“You weep, and weep, for nothing . . . and little by little . . . you begin to grieve.” Samuel Beckett, EndGame
I grieve for the heroes. They were put through hell, defamed and economically damaged, for refusing to do what they knew was wrong. Their unhappiness at the attacks upon them was enormous. * “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.” Joannie Houk started the Reno Mortgage Division of Norwest Bank. Wells Fargo later took over Norwest. Ms. Houk was there for a combined 17 ½ years. She was a consistent Top Producer with a reputation for honesty. The climate of the Reno Wells Fargo Home mortgage changed when Rick Vaughan, Area Manager, and Beverly Stewart, Branch Manager, came on board. Ms. Stewart’s office was next to Mr. Vaughn. Next to her office was James Elvick, a sales manager. Next to his office was Mendy Elliott.
In 2003, Ms. Houk refused to do a home loan she knew was fraudulent. She had refused to do many previous fraudulent loans. This particular loan though, Ms. Houk later discovered was closed by Jill Blessing, another Home Mortgage Consultant in the same Wells Fargo office. Ms. Houk complained. Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Stewart then called her in. They told her, “protect the Realtors, your job is on the line, you’re just disgruntled, you’re the only one complaining.” At the time, Ms. Houk did not know that at least two other Wells Fargo loan officers and their sales manager were refusing to do mortgage fraud and getting the same treatment from Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Stewart. That was Ms. Vinson, Ms. Alexandra, and their manager Mr. Elvick. All were refusing to do mortgage fraud, and had been working for months with Wells Fargo Loan Fraud at the corporate level. In February 2004, Ms. Houk, still refusing to do mortgage fraud, and then not knowing about the other Heroes Among Us; Vinson, Alexandra and Elvick, left Wells Fargo.
Ms. Houk left Wells Fargo because she had long suspected, but now had proof, that Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Stewart knew about mortgage fraud in Mr. Vaughan’s region. Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Stewart encouraged mortgage fraud among their loan officers, and benefited by it. It was Mr. Vaughan’s and Ms. Stewart’s profitable for them EndGame at the expense of the inevitable destruction of our economy. The result is our now shattered community. It is believed that Mr. Vaughan was then earning around $800,000 a year and Ms. Stewart $450,000.
They were no different from vandals. The total for their willful destruction, and others that were then doing the same thing, is probably more than a billion dollars just in our community. Add up the certain results of this vandalism: the foreclosures, job losses, mental and physical health costs due to the stress, divorces, suicides, arsons, drop in home values, bankruptcies, drop in rents for landlords, drop or loss in income, miscarriages, increased domestic violence, more police calls, road rage, self-treatment with alcohol and drugs, less property taxes received by Washoe County, less sales taxes received by the State of Nevada, and on and on as we spiral down into this emerging depression.
That to me is economic terrorism, a threat to our Homeland. It is no different from the terror of 9-11 that brought down skyscrapers, murdered thousands and put the American economy on its knees. These local economic terrorists dragged our entire community to its knees. The toll in lives is unknown, as is the cost of the destruction.
Wells Fargo did not pay Ms. Houk her last $15k of commissions she had earned while there.
Sources are the Washoe County public records, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HUD, VA; Title 18, United States Code, Section 1014, Reno Justice Court, and Washoe County District Court public records.
The home loan lenders created the Housing Crisis through obvious pandering. It’s time we called the home loan lenders what they became. They are economic terrorists. The lenders, not the borrowers have Unclean Hands. It is up to those lenders to fix the Housing Crisis. It is against public policy and unconscionable to throw people out of their homes because of lenders previous lending practices.
Permanent home loan forgiveness and permanent home interest rate reductions are the only answer. Note modifications would immediately put a floor on the collapse of housing prices. That would pull us out of this recession. The home loan lenders current practice of losing the full mortgage plus foreclosure costs only adds to the already bloated for sale inventory further driving down the home values and further destroying the American economy.
* Samuel Beckett, EndGame
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