Video: Misplaced Mortgage Files on the Rise

IRONDALE, Ala.—- Glenda Young wasn’t too happy when she found out we had found her complete financial identity thrown out with the garbage.  Young’s file was one of two dozen discovered by Randy Robinson. 

While on a break from his job, he noticed this stack of mortgage files just dumped in an alley behind an Irondale shopping center.

Young’s file was one of two dozen discovered by Randy Robinson.

While on a break from his job, he noticed this stack of mortgage files just dumped in an alley behind an Irondale shopping center.

His first reaction was to call the authorities.

“I called the Irondale Police Department and they sent an officer out here to look at it.  And pretty much their attitude was like there’s nothing we can do about it.  And that was the end of that,” Robinson remembered.

So we called Irondale Police.

Within an hour, Lieutenant Norman Stapp and a handful of other officers were on the scene.

“Needs to be disposed of in the proper way and we’re going to have it boxed up and brought to the station and destroyed after that,” Stapp stated.

A city crew was called in.

In a matter of minutes, they had bagged every single document and thrown them in the back of a city pickup truck.

The files were then driven to the police department, where they were later destroyed.

So who dumped those mortgage files?

Well we found dozens of the same business cards scattered all over those financial documents.

They belong to a loan processor with Dream Builder’s Home Services.

So we stopped by their Roebuck office to get some answers.

A company representative would not grant us an on camera interview.

Off camera he told us Dream Builder’s Home Services was no longer in the mortgage business.

He said the employee whose name appears on the business card left the company months earlier and that he was not responsible for what files she took with her and how she disposed of them.

So we sat down with Scott Corscadden with the Alabama State Banking Department.

He was quite familiar with a company called Dream Builder’s Home Mortgage.

Last November he revoked their mortgage broker license for, among other violations, “failing to maintain the required records.“

Dumping two dozen mortgage files in an alley didn’t exactly win his approval either.

“At the bare minimum they should have maintained them in a safe manner.  You know a locked file cabinet or at least a file cabinet that is secure in some measure,” Corscadden claimed.

Since the company’s license is already revoked, Corscadden says the state can’t take any further action against them.   

He added unfortunately discoveries like this one in Irondale are becoming more common.

He said as the number of mortgage brokers has dropped recently, the amount of misplaced mortgage file cases has climbed.

“I think over the past six months to a year, six months probably changed dramatically. I’d say we’ve seen about four cases like this coming up,” Corscadden calculated.

That’s four times as many cases they’d see in the past.

Not comforting news for customers like Glenda Young.
“I’ve seen on T.V. how long it takes to get something straightened out once your identity has been stolen. It’s almost impossible, so it’s very scary,” Young concluded.
   
Fortunately for her, a concerned citizen found them before her fears were realized.

Right now Alabama law only requires mortgage companies to maintain each mortgage for three years after the last entry in the file.

There are no state requirements of how they must dispose the documents.