By Claudia Ricci
"In a world where banks hold the money and regular people are helpless, one scrappy lawyer is fighting back."
With those words, the movie -- produced by John Oliver at Comedy Central -- begins. In a world growing increasingly sad and insane, this little film will make you laugh, which is about all we can do these days.
Based on a true story, "The Forecloser" dramatizes an extraordinary episode in the on-going misery that is America's housing foreclosure mess. This story is hard to believe, but it's absolutely true: a Florida couple received a foreclosure notice from Bank of America.
That's not unusual of course. But what is totally bizarre and wacky is the fact that the couple -- Warren and Maureen Nyerges, of Naples, Florida -- had paid cash for their home. That's right, THEY NEVER HAD A DAMN MORTGAGE. That simple fact didn't stop the stupid B of A from issuing them a foreclosure notice.
Incredible? Absurd? Hard to fathom?
That's what Comedy Central's John Oliver thought when he did the story for Jon Stewart's Daily Show earlier this week.
See how the Florida couple fought back.
See how they tried to find a lawyer to take their case. See how two dozen lawyers turned them down. See how they finally found a scrappy lawyer, Todd Allen, (pictured here),
who had only been in practice all of EIGHT MONTHS.
See how with Allen's help, the couple won their case, and how the court ordered B of A to pay legal fees of some $2,543.
See how the B of A failed to pay said fees (perhaps the poor B of A was too strapped??)
Then see how the Nyerges decided to FORECLOSE ON THE BANK OF AMERICA!!!!!
The couple hired a truck and two bulky repo men. They were accompanied by two sheriff's deputies. They all waltzed into the bank and told the B of A bank manager that they were taking stuff. Allen told a local station WFMY that he had ordered the deputies to take photocopiers, desks, computers and cash. Allen said the bank manager on duty was "visibly shaken." An hour later, the B of A issued a check to the couple, pictured here talking to Comedy Central's John Oliver.
"Having two sheriff's deputies sitting across your desk and a lawyer standing up behind them demanding whatever assets are in the bank can be intimidating, but so is having your home foreclosed on, when it wasn't right," Allen said.
See all of this, and the movie that John Oliver made.
It's too good to be true.
But it is all too true.
It's all so funny, and it's all so terribly terribly sad, because it reminds us of those many millions of American people who have had their homes foreclosed by the f_____ Bank of America. It reminds us that B of A and other foreclosers have made millions of silly -- and not so silly -- mistakes in trying to take peoples' houses away.
And most of all, it reminds us that many more Americans will lose their homes this year.
Allen called it "sweet justice," because this case, he said, is a symptom of a larger problem. If you remember, Bank of America, GMAC and JPMorgan Chase were forced to freeze their foreclosures late last year, to evaluate whether they had made errors.
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