OAK GROVE, Mo. -- Homeowners across the country are wondering where their money is after a Florida mortgage giant was shut down by the feds.
Two months after a federal raid at a bank and mortgage wholesaler, a metro family is still trying to locate more than a thousand dollars of their money.
The rural atmosphere, not far from the city, attracted Carol Teasley to buy a home in Oak Grove. The couple is barely surviving, and lives paycheck to paycheck.
Some of the food on their table, luckily, comes from just outside. Their chickens provided eggs for them to scramble on the day we visited.
The couple had no idea the feds would crack open a criminal investigation into their mortgage holder,
Taylor Bean & Whitaker.
It's made it difficult to provide for the family.
"To us, it's a very large portion of our income," Carol Teasley said.
More than a thousand dollars of their money is tied up in a federal investigation, putting them a month behind in their mortgage payments. They asked Call for Action to track their money.
"I still haven't received anything from anybody on where the funds are or where they're being kept," Teasley said.
We found the Teasleys are one of hundreds of Taylor Bean & Whitaker mortgage holders across the country who have tax money and mortgage payments held up in a federal investigation.
Timeline
On August 3rd, federal agents raided the wholesale lender and Colonial Bank of Montgomery, Alabama.
According to federal documents, Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp signed a definitive agreement to invest $300 million into Colonial Bank on March 31, 2009.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said it has reasonable cause to believe Colonial Bank "engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practice."
TBW closed its mortgage office after the Federal Housing Administration suspended its lending power on August 5th. The paperwork goes on to say TBW deposited $900 million in mortgage escrow deposits with the bank.
Colonial Bank said it was told by the U.S. Department of Justice that it's the target of a federal criminal investigation involving their mortgage warehouse lending and account irregularities.
According to federal paperwork, the FDIC took over as receiver of the bank and hoped to get a picture of all bank accounts maintained by TBW at the bank, all borrower payments held at the bank and TBW, and other payments related to mortgage servicing. The goal was to wrap this all up by October 30th.
On August 24th, TBW filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Now, all decisions must be approved by the bankruptcy court.
In the meantime, other servicers took over the Taylor Bean & Whitaker mortgage accounts.
Cenlar (Central Loan Administration & Reporting) took over the Teasley's loan. Cenlar is a wholesale bank and Teasley says she was assured everything would be transferred to Cenlar.
