Steven Mnuchin, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, in the lobby of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, November 15, 2016. Mnuchin’s dealings as a hedge fund manager and close ties to others in the sector are likely to open him to intense scrutiny at a Senate confirmation hearing. (Photo: Sam Hodgson / The New York Times)
In 2015, OneWest Bank moved to foreclose on John Yang, an 80-year-old Korean immigrant living in Orange Park, Florida, a small suburb of Jacksonville. The bank believed he wasn’t living in his home, violating the terms of its loan. It dispatched an agent to give him legal notification of the foreclosure.
Where did the bank find him? At the same single-story home the bank had said in court papers he did not occupy.
Still OneWest pressed on, forcing Yang, a former Christian missionary, to seek help from legal aid attorneys. This year, during a deposition, an employee of OneWest’s servicing division was asked the obvious question: Why would the bank pursue a foreclosure that seemed so clearly unjustified by the facts?
The employee’s response was blunt: “You’re trying to make logic out of an illogical situation.”
Yang was lucky. The bank eventually dropped its efforts against him. But others were not so fortunate. In recent years, OneWest has foreclosed on at least 50,000 people, often in circumstances that consumer advocates say run counter to federal rules and, as in Yang’s case, common sense.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary has prompted new scrutiny of OneWest’s foreclosure practices. Mnuchin was the lead investor and chairman of the company during the years it ramped up its foreclosure efforts. Representatives from the company and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
Records show the attempt to push Mr. Yang out of his home was not an unusual one for OneWest’s Financial Freedom unit, which focused on controversial home loans known as reverse…