THE 15 DAY LAW
by ABC2 News Investigator Tisha Thompson

The next time you get into a cab, look closely in the rear view mirror.

Because you may be looking into the soul of Kwaku Attapoku, a new American citizen from Ghana, who started his cab company 14 years ago with nothing more than sheer determination.

It was, “hard work,” he says. “I walked the length and breadth of Howard County in the cold winter, I’m from Africa! Chased by dogs, passing out flier all over.”

It worked. The Baltimore Sun did a profile on his cab company, he’s hired as many as 20 drivers and he saved enough money to buy a home for his wife and family.

"I saw a beautiful home and that is what I made it into."

With the same determination he put into his company, Attapoku put into his house in Columbia, increasing its value from $98,000 to $320,000.

“I had my office in the house,” he says with pride.

But he is not sitting in his office.

Instead, he’s trying to do business as his three children run around him in a small kitchen in a tiny apartment…because the Attapokus were evicted after Washington Mutual foreclosed on their house.

Attapoku shakes a legal document. "This is the affidavit for the court to take my house,” he says shaking it hard. “This is it."

Buried in a growing box of paper, Attapoku says he has documents that show not only did he pay his mortgage every month; he was actually three months ahead. He also refinanced his home with another bank five years ago and has the letter from Washington Mutual telling him his loan was paid in full.

But now Washington Mutual has told the court it lost these same pieces of paper.

Attapoku says, "They cannot find their paperwork, I have my paperwork. They claim they cannot find the original loan number. So they took my house. The only reason the court took my house is because of this document."

Lisa Friedman is a national spokeswoman for Washington Mutual. In a written statement, she says the bank, “sent the loan proceeds to the customer's closing agent. Typically, the closing agent then sends the prior lender the amount required to pay off the prior loan.” She says the bank “never received the proceeds from the closing agent to pay off the prior loan.” As a result, she says “the foreclosure was the unfortunate and unavoidable result. While this outcome is certainly regrettable, the foreclosure wasn’t our fault."

But Attapoku never had a chance to fight the foreclosure because Maryland banks can foreclose on your home in just 15 days -- and they don't have to tell you about it. In Attapoku's case, he only found out about it when the new owner knocked on his door."

"I was on the job when somebody walked into my house and said I'm buying your house,” he says. "The day I got notice, I had less than five days left. That includes the weekend."

Lawyers with the non-profit group Civil Justice Inc. say Maryland’s “Rocket Docket” allows unscrupulous banks and lawyers to steal people’s homes. “There is nothing you can do to stop the sale except go into bankruptcy," says Phillip Robinson, the group’s Executive Director.

Other lawyers in the organization say they are now seeing homes go into foreclosure because the owner didn’t pay the $100 homeowner association fee.

That’s right -- $100.

"In this state, you actually have more rights in court as a tenant than you do as a homeowner,” says Peter Holland, another attorney working with Civil Justice.

Which means the Attapokus are better protected now that they are forced to rent a home than they were when they owned their own home. "The law has made it possible for a crime to be committed against me and my family" Attapoku says.

A crime, he says, made so much worse because he worked so hard for the American dream, only to be let down by the laws he swore to uphold.