She claims her annual payment was reported as monthly — two bureaus allegedly wouldn't fix it
A $180,000 mortgage made to look like $4.2 million in debt — because an annual payment was reported as a monthly one.
That is the central allegation in a federal lawsuit filed March 26, 2026, in the District of North Dakota. Deann Bueligen, a resident of New Salem, is suing Nationstar Mortgage, LLC and all three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union — alleging inaccurate credit reporting on her mortgage account.
According to the filing, Bueligen's mortgage carried a single annual payment of $11,329, a structure described as more common in rural and farming areas where borrowers receive most of their yearly income from selling livestock or crops. The loan was originally obtained through Valley Mortgage, a local North Dakota lender, and later transferred to U.S. Bank, then to Community Loan Servicing, LLC, before being sold to Nationstar, which used Rushmore Servicing to service the account.
In 2024, Bueligen pulled her credit reports and discovered that the annual payment was showing up as a monthly obligation — $11,329 per month, with 372 monthly payments. To any lender reviewing her file, it would have appeared she owed more than $4.2 million. Her actual remaining balance at the time was less than $150,000.
The alleged consequences were serious. The filing states that the error had a massive negative effect on Bueligen's debt-to-income ratio, severely hampering her ability to seek credit. She was denied a credit card and an automobile loan, and the inaccurate data was viewed by Capital One and JPMorgan Chase.
Bueligen tried to get the error corrected. She first disputed the reporting directly with Experian, but according to the filing, Experian verified the inaccurate monthly payment amount and continued reporting it. She then sent formal dispute packages by certified mail to all three bureaus. Equifax removed the Nationstar account from her credit report. Trans Union, however, allegedly continued reporting the $11,329 monthly balance along with derogatory and inaccurate past-due statuses for multiple months, even after the thirty-day investigation window had passed. Bueligen never received dispute results from Experian regarding the certified mail dispute.
The lawsuit identifies Nationstar as the source of the inaccurate data, alleging the servicer verified the disputed information as accurate and instructed the bureaus to continue reporting it even after being notified of the dispute.
Bueligen's loan changed hands multiple times before reaching Nationstar. The lawsuit argues it was illogical to report a borrower as owing over $11,000 a month when the entire original balance was $180,000, payable over thirty-one years. For mortgage servicers handling loans with non-standard payment structures, the case underscores how data can go wrong when it passes between multiple servicers and gets translated into standard monthly reporting formats.
The lawsuit seeks actual, statutory, and punitive damages. No defendant has responded and no determination has been made on any of the claims.
