Foreclosure settlement check blunder hits North Palm Beach

Palm Beach County
Palm Beach County

North Palm Beach residents were among the 96,000 U.S. borrowers feeling cheated after receiving errant checks for foreclosure abuses this week, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Rust Consulting, a Minneapolis-based paying agent with an office in Palm Beach Gardens, issued a statement Wednesday about the error, saying it would mail supplemental checks to the bilked borrowers “as soon as May 17.”

Regarding foreclosure abuses in 2009 and 2010, regulators hired Rust to distribute funds using formulas designed to calculate the probability that borrowers were wronged, reports said.

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John Lebeau of North Palm Beach expected a $50,000 restitution check for a possibly fraudulent foreclosure on his home that had dragged on for years. Instead, he received $400, he said. Lebeau told the newspaper his home was recently bought by an investor and he has been served with an eviction notice.

Lebeau said he received a loan modification in 2009. His loan was bought by another company, which said he needed to apply for the modification. And though he did, the company lost his paperwork repeatedly and his home was soon foreclosed on, the report said.

About 2.1 million borrowers have cashed settlement checks worth $1.9 billion, the Palm Beach Post said. [Palm Beach Post]Mark Maurer