Six years ago, Kwaku Atta Poku lost his Clary’s Forest townhome to foreclosure, well before the national foreclosure crisis began. Mr. Poku lost his home despite the fact that he never missed a mortgage payment.
Mr. Poku got screwed. Unbeknownst to him, when he refinanced his home in 2001 to take advantage of a lower interest rate, his new mortgage company failed to pay off his old mortgage company. To make matters worse, his original loan was with the now defunct Washington Mutual Bank and his new mortgage was with Washington Mutual Home Loan, essentially the same company. Somehow, somewhere in that chaotic company the money was never transferred from the one entity to the other. It took the bank almost five years to discover this and when they did they assumed that the homeowner was at fault, not them. By the time Mr. Poku became aware of the problem it was already too late. The Pokus were evicted in August 2006.
Despite almost five years of unsuccessful attempts to seek redress in the courts, the Ghanian native never gave up. Now, according to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun, “a federal judge's ruling has given new hope to Atta Poku,”
“U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled Monday that Atta Poku, who lost his home to foreclosure in 2005 and was evicted the following August, is entitled to a trial. Atta Poku says in court papers that his first mortgage was not properly paid off by the bank that gave him the new loan.”
A trial is set for this summer.
