Chase Bank Overcharged Troops For Mortgages

A Marine who refused to roll over when mortgage giant JP Morgan-Chase imposed too high an interest rate on his loan and repeatedly pressed him for payments he'd already made has won a victory for thousands of military families including his own.
Chase says it will pay more than $2 million to about 4,000 servicemember mortgage holders that were overcharged in interest while they were on active duty. The bank's decision is linked to a five-year legal battle with Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles, an F/A-18D weapons system officer who sued after the institution continued to charge him 9 or 10 percent interest on his mortgage -- a violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act -- and threatened to take his home. Under the SCRA, troops may have their mortgage rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure.
Rowles sought those legal protections beginning in 2006 after he went on active duty and found the bank was charging him the original, higher interest rate. He thought it was resolved, but later the bank continued to calculate Rowles' mortgage payment on the higher rate, according to various media reports.
Then Chase began hounding him for what it said was unpaid balances, according to an NBC report.
"Saturday, Sundays, middle of the night. It did not matter if it was a holiday," Julia Rowles told the network. "Collection calls at 3 in the morning. He would state, ‘I'm in California. I'm stationed here in Miramar. It's 3 in the morning. What are you doing calling me?' ‘Well, sir, this is an attempt to collect a debt.'"
The bank told the family it would foreclose on the house if the payments were not made. At that point Rowles got a lawyer and filed suit against JP Morgan-Chase on behalf of himself and other military families.
Rowles' attorney, Dick Harpootlian, told NBC: "They ought to only have to worry about fighting the fight and keeping alive, not about whether their wives and children and going to be put out on the street.
Chase now acknowledges that it was wrong. Not only on the Rowles' mortgage but on thousands more, including those of about 14 families it did foreclose on. The bank says it is now putting those families back in their homes.
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