It's criminal: Banksters holding up active-duty troops

These days it seems big banks will break any law if it helps to fill their pockets. But you’d think they’d at least have the decency to leave their greedy hands off our active-duty troops. Nope.

Not only have banks like JPMorgan Chase foreclosed on thousands of active-duty soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, they’re also going after troops to collect student loan repayments.

The Consumerist reports:

Benjamin is in the military, and currently serving in Afghanistan. We'd thank him for his service, but Citibank says not to. They think that he's not there anymore, and have ended the active-duty forbearance on his student loans. Calling up Citi and sending them documentation is tricky when you're, you know, in Afghanistan, but he’s doing his best. Nothing he sends is good enough for Citibank to actually believe him.

According to SCRA, troops cannot be the target of civil financial actions while they are on duty. That means soldiers are protected from bankruptcies, foreclosures and garnishments. A recent amendment to the SCRA also requires a 6 percent cap on interest rates for most kinds of debt.

JP Morgan was the target of a suit involving 6,000 troops for unlawful foreclosures and failing to drop interest rates to 6 percent. The bank quickly settled – apparently they do have some shame, at least when it's bad PR. The Department of Justice also launched an investigation into the banks’ criminal violations of SCRA provisions, but no one’s gone to jail and wronged American troops have gotten little restitution from the DOJ’s mortgage settlement earlier this year.

As for Benjamin, he’s been fighting Citibank for more than two months over email and on the phone. Two years ago he received forbearance on his student loan when he sent the bank a copy of his orders, which stipulated a minimum of two years of service.

As Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism writes,

While this is clearly only one instance, big banks like Citi are not set up to do anything in a one-off manner. The dunning letter was auto-generated; the bank deemed his active duty to have ended (based on an inability to understand the word “minimum”); it pretends to be unaware of the fail-safe way to verify whether Benjamin is on duty, which is by checking with the active duty database.

Taking away troops’ homes and money is a strange way to honor Americans who serve their country. But hey, we've learned to expect no less from our banks.

-- Union Thug