Yesterday, we posted that $C and the Bandit were playing Let’s Make A Deal with homeowners, offering them a hot grand for their deed if they would walk away from houses they can’t afford without selling off the pipes and drywall to the highest bidder. Today – we learn that Bank of America is foreclosing on houses that were paid for in cash:

Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure.

Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.

Oopsie! Turns out Bank of America had the wrong address. The Cardosos’ tenant tried to tell the bank this. The Cardosos tried to tell the bank this. The real estate agent that worked for Bank of America tried to tell the bank this. But the paper-pushers pushed on, and foreclosed on the Cardosos’ house and the one ten doors down that they actually had a right to foreclose on.

And when the error was finally realized… did they even say: “Hey, Cardosos. We’re sorry we scared off your tenant, lost all your family photos, cut off your utilities and let your pipes freeze?”

You guessed it: no. They didn’t even remove the lockbox. Dude had to break back into his own house after he proved to police he owned it.

Unfortunately, this maybe isn’t rare:

Citi-Residential started the foreclosure process on a home in Kissimmee in 2008 — changing the locks and emptying the pool — even though the owner, who lives in London, didn’t have a mortgage with the company, according to a report by Orlando TV station WFTV. Company officials said the high number of foreclosures they were dealing with in Central Florida contributed to the error.

I would say the moral of the story is to rent, but even that isn’t enough to stop the guys with lockboxes from getting up in your shiz if the landlord defaults (or even if the landlord doesn’t default, in the case of the Cardosos’ tenant). The moral of the story may involve being ready to protect your property from banksters with armaments and an end-of-days-sized canned goods larder, or at the very least, making some good friends in the legal community, if this is really happening with any regularity.