La Maison Mortgage Corporation in Houma, LA

For the last several months, I have been working with Kathy Hamner and Renee Dupre of La Maison Mortgage in trying to secure a piece of land and place a mobile home on it through Rural Development. Part of that process is that they collect a check for $700 for a land appraisal in their up front document collecting that will be used to order said land appraisal once the applicant's(mine and my husband's) credit and income meet their guidelines. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we found out that we were not going to be able to secure the land or move forward in the mortgage process BEFORE THE APPRAISAL WAS ORDERED, so Kathy emailed me and told me that she was closing my file. During the whole process, it was never said that I would owe them anything for services rendered or anything of the sort, and when they said my file was closed, I assumed my $700 check would be shredded with the rest of the file or mailed back to me - especially since Renee emailed me and asked where I wanted my "refund" check sent to. I wondered at the word "refund" but dismissed it as being my original check. On 12/30/16, I checked my bank account to find that they'd cashed that $700 WITHOUT my permission or knowledge or any invoices for money owed to them. Being that this file is supposed to be closed, I used that money to pay off some other bills that once they pull out of my checking account this week while waiting on their refund check of $637.68 will cause several transactions of mine to bounce at a $30 overdraft fee for each one that bounces.