Bank Overcharged Military Families On Mortgages - Tamara Keith, NPR News, Washington

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JPMorgan Chase admitted to overcharging more than 4,000 active-duty military personnel on their home loans and said it foreclosed in error on 14 of them. The company will send out $2 million worth of refunds to 4,000 active-duty customers who were affected.

The banking giant JP Morgan Chase has admitted that it overcharged more than 4,000 active duty military personnel on their home loans. As first reported by NBC News, the bank also says it mistakenly foreclosed on the homes of 14 soldiers.

As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, members in the military have special protections, but in this case, they didn't work.

TAMARA KEITH: Julia Rowles and her husband Marine Captain Jonathan Rowles have been fighting with Chase bank for years - basically ever since Captain Rowles was commissioned as an officer in 2006.

Ms. JULIA ROWLES: They would say, we will take your house. We will report you to the credit agency. This is a bad situation that you don't want to be getting into. Pay us today. They were harassing us for money that we did not owe them.

KEITH: Her husband once got a collection call at 3:00 AM. And none of that was supposed to happen. Under a federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, most troops can get their mortgage interest rates reduced to six percent while on active-duty and foreclosures aren't allowed. Rowles says her husband, who is now overseas, was granted the lower interest rate, but Chase didn't adjust its records.

Ms. ROWLES: They kept still charging us nine and 10 percent and we were paying upwards to $2,000 when we should have only been paying $1,400.

KEITH: This week, Chase said it would be sending out $2 million worth of refunds to 4,000 active-duty customers like the Rowles, who were overcharged. It also admitted wrongfully foreclosing on 14 homes, and said all but one of those cases has been resolved.

Bank officials declined an interview request, but in a statement said quote, while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly badly about the mistakes we made here.

But attorney Dick Harpootlian in Columbia, South Carolina isn't ready to accept the apology. He's one of the lawyers representing the Rowles family in what he hopes will become a class action lawsuit against Chase.

Mr. DICK HARPOOTLIAN (Civil Attorney): I was a prosecutor for 12 years, everybody that got caught taking money that wasn't theirs always said they were sorry, offered to give it back and call it even and that's just not what ought to happen in cases like this.

Ms. ELIZABETH WARREN (Assistant and Special Advisor to the President): This latest incident is further proof of why we need a strong consumer financial protection agency.

KEITH: That's Elizabeth Warren, a special assistant to President Obama. She's putting together the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was created by Congress to look out for consumers in the wake of the financial crisis and will also focus on protecting military families.

Ms. WARREN: We need a cop on the beat. The laws are in place but there's no one to enforce them and no one to speak up for these families, this is just wrong.

KEITH: Warren says the laws exist so service members can concentrate on doing their jobs.

Ms. WARREN: Not be worried about paperwork and bills and whether or not a loved one is being harassed for money that's not even owed.

KEITH: Yesterday, Warren visited Lackland Air Force Base in Texas to talk to military families about their financial concerns. She was joined by Holly Petraeus, the wife of General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Mrs. Petraeus was one of the first hires for the new consumer bureau.

Ms. HOLLY PETRAEUS (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau): I really can't think of anything better to be doing while my husband is deployed forever than, you know, working on a project like this.

KEITH: She'll head the office of Service Member Affairs - an office that will be on the lookout for issues like those at Chase.

Spectators Suffer Minor Injuries in S.I. Helicopter Mishap by Tim Minton and Michael Clancy - NBC New York

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Ten people were injured, including seven transported to the hospital, when an Osprey military aircraft performing a Memorial Day demonstration in a Staten Island park knocked down tree limbs onto spectators.

The Osprey MV-22 aircraft was landing at Staten Island's Clove Lakes Park around 9 a.m. Monday as part of Fleet Week when it blew down a number of tree limbs. Video captured by an overhead chopper filming the demonstration shows spectators scrambling for cover as the powerful helicopter - which combines airplane-like wings with rotors that let it take off and land vertically, like a helicopter -- kicked up a terrible wind.

"It was like two tornadoes with the propellers," eyewitness Keith Carlsen told NBCNewYork. "They got low and everything started flying. I was walking 300 yards away and it was still amazing."

Onlookers first scrambled for cover and then rushed to clear fallen branches to see if people were trapped beneath them. Parents snatched up small children and carried them out of harm's way. One tree lost all its branches on one side, photographs from the scene show.

ed, including seven transported to the hospital, when an Osprey military aircraft performing a Memorial Day demonstration in a Staten Island

park knocked down tree limbs onto spectators.

The Osprey MV-22 aircraft was landing at Staten Island's Clove Lakes Park around 9 a.m. Monday as part of Fleet Week when it blew down a number of tree limbs. Video captured by an overhead chopper filming the demonstration shows spectators scrambling for cover as the powerful helicopter - which combines airplane-like wings with rotors that let it take off and land vertically, like a helicopter -- kicked up a terrible wind.

"It was like two tornadoes with the propellers," eyewitness Keith Carlsen told NBCNewYork. "They got low and everything started flying. I was walking 300 yards away and it was still amazing."

Onlookers first scrambled for cover and then rushed to clear fallen branches to see if people were trapped beneath them. Parents snatched up small children and carried them out of harm's way. One tree lost all its branches on one side, photographs from the scene show.

"The wind was unbearable," recalled eyewitness Anita Muriale. "People were falling. Trash was going all over the place. Trees was flipping -- I ran!"

Ten people suffered minor injuries in the mishap. Seven people taken to Richmond University Hospital and three people on the scene refused treatment, according to the fire department.

The MV-22 is a Marine Corps version of the V-22, which combines airplane-like wings with rotors that let it take off and land vertically. It "stirs up a lot of wind, and that's apparently what did it," Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said.

"We came in over the trees and the next thing I see is a Tennessee Titans blanket blowing up in the air and so that made me think something was below us," Capt. Mike Henson told NBCNewYork. "And I turned down and looked and there's some people walking away from the downed tree."

A joint venture of Boeing Co. and Textron Inc.'s Bell Helicopter, the V-22 is designed to carry 24 combat troops and fly twice as fast as the Vietnam War-era assault helicopters it was designed to replace.

The Osprey program was nearly scrapped after a history of mechanical failures and two test crashes that killed 23 Marines in 2000. But development continued, and the aircraft have been deployed to Iraq.

While the General Accounting Office questioned the V-22's performance in a report last year, the Marine Corps has called it effective.

In hindsight things would be done differently but every precaution had been taken, the Marine regiment commander in charge of the operation said.

"All i can tell you is we hit all of the safety parameters as far as distances," Col. Eric Smith said. "So the people were as far back as they should have safely been. But that tree limb obviously was not something we anticipated snapping."