A bank owned by Donald Trump's billionaire Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spent almost two years trying to force a 90-year-old woman out of her home over a 27 cent debt.

According to court papers, OneWest Bank NA sought to foreclose Ossie Lofton's house in Polk County Florida on November 25, 2014.

Last year, One West Bank merged with CIT Bank, who continued the case against Mrs Lofton, until the case was dismissed on October 7, 2016.

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Ossie Lofton took out a Reverse Mortgage on her Florida home, pictured, from OneWest bank who sent her a bill for $423.30 to cover insurance payments on the property, pictured

When Lofton sent a check for $423, the bank demanded the remaining 30 cents. Mistakenly, she issued a check for 3 cents, prompting the bank to issue this foreclosure notice

Steven Mnuchin (pictured with fiancee Louise Linton) led a group of investors who bought the bank which spent almost two years attempting to take Mrs Lofton's home from her over a debt of 27 cents

Mrs Lofton had taken out a reverse mortgage on her home from OneWest to fund her living expenses in her retirement. According to Politico, the bank sent her a bill for $423.30 to cover insurance payments on the property.

She returned a check for $423. In response, the bank, which was still owed 30 cents, sent out a second demand.

Mrs Lofton, who is 90, made a minor mistake, and sent the bank a check for 3 cents. Having lost out on 27 cents, the bank foreclosed.

Fortunately, lawyers at the Florida Rural Legal Services took up Mrs Lofton's case and the bank, which had since merged with Cit Bank NA, dropped their action.

Lynn Drysdale, who represented Mrs Lofton said: ' I don’t know that they’re the worst, but I certainly think it’s criminal the way these servicers are treating elderly homeowners.'

When the banks merged, it is reported Mnuchin made more than $10 million from the deal and is still on the board of CIT Bank.

Mnuchin, pictured, is a former Goldman Sachs executive and Hedge Fund manager

Trump supporter Teena Colebrook, 59, said she voted for the former reality TV star because of his promise to Make America Great Again.

However, she had previously taken out a loan with OneWest - and the bank had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

She said: 'I just wish that I had not voted. I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in.'

Less than a month after his presidential win, Trump's populist appeal has started to clash with a cabinet of billionaires and millionaires that he believes can energize economic growth.

The prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department drew plaudits from many in the financial sector. A former Goldman Sachs executive who pivoted in the early 2000s to hedge fund management and movie production, he seemed an ideal emissary to Wall Street.

When asked on Wednesday about his credentials to be Treasury secretary, Mnuchin emphasized his time running OneWest - which foreclosed on thousands in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by sub-prime mortgages.

Trump supporter Teena Colebrook, pictured, feels betrayed by the President-elect because she lost her home near Los Angeles Airport to OneWest during the economic down turn

'What I've really been focused on is being a regional banker for the last eight years,' Mnuchin said. 'I know what it takes to make sure that we can make loans to small and mid-market companies and that's going to be our big focus, making sure we scale back regulation so that we make sure the banks are lending.'

But the prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department prompted Colebrook and other OneWest borrowers who say they unfairly faced foreclosure to contact The Associated Press. Colebrook wishes she could meet with Trump to explain why she feels betrayed by his Cabinet selection after believing that his presidency could restore the balance of power to everyday people.

'He doesn't want the truth,' she said. 'He's now backing his buddies.'

The Trump transition team has been sensitive to preserving trust with its voters. Senior adviser Kellyanne Conway publicly warned that supporters would feel 'betrayed' if former critic Mitt Romney was named secretary of state, for instance.

For Mnuchin, the fundamental problem stems from the Great Recession. His investor group was the sole bidders to take control of the troubled bank IndyMac in 2009.

The group struck a deal that left the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission responsible for taking as much as 80 percent of the losses on former IndyMac assets and rebranded the troubled bank as OneWest.

Donald Trump, pictured, said he wants Mnuchin as his Treasury Secretary

The combination of OneWest's profitability, government guarantees and foreclosure activities drew the ire of activist groups like the California Reinvestment Coalition. It found the bank to be consistently one of the most difficult to work out loan modifications with even though OneWest never drew a major response from government regulators.

By June of 2014, five years after taking over OneWest, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion at a tremendous profit.

Colebrook said she learned the hard way about OneWest's tactics, after the regional bank acquired her home lender, First Federal Bank of California, in late 2009.

In 1998, she bought a triplex for $248,000 in Hawthorne, California, not too far from Los Angeles International Airport.

She rented out two of the units and lived in the third. Colebrook refinanced her mortgage in order to renovate the property and help buy additional homes to generate rental income.

By the time the financial crisis struck in 2008, she had an interest-only mortgage on the triplex known as a 'pick-a-payment' loan. Her monthly payments ran as high as $2,000 and only covered the interest on the debt. Then she got ensnarled in the economic downturn.

'All my tenants lost their jobs in the crash,' Colebrook said. 'They couldn't pay. It was a knock-on effect.'

By the time she lost her home in foreclosure in April 2015, the payoff balance totaled $517,662.

Colebrook said she is still challenging the foreclosure in court.

She now lives with her boyfriend in the small California city of San Luis Obispo. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, knowing that she could just as easily have ended up there.

'I cook at the homeless shelter because there but the grace of God go I.'