That charming little organization, BofA — which could almost be BFF, because they’re, like, best friends with their customers — is celebrating one hundred years of proudly serving America’s veterans.
That touched my cynicism rail. I bet, if one were to check, they would discover that BofA has been making money off America’s veterans for one hundred years. I’ll bet, if you check, they’ll have a number of happy stories about their efforts to hire and retain vets. I’ll be once a year, probably on Veteran’s Day, a senior exec sends out a thank you to all the vets who work for Bank of America. And then others in the company electronically chirp in, “Yes, thank you!”
I’ll bet all of this is just like the other corporations I worked for who so supported vets, like me. I wonder, though, if back in the meltdown, when BofA was evicting homeowners and taking possessions of people’s homes, how often the bank stopped and said, “Wait. This is a vet. We support America’s veterans. We can’t evict them.”
Yeah, I don’t think so. Not when there’s stories out there like this:
Service Members to Receive Over $123 Million for Unlawful Foreclosures Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act
The Justice Department announced today that under its settlements with five of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers, 952 service members and their co-borrowers are eligible to receive over $123 million for non-judicial foreclosures that violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). The five mortgage servicers are JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. (JP Morgan Chase); Wells Fargo Bank N.A. and Wells Fargo & Co. (Wells Fargo); Citi Residential Lending Inc., Citibank, NA and CitiMortgage Inc. (Citi); GMAC Mortgage, LLC, Ally Financial Inc. and Residential Capital LLC (GMAC Mortgage); and BAC Home Loans Servicing LP formerly known as Countrywide Home Loans Servicing LP (Bank of America).
| Amount of Money to be Distributed | Number of Service Members Eligible for Compensation | |
| Bank of America | $35,369,756 | 286 |
| Citi | $14,880,578 | 126 |
| GMAC Mortgage | $13,720,588 | 113 |
| JP Morgan Chase | $31,068,523 | 188 |
| Wells Fargo | $28,358,179 | 239 |
| TOTALS | $123,397,624 | 952 |
Maybe BofA should amend their ad to, “Proudly serving America’s veterans for one hundred years, except for those times we cheated and fucked them over to increase our profits.”
I imagine BofA made all kinds of nice noises and saccharin pubic apologies, while shrugging it off with the rationalization, “We’re a big business. Shit happens.”
Michael Seidel, writer 