East Idahoans are being hit with a phone scam. Someone claiming to be with Wells Fargo is telling them their “card is locked” and they need to give their card info over the phone to unlock it.
Local Wells Fargo officials say it’s called a “fishing” scam, and that you should deal directly with your local bank if there’s a possible problem with your card.
In East Idaho there are a couple of scams going around. The first involves people calling you up and acting like cops trying to get bail money. They tell you they’ve arrested one of your friends, or in the case of a local business, one of your employees, and they need bail money. Sounds unbelievable, because bail is normally handled through the courts, but, amazingly several people, and a local Pocatello restaurant (Butterburr’s) have fallen for the scam. One guy was even told he would end up getting his money back. Do not wire money to anyone you do not know, even if they claim to be a police officer!
The warning for the other scam is coming from the United States Postal Service (USPS). People are being sent email notices about a package they need to pick up.
On Friday, October 22, I was in one of the Pocatello post offices and the lady in front of me asked for a package that she was told she had to pick up. The Postal Clerk looked for some time, didn’t find anything, then asked for the pick up slip the Postal Carrier normally leaves. The lady said she had gotten an email. As far as I know the USPS does not send out email, or phone, notices that a package needs to be picked up. It’s a good thing the lady didn’t click on the email link, ’cause that’s when they get you. The USPS website has a warning about the scam.
A mortgage Note is the document that proves who holds the mortgage on the home that’s being bought. There’s more and more evidence that the big banks can’t find those notes. That includes Notes on homes that have already been foreclosed. Another problem is that, in states that require court involvement, the judges never asked for proof of the Note.
The program, Need to Know, on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), interviewed Michael Hudson, an author who revealed how the big banks were intentionally trapping people in bad home loans. Hudson says The big banks are using the same tactics in foreclosing. He also says that many of the foreclosures involve home buyers who were looking to refinance their loans to save money, instead they were set up to fail.
The problem with the Notes is that the big banks quickly sold off the bad loans, and there doesn’t seem to be any record keeping regarding the Notes. In many cases, mortgages were sold several times over to other banks, and as investment schemes. Hudson says the push to foreclose is a way of making more money for the big banks. In other words the bad loans, the reselling of mortgage loans, and now the foreclosures, are all part of a big money making scam by corporate America.
Michael Hudson says the Federal government has done almost nothing about this probable crime against American home buyers. It’s the states that have taken the most action. But each state has their own foreclosure laws, which seem to be adding to the mess. Hudson says that the reason why President Obama isn’t ordering a halt to foreclosures, is that he could be held politically responsible for any crash in the housing market. That would suggest that the current housing market is actually being driven by the foreclosures.
Another article, in the Executive Intelligence Review, says that this is all part of the dying last gasp of our country’s financial system. For too long investments have been sold, that were on paper only, no real assets. So the bad loan scandal was how the big banks set things up to grab some real assets, and the foreclosure scandal is how the big banks are cashing in those assets to pay off the investors.