Articles Related To Mortgage Servicing Fraud

Articles Related to Mortgage Servicing Fraud

Pet owners in financial trouble should check with local shelters or rescue groups for information about temporary assistance (some can provide food for the short term or provide lists of lower-cost vet care, for example). Also, the HSUS has a broad range of information on its website, including how to market yourself to a rental property manager if you're a pet owner, how to save money on pet care, and links to pet-friendly apartments. Go to www.hsus.org and type "foreclosure pets" into the search function.

MSFraud Newsletter "From the Inside"

*Date*	Article (Recent Additions)	*Author*	*Comment*
6/29/09	US High Court: States Can Probe National Bank Lending	Brent Kendall DOW JONES NEWSWIRES	Scalia said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo couldn't issue executive subpoenas to the banks but could bring enforcement actions against them in court.
6/29/09	Madoff Sentenced: 150 Years!	Consumer Warning Network	The judge ordered that much of Madoff’s assets be confiscated, including his Manhattan apartment. (Now it's time to move on the the next targets. MSF)
6/19/09	PETERS AND FREEDMAN SUFFER ANOTHER CRUSHING LEGAL DEFEAT Court of Appeal Unanimously Rules Against the Taking of the AHRC Website	AHRC	A panel of three judges in the California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division 3, unanimously ruled that the AHRC website could not be turned over to Peters and Freedman, and ordered the trial court to reverse its ruling.
6/17/09	Obama Seeks Financial Rules to Curb Excesses "if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”	STEPHEN LABATON New York Times	“A cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities” over decades led to the present problems, the president said. “It was easy money, while it lasted.” But, he added, “These schemes were built on a pile of sand.”
1/22/09	Foreclosure Fightback	Ben Ehrenreich The Nation .com	`A grassroots “home defense” organization, which had managed to forestall the eviction on three occasions, put out the call, and 10,000 people–mainly working-class immigrants from Southern and Central Europe–soon gathered, withstanding wave after wave of police tear gas, clubbings and bullets, “vowing not to leave until John Sparanga [was] back in his home.”`
6/12/09	Neighbors are forcing neighbors into foreclosure	PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press	Gauging the number of foreclosures nationwide by homeowner association is difficult. But in Texas, foreclosure attempts initiated by homeowner associations in 19 counties are up 30 percent from two years ago, according to Dallas-based Foreclosure Listing Services.
6/12/09 Video	Woman Who Chained Herself To Home To Stand Trial	10news.com	"I'm not the trespasser here and I'm not the lawbreaker," said Reyno. (The bank didn't own the home - they just stole it. MSF)
6/12/09	Foreclosure defense a popular subject at Bar convention	Paul Brinkmann South Florida Business Journal	“It’s true some judges will pay more attention to these tactics than others, but I think they are likely to give the benefit of doubt to the property owner, if presented with a solid defense, ” Graham said.
6/11/09	Want a Lower Mortgage Payment? Just Ask!	Nicole Mayer Consumer Warning Network	With property values dropping dramatically, property taxes are also falling, and that could be an opportunity for you to save money. Many homeowners are paying much more, often hundreds of dollars more a month than they have to on their mortgage.
6/10/09**	Foreclosure Defense New state bar forms to educate homeowners facing foreclosure	Daily Business Review	A group of foreclosure and bankruptcy attorneys has formed a statewide bar association to educate the public about legal rights in foreclosure cases and educate attorneys about the most effective defenses. The Florida Foreclosure Defense Bar Association was founded by attorneys who deal daily with foreclosures or bankruptcies.
6/10/09	Foreclosure Mediation Becomes Mandatory in Connecticut	Eugene S. Melchionne, Connecticut Consumer Attorney	Effective July 1, 2009 and continuing at least until June 30, 2010, all new foreclosure actions filed in the State of Connecticut must pass through the foreclosure mediation program.
6/10/09	Lawmakers Order Fed to Relinquish Merrill Documents	Amit R. Paley Washington Post	A congressional oversight committee issued a subpoena yesterday to force the Federal Reserve to turn over internal documents related to Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, part of a growing investigation into whether government officials pressured the bank to withhold details about the deal from investors.
6/10/09	The Short Sale Got’cha – SELLER Beware	John Newcomer Consumer Warning Network	Enter the “Short Sale.” This is when the mortgage company agrees to allow someone to buy your property for less than you owe on your mortgage. There is just one tiny problem. Most mortgage companies are only releasing the property from the mortgage lien. They are not releasing you, the borrower, from the remaining debt.
6/9/09**	Court puts legal cloud over foreclosure sales	Jerry Kronenberg Boston Herald	A Springfield judge’s ruling has thrown the entire Massachusetts foreclosure market into disarray by bolstering claims that lenders improperly seized thousands of Bay State homes. (The courts are "finally" getting it. MSF)
6/9/09	Investigation of Foreclosure Law Firms Continues	Eugene S. Melchionne, Connecticut Consumer Attorney	Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, is continuing to press his investigation of three law firms who appear to file more than 90% of all the foreclosures in the state.
6/9/09	A '09 Milestone: One Million Foreclosure Starts	Amilda Dymi Mortgage Servicing News	According to the Center for Responsible Lending a new foreclosure starts every 13 seconds, equaling nearly 6,500 a day. CRL data show the number of new foreclosure starts for the first five months of 2009 has reached one million.
6/8/09	Are Increasing Numbers of Homeowners Withholding Their Mortgage Payments?	George W. Mantor RisMedia	If the choice comes down to saving the banks or saving our neighborhoods, the politicians need voters more than they need banks. People who can pay their mortgages have stopped, and their number is growing. Among probable reasons are the following...
6/7/09**	Supreme Court rules that campaign contributions can create perception of judicial bias Supreme Court decision here*	David G. Savage LA Times	The Supreme Court today ruled for the first time that a state judge who wins an election thanks to huge contributions from a person or company must step aside from deciding a case involving that individual or his company. This sort of conflict creates a real risk of "actual bias" and violates the Constitution's guarantees of due process of law, the justices said.
6/7/09	LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS VIOLATING THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS BILL Violation in Excess of $20 million	AHRC News	The County of Los Angeles, and possibly 54 other counties in California, are illegally using the money provided to them under the Economic Stimulus Package to give bonuses to judges. This illegal - and callous - act was committed while the unemployment rate in California is 11%, while homeowners are losing their homes, while parents cannot provide food and medicine for their families.
6/4/09	S.E.C. Accuses Countrywide’s Ex-Chief of Fraud	AP	The government is charging Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive of the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, and two other company executives with civil fraud.
6/4/09	Countrywide’s Mozilo Saw Loans as ‘Toxic,’ SEC Claims	David Scheer and Karen Gullo Bloomberg	In one e-mail, he described a “particularly profitable subprime product as ‘toxic.’” He also wrote that Countrywide was “flying blind” and had “no way” to determine the risks of some adjustable-rate mortgages, the SEC said. “Each of the defendants was aware, but failed to disclose, that Countrywide’s current business model was unsustainable,” the agency wrote in the suit.
6/4/09	Former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo Charged With Fraud	Peter Barnes and Joanna Ossinger FOXBusiness	Mozilo was charged with “deliberately misleading investors about the significant credit risks being taken in efforts to build and maintain the company’s market share,” as well as with insider trading, according to the SEC.
6/3/09**	Maybe You Can Get a "Deficiency Judgment" Against Your Bank	ForeclosureFish	In times of rising home prices, as was the case during the housing boom a few years ago, properties that sell for less than their fair market value at auction but are quickly resold by the lender may indicate violations of good faith and due diligence.
6/3/09	Bank executive's plunge from downtown Fort Worth garage ruled a suicide	DEANNA BOYD Star Telegram	Robeson was a senior vice president of Frost Bank
6/2/09**	Mortgage Servicers Given Taxpayer Money to Put Homes Back Into Foreclosure	Foreclosure Fish	With the recent analysis that nearly 75% of homeowners offered mortgage modifications by banks or servicing companies will end up defaulting again within a year of receiving the modification, it should be clear how ridiculous the government's programs to stop the foreclosure crisis have become. However, another level of insanity is being added...
6/2/09	Judges' extra pay undermines austerity plea	Dan Walters / The Sacramento Bee	A state appellate court ruled in October that the supplemental payments were illegal in a case that stemmed from Los Angeles County's practice of giving judges more than $47,000 a year in extra pay and benefits on top of their $178,789 salaries, the state's most generous bonus package. A lawyer who complained that the extra payments made it impossible for judges to be objective in cases involving county government was slapped in jail for contempt of court despite the ruling.
6/1/09	Foreclosures: No End in Sight	New York Times	A continuing steep drop in home prices combined with rising unemployment is powering a new wave of foreclosures. Unfortunately, there’s little evidence, so far, that the Obama administration’s anti-foreclosure plan will be able to stop it.
6/1/09**	Foreclosure task force eyes ADR solutions	Mark D. Killian The Florida Bar News	The Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases has told the Supreme Court that uniform solutions are needed to deal with the high volume of mortgage foreclosure cases that are swamping the courts.
5/31/09	In Crisis, Banks Dig In for Fight Against Rules	GRETCHEN MORGENSON and DON VAN NATTA Jr. New York Times	The nine biggest participants in the derivatives market — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America — created a lobbying organization, the CDS Dealers Consortium, on Nov. 13, a month after five of its members accepted federal bailout money.
5/31/09**	One Connecticut State Marshal's Net Income Soars Above $1 Million	MATTHEW KAUFFMAN and DAVE ALTIMARI \| The Hartford Courant	Now, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says his office has been actively looking into the issue for several months. "We have an ongoing investigation involving a number of law firms and marshals relating to potential abuses in the mortgage-foreclosure process," Blumenthal said.
5/30/09	Bank convinced SR borrower 'pay-option' loan was best	MICHAEL COIT THE PRESS DEMOCRAT	“A lot of people get stuck. Their loan was growing while they were making payments. They get hit with a huge new payment,” Cory said.
5/30/09	Ex-Countrywide execs to aid housing	RACHEL BECK - Google	A team of Countrywide alumni are still in the game — shopping around a new business called PennyMac that buys up distressed mortgages and modifies borrowers' loans. So, the same people who made massive amounts of ill-gotten gains and created the economic mess are now trying to make money cleaning it up. "Priceless" MSF
5/29/09	Couple evicted from Middletown home despite ability to pay mortgage	MONICA VON DOBENECK, Patriot-News
5/28/09	Countrywide loses bid to dismiss mortgage lawsuit Suit alleges racketeering, conspiracy, unfair practices	Reuters	The class-action complaint accuses Countrywide of inappropriately convincing borrowers to take on subprime mortgages they could not afford, violating federal racketeering and conspiracy laws, as well as state laws barring unfair competition and unjust enrichment.
5/28/09	Foreclosures now hitting homeowners with Good Credit	Associated Press	A record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the housing crisis spreads to borrowers with good credit. And the wave of foreclosures isn't expected to crest until the end of next year
5/27/09	Critics Assail Congress for Using Subpoena Powers and Strong-Arm Tactics	Maxim Lott FOXNews.com	On Oct. 23 last year, William Frey, the president of a company that puts together mortgage-backed securities, told the New York Times that he had been contacting banks and threatening to sue them if they renegotiated mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure.
5/26/09	Banks to earn billions from bad-loan accounting	Bloomberg	JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall thanks to an accounting rule that lets the second-biggest U.S. bank transform bad loans it purchased from Washington Mutual Inc. into income. Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp. and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. are also poised to benefit from taking over home lenders Wachovia Corp., Countrywide Financial Corp. and National City Corp., regulatory filings show.
5/26/09	Busted: The New York Times' Edmund Andrews trips into the mortgage meltdown	Tom Barlow WalletPop	I've seen too many people who really were duped by the system, and I've learned too much about how corrupt the system itself had become. Our entire financial system had run amok. The recklessness on Wall Street was driving the recklessness on Main Street. I understand why somebody who did all the right things feels ripped off if the government is bailing out people who made poor decisions, but the real morons were at the top of the pyramid.
5/25/09	Armed with advice, homeowners fight foreclosures on their own	Susan Taylor Martin, St. Petersburg Times	A tiny but growing number of the 2.1 million Americans facing foreclosure this year are aggressively battling to save their homes. And those unable or unwilling to hire lawyers are representing themselves in court. "I say to you, you have every reason to be restored to the position you were in before you were the victim,'' Garfield tells the group.
5/25/09	Attorney passionate about the law, whether as prosecutor or defender	Robert Trigaux, St. Petersburg Times	You mention mortgage fraud. What do you hear? There's a mortgage fraud task force in Florida, and it has a list with names on it. Prosecutors are telling me to get ready for a wave. The housing bubble burst a few years ago, but the fallout is happening now.
5/25/09	Resist the Offer of a Debit Card That Draws on Your HELOC Bank of America's newest scam.	Däna Wilkinson, Attorney at Law	Lenders have come up with a lot of products that have turned out to be bad news for consumers-exploding ARMS, payment option loans, just to name a couple-but the one I heard about this weekend may have far greater negative potential for consumers than any of the others. Bank of America is offering some of its mortgage customers (including former Countrywide customers) a debit card that draws down your home equity line of credit. That’s right-you can carry around a card that increases the mortgage debt on your home every time you use it.
5/25/09	President Signs Bills to Help Homeowners and Combat Mortgage Fraud	Mike Walace National League of Cities	The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act authorizes $547 million for the Justice Department, Housing and Urban Development, Postal Service, Homeland Security Department's Secret Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate and prosecute mortgage fraud.
5/25/09	Localities Want U.S. to Support Muni Bonds	LESLIE WAYNE New York Times	On the same day, Mr. Geithner told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the relief money cannot be used to resolve local government budget crises, since that money has been reserved for financial companies. The finance companies sold a pipedream to these municipalities, but instead of reimbursing them for the fraud the banks committed, the banks take all the bailout money. MSF
5/24/09**	Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure	PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY New York Times	“We’re right in the middle of this third wave, and it’s intensifying,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “That loss of jobs and loss of overtime hours and being forced from a full-time to part-time job is resulting in defaults. They’re coast to coast.” Those sliding into foreclosure today are more likely to be modest borrowers whose loans fit their income. Economy.com expects that 60 percent of the mortgage defaults this year will be set off primarily by unemployment, up from 29 percent last year.
5/22/09**	RESPA: THE FINANCIAL PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION ACT OF 2009	Marx Sterbcow	The Senate version of this bill under Section 10: Enforcement has some very strong criminal and civil money penalties that could further strengthen consumer protections against businesses. The current senate & house versions of the bill could add considerable consumer protections against loan servicing companies which under Section 6 of RESPA offer consumers very little protection from some mortgage servicing companies abusive practices
5/22/09**	ANALYSTS: TWEAKS MAY NOT SAVE CONGRESS' FAILED FORECLOSURE FIX	Alexandra Andrews	All their fraud focus in now on borrowers, when stats indicate that 80% of all mortgage fraud that has occurred has been LENDER fraud, not borrower fraud!
5/21/09	Activist Financier 'Terrorizes' Bankers in Foreclosure Fight	JAMES R. HAGERTY and RUTH SIMON	In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker's divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker's child. He says he would use such tactics again. "We have to terrorize these bankers," Mr. Marks says.
5/21/09	Obama signs mortgage bill into law	PHILIP ELLIOTT - AP	"Americans living in fear that they're one illness or one accident away from losing their home, hardworking Americans who did all the right things, met all of their responsibilities, yet still find the American dream slipping out of reach."
5/20/09	Banks Use Life Insurance to Fund Bonuses Controversial Policies on Employees Pay for Executive Benefits, Help Companies With Taxes	ELLEN E. SCHULTZ Wall Street Journal	Banks are using a little-known tactic to help pay bonuses, deferred pay and pensions they owe executives: They're holding life-insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of their workers, with themselves as the beneficiaries.
5/20/09	As economy is struggling, fraud cases are increasing	DON MECOY News OK	The Federal Trade Commission during the past five years has brought 71 law enforcement actions involving mortgage advertising and marketing, mortgage servicing, debt settlement and credit counseling, debt collection practices, credit repair operations, lending discrimination, and other financial services issues. The commission also has taken action against loan modification and foreclosure rescue scams.
5/19/09	Dirty Trick: See Who Lands In Danielle's Doghouse - Tonight at 11	19 Action News	19 Action News found one family who claims they've made every house payment on time and is still in default! How is that possible?
5/19/09	Obama picks credit card reform over housing	Bob Sullivan Red Tape/ MSNBC	While $39 over-limit fees are hideously unfair and deserving of legislative attention, the number that really needs attention is 649,917 -- the number of U.S. homes that entered foreclosure last quarter.
5/18/09	Judge's ruling deals blow to national mortgage servicer MERS	TIM O'REILEY Las Vegas Business Press	U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Linda Riegle has ruled that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) could not represent lenders seeking to foreclose. (MERS has NEVER had any standing to foreclose under ANY circumstances. They were operating unlawfully. How many MERS foreclosures need to be reopened and reversed and how many lawyers are willing to do what is right? MSF)
5/18/09	99 years for Mortgage Fraud This is NOT a typo!	National Mortgage News:	Though other recent Texas mortgage fraud convictions have seen prison sentences of between 18 months and five years, Kandace Yancy Marriott of Gun Barrel City, Texas, got the maximum sentence possible after being found guilty of orchestrating a complex mortgage fraud scheme. (She did exactly what the mortgage companies do, only on a much smaller scale. MSF)
5/17/09	Sub-prime king for ‘boiling in oil’ Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo, the banker blamed for dodgy home loans may face justice	Dominic Rushe TimesOnline	Cox said an SEC investigation could easily form the framework for a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. “This guy is the highest ranking, most vulnerable executive associated with the sub-prime mess,” said Cox.
5/17/09	Lawyers Make Pro Bono Leap Into Foreclosures	Brian Reed - NPR	Liz Quick didn't plan to get into foreclosures and loan modification. But Mirkab's work ethic impressed her so much that she offered to help him — for free.
5/16/09	Second Labour MP claimed thousands for paid-off mortgage	Joe Churcher The Press and Journal	Lawyers have said there is good cause for a criminal investigation into such claims.
5/16/09	SEC Poised to Charge Mozilo With Fraud	Securities Law News Blog	The Securities and Exchange Commission staff is readying civil fraud charges against Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo, in what would be the highest-profile government legal action against a chief executive connected to the financial crisis. If the SEC’s commissioners approve filing a suit against Mr. Mozilo, it could be announced within the next few weeks.
5/16/09	Why can’t I get a short sale closed? Ask your Senator. Bankruptcy to follow	David Leibowitz, Illinois and Wisconsin Bankruptcy Attorney	You are way underwater. You can’t modify your mortgage in chapter 13. The Senate made sure of that when it voted down mortgage modifications in chapter 13.
5/15/09 VIDEO	Michael Greenberger talks about the Administration's plan to change rules regarding "derivatives"	Michael Greenberger, University of Maryland Law School, Professor	The Administration believes the lack of oversight of these markets led to the current day trouble in the financial markets.
5/14/09	Constable faces $2.5 million suit for Illegal Eviction	Stephanie Flemmons Star Courier	“The constables knew it was wrong to execute an eviction in Collin County when the writ of possession was issued out of Dallas County”
5/13/09**	More On The Use Of Multiple Corporate Hat-Wearing Dummy Vice Presidents By Lenders & Mortgage Servicers In Foreclosure Actions	The Home Equity Theft Reporter	Fidelity National Foreclosure Services and affiliates, of Mendota Heights, Minnesota, has made available dozens of its employees to foreclosing lenders & mortgage servicers to act as authorized corporate officers for the limited purpose of signing necessary documents to be filed in court in the effort to obtain foreclosure judgments
5/13/09**	There’s the OUTRAGE: Riverside Man Booby-Traps Foreclosed Home	Mandelman	“Former homeowner Daniel Gherman?” Now that’s a way to phrase something, don’t you think? That really encapsulates a man who got so angry, so enraged, so desperate to make a statement, and felt so powerless that he was willing to blow up his house.
5/13/09	Foreclosures at Record Levels in April - Failure of Bankruptcy Legislation to Blame	David Leibowitz, Illinois and Wisconsin Bankruptcy Attorney	When the Senate voted against legislation which would allow mortgage modification in chapter 13, it gave a green light to mortgage foreclosures at a record pace. Now, the only people getting crammed-down are American Homeowners. Speed limits on foreclosure suits are gone. It’s pedal to the metal.
5/13/09**	PLEASE CHOOSE A JUST JUSTICE Letter to President Obama from the Homeowners of America	American Homeowners Resource Center	One of the most disturbing aspects of these calamities is the outright indifference - and sometimes, collusion - of the judges and other law enforcement officials involved in these cases. (When are people going to wake up to the corruption inside the courts and do something about it? MSF)
5/12/09	DOJ Probing Mortgage Data Processing Firms	Peg Brickley Of DOW JONES	Fidelity, later LPS, is the electronic powerhouse behind the foreclosures rolling through much of the country, taking in data and spitting out loan-default notices for 16 of the 20 largest mortgage loan servicers in the nation.
5/12/09	Lawsuit alleges that loan originator stole money from a client during a refinance	Kate Moran, The Times-Picayune	The lawsuit filed accuses a loan originator and branch manager at Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. of stealing money during a mortgage refinance. Instead of forwarding the proceeds of the refinance to pay off the Ocwen loan, however, Killett and Smith allegedly had attorney Chad Ham of Bell Title wire the money to a bank account they controlled.
5/12/09	Swindled unlikely to recoup all losses	Craig Harris The Arizona Republic	"A Ponzi scheme could go on for years and years without people knowing about it," said Julie Halferty, an FBI white-collar crimes supervisor in Phoenix. "But the market change caused people to call up (their investments) and pull out. Once that occurred, they (the schemes) collapsed."
5/11/09 Settlement	Attorney General Martha Coakley and Goldman Sachs Reach Settlement Regarding Subprime Lending Issues Litton Loan Servicing	Mass. ATTORNEY GENERAL MARTHA COAKLEY	Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced that it has reached a settlement agreement with Goldman Sachs & Company (Goldman), stemming from the office’s investigation of subprime lending and securitization markets. The loan restructuring program is designed to enable borrowers to replace problem loans with new, more affordable loans that take into account the current value of their properties. [This solution allows GS to destroy the evidence in these fraud-laced loans and create a fresh new loan.] MSF
5/10/09**	How a monthly statement could save your home!	Denise Richardson Sun-Sentinel	Without a monthly statement to monitor, I didn’t catch nor did I suspect that my "on-time" payments had been misapplied as late and that my additional principal payments had not been credited to my principal balance. In fact, much of my additional principal payments were eaten up in unlawful late charges and fees tacked on by the bank.
5/10/09**	Lies a new tool in foreclosure Only 1 in 12 cases had the proper documents!	Todd Ruger Herald Tribune	It is alarming that judges are so easily fooled by these criminals. This has been going on for so long, one would think the judges would realize this is one huge fraud. MSF
5/10/09**	America’s “Money Machine”	foundingfather1776
5/8/09	SEC Charges Former Alt A Lender with Fraud	Inside B&C Lending	Two executives at American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. allegedly engaged in accounting fraud in early 2007.
5/8/09	KB Home, Countrywide accused of $2.8 Billion fraud Homeowners bring racketeering claims suit	Gina Keating - Reuters	The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Phoenix, claims LandSafe Inc, KB Homes and Countrywide colluded to overprice as many as 14,000 homes in the two states by an average of $20,000, for an estimated total of $2.8 billion between 2006 and the present. The plaintiffs seek class action status and triple damages.
5/8/09	AG casts wide net in mortgage suits Fraud victims face foreclosure, AG says	Bill Diven/Alex Tomlin KRQE	New Mexico's attorney general is going after everyone from mortgage brokers to banks after accusing them of mortgage frauds that took advantage of two homeowners now facing foreclosure.
5/8/09**	FLORIDA SUPREME COURT TASK FORCE ON RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE CASES	FLORIDA SUPREME COURT TASK FORCE ON RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE CASES	On March 9,2009, the Chief Justice established the Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases by Administrative Order AOSC09-8. The Task Force was charged with submitting an interim report by May 8, 2009, and a final report by August 15,2009.
5/8/09	Fannie's Reverse Mortgage Interest Rate Rule Invites Fraud, "Bait & Switch" Tactics?	The Home Equity Theft Reporter	Industry insiders fear that the margin increases will lead to higher instances of fraud, with lenders quoting a low margin to get clients interested, then disclosing a margin increase later in the process in a “bait-and-switch” strategy.
5/8/09	Handwritten Notes Show Fed Oversight Bill Neutered On Senate Floor	ryan@huffingtonpost.com	Legislation to give Congress greater oversight of the Federal Reserve was severely watered down on the Senate floor Wednesday in private negotiations between two powerful Republican senators.
5/8/09	More muscle in fraud fight Congress has sent the White House legislation to allocate $532 million over the next 2 years to hire more investigators and prosecutors to fight financial fraud. Related story: FBI seeks more agents to investigate mortgage fraud	Jennifer Liberto, CNNMoney.com	"People are very upset about what happened and it's really important for the government to demonstrate there's a charge for doing these types of things," said Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., a bill co-sponsor. "Just because someone is at a Wall Street firm or a bank, they get the same kind of justice everyone else gets."
5/7/09	First American Corp and eAppriaseIT lied for Washington Mutual	Courthouse News Service	The class claims WaMu was eAppraiseIT's largest customer. Plaintiffs claim that Santa Ana-based "eAppriaseIT, at Washington Mutual's urging, provided materially false and inflated appraisals for properties where Washington Mutual sought to originate a mortgage. This enabled Washington Mutual to engage in real estate mortgage transactions that would otherwise have been untenable had the property at issue been correctly appraised. Senior executives at First American were aware of and willing to accommodate the request to falsify appraisals. Washington Mutual's competitive place in the market and profit were driven in large part by the number of mortgages it issued based upon artificially inflated appraisals issued by eAppriaseIT."
5/6/09	Bailed-out banks enabled subprime lending, study contends	Tom Hamburger and Ralph Vartabedian Los Angeles Times	The major banks now collecting federal bailout money were not unwitting victims of the mortgage meltdown but instead were directly linked to the root cause of the problem: a subprime lending machine concentrated in Southern California, a new study asserts.
5/6/09**	Predatory Lending: A Decade of Warnings While chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, former Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland introduced a bill to curb abusive high-cost lending, but the measure never received a committee vote.	Kat Aaron Public Integrity	Washington was warned as long as a decade ago by bank regulators, consumer advocates, and a handful of lawmakers that these high-cost loans represented a systemic risk to the economy, yet Congress, the White House, and the Federal Reserve all dithered while the subprime disaster spread. Long forgotten Congressional hearings and oversight reports, as well as interviews with former officials, reveal a troubling history of missed opportunities, thwarted regulations, and lack of oversight. (Who is going to hold them accountable? Are you fed up, or washed up?MSF)
5/6/09	Who Is to Blame for the Financial Crisis?	Jake Tapper - ABC News	Also don't miss "Predatory Lending: A Decade of Warnings," which shows how our leaders in Washington, DC, abdicated their responsibilities and enabled this crisis, ignoring warning alarms sounded for a decade.
5/6/09	Citigroup, Wells Fargo Gained From Subprime Lenders, Group Says	Jonathan D. Salant Bloomberg	The center found that most of the lenders were backed by institutions including San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, and Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase & Co., both based in New York. U.S. banks received almost $200 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
5/6/09	Banks Win - Homeowners Lose	Angie Moreschi Consumer Warning Network	Chalk up another one for the banking lobby. The Senate deep sixed the provision many homeowners facing foreclosure were hoping could offer them a second chance. The Senate defeated an amendment for the so called “cram down” provision, that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify primary residential mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure. This would have helped to prevent thousands of foreclosures, because the threat of court-mandated modifications could have prodded more banks and loan servicers to negotiate in good faith.
5/6/09	Senate moves toward easing mortgage terms	ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press	When it was established last year, Congress envisioned helping some 400,000 troubled homeowners. But because eligibility requirements were so strict, one borrower has completed the refinancing process and only 51 more are in the works, according to statistics released last week.
5/5/09 Video	Bank Forecloses On New Homes, Demolishes Them	Jay Fleischman, New York Foreclosure Defense Lawyer	Think about the families that could have enjoyed their lives here, the money wasted, and the excess of the real estate bubble as you watch this.
5/5/09	South Carolina Supreme Court Stays Many Foreclosures	Pam Stewart, Texas Bankruptcy Attorney	The injunction, which appears to be the first court-ordered stop for an entire state, prevents judges in South Carolina from completing foreclosure sales on properties guaranteed by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or any other mortgage company that has signed onto a federal assistance program. In many of these cases, the loss mitigation departments of huge lenders or servicers have promised modification while the foreclosure departments have pressed on with foreclosure leaving home owners with no means of keeping their homes.
5/4/09**	Lenders Inability to “Produce the Note” Leads to Shady New Practice	Consumer Warning Network	Mortgage lenders who were sloppy with important paperwork in the hey-day of the housing boom are now turning to questionable practices to clean up their mess so they can foreclose on homeowners.
5/4/09**	A Peek Inside the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Meeting; And it ain't pretty	Denise Richardson GiveMeBackMyCredit.com	"...the banks own the Senate. And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,"
5/4/09	Economy behind string of suicides?	MARK ROTH Pittsburgh Post-Gazette	“For employees in the middle- to lower-income range, the effects of an economic crisis are often more direct,” Joiner said. “Any economic downturn that is associated with a lot of home foreclosures or serious career disruptions, those are real stresses.”
5/4/09	Buffett Lambastes Bankers, Insurers for ‘Stupidity’	Erik Holm and Andrew Frye Bloomberg	“I think that virtually everybody associated with the financial world contributed to it,” Buffett said of the crisis. “Some of it stemmed from greed, some from stupidity, some from people saying the other guy was doing it.”
5/3/09**	More Mortgage Madness	Kai Wright \| The Nation	HOPE for Homeowners has generated the most laughable data. The program launched in October. As of late March, it has prevented exactly one foreclosure. “Needless to say, the program isn’t working terribly well,” an FHA spokesman deadpanned to CNNMoney.com. Take the infamous deposition of a Citi Residential Lending employee, Tamara Price. Jim Kowalski, a former prosecutor now handling foreclosure defense cases in Jacksonville, sat Price down in April 2008 to determine why her name appears over and over again as the signer on mortgage assignments in Citi’s foreclosures. Price described an automated process for faking the assignments. Does she prepare the documents? Kowalski asked. No, the foreclosure lawyer does. Does she review the case files, as testified in the affidavit? No. Does the notary witness her signing the documents, or even notarize them on the professed date? No. Price even revealed that the “vice president” title attached to her name on assignments is bogus. “They’re lying,” Parker rails. “They’re filing fraudulent documents and giving this to a judge in order to kick somebody out of their house.”
5/3/09**	Retroactive Mortgage Assignments Not Effective In Massachusetts	L. Jed Berliner, Massachusetts Foreclosure Defense Attorney	The Massachusetts Land Court ruled last month that only the mortgage holder could advertise a foreclosure sale under G.L. c. 244 sec 14. Mortgage assignments executed after publication of the advertisement were not good enough, even with language retroactive application.
5/3/09**	Most plaintiffs never “hold” the original mortgage note	Chip Parker, Jacksonville Consumer Attorney	In the state of Florida, foreclosure mill law firms file 11,000 foreclosure complaints per month, and the vast majority of those complaints are filed with the knowledge that the plaintiff does not have the right to foreclose.
5/3/09	Companies help lenders transfer home loans to foreclose	Susan Taylor Martin, St. Petersburg Times	Bly, who lives in a Clearwater trailer park, is one of several Nationwide employees authorized by lenders to sign as "vice president'' in assigning loans from one company to another. Assignments are key in determining who actually owns the loan, an issue that has become all-important as banks foreclose on millions of loans that were bundled into securities and sold to investors.
5/2/09**	Accelerating Foreclosures to Cost Neighbors $502 billion in 2009 alone; 69.5 million homes lose $7,200 on average	Center for Responsible Lending	This is CRL's third report on the spillover impact of mortgage foreclosures. This new report is based on new CRL projections of 2.4 million foreclosures for all loans (not just subprime) in 2009, and 9.0 million during 2009-2012. This report also reflects a somewhat more conservative methodology for calculating the spillover impact.
5/2/09**	Congress turns from bank bailouts to helping consumers Targets include credit card companies, payday loans with exorbitant interest rates, and predatory mortgage lenders.	Gail Russell Chaddock The Christian Science Monitor	“Mortgage fraud has reached near epidemic levels in this country. Reports of mortgage fraud are up 682 percent over the past five years, and more than 2,800 percent in the past decade,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who sponsored the bill. “And massive, new corporate frauds, like the $65 billion Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, are being uncovered as the economy has turned worse, exposing many investors to massive losses.” Next week, the House takes up the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, passed by the Senate last week. The act amends the federal criminal fraud statute to specifically include “mortgage lending business” and it expands the scope of money laundering crimes to cover all the proceeds of illegal activity, such as gross receipts, not just the profits. The bill also authorizes $245 million a year to hire federal investigators and prosecutors to fight financial fraud.
5/2/09**	Are Courts in California Truly Limited by Non-Judicial Foreclosure Statutes?	Michael Doan Mortgage Law Network	This is very significant since it provides further support to lawsuits brought against foreclosing parties lacking the ability to enforce the underlying note, since those laws also arise under Article 3. Under California Commercial Code 3301, a note may only be enforced if one has actual possession of the note as a holder, or has possession of the note not as a non-holder but with holder rights.
5/2/09**	Did a Predatory Mortgage Push You Into Foreclosure?	foreclosurefish.com	Our mortgage and real estate industries are corrupt from top to bottom, from beginning to end, and the foreclosure crisis is just another way for the banks to impoverish ordinary people while enriching themselves. That they have the audacity to perpetuate such frauds on homeowners and then blame those same homeowners for the collapse is a signal of just how much more powerful banking interests are than the people. That elected officials go along with the charade by bailing out the banks and sticking people with the bill is even more reprehensible.
5/2/09	Citigroup Said to Need Up to $10 Billion Bank Disputes 'Stress Test' Result; U.S. to Let Lenders Convert Loans to Common Stock Also see article below	DAVID ENRICH and DAMIAN PALETTA - WSJ	Citigroup Inc. may need to raise as much as $10 billion in new capital, according to people familiar with the matter, as the government continues negotiations with banks over the results of its so-called stress tests.
5/1/09**	Citigroup Banker: 'What'd I Do Wrong, Officer?' Cop: 'You've Got Algae in the Pool, Sir' Fearing Blight, a California Town Makes It a Crime to Neglect Foreclosed Homes	NICHOLAS CASEY - WSJ	Officials at Citigroup Inc. placed a call to this desert town recently. The bank had caught word that Indio was coming after the lending giant with fines and threats of criminal charges.
4/29/09**	Fraud Charge in N.Y. Pension Case	DANNY HAKIM New York Times	“I believe we are disclosing a national network of actors who often acted in concert and did this all across the country,” Mr. Cuomo said. “They collaborated, they often partnered and victimized states and taxpayers across the country. It’s also an ongoing scam.”
4/29/09	Ken Lewis ousted as Bank of America chairman	AP	After shareholders spent four hours railing against Bank of America's brass, executives said Ken Lewis lost his chairmanship but kept his title as chief executive after angry shareholders voted to separate that job from that of the bank's chief executive.
4/29/09	Why Congress Won't Investigate Wall Street Republicans and Democrats would find themselves in the hot seat.	Thomas Frank - WSJ	The crisis today is not solely one of bank misbehavior. This is also about the failure of the regulators -- the Wall Street policemen who dozed peacefully as the crime of the century went off beneath the window.
4/29/09	Report: Loan Servicer Safe Harbor Will Foster Shoddy Loan Mods	The Truth About Mortgage.com	Legislation aimed at providing a so-called “safe harbor” for loan servicers will actually lead to more abuse and shoddy loan modifications, according to a report from Amherst Securities Group. Another example cited in the report claims one servicer modified loans that were “destined to fail” in order to keep the servicing fee revenue coming in.
4/29/09	U.S. expanding foreclosure prevention plan	Ben Meyerson and Scott Reckard Chicago Tribune	Money for the plan would come from a previously authorized $50-billion allocation from the $700-billion Treasury Department bailout fund that Congress established last year. The $50 billion already has been used to create incentives for modifying first mortgages.
4/28/09	Tips For Avoiding Foreclosure	Donna Capurso Selkirk Mountain Real Estate	Probably the most precious commodity you will need if you are facing foreclosure is time. Time to discover your options, analyze your particular situation and implement a plan of action.
4/28/09	Administration is set to expand housing aid plan Obama administration is set to launch effort to aid troubled borrowers with second mortgages	Alan Zibel, AP	The administration also plans to give mortgage companies $2,500 payments to entice them to participate in the "Hope for Homeowners" program. It was launched by the government last fall but has so far fallen flat, proving unattractive to banks required to absorb large losses.
4/27/09	Who Owns My Mortgage?	Ralph Roberts Realty Times	Customers trying to look up the investor on the MERS registry will not find it. MERS makes the name and contact information of the servicer available, but not the name and contact of the investor. That information is for the servicer or investor to disclose, not MERS.
4/27/09	Banks Want Your House But Not Your Problems	Wendell Sherk, Missouri Attorney	Not only do bankers have no sense of irony, they seem to have no shame.
4/27/09**	Italy Seizes Millions in Assets From Four Banks	CLAUDIO GATTI New York Times	Three of the banks are also being investigated over their municipal bond practices in the United States. Officials or former officials of JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and UBS, along with the institutions themselves, are the subjects of investigations, company filings and documents filed in civil cases show.
4/27/09	Criminal charges brought in alleged $70M Md. mortgage fraud scheme	Paul West Baltimore Sun	Breuer said that "rampant financial fraud," including a sharp increase in mortgage scams, is among the factors behind the mounting rate of home foreclosures nationwide. He said he could not estimate how many of the millions of homeowners now facing foreclosure may have been victims of mortgage fraud.
4/27/09	Ponzi schemes flourish with vulnerable victims	McClatchy Newspapers	Nationwide mortgage fraud — about 80 percent was “induced” by corrupt lenders, Black said.
4/27/09	U.S. toxic-asset plan stirs fears The government will take on a mountain of risk while trying to create an artificial market for the loans and debt securities. Critics worry about possible fraud and further banking system damage.	Ralph Vartabedian and Tom Hamburger LA Times	There is so much uncertainty about the value of those loans -- held both by banks and by big institutional investors -- that they have become a black hole in the financial system. "We are repeating all the mistakes that the mortgage guys made," Stiglitz said. "In the worst case, the national debt goes up by $1 trillion."
4/27/09	Texas securities regulators hampered as they investigate investment fraud	dbarbee@star-telegram.com	One thing that hamstrings the state, she said, is a 1996 federal law that makes some investment offerings exempt from filing detailed information. Companies using "Rule 506" can raise unlimited money, do not have to register their securities and usually do not have to file reports with the SEC. The brief notice they do file includes little beyond the names of owners and promoters, contact information and the type of securities offered.
4/26/09*	Pennsylvania Judge Writes Epic Opinion on Technology and Professional Responsibility	Texas Bankruptcy Attorney Stephen Sather	The Taylor case started with a simple question that comes up frequently in consumer bankruptcy cases: Why couldn’t the creditor’s lawyer get a payment history? The answer given to this question prompted Judge Sigmund to launch a one year investigation into the technology behind the case and how it was being used and to award some very creative sanctions.
4/24/09	Agricultural Secretary suspends foreclosures	Chip Parker, Jacksonville Consumer Attorney	This time will also afford the Department the opportunity to review loans involving possible discriminatory conduct. We are also talking to the Department of Justice about exercising its authority to review existing litigation over these loans.
4/24/09	Bank of America's Lewis Confirms: Government Coerced the Merrill Deal	Seeking Alpha	Now, understanding that he is being made out to be the fall guy, Lewis has fessed up that Bank of America was coerced into the deal. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA.
4/24/09	Clash looms over US mortgage aid	Aline van Duyn - FT.com	The banks ripped off investors, homeowners and taxpayers, and now want protection so they are not held accountable for what they did and continue to do.
4/24/09	The Financial Crime of The Century: William K. Black On Massive Mortgage Fraud –Videos		List of relevant videos
4/24/09	Stronger tools needed to protect public from fraud	Sen. Patrick Leahy	If fraud goes unprosecuted and unpunished, victims across America lose their investments -- even their life savings. In fact, fraud enforcement is an excellent investment for the American taxpayer. According to the Justice Department, the government recovers on average $32 for every dollar spent on criminal fraud litigation. Strengthening criminal and civil fraud enforcement is a sound investment, it's a confidence-building investment, and our bill not only will pay for itself but will yield a taxpayer premium.
4/23/09	U.S. law chief wants financial fraud task force	Randall Mikkelsen News Daily	The 10-member, bipartisan Financial Markets Commission would be modeled after the 9-11 Commission, which investigated failures leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and made recommendations on how to avoid another such assault. The Senate is looking to extend federal fraud laws to mortgage lending businesses, which the U.S. government does not now regulate or insure.
4/23/09	Freddie Mac's Kellerman: the Scapegoat of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?	HousingWire staff	This isn’t the story of a guy who was trying to cover something up. It’s the story of a guy who was trying to do the right thing.
4/23/09**	Tracking Loans Through a Firm That Holds Millions	MIKE McINTIRE New York Times	“I’m convinced that part of the scheme here is to exhaust the resources of consumers and their advocates,” said Marie McDonnell, a mortgage analyst in Orleans, Mass., who is a consultant for lawyers suing lenders. “This system removes transparency over what’s happening to these mortgage obligations and sows confusion, which can only benefit the banks.
4/23/09	Wells Fargo accused of securities fraud by state lawsuit Attorney General Jerry Brown says customers were misled into believing that auction-rate securities were safe.	Martin Zimmerman LA Times	The securities "were sold to customers on the basis that they were like cash and people could get their money back in eight days," "Now, it turns out they were not like cash and people can't get their money back even after many, many months, and they're mad as hell."
4/23/09	Lewis Testifies U.S. Urged Silence on Deal Bank of America Chief Says Bernanke, Paulson Barred Disclosure of Merrill Woes Because of Fears for Financial System	LIZ RAPPAPORT - WSJ	During his testimony, Mr. Lewis described a conversation with Mr. Paulson in which the Treasury secretary made it clear that Mr. Lewis's own job was at stake. Mr. Lewis still was considering invoking his legal right to terminate the Merrill deal. Also see Richard Davet's prophetic comments from the 2005 Annual Shareholders meeting.
4/22/09	Freddie Suicide: Tragic Trend	Charlie Gasparino The Daily Beast	In March, Kellermann was one of a handful of senior Freddie Mac people to have received a bonus, in his case $850,000, which prompted criticism and outrage.
4/22/09	Freddie Mac official found dead	AP	David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what broadcast reports said was an apparent suicide.
4/22/09	Foreclosure Roundtable: Frustration Leads to Promises of Help	Angie Moreschi Consumer Warning Network	Homeowners are quick to tell Consumer Warning Network about repeated frustrations in trying to get mortgage lenders to work with them to avoid foreclosure. Now, the issue has the attention of a key government leader in Florida.
4/21/09	Bailout cop busy on the beat Neil Barofsky, who is overseeing the $700 billion TARP, says he has 20 criminal probes and calls for changes to prevent fraud.	Jennifer Liberto, CNNMoney	The report reveals that Barofsky is looking into whether bailout decisions were influenced by those who stood to benefit from them and whether companies receiving bailout dollars are adhering to caps on executive pay.
4/21/09**	Crimes suspected in 20 bailout cases -- for starters The special inspector general says TARP is 'inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.' The risk grows as the plan becomes more complex, he says.	Ralph Vartabedian and Tom Hamburger LA Times	Federal investigators said Monday they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax violations, insider trading and other crimes. Giving money to fraudsters is an invitation to them to create more FRAUD. MSF
4/20/09	Holder and Geithner LIED About Loan Modification Scams	Mandelman Matters	Attorney General Eric Holder and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flat lied on April 6, 2009, when they addressed the nation to talk about the government’s response to the fraudulent loan modification scams that they claimed were sweeping the nation.
4/19/09	Mortgage Fraud Crackdown Is Gathering Steam in Florida	TIM PADGETT / MIAMI AND WENDY MALLOY Time	"We would be hard pressed to come up with another crime that has tugged at the fabric" of Florida lives, says Ibison. "Everyone ends up being a victim."
4/18/09**	Mortgage industry changes throw new hurdles in borrowers' way	Kenneth R. Harney Los Angeles Times	Even for prime borrowers with 800 FICO scores and 50% down payments, Lipes said, "I can't tell them that we're certain we can get you a mortgage."
Jan/09**	Foreclosure Crisis: Maryland Lawyers Take Action, Volunteer to Help Hundreds of Homeowners	Janet Stidman Eveleth Maryland Bar Bulletin	Send this to your local, state and American Bar Assoc.. We need to push this in EVERY state. Those responsible for creating the foreclosure/economic meltdown received BAILOUT money for their unlawful acts and are increasing the number of unlawful foreclosures with the intent of covering up their fraud by creating a less tainted note. MSF
4/17/09**	Dozens of Cases Rolling in from Bankruptcy and Civil Courts Reversing Foreclosures, Evictions	LivingLies	We are getting daily reports of many cases that have gone as far as writs of possession being completely reversed, putting the homeowner not only in possession of the house, but free from the threat of foreclosure. Many homeowners are now considering filing damage actions for abuse of process and lawyers are getting the point.
4/17/09	Spitzer "The Sheriff of Wall Street" is back	Andie Coller Politico	He’s become a columnist for Slate and a commentator in the media, weighing in on the economic crisis and AIG. He made his return to network TV on the Today show, where he spent less than three-and-a-half minutes discussing the scandal and its aftermath.
4/16/09	Alleged Fraudster Used Law Firms to Cover His Tracks The letter	Legal Blog Watch	The paper reprints a letter that Pang's lawyer, Fulbright & Jaworski partner Charles Schmerler, sent Nasar Aboubakare offering him $500,000 if he could convince the WSJ to kill the story.
4/16/09	Foreclosure filings jump 24%	CNN Money	Foreclosure activity skyrocketed in March and the first quarter of 2009 to their highest levels on record as banks lifted moratoria on filings.
4/16/09	Home buyers describe feeling of deception ''They turned our dream, our first home, into a nightmare,'' Robinette Vetter said moments after she left the witness stand.	Ed Meyer Beacon Journal	The Vetters' story was part of what Summit County prosecutors attempted to show to a judge and jury Wednesday as evidence of a pattern of corrupt activity in the joint trial of the last two co-defendants in the Evergreen case.
4/15/09	Banks Ramp Up Foreclosures Completed Foreclosures Jumped 44% in March	Ruth Simon-WSJ	Mortgage companies cannot modify an invalid loan or a loan they do not own. Make them prove there is a valid loan. In 90% of cases -- they can't! MSF
4/15/09**	6 Companies to get $9.9B under mortgage program	MARTIN CRUTSINGER ALAN ZIBEL- AP	What should set you on fire is these same companies are operating the illegal foreclosure scam that caused the foreclosure crisis. The government gives them billions for stealing homes and equity, and destroying families and entire neighborhoods. MSF
4/15/09	Stick it to the credit card companies. Here's how!	Denise Richardson GiveMeBackMyCredit.com	“I’m really passionate about this. It’s credit unions helping people to help themselves in a desperate time. It is our chance to do something to make a difference right now, to make life better for our neighbors and members.”
4/14/09	Bailoutspotting (Or The Search For The Great Financial Methadone Clinic)	Tyler Durden - Zero Hedge	There is nothing that can be done at this point to prevent the administration from leeching every last dollar out of its taxpayers to benefit the terminally addicted and zombied bank system. Using pretexts, subterfuge and lies, the administration's charade triage will only end once there are no more gullible taxpayers to provide their cash, no more demagogue senators and congressmen who will bend reality to make it seem that their actions benefiting a select few are for the benefit of all, and no more naive investors who buy into the promises that U.S. debt is the "safest investment."
4/14/09	Class Action Says Wells Fargo, Rels Illegally Strong-Arm Appraisers	Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP	The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Practices Act (RICO), claims that beginning in 2004 Wells Fargo and Rels colluded to punish appraisers who refused to inflate appraisals by denying them future appraisal work.
4/14/09	Domestic abuse on rise as families try to cope with recession	Canadian Press	"We see some very serious, very shocking abuse."
4/13/09	Foreclosures 46% higher in March than a year ago	Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY	"I think we'll see foreclosures surge through the summer," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. The increasing number of jobless Americans is likely to accelerate the supply of foreclosures, which in turn will continue to pull down housing prices, economists say.
4/13/09	"Produce-The-Note" Foreclosure Rescue Litigation Runs Aground In California	Josh Mandell Mortgage Servicing News	[a] successful challenge to a non-judicial foreclosure sale requires evidence of a failure to comply with the procedural requirements for the foreclosure sale that caused prejudice to the person attacking the sale.
4/12/09	Our Government and Wall Street kept lying to us You think you are rich? Have a solid net worth? So did many of Madoff's client's....until they found out the truth.	The Motley Fool	More and more loans will default because *there simply is not enough money in circulation to pay off the debt.* Not only that, now that banks are not printing funny money so citizens that can't afford to pay on the debt, revenues are evaporating and even legitimate loans can no longer be serviced.
4/11/09	False hope	MELISSA HAYES Burlington County Times	State Attorney General Anne Milgram last month announced the filing of three lawsuits aimed at attacking mortgage fraud. In one way or another, each of the defendants in these complaints is charged with making money by selling false hope to trusting people during uncertain economic times," Milgram said.
4/10/09	Judges are starting to “Get It”	Neil Garfield	Given the current state of this country’s economy I will grant your continuance, I don’t want to put a judgment on you if you have a case here. It seems if there weren’t something to this, they would have had you out by now.
4/9/09	Sallie Mae CEO Gets Raise Despite Record Losses	Consumer Warning Network	Remember the outrage when we we all learned that A.I.G., a recipient of huge federal bailout dollars, was handing out bonuses to executives who had been in charge of financial operations that lost buckets of money? Well Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private student loan lender, apparently likes what it saw. Despite losing $213 million in 2008, Sallie Mae’s CEO Albert L. Lord got a multimillion dollar raise as his reward. He received $4.7 million in total compensation for 2008, a raise of $3 million over his 2007 compensation.
4/9/09	Government cracks down on mortgage scams Federal and state officials are cracking down on mortgage modification scams	AP	“If you are struggling to make your mortgage payment, or if you are facing foreclosure, stay away from anyone who says that they will save your home for money upfront,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
4/9/09**	Did Lack of Regulation Cause the Financial Crisis?	D. Saul Weiner	There needs to be a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of what happened. Executives from the failed banks need to be replaced and successful regulators need to be appointed, not the same people who got us into this mess.
4/9/09	With Advocates’ Help, Squatters Call Foreclosures Home	JOHN LELAND New York Times	“We’re seeing sheriffs’ departments who are reluctant to move fast on foreclosures or evictions,” said Bill Faith, director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, which is not engaged in squatting. “They’re up to their eyeballs in this stuff. Everyone’s overwhelmed.”
FRAUD ALERT! 4/8/09	Property owners at risk for fraud New scam could hit every property owner with Video	Matt McCutcheon Wayne.com	After falsifying a new deed, having it notarized, and filing it… the crooks can then appear to be the landowner. They then can head to the bank for a loan. "Worst case scenario we've heard of people waking up in the middle of a foreclosure proceeding because they were not aware that somebody had taken out a mortgage on the property that they own,"
4/7/09**	Breach of FHA Regulations no defense to Illinois Foreclosures	David Leibowitz, Illinois and Wisconsin Bankruptcy Attorney	According to this court, borrowers have no rights even if the lenders totally ignore FHA regulations.
4/7/09	Guarding against home foreclosure fraud	Elk Grove Citizen Online	According to council official David K. Lal, the surge in foreclosures and consumer demand for mortgage relief has spawned a new industry full of opportunistic salespeople who bill themselves as experts.
4/7/09	24 Charged in Rico Conspiracy Based on Extensive Mortgage Fraud Scheme	PRNewswire	U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt announced today the unsealing of an indictment charging 24 individuals with conspiracy to conduct enterprise affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Specifically, the defendants are charged with using a corrupt enterprise to conduct a pattern of racketeering activity, namely, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. The charged racketeering activity all stems from an extensive mortgage fraud scheme based in San Diego , that involved 220 properties with a total sales price of more than $100 million dollars .
4/7/09	Former Inland Empire Mortgage Company President Convicted of Fraud	James Comtois Mortgage Servicing News	Following the reading of the jury's verdicts, U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips revoked Varner's bond and remanded him into custody after hearing from prosecutors that Varner is realistically facing a sentence of more than 12 years in prison, and after learning that he remained in the real estate industry following his arrest in this case in 2007.
4/6/09	Treasury Secretary Geithner May Replace CEOs of Bailed-Out Banks	AP	Asked if chief executives of big banks such as Citibank and Bank of America should worry about their jobs if their companies don't improve their performance, Geithner said the government would not shy from such a restructuring.
4/6/09**	Mortgage Fraud: How the FBI Blew It FBI doesn't even have a single major conviction. with Video	Aaron Task - Yahoo Finance	Indeed, as much as 80% of the fraud during the boom was "induced by the lenders," who either encouraged people to lie on loan applications or actively altered documents to make them more likely to be approved, says Black.. "They used razor blades to take out the honest information and inserted the false information."
4/6/09	Mortgage Fraud Fought	AP	Officials say such operations almost always are fraudulent, and that free help is available from government-approved housing counselors.
4/6/09	Mortgage fraud crackdown Feds vow to end scams targeting homeowners	Vic Kolenc / El Paso Times	"We will shut down fraudulent companies more quickly than before," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at a news conference. "We will target companies that otherwise would have gone unnoticed under the radar." [PROVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
4/6/09	Illinois Passes Foreclosure Moratorium Law	Andy Miofsky, Illinois Consumer Law Attorney	Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law April 5th, 2009 that prevents mortgage holders from foreclosing for up to 3 months. The law imposes a moratorium on foreclosure within the first 30 days of delinquency. Mortgage holders must advise borrowers they have 30 more days to seek credit counseling. Homeowners who obtain housing counseling approved by HUD are given an additional 30 days to resolve the delinquency with the mortgage holder before foreclosure. Are credit counselors trained to detect and advise homeowners that their alleged delinquency is the result of Mortgage Servicing Fraud? MSF
4/6/09	Government cracking down on mortgage scams	AP	Government officials say scammers are seeking to take advantage of borrowers in danger of default by charging them upfront fees of $1,000 to $3,000 for help with loan modifications that rarely, if ever, pay off.
4/5/09	One journey through the mortgage maze	Susan Taylor Martin St. Petersburg Times	Involved in this single loan, with each taking their cut of unlawful fees, are: Argent Mortgage, "Argent Securities Asset-Backed Pass-Through Certificate'', Citigroup, Citi Residential Lending, Deutsche Bank, as trustee for Pass-Through Certificate Series 2006-W25; Pass-Through Certificates Series 2005-W5, not 2006-W25 and American Home Mortgage Servicing from the state of Texas; the corruption state, where many of the fraudsters run to find safe haven from the law.
4/4/09	Executives Took - but the Directors Gave	HEATHER LANDY New York Times	Activist shareholders have been criticizing executive pay practices for well over a decade, accusing directors of being too cozy with C.E.O.’s, too eager to lavish pay on them and too ambiguous about the formulas they use for setting compensation.
4/3/09	More Mortgage Companies Are Refusing To Foreclose When the Borrower Stops Paying.	Rachel Lynn Foley - Kansas City, MO Bankruptcy Attorney in Foreclosure News	I explained that mortgage companies are abandoning homes left and right instead of choosing to foreclose on the property. Yes that sentence was not a typo. I explained to her that the mortgage companies are the ones walking away and not the debtors.
4/3/09** with video and transcript	The banks and our government continue to cover up the fraud	Bill Moyers Journal	William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything.
4/3/09	WHERE’S THE NOTE, WHO’S THE HOLDER: ENFORCEMENT OF PROMISSORY NOTE SECURED BY REAL ESTATE	HON. SAMUEL L. BUFFORD UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY JUDGE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA	When the actual holder of the note is unknown, it is impossible – not difficult but impossible – to plead a cause of action in a federal court (unless the movant simply lies about the ownership of the note). Unless the name of the actual note holder can be stated, the very pleadings are defective.
4/3/09	Texas Instruments sues 3 banks over auction-rate securities	ANDREW D. SMITH The Dallas Morning News	"TI is simply seeking to have the banks buy back the securities it purchased based on misleading and untrue statements of material fact by these banks,"
4/3/09	Woman Who Shot Self After Foreclosure Needs Money For Burial	AP	(Would Addie Polk be alive if she had she not been scammed? MSF)
4/3/09	Loan modifications rise; many don't pare payments	AP	(Allowing third-party debt collectors to modify someone else's assets will not work and may not be legal. MSF)
4/3/09	Report: Bailed-Out Banks May Buy Toxic Assets	Reuters	(Your hard-earned money is going to be used to buy WORTHLESS assets, and you have no say in the matter. MSF)
4/2/09 Info	Understanding California foreclosure Hold a foreclosure sale and surrender all rights against the borrower.	Cathy Moran, California Bankruptcy Attorney	California foreclosure procedures provide that any secured creditor who uses the power of sale in a deed of trust to conduct a foreclosure sale gives up any claim against the borrower for a deficiency. So, a creditor who chooses a quick and relatively cheap non judicial foreclosure cannot pursue the property owner for more money after the sale.
4/2/09**	Why Won’t My Mortgage Company Help?	Consumer Warning Network	She called the mortgage servicer, Century 21/Wells Fargo, hoping to get help through a loan modification, but they told her she had to be behind in her payments, before they would consider helping. “I told them it doesn’t make sense that you want me to be late, for you to review my paperwork, and they said that’s how they operate,” she says. As crazy as it sounds, that’s how most lenders operate.
4/2/09	Bailed-out banks eye toxic asset buys	By Francesco Guerrera in New York and Krishna Guha in Washington Financial Times	(Not only has the U.S. dollar been devalued; they are now going to give VALUE to paper that is - by legal standards - worthless. MSF)
4/2/09	New Accounting Rules for Mortgage-Backed Securities	FLOYD NORRIS New York Times	(This is exactly how we got in this mess and now they are going to give MORE power to the banks and allow THEM to decide what their assets are worth? MSF)
4/1/09**	Curtain May be Rising on a New Toxic Asset Mess	Mortgage Daily News	Martin sees another problem where homeowners have a defense against foreclosure or avenues for redress when they have already lost their homes.
4/1/09 Video	G-20 protesters jam downtown London, target banks "Financial Fool's Day"	RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press	Fearing they would be targeted by protesters, some bankers swapped their pinstripe suits for casual wear and others stayed home. Bolder financial workers leaned out their office windows Wednesday, taunting demonstrators and waving 10 pound notes at them.
3/31/09 Video	'Go After the Bankers. They Are Financial Terrorists.'	FACEOFF - Blip TV	Broadcast debate over who is to blame for the financial crisis.
3/31/09	Woman who shot herself when facing eviction dies in nursing home	Colette M. Jenkins Beacon Journal	In response to public outcry, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) announced it would dismiss its foreclosure action against Polk, forgive her mortgage and allow her to return to her home, where she had lived since 1970. That never happened. After her release from Akron General Medical Center, Polk went to the Arbors at Fairlawn, a nursing facility where she died at 3:20 a.m. today.
3/29/09**	Debtor Without Lawyer Defeats Motion for Relief from Stay, Based on Lack of Standing UBS AG, as servicing agent for ACT Properties, LLC (”Movant”),” was accompanied by an unauthenticated copy of an adjustable rate note in favor of Castle Point Mortgage, Inc.; and by a “barely legible” copy of a mortgage in favor of Castle Point Mortgage as “lender”; the beneficiary was identified as Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS); and an apparently unrecorded “Assignment of Mortgage” to ACT Properties. The motion was also supported by a declaration (made in Irvine, California) by a “bankruptcy specialist” that Wells Fargo Document Custody had possession of the note, mortgage, and assignment, in its Minnesota offices.	Craig Andresen, Minnesota Bankruptcy Attorney	In re Jacobson, 2009 WL 567188 (Bky.W.D.Wash. March 6, 2009), involved a chapter 13 bankruptcy debtor whose mortgage servicing agent filed a motion seeking an order from the bankruptcy court that it could foreclose on the debtor’s home mortgage, based upon lack of payments. The debtor had a lawyer in the chapter 13 case, but the lawyer made no appearance.
3/29/09	Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures	SUSAN SAULNY New York Times	Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate. The company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it. [The banks made their money on the front end and when they sold it to Wall Street. MSF]
3/28/09**	Did BIG Money Buy a Texas Supreme Court Decision? You be the judge. Listen Now Timeline: The Culls' 13-Year Legal Odyssey	Wade Goodwyn NPR.org	The arbitrator sided with the Culls. Perry Homes was ordered to pay $800,000 in damages and retake ownership of the house. The Culls felt triumphant and vindicated. But they were about to discover that if your builder has the resources, binding arbitration isn't necessarily all that binding.
3/27/09	HSBC says no to Making Home Affordable modification plan	HouseholdWatch.com	HSBC blames us and other middle-class Americans for the fraud of global proportions they created.
3/27/09	Needed: Blue Ribbon Panel To Investigate Financial Crimes CEO gets 30 years	Danny Schechter www.opednews.com	In North Carolina, a judge sentenced Lance Paulson, the former CEO of National Century Financial Enterprises, to 30 years for security frauds. Said the Judge, “Poulsen was the architect of a fraud of such magnitude that it would have made financial experts shudder.” Judges may be shuddering but our media is still downplaying the extent of the crimes behind the collapse of our economy.
3/27/09	Florida Mortgage Fraud Crisis Called 'State Of Emergency'	sbehnken@tampatrib.com	It will take an all-hands-on-deck approach between our state's agencies to effectively address our citizens' concerns," McCollum said. Mortgage fraud topped the list of complaints logged by his office in 2008, and the state has pursued civil and criminal action against dozens of companies and individuals accused of mortgage fraud.
3/27/09	Goldman Sachs Bailed Out 2 Executives	LOUISE STORY New York Times	The financial giant Goldman Sachs spent tens of millions of dollars to bail out two senior executives last fall who were short on cash, according to the bank’s proxy statement filed on Friday.
3/27/09**	Time for Action: CWN Notifies AG’s of Foreclosure Fraud Apparently, the lines of bail-out communication are open between the banks and the government, but consumers only get a busy signal.	ConsumerWarningNetwork	The Consumer Warning Network is giving voice to the email complaints readers have been sending to us. We’ve compiled the emails and will deliver an alert regarding these concerns to the Attorneys General in 39 states - from Maine to California, from Florida to Hawaii. For each AG, we’re including the citizen complaints of mortgage fraud from each of their respective states and asking them to take action.
3/26/09	The Greater Greed Wall Street didn't invent excess. It just upped the ante.	Newsweek	It wasn't just that AIG got fat bonuses after their firm took U.S. government bailout funds, it was that they were collecting them while others in the U.S. were losing their jobs, houses and retirement investments. And those were the people whose taxes were paying for the AIG bonuses. What made the AIG-ers seem even more objectionable was the perception that the same guys who were bagging the bonuses had created the strategies that led to the financial mess in the first place.
3/26/09	Cuomo Widens His A.I.G. Investigation	New York Times	Cuomo is widening his investigation of the American International Group to examine whether its trading counterparties improperly received billions of dollars in government money from the troubled insurer.
3/25/09	Hope Now Modifications sued for deception and fraud. Hope Now Modifications had zero affiliation with Hope Now Alliance.	Monica Yant Kinney Inquirer Columnist	Eventually, five couples in three states gave Hope Now Modifications their funds and faith. They weren't alone. By the time the FTC caught wind of the scheme, 2,200 homeowners had been hoodwinked.
3/23/09**	Local man stops foreclosure with `Produce the Note"	Laure Cioffi - EllwoodCity.org	An Ellwood City man was set to lose his house at a county sheriff’s sale March 11, but learned that morning a judge had granted his request that his mortgage company must show proof that they actually own the house by producing his original mortgage. The company has yet to produce the original documents.
3/23/09	Foreclosure Practice in Massachusetts Traps for the Unwary Lender	Kurt A. James Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster	In a unanimous decision, the SJC significantly expanded the application of these regulations by deciding that a mortgagee cannot foreclose a mortgage with the following four (4) characteristics:
3/22/09** Video Series	'If you had a pulse, we gave you a loan' Inside the fiasco that led to the mortgage mess and Countrywide's collapse NBC's Chris Hansen series	Richard Greenberg/Chris Hansen Dateline NBC	The greed that permeated the industry was driven by some of the most arcane financial instruments ever devised by Wall Street. Those instruments, mainly derivatives of mortgage-backed securities, became so convoluted that instead of lowering financial risk, as they ostensibly were intended to do, they actually expanded and obscured it.
3/21/09	Washington Mutual sues FDIC for over $13 billion	Reuters	It also accused the FDIC of agreeing to an unreasonably low price in arranging the a $1.9 billion sale of the banking business to JPMorgan on September 25, when regulators seized Washington Mutual and appointed the FDIC as receiver.
3/19/09	AIG Sues Countrywide for Misrepresenting Mortgages	Edvard Pettersson Bloomberg	United Guaranty said in the complaint that it had reviewed loan files that showed that most mortgages covered by 11 policies for asset-backed securities were either underwritten in violation of Countrywide’s own guidelines or contained defects, such as missing documents, misrepresented credit scores or false social security numbers.
3/19/09	Public Outrage as a Systemic Risk The crux of the problem is that we are not allowing major companies to fail.	By Philip I. Levy The American	AIG was a poorly run company that made bad decisions. One of those was to sign generous “retention bonus” contracts with select employees. These agreements made the recipient employees creditors of the company, just like the banks who purchased credit default swaps.
3/19/09**	THE BIG TAKEOVER	MATT TAIBBI Rolling Stone	The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.
3/19/09	AIG Sues Countrywide for Misrepresenting Mortgages	Edvard Pettersson Bloomberg	United Guaranty said in the complaint that it had reviewed loan files that showed that most mortgages covered by 11 policies for asset-backed securities were either underwritten in violation of Countrywide’s own guidelines or contained defects, such as missing documents, misrepresented credit scores or false social security numbers. (No one complained until the gravy train stopped delivering the cash. MSF)
3/19/09**	Lenders are Fooling Washington Again	Angie Moreschi: consumerwarningnetwork.com	When exactly are we going to wake up? Or perhaps more accurately, when are the outraged lawmakers in Washington going to wake up? We’ve been had; we know it, and we’re letting it happen again.
3/19/09	13 firms receiving federal bailout owe back taxes	STEPHEN OHLEMACHER - AP	Banks and other firms receiving federal money were required to sign contracts stating they had no unpaid taxes, Lewis said. But he said the Treasury Department did not ask them to turn over their tax records.
3/19/09	Troubled Kazakh homeowners protest over foreclosures - Protestors go on hunger strike	Reuters	"Ignoring the problems of mortgage borrowers will only raise the social tension and lead to more protests," the protesters said in a written statement.
3/18/09	Fed to Buy $1 Trillion in Securities to Aid Economy	EDMUND L. ANDREWS New York TImes	But in a surprise, it dramatically increased the amount of money it will create out of thin air to thaw out the still-frozen credit markets that have cramped lending to consumers and businesses alike.
3/18/09	Fannie Mae to Pay Bonuses of up to $611G (each) for Four Execs	FOX News	Fannie Mae discloses plan for bonuses of $470,000 to $611,000 for four top executives, on top of their base salaries this year as sibling company Freddie Mac is plan similar awards.
3/18/09	Handful of lenders account for 40% of D-FW foreclosures	STEVE BROWN The Dallas Morning News	"In the vast majority of foreclosure cases in the U.S., including the ones you're looking at, Deutsche Bank is not a lender," said John T. Gallagher of Deutsche Bank media relations. "In fact, we do not have a mortgage lending arm in the U.S. "Rather, we are the trustee on the mortgage-backed securities of which these loans are a part." (Trustee does NOT have legal standing to foreclose. MSF)
3/18/09	How credit card companies are ruining your credit score and contributing to our economic malaise.	Denise Richardson www.Givemebackmycredit.com	Consumers are facing serious hardships. They are losing their homes, their jobs, their savings, their health insurance and their pensions. This latest maneuver to raise interest rates and lower credit lines is costly, unfair and decreases your credit score even though you did nothing wrong.
3/17/09	Congress Can Take the Blame for Foreclosures	Terry Savage TheStreet.com	First it's easier and cheaper to turn defaulted mortgages over to foreclosure attorneys, whose business is booming. The banks can write off the loans and move forward, wasting little of their employees' time.
3/17/09	Congress looking at huge taxes on AIG bonuses Democrats threaten strong action to recoup AIG bonuses through new taxes	Laurie Kellman - AP	Congressional Democrats vowed Tuesday to all but strip AIG executives of their $165 million in bonuses as expressions of outrage swelled in Congress over eye-catching extra income for employees of a firm that has received billions in taxpayer bailout funds.
3/17/09	AIG bonuses: Bring on the lawyers	Roger Simon - POLITICO	The only real difference between Bernie Madoff and the management of AIG is that when Bernie Madoff got caught, he pleaded guilty. When AIG got caught, it asked the government for $170 billion. And it got it. Now the American International Group is going to pay $165 million to its executives as a reward for the fine job they did in duping everybody.
3/16/09	Wells Fargo Assails TARP, Calls Stress Test ‘Asinine’	Ari Levy - Blooberg	Kovacevich joins a growing list of bankers who are chafing at restrictions imposed by the TARP program, which affect lending, foreclosures, pay and perks.Any bank receiving government funds has to limit annual pay for top executives to no more than $500,000.
3/15/09**	Experts: Improper fees play part in crisis Servicers may benefit from loans in default	Kirsti Marohn kmarohn@stcloudtimes.	Charging improper or unexplained fees is a common practice for some mortgage servicing companies and is a larger part of the national foreclosure crisis than most people realize, experts say.
3/13/09	Banks steered blacks to bad loans, NAACP says Class-action lawsuits target subprime lenders Wells Fargo, HSBC Original Complaint NAACP v. Wells Fargo	AP	In 2004, she wanted to buy the house next door for her son to live in. She said the bank promised her a low fixed rate for a $40,000 loan, but at the closing, when reading the fine print, she noticed that the rate was actually 11 percent. "I was blown away," said Weaver, an NAACP member. "I didn't have any choice (but to sign). ... It made me feel violated."
3/12/09	Foreclosures up 30 percent in February	ALAN ZIBEL, AP	The rise in foreclosure filings came despite temporary halts to foreclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and major banks JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America. Those companies pledged to do so in advance of President Barack Obama's plan to stem the foreclosure crisis, which was launched last week.
3/11/09	The Fed Did Indeed Cause the Housing Bubble Alan Greenspan is a liar. The Federal Reserve and its long standing partner, the US Treasury, engineered the housing bubble, including the fraudulent inducement of America as part of a financial coup d’etat. Our bankruptcy was not an accident. It was engineered at the highest levels.	Catherine Austin Fitts	Homeowners would default on mortgages while losses on mortgage-backed securities would drain retirement savings from 401(k)s and pension plans. Taxpayers would ultimately be hit with a large bill . . . but insiders would make a bundle. I looked at the official and said that the Administration was planning on issuing more mortgages than there were houses or residents. “Shut up, this is none of your business,” the official snapped back.”
3/11/09	One in 50 American children homeless: study	Xinhua	"The number will grow as home foreclosures continue to rise." The study also offers policy recommendations for the government to address the issue, such as ensuring that children's schooling is not interrupted when they lose homes, and providing services to address the trauma of homelessness.
3/10/09**	What if Your Lender CAN’T Produce the Note?	Terry Smiljanich Consumer Warning Network	Everyone needs to understand the importance of the issue. When a lender can’t “produce the note,” allowing a foreclosure to proceed puts the homeowner at risk of owing that debt again to another party. So great caution must be taken before a judge can allow someone who can’t “produce the note” to cash in on your home.
3/9/09	Buffett: The economy has ‘fallen off a cliff’ Investor tells CNBC unemployment level could climb a lot higher	Associated Press	“Not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven’t seen.”
3/8/09	Who got AIG's bailout billions? with video *[This is YOUR money! MSF]*	Toni Reinhold - Reuters	Some of the banks paid by AIG since the insurer started getting taxpayer funds were: Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group. [This is YOUR money! MSF]
3/8/09	World Bank Says Global Economy Will Shrink in ’09	EDMUND L. ANDREWS The New York Times	The economic crisis that started with junk mortgages in the United States is causing havoc for poorer countries around the world, not only stifling their growth but choking off their access to credit as well, the World Bank said.
3/8/09	G.O.P. Senators Say Some Big Banks Can Be Allowed to Fail	J. DAVID GOODMAN and BRIAN KNOWLTON The New York Times	“If they’re dead, they ought to be buried.” While the Alabama senator did not say which banks to shutter, he suggested that Citigroup might be on that list, saying the bank has “always been a problem child.”
3/8/09*	Protesters target U.S. foreclosed-homes auctioneer Housing and Economic Recovery Act*	Reuters	"What is happening to these families. Are they living in their cars? And are they being bailed out, like AIG or Citicorp?" Foreclosures taking place are in violation of the federal Housing and Economic Recovery Act, it alleged.
3/7/09	Discharged Debts Are Not Collectible !	Carmen Dellutri The Dellutri Law Group, P.A.	Since the debt had been discharged by the person who was legally obligated to pay the debt, how could the debt collectors come after the authorized users. Well, the collection of any kind of debt is big business, and it is getting worse all the time. Creditors are now taking risks that have never been taken before. Sure, they know that they are going to get caught every once in a while, but it is a cost of doing business.
3/7/09	Sarasota Florida Judge Berlin Slams The Foreclosure Door On Wamu!	Carmen Dellutri The Dellutri Law Group, P.A.	In Sarasota, Florida, Judge Donna Pader Berlin slammed the foreclosure door on Washington Mutual Bank in a mortgage foreclosure case. As a foreclosure defense attorney, I love reading about cases like this, because Judge Pader Berlin gets it. She was able to see the mortgage company’s game, and she put them on the defensive.
3/7/09	Sarasota Judge Cancels Foreclosure Sale	Carmen Dellutri The Dellutri Law Group, P.A.	As a foreclosure defense attorney in Sarasota, I am glad to say that Sarasota Circuit Court Judge Donna Padar Berlin recently issued an Order canceling a foreclosure sale in a mortgage foreclosure case. Sarasota is now, in my opinion, taking a firmer stance against abuse in the mortgage foreclosure system by the mortgage companies. This is an excellent step in the right direction. Kudos to Judge Donna Pader Berlin for putting a stop to a practice that is all too prevalent in today's economy.
3/7/09	Foreclosure protest takes place in Milford	JERRY WOLFFE The Oakland Press	The rally was a way to get people aware of what is going on,” Shew said. “Banks are foreclosing on loans, many of them business loans, that are being paid on time.
3/6/09	Bear Stearns’s ‘Dirty Secret’ Bursts in Cohan’s Book	James Pressley Bloomberg	Chronicling the cocky rise and meteoric fall of Bear Stearns, whose swoon into the arms of JPMorgan in March 2008 underlined the greed, hubris and madness that have plunged the world into its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
3/5/09	CtW Investment Group Calls on Bank of America Board to Remove Lewis or Face Ouster Vote	PRNewswire	Recent events have fatally undermined investor confidence in Bank of America Chairman and CEO Kenneth D. Lewis. With BAC's share price now down 90% in 5 months, we call upon the BAC board of directors to immediately seek the resignation of Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis. Absent prompt action to remove Mr. Lewis, we will have no choice but to call upon BAC shareholders to join us at BAC's upcoming annual meeting in voting against Mr. Lewis,
3/5/09**	Regulators Promise to Heed Whistle-blowers Go to S.E.C. Press Release » SEC Revamping Process for Reviewing Whistleblower Complaints and Enforcement Tips Go to Finra Press Release » FINRA Announces Creation of "Office of the Whistleblower" Dedicated Team to Handle High-Risk Tips	The New York Times	The agency said that it had set up a phone number, 1-866-96-FINRA (1-866-963-4672), and a Web site where potential tipsters could forward their information.
3/5/09	FDIC warns US bank deposit insurance fund could tank	AFP	The FDIC chief said in the letter that the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions raised the prospects of "a large number" of bank failures through 2010.
3/5/09	12% are behind on mortgage or in foreclosure	AP	An industry survey shows a record 5.4 million American homeowners with a mortgage, or nearly 12 percent, were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of last year.
3/3/09	Banks Refusing To Take Back Foreclosed Properties	Mhari Saito - NPR	When there's no bid, the lender can either try to sell at another sheriff sale or do nothing. Doing nothing means the foreclosure is not complete. And Cleveland foreclosure attorney Larry Rothenberg says doing nothing is becoming more popular.
3/3/09	Dallas-Fort Worth sees jump in foreclosures of $1 million-plus homes	stevebrown@dallasnews.com	Filings for homes priced at $1 million and up jumped 175 percent from a year earlier. And foreclosure postings were up almost 40 percent for houses priced from $500,000 to $999,000.
3/3/09	Citigroup to lower some mortgage payments Citigroup to lower mortgage payments for some homeowners that are out of work	Michelle Chapman, AP	Citigroup's new mortgage efforts also come on the heels of the latest attempt to bail out the company, which includes the U.S. government's exchange of up to $25 billion in emergency bailout money given to Citigroup for as much as a 36 percent equity stake in the company
3/2/09	Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit A Second Time From Bad Loans They Created	ERIC LIPTON The New York Times	The lawsuits, including one filed by New York State’s comptroller, say Mr. Kurland was well aware of the risks, and even misled Countrywide’s investors about the precariousness of the company’s portfolio, which grew to $463 billion in loans, from $62 billion, three times faster than the market nationwide, during the final six years of his tenure.
3/2/09	Maintaining Properties: Borrowers Seek Foreclosure Stops	Jennifer Harmon Managing REO	Servicers are seeing increased cases where borrowers are trying to stall or stop foreclosures by filing “right to rescind” notices as violations of the Truth in Lending Act.
3/2/09	Cases with Texas justices' big campaign donors raises question: Does money rule the courts?	RANDY LEE LOFTIS and RYAN McNEILL / The Dallas Morning News	The money comes mostly from lawyers, including some who practice before the court, and from corporations, some with pending cases.
3/29/09**	Guess What Got Lost in the Loan Pool? But if the holder of the note is in doubt, how can these loans be modified?	GRETCHEN MORGENSON The New York Times	Depending on the documentation defect, lawyers say, investors in the trust could try to force the institution that sold the loan to the trust to buy it back. Many of these institutions would be unable to do so, however, because they are defunct. In the meantime, when judges are not persuaded that the documentation is proper, troubled borrowers can remain in their homes even if they are delinquent.
3/ 09** Online Book	Sold Out How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America	Robert Weissman and James Donahue. Harvey Rosenfield, Jennifer Wedekind, Marcia Carroll, Charlie Cray, Peter Maybarduk, Tom Bollier and Paulo Barbone assisted.	Blame Wall Street for the current financial crisis. Investment banks, hedge funds and commercial banks made reckless bets using borrowed money. They created and trafficked in exotic investment vehicles that even top Wall Street executives — not to mention firm directors — did not understand. They hid risky investments in off-balance-sheet vehicles or capitalized on their legal status to cloak investments altogether. They engaged in unconscionable predatory lending that offered huge profits for a time, but led to dire consequences when the loans proved unpayable.
2/27/09	JP Morgan Chase Continues Foreclosure Proceedings Despite Promised Freeze	Nathan Havey Brave New Films	EMC featured on a site called the Ripoff Report, where there are 261 complaints about EMC Mortgage, including customers being penalized for being "late" when they weren't, repeated phone calls, rude treatment, no help with mortgage modifications and numerous other problems.
2/27/09	House of Cards: The Faces Behind Foreclosures (Special Report: "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis")	David Von Drehle - Time	Obama, in presenting his mortgage plan, promised to distinguish between the sinners and those unlucky bystanders dragged down by the economy's undertow. His lifeline, he insisted, will not "rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible." Delivering on that promise is vital to Obama's future, because hope is a tough sell to people who believe that only the wicked prosper.
2/27/09	Proceed with Caution Foreclosure aid fraud soars, says state official	Mediha Fejzagic DiMartino Daily Bulletin	After threatening to sue the loan modification company, Davis got her money back, but it was too late to save her house.
2/26/09	Bear Stearns Ordered to Pay $27.3 Million in Damages to Investors for Misrepresenting Its Investment Strategies	msnbc.com	After 17 years of litigation, Bear Stearns & Co. was ordered to pay $27,353,000 in damages to the state of Delaware. Court testimony later revealed that Bear Stearns knew of the company's financial situation and Order of Court Supervision and aggressively solicited NHL's business.
2/26/09	Foreclosure Ponzi Schemes	Michelle Malsbury American Chronicle	The secondary market is the investment banking marketplace where "junk bonds" and "ponzi schemes" were born. These operations are supposed to be regulated by the SEC, FDIC, and the Federal Reserve. There are regulations on the books that should prevent abuse and misuse, but during the Bush years those were cast aside, or deregulated to the point of non-existence, in order to make more money for their wealthy investors.
2/25/09	Bill Deals with Faulty Foreclosures	Brendan Riley AP	A proposed 1-sentence law change, approved Wednesday by a key Assembly panel, would help homeowners who face errors by mortgage companies of the sort that cost a Las Vegas family irreplaceable personal possessions.
2/25/09	Miami Investigates Illegal Foreclosures By Deutsche Bank	MFI-Miami, LLC	In the majority of these cases, Deutsche Bank or its servicer almost never produces or refuses to produce the original note and mortgage, or proof that the transfer of the note has been validated. They freely admit this in the actions filed in court. However, some minority homeowners don’t have the legal expertise to understand how important these documents are to their case. They assume they have no defense and don’t show up for the hearing.
2/24/09	Wis. bill would allow fraud suits over home sales	Associated Press	Duped home buyers could sue the sellers for fraud under a bill approved Tuesday by the Wisconsin Senate.
2/24/09	State favors making residential mortgage fraud a felony.	Ken Dixon ConnPost.com	Alan J. Cicchetti, deputy banking commissioner, said the department favors making residential mortgage fraud a felony.
2/24/09	Texas legislators look to help renters whose landlords are foreclosed on	mike lee star-telegram	Texas has always been a tough place for renters, especially those on limited incomes. But the foreclosure crisis has thrown thousands of people out on the street through no fault of their own.
2/24/09	Conservative group says bill to reduce foreclosures would actually hurt homeowners	ED VOGEL LAS VEGAS REVIEW	Lawrence said the Buckley bill, Assembly Bill 149, could induce existing homeowners who are not in default to stop paying so they could enter into mediation with the lender and secure a better mortgage rate.
2/23/09	U.S. Attorney leading crackdown on mortgage fraud in Maryland	Daniel J. Sernovitz Washington Business Journal	“Our homes are our most valued possession. As a community we must do everything within our power to protect our citizens’ investment,” said Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.
2/23/09	Shareholder lawsuit vs Moody's allowed to proceed	Reuters -UK	The judge rejected attempts by Moody's to dismiss the case, which accuses the company and CEO Raymond McDaniel of securities fraud. Rating agencies have been blamed by critics for helping to foment the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown by giving high ratings to subprime-linked securities that later disintegrated.
2/22/09*	THE LOAN RANGER LAWYER OUTWITS BANKS IN FORECLOSURE BATTLES	RICHARD WILNER New York Post	Charney has forced scores of plaintiffs in foreclosure actions in Jacksonville to admit they don't have legal ownership of the securitized mortgage they are trying to foreclose upon - stopping the home takeover battle in its tracks.
2/21/09*	After Huge Losses, a Move to Reclaim Executives’ Pay “There is a line that separates fair compensation from stealing from shareholders,” said Frederick E. Rowe	GRETCHEN MORGENSON NY Times	“When managements ignore that line or can’t see it, then hell, yes, they should be required to give the money back.” But now, with a public backlash against excessive pay and taxpayer lifelines extended to crippled companies, the idea of recouping compensation, known as “clawback,” is gaining traction.
2/21/09	The Most Objectionable Of Documents	Benny Kass The Washington Post	Lenders insist that borrowers sign IRS Form 4506, "Request for Copy of Tax Return." In my opinion, this is the most objectionable of the documents. You are giving a blank check to the holder of the document to have complete access to your federal income tax returns. It is an invitation to pry into what you thought were your private tax returns.
2/20/09	We Won't be Helped by the Housing Fix	Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com	Sorry, but you likely aren't among the 9 million people who may get help under President Obama's $75 billion foreclosure prevention program.
2/20/09	Santelli’s “Tea Party” Illustrates Press Failure The mobs want to string up the wrong people	Ryan Chittum Columbia Journalism Review	We know that some half of all subprime borrowers actually qualified for prime mortgages, with better terms, lower interest rates and lower payments, but were fraudulently put into more expensive ones by brokers who were incentivized with bonuses by the Countrywides of the world.
2/20/09	ACORN Seeks To Turn Back Local Foreclosures	Public Broadcasting	[w]e're still calling attention to all the people this plan is too late to help and also call attention to those folks whose houses are going up for auction today and tomorrow and next week and the week after, who are going to be too late to benefit from that plan."
2/20/09**	How to use “Produce the Note” in Non-judicial Foreclosure States	Consumer Warning Network	In these “nonjudicial foreclosure” states, such as California, Texas, or the thirty or more other states with similar procedures, the homeowner has to file a lawsuit against the party trying to foreclose.
2/20/09	BofA's Ken Lewis subpoenaed over Merrill bonuses N.Y. Attorney General Cuomo probing $3.6 billion in bonuses at firm	Associated Press	The initial reports of the bonuses came just days after Bank of America received an additional $20 billion from the government that it said it needed to help offset the losses it was absorbing from the Merrill acquisition. The government also promised to cover losses on more than $100 billion in risky assets.
2/20/09	U.S. Tries a Trillion-Dollar Key for Locked Lending	VIKAS BAJAJ - NT Times	Most banks no longer hold the loans they make, content to collect interest until the debt comes due. Instead, the loans are bundled into securities that are sold to investors, a process known as securitization.
2/19/09	Glut Of Foreclosures Clogs Courts CBS Evening News: A Look At "Fast-Court" In Florida And An Innovative Program In Philly For Those Facing Losing Their Homes	CBS News	"If this wasn't here, I'd be out on the street, me and my two children," Homan said. Now five cities and the state of New Jersey say they'll duplicate the program to stem the tide to rising foreclosures.
2/19/09*	Delinquent Borrowers Turn Increasingly to Litigation over Mitigation	Charles Wisniowski, MBA NewsLink	[l]enders or mortgage servicing firms in the past might be given the benefit of the doubt in the event a home foreclosure case went to court, juries and judges in the current unfriendly judicial environment do not feel as inclined to cut mortgage firms or their attorneys any slack whatsoever. "There has been a climate change," Hutchens said. "The pendulum has swung too far and we are not being treated fairly."
2/19/09	Jobless Hit With Bank Fees on Benefits Banks work a scam wherever they can.	Associated Press	Some banks, depending on the agreement negotiated with each state, also make money on the interest they earn after the state deposits the money and before it's spent. The banks and credit card companies also get roughly 1 percent to 3 percent off the top of each transaction made with the cards. This time, he was issued a Bank of America debit card — a "prepaid" card in industry lingo — but he was surprised to learn he had to pay fees to get his money. He asked the bank to waive them. It said no.
2/19/09	Ambitious Obama plan won't stop flood of foreclosures, analysts say	Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Edmund L. Andrews	"Does your plan compensate banks for the bad mortgages they should never have made in the first place?" Boehner asked, in a written statement.
2/18/09**	Obama's Foreclosure Plan Seeks To Save Millions From Losing Homes	MARK S. SMITH and ALAN ZIBEL - AP	President Barack Obama says his $75 billion plan to tackle "a crisis unlike any we've ever known" in home foreclosures is necessary to help save the economy.
2/18/09	Florida Court's 'Rocket Docket' Blasts Through Foreclosure Cases 2 Questions, 15 Seconds, 45 Days to Get Out; 'What's to Talk About?' Says a Judge	Wall Street Journal	She and her husband have been taking care of three of their grandchildren since their daughter lost her home last year in Atlanta. (And the fraud behind what caused the financial meltdown is ignored, as banks are awarded homes without proving the debt even exists. This is dereliction of duty. MSF)
2/18/09	UBS Is Set to Open Its Secret Files	LYNNLEY BROWNING - NT Times	Prosecutors suspect that from late 2002 to 2007, UBS helped American clients illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes.
2/17/09	Homeowners' rallying cry: Produce the note	MITCH STACY Associated Press	Kathy Lovelace lost her job and was about to lose her house, too. But then she made a seemingly simple request of the bank: Show me the original mortgage paperwork. And just like that, the foreclosure proceedings came to a standstill. Lovelace and other homeowners around the country are managing to stave off foreclosure by employing a strategy that goes to the heart of the whole nationwide mess.
2/17/09	"Worst Is Yet to Come:" Americans' Standard of Living Permanently Changed with video	Aaron Task Yahoo Finance	"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school [and] buy a car," Davidowitz says. "A lot of that is gone."
2/17/09	D-Day vet's tale parallels mortgage meltdown Ex-corpsman, 84, blames 'greed, greed, greed' as he faces losing his home	Mike Stuckey - MSNBC	the party attempting to foreclose is identified as Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., or MERS. MERS claims an interest in tens of millions of U.S. home loans and the legal right to foreclose on those in default. But MERS never gave Vargas a loan. It never collected money from him or recorded his payments. It had no ability to modify his loan.
2/17/09	William Black: "There Are No Real Stress Tests Going On"	nakedcapitalism.com	One possibility is that even a very quick and dirty look at many of the big banks' books will reveal them to be in very bad shape. In fact, the inadequate staffing could be part of the private conversation: "You know we didn't send in enough bodies to do this right.
2/17/09	Texas Financial Firm Is Accused by U.S. of $8 Billion Fraud	CLIFFORD KRAUSS, PHILLIP L. ZWEIG and JULIE CRESWELL NY Times	In the complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Dallas, the S.E.C. accused Mr. Stanford and two associates — James M. Davis, a director and chief financial officer of Stanford Group and the Antigua-based bank affiliate, and Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of both organizations — with misrepresenting the safety and liquidity of the uninsured CDs.
2/17/09	Evergreen associate gets plea bargain, probation Ex-girlfriend pleads to money laundering	Ed Meyer Beacon Journa	Willan, the former chief executive of Evergreen Investment Corp., Evergreen Homes and Evergreen Builders, was convicted in December of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activities and 67 additional counts in what authorities have described as a multimillion-dollar scheme of mortgage and state securities violations in the Akron area.
2/16/09	Fraud alleged against housing group's backer Partner in AHP foreclosure prevention program may face charges in Indiana	Rick Armon Beacon Journal	''Our position is that they've defrauded the government and they will be charged,'' Steve Golden, assistant police chief with the Housing Police Department, said today.
2/16/09**	Big banks declare moratorium, then file 56 new Cuyahoga foreclosures on same day	Callahan’s Cleveland Diary	The Court’s online docket shows a total of 56 foreclosures filed on Friday. In addition to Citimortgage’s nine, they include nine on behalf of Bank of America (including subsidiaries Countrywide and Lasalle); six on behalf of Wells Fargo/Wachovia; and one on behalf of Chase Financial, an arm of JP Morgan. That’s 25 out of the day’s 56 foreclosure cases, filed by the same four banks whose executives spent the day telling reporters about their new “moratorium”.
2/15/09**	World Of Trouble Three years before the housing market crash, Paul Bishop says he warned his superiors at World Savings that many of the mortgages they were granting were misleading and predatory. with video	Scott Pelley 60 Minutes	What does Paul Bishop say he told executives at World Savings, three years before the crash? "We're breaking the law, okay? We're breaking the law. You know we're breaking the law. I know we're breaking the law. What the hell do you think is going on here? You know, you're granting too many people loans who simply can't qualify,"
2/15/09	Critiquing CNBC’s House of Cards and Its Role In The Crisis	Danny Schechter newsdissector.com	At the end of ‘House of Cards,’ the Wall Street investors they interviewed were asked if they felt guilty about the role they played in the crisis. Most couldn’t even understand the question, fudged around or didn’t answer it.
2/14/09	Britain’s bankers plumb new depths	Patrick Hosking - The Times	The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.
2/13/09	Democratic Senator Predicts None of His Colleagues 'Will Have the Chance' to Read Final Stimulus Bill Before Vote	Ryan Byrnes and Edwin Mora CNSNews.com	This sounds a lot like closing a loan...rush you through and make sure that you don't get a chance to read ALL of it before signing on the dotted line. (Ann Holden)
2/13/09	How Banks Are Worsening the Foreclosure Crisis with videos	Brian Grow, Keith Epstein and Robert Berner - BusinessWeek	One reason foreclosures are so rampant is that banks and their advocates in Washington have delayed, diluted, and obstructed attempts to address the problem.
2/13/09	Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses	EDMUND L. ANDREWS and ERIC DASH - NY Times	It would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
2/12/09	How Banks Are Worsening the Foreclosure Crisis How the banking industry is undermining efforts to keep people in their houses	Brian Grow, Keith Epstein and Robert Berner BusinessWeek	Some lawmakers and regulators are calling for a foreclosure moratorium. "People are falling through the cracks," Preston says. "That's bad for communities, bad for the individuals losing their homes, and bad for investors."
2/12/09	Foreclosed homeowners could get restitution in Countrywide pact	DAVE MICHAELS and BRENDAN CASE Dallas Morning News	Countrywide steals your home and then when they get caught, they are asked to pay you $2,300.00. Sounds like a violation of the Honest Services Doctrine should be filed against the Attorney General.
2/12/09	Pa. judges to enter plea in kickback scheme	AP	Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers are expected to plead guilty to fraud. (Are judges taking kickbacks to allow the banks to illegally foreclose? MSF)
2/12/09	Lawsuit Challenges Bank's Decision To Cut Home Equity Credit	newsnet5.com	A newly filed lawsuit will now challenge a Cleveland bank's decision to cut home equity lines of credit. Home equity is a credit lifeline during these tough times and cutting it off can be catastrophic.
2/11/09	Texas Judicial System in State of Crisis, Reformers Say Advocates Call on Chief Justice Jefferson to Put an End to Payola Justice and Partisan Courts	Texans for Public Justice	“The Texas Supreme court is under a cloud that just seems to get darker by the day,” said Alex Winslow, Executive Director of Texas Watch. “With two members of our state’s highest court guilty of violating state ethics laws, rampant influence by big-money donors, and blatant disregard for laws designed to protect Texas families, Texas justice is in jeopardy.”
2/11/09	FBI expects number of major financial bailout fraud cases to rise	Josh Meyer - LA Times	Top FBI and Justice Department officials said they believed mortgage fraud and other types of corporate criminal behavior has contributed to the economic tailspin. Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), told the FBI and Justice Department officials that he wanted to see people prosecuted and sent to jail.
2/11/09	Top bankers face grilling by dubious Congress Contrite bankers try to persuade lawmakers they have been lending	MSNBC	Angry Congressmen wanted to know why their constituents cannot get loans for cars, homes and businesses even though the banks received $160 billion so far to help thaw frozen credit. "There has to be a sense of the American people that you understand their anger ... and that you're willing to make some sacrifices to get this working." Barney Frank
2/11/09	Editorial: Bankers get theirs; will Congress?	DallasNews.com	There are few people more reviled in public life today than eight heads of major U.S. banks, which is why everybody expected yesterday's House grilling of these men to be a public flogging.
2/11/09	Wall St CEOs to defend use of bailout to Congress (The lies will be shocking)	Kevin Drawbaugh - Reuters	Lawmakers are expected to seize the opportunity presented by a congressional committee hearing on the troubled bailout program to grill the eight bank CEOs scheduled to testify, and to vent rising public anger over the economic crisis.
2/10/09	Foreclosure 'Tsunami' Hits Mortgage-Servicing Firms	CARRICK MOLLENKAMP Wall Street Journal	Sean F. O'Shea, Carrington's lawyer, said that American Home Mortgage "self-dealing" meant that homeowners had been unnecessarily evicted.
2/10/09	The Water Keeps Rising on Homeowners	Ted Cornwell Mortgage Servicing News	Zillow.com estimates that homeowners lost $3.3 trillion in equity value last year. Since the peak of the housing boom, Zillow says homeowners have seen $6.1 trillion of equity evaporate.
2/10/09*	Request For Criminal Investigation for Violation of the Implied Right of Honest Services By California Judges Judicial corruption is driving the current economic crisis and making Americans homeless	Elizabeth McMahon - AHRC	We have seen how a giant fraud has infected the entire body politic and economic. From the savings and loan scandal of the 1980's up until today, the fraudsters have piled scheme upon scheme to mass massive personal wealth for themselves at the expense of citizens.
2/9/09	Financial Suicides & Timeline	Feifei Sun - Vanity Fair	With the number of suicides related to the financial crisis mounting, VF Daily documents, in chronological order, how some of the tragedies have unfolded.
2/9/09	Changes Needed To The Whistleblower Statute – Contact your Representative	John Newcomer The Consumer Warning Network	With waste and greed rampant these days, important changes are needed to beef up the Federal False Claims Act, also referred to as the Whistleblower Act.
2/9/09	Success Fighting Foreclosure with Produce the Note with video	The Consumer Warning Network	Rhode Island Attorney George Babcock is finding success using the “Produce the Note” strategy to fight foreclosure for his clients. Mr. Babcock has used the bank’s failure to properly produce documents to get a temporary restraining order to stop the foreclosure process. When it came time for a hearing before the judge, the banks decided to walk away.
2/8/09	While Americans lose their homes, go without medical care, America offers fat stipends to foreign students, excellent jobs to H1B foreign workers	Rina Ayer - India News	America is starving. People are losing jobs in millions. Families are forced into streets because of foreclosures. Car companies are sending thugs to create terror in American families and pick up their cars for non-payments. People are dying because of lack of medical insurance and care. But at the same time Universities in America are offering billions of dollars worth stipends, assistantship, free education for foreign students.
2/8/09	Have you been hurt by EMC Mortgage Corporation? You are not alone...	Denise Richardson givemebackmycredit.com	If you've been harmed by mortgage company EMC, the Law Offices of Michael T. Pines wants to speak with you. He's pursuing his beef with EMC in federal court in Utah and he become an outspoken critic of the company, which once was owned by defunct Bear Stearns
2/7/09	Investor battles EMC MORTGAGE EMC Mortgage settled unlawful practices charges with the FTC, but beefs linger.	Lesley Mitchell The Salt Lake Tribune	The FTC said EMC MORTGAGE allegedly made harassing collection calls, falsely represented the character, amount, or legal status of consumers' debts and failed to communicate with credit-reporting agencies that debts were disputed; misrepresented the amounts borrowers owed on loans and charged late penalties and other unauthorized fees, such as property inspection fees and loan modification fees and engaged in unlawful and abusive collection practices.
2/6/09	Legal Services to fight foreclosures	St. Louis Business Journal	Funds from the grant will be used to hire additional staff to handle bankruptcies and provide other assistance in the defense of clients who are at risk of losing their homes through foreclosure.
2/6/09*	FOCUS ON Foreclosures	Center for Responsible Lending	It adds up to disaster. The economic crisis started with home foreclosures, and the numbers are getting worse: 6,600 new foreclosures a day; one every 13 seconds. Washington needs to understand that helping homeowners is key to helping the entire economy. See foreclosures in your state and learn about REAL solutions.
2/5/09	Bailed Out Banks Spend Millions Lobbying Congress	Angie Moreschi: Consumner Warning Network	Not that this should come as a big surprise, but all those banks that have been getting billions in taxpayer bailout dollars, spent a whole lot of it lobbying members of Congress, last year.
2/5/09	Helping Americans Keep Their Homes: Institute Announces $2.4 Million More in Grants to Help Families Fight Foreclosure	Center for Responsible Lending	The Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance today announced it has awarded $2.4 million in grants to nine legal-aid offices in as many states. The grants are the second and final round in a multi-year program to bolster local groups nationwide who assist the growing legion of borrowers facing foreclosure.
2/5/09	Big Fight to get Funding for Legal Services to Help Stop Illegal Foreclosures	Denise Richardson Givemebackmycredit.com	Bailout money to the big banks did nothing to help borrowers stay in their homes, free up credit, help homeowners with mortgage modifications or restructuring of loans. Many borrowers are often without legal representation and unaware they may be victims of illegal foreclosures. Now, Senators Casey, Specter, Leahy, Dodd, Schumer & Kerry have introduced an amendment to the stimulus package that would provide $30,000,000 to legal service organizations doing foreclosure prevention work.
2/5/09	Big bank execs: What they take home When times were good, the top executives from the largest U.S. banks made a mint. Below is the total compensation in 2007 for the 9 banks that received the first batch of government aid through TARP.	CNN Money	Bailout money going to those whose giant Ponzi scheme is responsible for the willful theft of homes and equity, job loss and the collapse of the economy. To restart the economy, the bailout funds should go to fully redress the people they stole from, where it would be injected back into the economy to create jobs from the purchase of goods and services. (MSF)
2/5/09	'Extreme Makeover' Family Gets Break On Loan Family Had Faced Foreclosure	newsnet5.com	The couple, who are deaf, had fallen in arrears after their monthly payments ballooned from $1,471 to $2,250.
2/4/09	Congress considers changes to mortgage aid program	Alan Zibel, AP	With fewer than 500 applications and only two-dozen homeowners helped so far, House lawmakers moved Wednesday to revamp a new program that was intended to help hundreds of thousands of borrowers avoid losing their homes.
2/4/09	Local Mortgage Brokers, Appraisers Indicted	PITTSBURGH (KDKA)	Corrupt mortgage brokers, appraisers and closing attorneys greased the skids for the massive numbers of sheriff sales, foreclosures and evictions in the U.S. And they played no small role in creating the economic crisis that grips the country and the world.
2/4/09	TARP Recipients Paid Out $114 Million for Politicking Last Year	OpenSecrets.org	The companies that have been awarded taxpayers' money from Congress's bailout bill spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions, Center finds. The return on investment: 258,449 percent.
2/3/09	10 indicted in alleged foreclosure conspiracy Authorities: Homeowners tricked into paying fees	Emmet Pierce Union-Tribune	If convicted, the defendants could face sentences ranging from three years to more than 25 years, officials said. Authorities moved to freeze the bank accounts of the suspects to preserve remaining assets for victim restitution.
2/3/09	Are Loan Modifications Evil?	John Carney The Business Insider	But with housing there's an added problem, according to Su. It's actually evil, making people slaves to unaffordable mortgages rather than letting them exit home ownership in favor of renting.
2/3/09	With Growing Number Of Foreclosures, Homeless Turning to Squatting	NBC6	With the number of foreclosures continuing to rise in South Florida, squatting has become a growing trend among the area's homeless. "I had to squat because nobody gave a squat," said 'Mary.'
2/3/09	Legislative Action: Taking Steps to Prevent Foreclosures	Jennifer Harmon Managing REO	The federal government is building momentum to be proactive and fight foreclosures by figuring out ways to persuade lenders that loan forgiveness is important.
2/3/09*	Mortgage Fraud Insider Apologizes	George Warren - News10	The managing broker behind the failed Ameriquest operation posted a rambling essay on the company's Web site describing his years of fraudulent activity and is asking for forgiveness. Read the essay here.
2/3/09	Stricter enforcement necessary for foreclosure problem, Ohio AG says	Tim Tresslar Dayton Daily News	The state's foreclosure problem hasn't abated, he said. Ohio's tally of foreclosure filings for 2008 is expected to reach between 85,000 and 95,000, Cordray said.
2/3/09	Wells Fargo defends, then reconsiders Vegas junket	DANIEL WAGNER and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press	Wells Fargo abruptly reconsidered a pricey Las Vegas casino junket Tuesday after a torrent of criticism that it was misusing $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money.
2/3/09	Empower Families Facing Foreclosure	Center For Responsible Lending	Over the next several years, 8.1 million American families will lose their homes. Because of market declines, these struggling homeowners can neither refinance nor sell. Unless their mortgages are modified to align the loan amount with the value of the home, the foreclosure crisis will continue to get worse.
2/2/09**	Deutsche Bank's Illegal US Foreclosure Practices	David Vickrey Dialogue International	"They are turning the foreclosure process into the Wild West, and many of these foreclosures are plainly illegal."
2/2/09	Economy May Be Worse A Year From Now: Feldstein	CNBC.com	The US economy is likely to be in worse shape a year from now and will require aggressive government spending and intervention to stem the damage, economist Martin Feldstein told CNBC.
2/1/09	Big Risks for U.S. in Trying to Value Bad Bank Assets	VIKAS BAJAJ and STEPHEN LABATON - NY Times	President Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday. “Too often taxpayer dollars have been spent without transparency or accountability. Banks have been extended a hand, but homeowners, students, and small businesses that need loans have been left to fend on their own.”
2/1/09	The $60 mortgage and the $50b fraud	STEVE FORAN The Chronicle Herald	Where is the right and wrong in all of this or does it even matter? Stories like these should serve as reminders and prompt businesses and business people to take an accounting or self-examination.
2/1/09	Pooling complicates mortgages	RICHARD PRIOR St. Augustine Record	Things got confusing when individual loans became drops in large pools. And without that proof of ownership, service companies don't have "standing" to foreclose. "They have to prove they have the right to bring a suit,"
2/1/09	AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workers	FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press	Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
1/31/09	"Here It Comes" There is a tremendous amount of anger rising in America.	Karl Denninger The Market Ticker	The "bad banks" that created this mess must not be further rewarded. The public simply won't stand for it. This is no longer an option and if President Obama and the rest of the government is too tone-deaf to understand this they will ma

Foreclosure Fightback

There’s the OUTRAGE: Riverside Man Booby-Traps Foreclosed Home

KB Home, Countrywide accused of $2.8 Billion fraud

Predatory Lending: A Decade of Warnings

Holder and Geithner LIED About Loan Modification Scams

Bailoutspotting (Or The Search For The Great Financial Methadone Clinic)