MA Consumer Files Class Action Against FHFA, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo Over Alleged Foreclosure Due Process Violations

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A Massachusetts consumer has filed a proposed class action against the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. over the entities’ allegedly unlawful foreclosure of mortgages and sales of properties. The plaintiff behind the 21-page case roots the defendants’ allegedly improper conduct in their failure to provide homeowners with both adequate notice and an opportunity for meaningful hearings, which the case pegs as violations of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.

The plaintiff states that she executed a promissory note and mortgage deed for $214,000 in May 2007, with Drew Mortgage Associates as the lender and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems as the mortgagee. In 2009, the plaintiff’s mortgage was assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, which subsequently became the servicer and the holder of the woman’s promissory note, according to the suit.

In May 2018, Wells Fargo Bank reportedly filed an Order of Notice in Massachusetts Land Court in order to determine the plaintiff’s military service member status. Following an affidavit issued later that same month, Wells Fargo, acting on behalf of Fannie Mae, mailed the plaintiff in August a Notice of Intent to Foreclose and Mortgagee’s Foreclosure Sale that stated the sale was to commence in September.

As the plaintiff tells it, the defendants ran afoul of her constitutional right to due process by conducting a non-judicial foreclosure sale of her property in September 2018 “without first providing adequate notice, a meaningful hearing prior to the deprivation of property, and an opportunity to recover adequate damages.” The plaintiff argues the foreclosure and sale of other, similarly situated mortgages are therefore also “wrongful, void, and without force and effect.”