CIT Group I Won A $100,000 Judgment Against CIT Group For Mishandling My Mortgage New York New York

In 2005, I won a $100,891 judgement against the CIT Group for mishandling a mortgage I took on an investment property.

CIT bought the mortgage from Ocwen Federal Bank in 2004 and immediately ceased paying the taxes and insurance. In response, I was forced to pay the taxes and insurance out of pocket. I then sued the CIT Group for the amount I had to pay -- about $1400 -- and won two judgments against them (one for taxes, then one for insurance).

CIT Group refused to acknowledge the judgment, and sent me a letter stating they did not have to respect the judgment of a District Court in Virginia, since Virginia did not have jurisdiction. After receiving that, I took out a Writ of Fieri Facias and placed a garnishment on my mortgage payments to them, i.e., I seized my own mortgage payments to pay their debt to me.

When I did this, CIT Group attempted to place me in foreclosure, and noted such on my credit report. To stop this, I sued them for libel, tortious interference with business, making a false credit statement and a few other things. CIT Group sent a letter to my attorney stating that the court system in Virginia did not have jurisdiction over them and that they did not recognize the validity of the lawsuit. In September of that year, I received a $100,000 default judgment against the CIT Group.

In November, I filed another Writ of Fieri Facias and got a court order for the Henrico County Sheriffs to seize the CIT Group's retail lending office in Richmond Virginia and all CIT Group property within. That finally got the CIT Group's attention and they posted a bond with the court through Hartford Fire Insurance to stop the seizure. However, they still failed to pay the judgment.

It was only when I sued Hartford Fire Insurance to pay the bond, since CIT Group had failed to respond, that I was able to get the CIT Group to cut me a check. In the end, I did receive the $100,891. And, while I have sued a lot of lenders for a lot of illegal practices, I have never dealt with one as ignorant and arrogant as the CIT Group. For the damages I did receive, I also had to put up with a year of my credit report stating I was in foreclosure -- a fact that essentially froze all financing activity for my company for 2005.

Bill
Roanoke, Virginia
U.S.A.