Daily News related to the Foreclosure Crisis

The biggest unpunished heist in human history - Max Keiser

2014

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Mortgage Servicing Fraud
occurs post loan origination when mortgage servicers use false statements and book-keeping entries, fabricated assignments, forged signatures and utter counterfeit intangible Notes to take a homeowner's property and equity.
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Revealed: Brian Moynihan's Grand Plan For Bank Of America

Including: Binge Bankers: 6 Men Who Built "Too Big To Fail" Banks 

Forbes At one point in 2011 Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois took to the Senate floor with a Bank of America debit card in his hand and urged the public to “get the heck out of that bank.” 

Bank of America’s shares fell below $5 later that year, down 58% in 2011 compared to a flat S&P 500.

Jan 2014

The State of Play in City Claims Against Financial Firms

Kathleen Engle Municipalities were in impossible positions. They were powerless to prevent abusive lending. Only state and federal legislatures and regulators had the authority to restrict unfair loan products;[2] yet the cities bore the burden of unaffordable loans in the form of abandoned property, displaced families, increased demands for police and fire protection, and declining tax revenues.

Illegal Foreclosure, Ignorance Is No Excuse

When faced with foreclosure many home owners are frightened and ignorant. The banks and mortgage companies count on this. They are hoping the homeowner will do nothing to fight the foreclosure. 

Bruce Nutting 1) They must show that they are the Note Holder in Due Course. 
2) They must show that they still have the original signature documents, not a photocopy. 
3) They must show that they are actually a creditor according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

What (GAAP) means is, if money was lent, it must be shown in the books that money was taken out of an account (a debit), and credited it to an account, which makes the bank a creditor. Many of the banks didn't do this. They just created some numbers on their computer screens and money was created out of thin air. This makes the loan an illegal loan because money was not actually debited and credited.

Statesville homeowners try to ward off foreclosure over Clouded Titles

More than a dozen homeowners are trying to stop foreclosure on their properties over a $1 million loan they say went unnoticed when they bought their homes. THE TITLE CO. IS LIABLE!

More here- Ruling: 18 Fox Den homes to be foreclosed

Charlotte Observer The homeowners say it’s hard to understand how the $1 million loan wasn’t discovered in title searches before they closed on their homes.

“I just think in this day and time, with all the computers, the technology … (how) something like this was able to get this far and wasn’t caught?” Lynn Zanotti said.

Iredell County Assistant Clerk of Court Ruth Prevette ruled that Terrl and 17 of her neighbors on Wedge View Way will lose their homes in a May 29 foreclosure sale – from which they will receive no money – because their properties were never properly released from a 2004 construction loan. 

 

5/30/14

One West Bank v, Corrar

Defendant argues that plaintiff failed to move for a default judgment within a year after defendant's default and, therefore, pursuant to CPLR §3215(c), the action should be dismissed.

Supreme Court Kings County NY The Court does not agree with plaintiff's contention that it made an application for entry of a default judgment within one year of defendant's default. In fact, upon review of the papers, it is noted that plaintiff submitted an ex-parte application for an Order of Reference only, which was submitted directly to the court clerk. Therefore, this "application" could not have been a motion for a default judgment pursuant to CPLR §3215. Moreover, even if the Court considered plaintiff's application to be a motion pursuant to CPLR §3215, said application or motion was withdrawn by plaintiff. "The effect of a withdrawal of a motion is to leave the record as it stood prior to its filing as though it had not been made."

5/30/14

Complexities of reverse mortgages snag homeowners

The couple only had to take care of the property taxes and insurance, which totaled barely $100 a month back then.

"He told us you get paid every month instead of you paying the bank,'' said Kenny, now 87.

Soon after, their insurance premium jumped so high they could not afford it. They fell behind on their bills. The reverse mortgage company demanded that they pay $217,000 or lose their home of 25 years.

Tampa Bay Times You've probably seen the TV ads: Actors including Henry Winkler, Robert Wagner and Fred Thompson tout reverse mortgages as "a safe, effective financial tool.''

The couple now wish they had better understood the seemingly simple reverse mortgage, a frequent lament of homeowners who turn to what is actually a complex financial product. And as increasing numbers of baby boomers become eligible for reverse mortgages, concern looms that many others could find themselves in the same predicament as the Goodnows.

Some will end up fighting to keep their homes.

5/30/14

OCC to Loosen the Oversight Leash on Big Banks

Our ongoing process for self-assessment and review will be important in ensuring the success of these new initiatives,” said Curry.

National Mortgage Professional The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has announced that they will be rotating their big bank staffers around, to better supervise and monitor the nation’s largest banking entities. While MarketWatch seems to believe that this is due to the OCC cutting staff, the recent press release merely highlights the notion of getting fresh eyes on a situation.

5/30/14

L.A. sues JPMorgan Chase, alleges predatory home loans to minorities

The city of Los Angeles accused JPMorgan Chase & Co. of steering minority borrowers into risky home loans they couldn’t afford, triggering a foreclosure wave that hammered property values and city coffers.

L.A. Times In a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court, the Los Angeles city attorney alleged the nation's largest bank “has engaged in a continuous pattern and practice of mortgage discrimination in Los Angeles since at least 2004 by imposing different terms or conditions on a discriminatory and legally prohibited basis."

The JPMorgan suit cites a report from low-income advocacy groups that claimed the mortgage crisis resulted in 200,000 foreclosures in Los Angeles from 2008 through 2012, a wave that depressed property values, and in turn, city property tax revenue by $481 million.

In addition, the local government costs for safety inspections, police and fire calls, trash removal and property maintenance for those foreclosures have hit an estimated $1.2 billion.

5/30/14

The US Dollar and Economy Are Going To Collapse

and then we’ll finally examine all that’s wrong with foreclosure

Weidner Law The reaction to the worldwide financial crimes spree that precipitated the 2008 collapse was not punish the criminals….but to give them even more power.

There is no dispute on this point. As detailed and defended in books like Timmy Geithner’s new delusion, the entire US Treasury was turned over to the criminal banking institutions. Incredibly, those that caused the collapse did not pay for their crimes….they were rewarded with their crimes in the form of trillions of dollars in free money. 

5/30/14

Corporations Are People, So Discipline Them for Bad Actions

JPMorganChase admitted in November 2013 that it, along with every other large U.S. bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice. Their fraudulent actions resulted in the mortgage meltdown.

The Ledger JPMorgan, along with several other megabanks, has admitted to at least a dozen major frauds. To date, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally are underwater, meaning the homeowner owes more than the property is worth. Not one bank, court or the federal government has given adequate relief to homeowners.

5/30/14

What Will George Do as County Recorder?

1. George will uphold the oath of office he swore when he became a candidate. 2. George will obtain funding from the numerous mortgage fraud settlements to establish a Property Owner Notification and Assistance Program. Similar to the one recently established in Los Angeles County, George will conduct workshops personally and provide a necessary resource in helping homeowners obtain justice. 

George Mantor The county recorder’s office should do more for its citizens than be a passive rubber-stamper of fraud. 3. George will obtain funding from the numerous mortgage servicing fraud settlements to conduct an audit of recorded documents to get a clear understanding of the extent of the damage to the transparency and reliability of our land title records. 4. George will end the practice of recording back dated and robo-signed documents. 5. George will seek the recovery of the millions of dollars lost by the failure to record untold thousands of required documents.

5/29/14

U.S. probes possible overcharging by banks on foreclosure fees

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan is investigating at least five banks over whether they overcharged the government for expenses incurred during foreclosures on federally backed home loans, filings and interviews show.

Reuters "You've got a lot of people trying to clean up the servicing industry, but the truth is we are seeing the same servicing problems over and over," said Ira Rheingold, director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. "It was built into the model to charge as many fees as they could."

(As a player in the GSE Business Model, law firms must be willing to bastardize long standing real property laws, the consequences of which are clouded or unmarketable titles.)

5/29/14

This short opinion demonstrates lawyers will say anything to win. This one got caught - repeatedly.

Nicholas v. Bank of America

But “[i]nstead of modifying his loan, BANA lied to [Plaintiff] about who even owned his note, what guidelines would apply, what his real options were, and dual-tracked him into foreclosure.

Onx BANA’s third argument is there is no case or controversy because no trustee’s sale is scheduled. Not all of Plaintiff’s claims require a pending trustee’s sale to be viable. For example, Plaintiff is asserting a claim for “false documents.”. That claim does not depend on the existence of a pending trustee’s sale. Nor does Plaintiff’s breach of contract claim depend on a pending trustee’s sale. Therefore, BANA’s case or controversy
argument is not convincing.

"BANA’s fourth and final argument is that the complaint does not adequately allege Plaintiff has suffered damages. The complaint identifies a wide variety of alleged damages. For pleading purposes, that is enough."

5/29/14

Citizens have lost their right to due process as courts turn a blind-eye to these forgeries.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT ILLEGAL FORECLOSURES 

I am the only candidate who will take a stand against the destruction of our land title records. Every property owner, every borrower with MERS on their DEED OF TRUST, buyers of foreclosed properties, future sellers with bad titles, short-sale participants and everyone planning to own real property should be deeply alarmed and act accordingly.

No Dirty Deeds - 20-25 Million Americans Are Victims of Illegal Foreclosure

- 62 Million American Homes Have a Cloud on Title

The system has become infected with MERS; a bank owned and operated alternative title registry system that has never been authorized by anyone.

As a result, the county has lost millions of dollars in recording fees as banks hid transfers from the public by recording them only in their private registry.

Many property owners unknowingly have hopelessly clouded titles.

COLONIAL SAVINGS FORECLOSURE FRAUD

All parties involved are HomePath participants who are in the business of collecting foreclosed homes for resale.

Occupy Our Homes The Assignment of the Deed of Trust was signed by a former Colonial Savings employee, not a MERS VP and notarized by another Colonial Savings employee who did not use her full commissioned name in violation of Texas Gov. Code.

5/29/14

Do Equitable Mortgages Exist?

One lawyer in New York seemed to have gotten the Judge’s attention when he asked the Judge who was his cellphone carrier. The Judge said it was AT&T. And then the lawyer said, so what would you say to Sprint if they came in and demanded payment? You would say that as to Sprint, you are NOT a cell phone customer just as you are NOT a borrower in relation to someone who has neither loaned you money nor spent money purchasing your debt.

Living Lies Some appellate courts have gone off the reservation allowing foreclosure (enforcement of the mortgage) even in the absence of a genuine transaction anywhere in the chain of securitization.  That is not what was intended by commercial transaction law, the UCC or anything else. In some states the presence of facially valid documents may allow for suit to be brought — subject to all possible defenses of the “borrower” including his denial that he is a borrower. “Did you get the money” is used synonymously with “then you owe the debt” with horse blinders on the question of to whom the debt is owed.

5/29/14

Servicing Fees Eat Up What's Left After Foreclosure: Moody's

An increasing number of severely delinquent mortgages that were securitized during the boom years are sustaining losses that are greater than the loan's original principal balance.

National Mortgage News In some cases, on loans that have been in foreclosure for three years or longer, losses are wiping out the cash flow that normally would get paid to investors in private-label residential mortgage-backed securities, according to a report from Moody's Investors Service.

While a property is almost never worth nothing, servicing fees and advances of principal, interest, taxes and insurance payments by servicers to investors are increasingly exceeding the mortgage's outstanding balance. 

5/29/14

The Strike Force That Never Struck 

Despite pledging to crack down on foreclosure scam artists three years ago, Attorney General Kamala Harris has allowed an industry of fraud to flourish.

East Bay Express Three years after the establishment of the Mortgage Fraud Strike Force, Harris' office has prosecuted only ten cases of foreclosure consultant fraud. Despite the fact that California was the hardest hit state by foreclosure rescue scams, and that it is the home base for more scam artists than any other state, Harris' strike force has prosecuted fewer foreclosure consultant fraud cases than attorneys general in numerous other states. Moreover, as Harris' office has failed to act, attorneys general in other states have turned their sights on California, targeting rip-off artists who are based here and have scammed homeowners elsewhere in the country. 

Ex-banker falls 1000ft off cliff in fatal Highlands hiking accident

STV A spokesman for Police Scotland said: "We received a report that a man had fallen in the Highlands around 3pm while he was walking with a party of other people.

5/28/14

Santander Bank to Face Suit Claiming Bias in Mortgages

NY Times As the housing bubble expanded in the early 2000s, mortgage lenders aggressively handed out money in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, though often at exorbitant rates and in ways that made the loans unaffordable to more vulnerable borrowers. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way, raising concerns that some banks are shutting out blacks and Hispanics in favor of white homeowners.

5/28/14

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says there’s 1 big legal settlement left

Call Brian at 980-386-4949
Or Thomas Montag 646-855-1234
Or Terry Laughlin. 980-386-4750

Charlotte Observer Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says he thinks the Charlotte bank has put all of its major legal settlements behind it, save one: an impending deal with the U.S. Department of Justice.

5/28/14

Ally Financial Scammer Sentenced to Four-Year Prison Term

The head of a California mortgage lender who perpetrated a $5.3 million mortgage fraud scheme against Ally Financial will serve more than four years in prison.

National Mortgage News To refinance the mortgages held by other banks for Nationwide customers, Ally required the lender to disburse funds through a title company. Pitchersky used a fictitious company called Hanover. Since Ally was unaware this company was not real, Pitchersky had complete control over money Nationwide Mortgage acquired from Ally's warehouse line.

5/27/14

 

 

Where is my “satisfaction of a residential mortgage”?

Fannie Mae Mortgage Class Action Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

 

A class action lawsuit alleging that Fannie Mae failed to file loan documents appropriately was reinstated by an Ohio appeals court last week. The court’s order sends the Fannie Mae class action lawsuit back to the trial court.

Top Class Actions Lead plaintiff Rebekah Radatz alleged in her 2003 class action lawsuit that Fannie Mae failed to properly file documentation related to the payoff of her mortgage, known as “satisfaction of a residential mortgage,” within 90 days after Radatz had finished paying off her home loan. A “satisfaction of a residential mortgage” is a document that creditors are required to present to borrowers to show they have paid off a mortgage.

As discovery during the original Fannie Mae class action lawsuit progressed, it was revealed that Fannie Mae had not properly filed the same satisfaction of mortgage documentation for as many as 100,000 other homeowners.

5/27/14

More foreclosures, more middle-aged suicides

Research has already established connections between foreclosures and a host of physical and psychological problems, as well as the relationship between unemployment and the suicide rate.

SFGate The paper, from the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, found that even when taking into account other socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, the higher a state's foreclosure rate, the higher the suicide rate.

The analysis shows a particularly strong connection between foreclosures and the suicide rates of the middle-aged, considered 46 to 64 years old in the study.

 

5/27/14

Wells Fargo Ends 'Robo-Signing' Lawsuit

 

Wells Fargo is set to end the legal tussle it has been encountering since 2011 for a settlement of around a minimum of $67 million in connection with the ‘robo-signing’ fiasco. It was alleged that the company officials have conducted improper verification of documents in the home-foreclosure process.

This amounted to breach of law and faulty documents that caused improper foreclosure of homes.

Zacks In a judicial foreclosure state, the foreclosure process requires that the lending institution must authorize the fact that the homeowner has defaulted on a mortgage which the lender owns. It needs to be authorized through submission of verified documents and written statement duly signed under affidavit by a bank official. The objective is to restrict the possession of houses by the bank in the event where the bank is unable to prove the ownership of the particular mortgage or where in actuality the homeowner has not defaulted to the extent stated in the foreclosure papers.

Though Wells Fargo has not accepted the allegations, it has agreed for the settlement to lessen litigations, uncertainty and risks.

5/27/14

Economic Inclusion and Financial Integrity

Christine Largarde -IMF Some prominent firms have even been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms—LIBOR and foreign exchange rigging, money laundering, illegal foreclosure.
To restore trust, we need a shift toward greater integrity and accountability. We need a stronger and systematic ethical dimension.
5/27/14

Got HAMP? Mortgage Payments Will Go Up

Fox Business Although they knew this was a temporary help, many of these homeowners have adjusted their budgets to the monthly mortgage payments they have been making for the past five years. With income levels stagnant since the financial crisis, affordability may be an issue for many.

REPORT

Moody’s warns on Green Tree after servicing failures


Performance could hamper business with GSEs

Housing Wire When the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight released its latest compliance report, the news wasn’t good for Green Tree Servicing. According to the report from Joseph Smith, the monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement, Green Tree failed eight of the settlement’s 29 metrics for mortgage servicing.

5/27/14

Class action complaint

FOSTER v. the Banks, et al

This class action lawsuit was withdrawn because plaintiff's counsel, a single practitioner, could not prosecute the case by herself and could not get a large law firm to participate. However, it is an excellent complaint which may be of interest to all of you, esp. paragraphs 155 though 170. 

McKEEVER LAW As the conspirators and present Defendants have long intended, certain 
important terms in the mortgages and other legal documents are devolving into a state of meaninglessness. Even the names of the mortgage and lending institutions are tinkered with and interchanged so often that it is difficult to keep track of the constantly shifting 
parameters of the series of alleged mergers, assertions of subsidiary relationships.

5/27/14

Mortgage settlements come with gag order

Columbus Dispatch These clauses can hurt borrowers who later have problems with their mortgage collector by preventing them from complaining publicly about their difficulties or suing, lawyers say. If a collector, known as a servicer, makes an error, getting everything fixed can be a nightmare without litigation or public outcry.

US banks continue to steal homes

The largest US banks continue to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes.

Money Life It reports that, “...the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.”

One mechanical engineer Joji Thomas, in a last-ditch bid to save his home, delivered a cashier’s check for $27,777.85 to Bank of America, which promptly lost the payment, and foreclosed anyway. In another case, BofA transferred a property to a separate entity that was already closed down, and they clumsily switched the dates on the document to make it look correct.

 

5/26/14

REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTIONS CREATE TRAP DOOR FOR BANKS

Living Lies By alleging they are a holder and not a holder in due course they are admitting they didn’t pay for it and/or admitting that they took delivery with knowledge of the defenses of the borrower. 

5/25/14

At Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Investors Get the Cold Shoulder

Motley Fool Believing that a key mandate for both agencies is to increase liquidity in the housing finance arena, Watts has softened the rules regarding when lenders will be forced to buyback defective mortgages. This, he hopes, will give some pep to the housing market, but doesn't seem especially conducive to the health of the GSEs.

5/25/14

Mortgage Modification Litigation Continues

Appellate courts in some cases are writing one paragraph opinions upholding a trial court's decision to dismiss a borrower's lawsuit. 

Huff Post However, disputed factual matters may prevent an outright dismissal of a lawsuit by summary judgment. Another assertion by borrowers, that gives some courts pause, is that the lender violated various state consumer protection or real estate statutes. The relevance and application of state law to HAMP litigation is disputed and a subject of continuing judicial review.

5/25/14

Bank Of America And The Big Denial

Bank of America has glaring issues that investors in the stock refuse to face up to.

Seeking Alpha Investors looking for strong capital appreciation refuse to accept the fact that this stock will be held back for an extended period of time to where I will once again re-iterate; it is dead money.

5/23/14

Credit Suisse Gets Off Easy

The sham continues.

The DOJ Task Force promised to “prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, recover proceeds for victims” and so on.

Joe Nocera But in the just-announced settlement, no one in top management was forced to resign. The U.S. wanted the names of the Americans with private Credit Suisse bank accounts; Justice settled without getting them. And, most amazing of all, pleading guilty to a felony will have absolutely no business consequences for Credit Suisse. For instance, a Securities and Exchange Commission rule forbids a firm convicted of a felony from serving as an investment adviser; the rule was temporarily waived for Credit Suisse.

Securitization: The Sequel

To some people, securitization is a dirty word. 

CFO Small wonder, given its role in the meltdown of the financial system six years ago. The technique made it easy to spin dross into fool’s gold, say critics, pointing to the issuance of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities. Nowadays, anything that smacks of financial engineering is guilty until proven innocent — and that goes in spades for securitization.

Billions More in Mortgage Penalties Coming

A working group of federal and state authorities responsible for extracting a $13 billion settlement from JPMorgan Chase late last year over abuses tied to mortgage bonds still has "more than a dozen ongoing investigations," which will lead to billions of dollars in additional costs to financial companies, according to Michael P. Stephens, Acting Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Authority.

The Street "In the last six months my organization has indicted 82 people," he said. "Three of those people committed suicide recently. Why do I bring that up? Most of the people that we deal with are not hardened criminals. They're white collar. They're highly educated. They belong to churches. They have no prior arrest records. They're pillars of society. They're all making tremendous amounts of money and when they do get caught it's a little bit more difficult for them to take it than a street criminal." 

REPORT

Mortgage Companies Break The Law And Their Own Promises To Homeowners

Mortgage companies in California continue to routinely violate foreclosure laws and go back on promises they made in legal settlements, according to housing counselors and advocates, despite new federal rules designed to stamp out lingering problems in the mortgage servicing industry.

CHASM BETWEEN WORDS AND DEEDS X 

... and how the "Theft by Deception Scheme" works

How Ongoing Mortgage Servicing Problems Hurt California Homeowners and Hardest-Hit Communities

Think Progress The report also features nearly a dozen separate homeowner horror stories. Gemma and Cornelio Jaochico of Castro Valley followed every instruction they got from Wells Fargo in hopes of winning a loan modification after Gemma lost her job and their mortgage became untenable. The bank told the Jaochicos it would postpone the sale of their home while reviewing the modification request, but then sold the house out from under them and filed an eviction notice. The bank refused to revisit the modification application and even rejected the couple’s attempt to repay the full overdue amount after scraping funds together from family members. The Jaochicos ultimately lost their home in February of this year. Other foreclosure victims like Josefina Duenas held onto their homes, but only after years of stonewalling and paperwork deceptions drew homeowner advocates to file official complaints against the servicers.

Foreclosure Overhaul Comes Too Slowly For Many Homeowners

NPR The biggest U.S. banks are still foreclosing on homeowners who qualify for new loans, according to a coalition of non-profits. That's despite settlements aimed at preventing unnecessary foreclosures.

5/24/14

JPMORGAN CHASE v. PLAZA

ATTACKING ADMISSIBILITY OF FORECLOSURE-RELATED EVIDENCE

The result: a foreclosure based upon faulty evidence. This type of foreclosure is clearly wrongful and invalid.

Mr. Plaza is also filing a police report.

Richard Roman, Esq. But a problem still lies in that , an arguably invalid affidavit has been entered and left in court record even after counsel has been apprised of these issues by defendant's counsel. The evidentiary burden of proof is always upon the proponent of the evidence.
This includes admissibility, competence, materiality and the weight of sufficiency to be given any particular piece of evidence. If left unaddressed and unexamined, a materially false business record affidavit will be the basis upon which homeowners will unnecessarily
and avoidably - lose their home.

5/23/14

Bank of America is making money on its financial crisis settlement

The way post-financial crisis justice is doled out for Wall Street banks is a head scratcher, indeed.

The deal that BofA struck two months ago with Fannie and Freddie's regulator, restitution for financial crisis misdeeds, could end up boosting the bank's bottom line by $1.4 billion.

CNN Money FHFA didn't force BofA to repay Fannie and Freddie what it paid for the defective bonds and swallow the losses, as it did with other banks that bought back loans. Instead, BofA paid the current market price for the bonds, which on average was only about 20% of their original face value.
The bonds were certainly a bad investment for Fannie and Freddie. Two thirds of the mortgages in the 67 bonds that BofA repurchased from the mortgage insurance giants have either been written off, refinanced into better loans, or paid off.

5/23/14

FEAR and LOATHING ON THE SAN DIEGO CAMPAIGN TRAIL

For the victims of illegal foreclosure, there is no sympathy. It can mean years of agonizing uncertainty.

George Mantor And even though all of the billions in settlements prove they were just randomly stealing homes through a variety of devices, including HAMP, the victims have received only $300, if they were lucky to have a forwarding address to the homeless shelter or where they live in their car. And new victims are being created every day.

5/22/14

CFPB: Some Non-Bank Debt Collectors Still Misleading Consumers

To read the full report, click here.

MortgageOrb The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued a report showing that some non-bank debt collectors - possibly including certain non-bank mortgage servicing companies - continue to engage in prohibited practices, such as making excessive phone calls and threatening lawsuits when they don't have the documentation to make a case.

5/22/14

Data Quality Finally Gets Its Due in Mortgages

National Mortgage News The result is that wonderful systems are populated with less-than-wonderful data. The fallout is manifested in misevaluated risks, volatile bond prices, misguided collection strategies, extensive litigation and damages, and heightened government involvement, scrutiny and fines.

5/22/14

Missing Mortgage Notes and Deceptive Mortgage Servicing: Wall Street Shell Game 101

Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn’t always properly completed.

Loansafe Jacksonville Area Legal Aid Lawyer April Charney has had over 300 foreclosure proceedings dismissed or postponed in the past year, with about 80 percent of them involving lost mortgage notes. How come more homeowners and attorneys like Ms. Charney are not using this very effective foreclosure defense tool to effectively defend a foreclosure proceeding?

PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION GRANTED: MERS ATTEMPTED TO MAKE ASSIGNMENT YEARS AFTER IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO DO SO

Foreclosure Defense Nationwide This decision is important as it is based, in part, on the fact that the MERS Assignments were executed years after the original lender, for whom MERS claimed to be the “nominee”, was out of business. This decision thus shows that MERS has no authority to act as a “nominee” for a defunct entity.

Are banks stealing homes and equity - then collecting even more from LPMI insurance that you paid for?

Lender Paid Mortgage Insurance could be illegal

If a home is lost through foreclosure or a fire, the bank can collect the unpaid principle, any delinquent interest and foreclosure costs.

Docket: Lazzarone v. Wells Fargo 

KRNV "I think it speaks to the core of why you don't see anybody getting loan mods the past 6-7 years," said . "Why would I refinance you if I'm going to get my money back, collect all your payments and then I get to sell your property?"

Keep in mind there is no direct benefit to the customer. But are the banks skirting that disclosure law?

Wells Fargo refused to provide News 4 with any documentation to indicate how customers are informed about LPMI insurance.

5/22/14

Ocwen Financial Corp Downgraded by Zacks to Underperform

Ticker Report Zacks’ analyst wrote, “We are downgrading our recommendation on Ocwen to Underperform based on the on-going regulatory scrutiny of its loan servicing capability as well as lower-than-expected first-quarter 2014 earnings. 

5/22/14

Bank Of America: How Bad Is The Mortgage Situation?

BAC's mortgage origination revenue fell off a cliff in the year's first quarter.

Seeking Alpha We need to understand just how detrimental the mortgage problem is at BAC. In the three months that were reported, BAC produced $10.8 billion of first mortgages and refinancing combined. This seems like a lot, until you realize that last year in the same quarter, BAC produced $25 billion in first mortgages and refinancing combined. In other words, mortgage production was more than cut in half in the first quarter of this year. Ouch.

5/22/14

Fla. homeowners get $9.12 billion in mortgage relief from unique deal

At $9.12 billion, Florida’s side deal is double the $4 billion originally agreed upon.

Palm Beach Post About $4.5 billion of the loan relief that went to Florida homeowners came in the form of principal reductions on first and second mortgages, $1.4 billion was for lower-rate refinances, and $4.2 billion was provided in the form of short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure or deficiency waivers. (NO CASH?)

5/21/14

Flaws Seen in ‘Almost Every’ Mortgage-Bond as Crash Began

Investigators probing mortgage-bond sales in the run-up to the financial crisis are finding improper actions occurred “not only occasionally, but in the end, with almost every deal examined."

Authorities have uncovered evidence of lenders and bond issuers obscuring risk even more as the market began to crash to limit their own losses, with employees “laughing” about the environment.

Bloomberg “They were more concerned about their bonuses than what was going in these pools.  “At the core of it is greed.”

“I don’t see anything in the near future that’s going to wipe the slate clean with all of the investigations.”
Americans should be aware that “hundreds and hundreds of people have been indicted and convicted of some form of mortgage fraud,” such as bankers and foreclosure firms, he said. His organization has indicted about 82 people in the past six months, including three who committed suicide, he said.
“When they do get caught, it’s a little bit more difficult for them to take it than a street criminal.”

5/21/14

Banks Behaving Badly Day; Round Up Usual Suspects

Bloomberg No one’s losing his job, though, and no one’s losing the right to stay in business in the U.S. and to potentially do it again, so it sounds like the cost of doing business.

Why would a bank be afraid of facing criminal charges if it just means paying some fines like in a lawsuit and continue business as usual?” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods’s Fred Cannon asked Onaran, presumably rhetorically.

5/21/14

Former Top JPMorgan Banker in China Is Said to Have Been Arrested in Hong Kong

DealBook Mr. Fang, who left JPMorgan in March, has been a focus of a federal bribery investigation in the United States into whether the bank’s ‘‘Sons and Daughters’’ hiring program violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or F.C.P.A.

5/21/14

U.S. mortgage collectors gag homeowners in loan deals

When they saw the final paperwork for their settlement, they found that Ocwen Financial Corp, the company that collected and processed their mortgage payments, had added an extra clause: they could not say or print or post anything negative about Ocwen, ever.

The CFPB said the practice was "unfair," and required the two servicers to cease the practice.

Michelle Conlin

Reuters

Servicers are agreeing to ease the terms of borrowers' underwater mortgages, but they are increasingly demanding that homeowners promise not to insult them publicly, consumer lawyers say. In many cases, they are demanding that homeowners' lawyers agree to the same terms. Sometimes, they even require borrowers to agree not to sue them again.

These clauses can hurt borrowers who later have problems with their mortgage collector by preventing them from complaining publicly about their difficulties or suing, lawyers said. If a collector, known as a servicer, makes an error, getting everything fixed can be a nightmare without litigation or public outcry.

5/21/14

N.Y. Regulator to Review Borrower 'Gag Rule' Imposed by Servicers

New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky said Wednesday his office will investigate claims that Ocwen Financial Corp. and other servicers require distressed borrowers to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to receive mortgage modifications.

National Mortgage News "Reports that Ocwen is imposing a gag rule for certain struggling homeowners—preventing them from criticizing the company—are troubling and deeply offensive," the supervisor of the state Department of Financial Services said in an emailed statement. "We will investigate this issue immediately."

In some cases, borrowers' attorneys are also asked to sign similar agreements, which can also include requiring borrowers to forfeit their right to sue the servicer again, the report says.

5/21/14

Ocwen’s bad day just got worse

The day just went from bad to worse for Ocwen. First, New York State Department of Financial Services superintendent Benjamin Lawsky made it clear that his office will continue to investigate Ocwen’s business practices.

See Ocwen below

Housing Wire Ocwen has been sued in Pennsylvania by a group of homeowners whose mortgage loans were serviced by Ocwen. The homeowners say that they paid off their mortgages in full, per a payoff quote from Ocwen, only to have Ocwen take far longer than the legally prescribed amount of time to file the loan satisfaction documents with the county clerk.

Amended complaint for wrongful foreclosure.

Whitcomb v. BACHLS et al

 

Scribd Bank of America refused to honor a modification agreement made by Countrywide wherein the borrower made payments for more than a year before being told the modification was never signed by Bank of America and was not approved. They accepted all of the payments from the borrower and placed the funds in a suspense account as they claimed he was still in default. BANA also extorted payments from the borrower that were excessive and never satisfied the purpose for which they claimed they were requested for. Litigation still pending as of Spring 2013.

5/20/14

Guilty Credit Suisse Won't Deduct $2.6 Billion Fine, But Depositor Names Remain Elusive

Credit Suisse now goes on the record that it operated an illegal cross-border banking business. It knowingly and willfully aided thousands of U.S. clients in opening and keeping undeclared accounts, helping them to conceal offshore assets and income from the IRS. 

Forbes The massive DOJ case against Credit Suisse is finally over. Not unlike UBS and other Swiss Banks, the U.S. claims Credit Suisse helped Americans evade taxes through offshore accounts. But UBS rolled over and Credit Suisse resisted, a decision that now looks misguided. Recently, New York State regulators joined the DOJ attack over Credit Suisse’s New York regulatory filings.

It has been clear for some time that criminal charges would come and that large payments would be needed to resolve the case. But the DOJ finally filed the criminal information and the guilty plea has been entered. The latter is a big step for a big financial institution.

Lawsky: Our fight against nonbanks is just beginning

Says homeowners, investors at risk of becoming "fee factories"

Housing Wire The banking regulator many in the housing industry fear more than the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says that he is not taking his eye off nonbank mortgage servicers, and in fact he plans to go a lot deeper.

The full text of Lawsky's remarks can be read here.

5/20/14

Fraud and foreclosure: Couple takes on Bank of America

John Heenan of Billings, one of the attorneys for the Morrows, said the case could have repercussions for hundreds of Montanans in similar circumstances, and potentially thousands of people all over the country.

Morrow v. Bank of America, BACHLS, Countrywide

Last Best News If Morrow’s custom of taking good notes proved vital, Heenan said, it also illustrated how devious loan-servicing fraud can be.

“If people like that can be tricked, imagine everyone else,” he said.

Even more insidious, Heenan said, is that Bank of America was offering loan modifications under the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, for which it received federal bailout money designed to help keep people in their homes.

They turned this HAMP program into a swindlers’ paradise,” Heenan said.

5/20/14

Report: When It Comes to Mortgage Loan Servicing, Banks Are Still Failing to Comply With the Law

East Coast News The result is that many homeowners who qualify for loan modifications continue to be wrongfully foreclosed on, further damaging California's communities by displacing families, evaporating their savings, and depressing local tax revenues. The report, based on a survey of 66 HUD certified housing counselors who assist homeowners seeking loan modifications, asked whether new loan servicing rules are putting an end to illegal and sloppy practices that have led to an untold number of foreclosures.

5/20/14

A Whistleblower’s Tainted Defeat: CA Appellate Reversal Paves Way for Continued Bank Retaliation

I have been called the whistleblower who “conquered Countrywide”, “Wall-Street’s Greatest Enemy: The Man Who Knows Too Much.”

The real story is that the appeal court can manipulate facts, law and legal issues to justify the conclusions they want to reach. I have learned firsthand that the case one reads about in the published opinion can bear little resemblance to the case actually presented to the lower court. To make matters worse, judges have absolute immunity to any suit seeking remedy for grossly erroneous decisions no matter how negligently, recklessly or maliciously the judge acted in depriving a deserving party of a just judgment. This is almost farcical. Who judges the judges?

naked capitalism However, I do not feel like a conqueror at all. I feel like a victim who has been repeatedly re-victimized by a system that allows legal loopholes, misrepresentations, and fraud on a trial and appellate court. On May 8, 2014, I was informed that Bank of America has placed a lien on my Thousand Oaks home. 

This continues the retaliation that I have experienced by Countrywide and successor BAC for over 7 years. My offense? When they defrauded and abused employees, homeowners, shareholders and taxpayers, I stepped up and challenged them vigorously and took them to court. 

I won a convincing legal victory. Somehow they found a way to have my strong jury verdict and judicial ruling reversed in my absence (there was no new evidence) and now I must pay this behemoth’

s court costs including nearly $65,000 for a bond that was ordered by the court, not requested by me.

 

Questions raised about notary signatures in foreclosure cases

Detroit Legal News clerk Chris Fahgren’s notarized signature appeared on dozens of legal documents required for posting public foreclosure notices in the newspaper in late December 2009 and early 2010.

But Fahgren was in a coma at the time, following a Dec. 21, 2009, car accident. Even after she died on Jan. 4, 2010, her signature — dated and notarized — continued to show up in legal documents for more than three weeks, including one dated Jan. 30, 2010.

Detroit Free Press One notary testified that between October 2008 and September 2010 daily volume went from 60 to 20,000 documents per day with half being duplicates, while another described signing 12- to 18-inch stacks of documents at a time without review, the audit found.

The audit reviewed the top 10 law firms nationally — including Trott & Trott — that help process foreclosures for Bank of America. It does not list specific findings regarding Trott or the other firms, but notes “many of these law firms had been named in various court proceedings throughout the country, alleging questionable foreclosure activities.”

“If third-party law firms engaged in questionable practice on behalf of Bank of America, the foreclosures may not have complied with laws and agreements,” the audit said.

“My position is that legal rules are there for a reason, in the criminal system to protect a person accused on the street, or in these cases to protect a mortgage borrower to make sure that people don’t end up deprived of a right the law intended to give them,” said Jeffrey Stewart, the attorney who took the deposition in the Jackson County case.

 

Death and Misdemeanors

Ghost of notary comes back from death and notarizes thousands of documents.

Besides the obvious fact that the notarization is defective there is a deeper question of why anyone would need to falsify documents if the loans were real.

These apparent crimes not only go unpunished, but also are exacerbated by the actual occurrence of death and illness caused by stress from a wrongful foreclosure. The effects of TSD and PTSD is setting in on a huge portion of our population.

Living Lies One can imagine a case or two where someone crosses the line between legal and illegal. But why would there be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of cases in which documents and signatures were falsified?

Remember we are talking banks here - not a sandwich shop. These people invented documentation to protect themselves and create currency out of thin air by trading in commercial paper. They never had to fake it before, so why now?

My answer is because there are no transactions to support their paperwork.

5/20/14

 

Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC - Failure to Timely File Mortgage Satisfaction Documents Class Action

Homeowners whose mortgage loans have been serviced by Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC ("Ocwen") may be entitled to financial compensation for violations of state mortgage satisfaction statutes.

Most states have laws that require mortgage servicers to file with county clerks documents proving that mortgage loans have been satisfied. These statutes impose strict time limits within which such satisfaction documents must be filed (typically 30 to 90 days after the loan has been paid-in-full). 

DEMPSEY v. OCWEN

Berger & Montague, P.C. Failure by a mortgage servicer to timely file the mortgage satisfaction document can affect a homeowner's ability to refinance his or her home and have other serious consequences.

In Pennsylvania, Berger & Montague has commenced a class action on behalf of homeowners whose mortgage loans have been serviced by Ocwen and who paid in full all amounts due under their mortgages pursuant to a payoff quote provided by Ocwen. These homeowners subsequently requested that Ocwen record a document proving that the mortgage loan has been satisfied and paid off. But Ocwen failed to do so within 60 days of its receipt of the borrower's written request. On this basis, plaintiff alleges that Ocwen has violated Pennsylvania's Mortgage Satisfaction Act, and the federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

European Regulators Accuse 3 More Banks of Manipulating Interest Rates

DealBook European antitrust regulators on Tuesday accused JPMorgan Chase, HSBC and Crédit Agricole of having colluded to fix benchmark interest rates tied to the euro.

No liability for BofA for allegedly concealing $10 billion AIG case

Reuters A federal appeals court said Bank of America Corp was not liable to shareholders for allegedly concealing a $10 billion fraud lawsuit by American International Group Inc, whose filing led to a 20-percent one-day plunge in the bank's stock price.

The case is In re: Bank of America AIG Disclosure Securities Litigation, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 13-4422.

5/19/14

Defense files response in mortgage fraud case

Assistant U.S. Attorney Austin Berry filed a motion seeking to exclude evidence the government believes will be introduced at trial, including evidence that banks are being repaid, an argument that no victim exists in the case, and the claim that banks should be to blame for not seeing “red flags” in the scheme.

OA Online “The government seeks to prevent the jury from learning that no bank ever lost a single penny and that every loan (on more than 800 properties) is current or was previously paid off,” according to Freeman’s response. “The charged offense requires that the government prove a specific intent to defraud. A showing of good faith is a defense to that element.”
The response also claims that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has held that not allowing such evidence is a reversible error, and the decision would significantly damage the case for the defense.

Four Years Later, Housing Finance System still Sick (while banks enjoy record profits)

 

Mortgage Daily The conventional wisdom was that strong government intervention was necessary to get the housing market back on track, protect at-risk borrowers, and prevent another system failure. For the most part this was true and the government acted to stabilize the market. But four years later government isn't just still the backbone of housing, it has become the entire central nervous system of the real estate finance market. The system is stuck in the same place it was four years ago.

Factbox: Threat of fines, litigation stalks Deutsche Bank

Here is a summary of some of the key legal challenges faced by Deutsche Bank.

Reuters Deutsche Bank will ask shareholders for $11 billion to strengthen its balance sheet as a business slump and hefty fines eat into profits, with the bank saying more penalties await.

Heirs to Leo Kirch's media empire accused Deutsche Bank of hastening its collapse. The 12-year-old case appeared to have ended when Deutsche settled with the heirs in a deal costing the bank around 925 million euros. But the Munich public prosecutor in March widened an investigation into suspicions of attempted fraud in connection with the case 

5/19/14

Why is it that the fear of moral hazard only applies to homeowners, and not to the banks?

Bankrupt Housing Policy

Thanks to a 1993 Supreme Court decision, homeowners saddled with mortgage debt on their primary residences have not been able to take refuge in the bankruptcy courts. The unanimous ruling by the court found that when Congress rewrote the bankruptcy code in 1978, it specifically gave “favorable treatment” to mortgage lenders

Joe Nocera There was an effort that took place in the spring of 2009 that could have made an enormous difference to homeowners, one that would have required no taxpayer money and might well have become law with a little energetic lobbying from the likes of, well, Tim Geithner. That was an attempt, led by Dick Durbin, the Illinois senator, to change the bankruptcy code so that homeowners who were underwater could modify their mortgages during the bankruptcy process. The moment has been largely forgotten; Taub has done us a favor by putting it back on the table.
5/19/14

Why Tim Geithner is wrong on homeowner debt relief

Washington Post Tim Geithner has a problem with helping underwater homeowners. We’re
not sure why he hates the idea. He claims he doesn’t like the idea because the economic effects of helping underwater homeowners would have been small. But that is dead wrong.

5/19/14

Breaking News

Credit Suisse Set to Plead Guilty in Tax Evasion Case

Credit Suisse is about to do what no other huge bank has done in over two decades: plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing.

Doesn't mention jail time.

DealBook The severe rebuke from federal prosecutors — as well as from the Federal Reserve and New York State’s banking regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, who agreed to punish the bank without shutting it down — stems in part from Credit Suisse’s failure to fully cooperate with the United States government.

The resulting plea deal will strike a blow at overseas tax dodging and the shadowy world of Swiss bank secrecy, which had become a hallmark of the country’s financial system and the scorn of American policy makers. 

5/19/14

Foreclosures may be driving the rise in suicides

No one had looked at the unique role of foreclosures in this latest recession and their potential contribution to suicides.

Washington Post Previous research suggests that suicide rates tend to rise during economic downturns. And in 2009, the number of suicides in the United States passed the number of deaths by traffic crashes, a trend that's been accompanied by a particularly worrisome spike in suicides by the middle-aged.
5/19/14

U.S. Century Bank sells $14M in loans, foreclosure judgment

U.S. Century Bank sold about $14.2 million in loans, plus a large foreclosure judgment, as it seeks to cure its “undercapitalized” status.

Business Journal Century Bank, who received a $50.2 million federal bailout, is hoping to raise capital or find a buyer. By getting some loans off the books that makes the bank smaller and reduces the amount of new capital it would require to meet the demands of regulators.

Tracking Criminal Inquiries of Wall St. Giants

DealBook A lack of criminal prosecutions of banks and their leaders fueled a public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are “too big to jail.” 

5/19/14

Banking Deaths: Why JPMorgan Stands Out

Ina Drew, the head of JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office, reported on March 15, 2013 to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that her office was managing $9 billion of the company’s corporate owned life insurance portfolio. The Chief Investment Office is the division that lost $6.2 billion trading exotic derivatives.

Pam Martens

Wall Street on Parade

The series of strange deaths has brought unwelcome attention to the fact that mega banks like JPMorgan Chase are allowed to secretly collect life insurance proceeds on the lives of their employees, and former employees, without disclosing the amounts to the families, or the public, or their shareholders. (Other corporations are likewise engaged in this practice.) The payments are a closely guarded secret between the companies and the insurers who collect the lucrative premiums.

ATTORNEY SCORES APPELLATE MIRACLE RULING; PERMITS REQUEST TO AMEND TO ADD NEW CAUSES OF ACTION FOR FIRST TIME ON APPEAL

COTTEN v. MERS

Foreclosure Defense Network The appeals court reversed the trial court decision, holding that it is error for a trial court to sustain a demurrer without leave to amend if the party seeking to amend demonstrates a reasonable probability that the defect alleged in the demurrer can be cured by amending the complaint; that such a showing can be made for the first time on appeal; and that it is not relevant whether the party seeking to amend will be able to prove the allegations, citing prior published decisions of the appeals court.

5/17/14

If a creditor issues a 1099-c, Can They Still Sue Me to collect? NO!

Weidner Law It is inequitable to require a debtor to claim cancellation of debt income as a component of his or her gross income and subsequently pay taxes on it while still allowing the creditor, who has reported to the Internal Revenue Service and the debtor that the indebtedness was cancelled or discharged, to then collect it from the debtor. …… The court does not agree with the argument that because a Form 1099-C can be corrected or amended, it cannot constitute an admission by a creditor that a debt has, in fact, been discharged or cancelled and that the debtor is no longer indebted thereon.

Settlement Agreement unenforceable under the Credit Agreements Act

Van Pelt Construction v. BMO Harris Bank

No proof of a meeting of the minds as to the terms of the agreement.

Illinois Official Reports 
The settlement agreement was unenforceable under the Credit Agreements Act (the Credit Act); (2) no evidence showed that Harris’s attorney had the authority to enter into the agreement; (3) no settlement agreement was reached; and (4) the condition precedent to Harris’s duty under the agreement was not satisfied. We agree with Harris’s assertion that the alleged settlement agreement failed to satisfy the Credit Act. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for further proceedings. 

5/17/14

Lender's Mistake Costly, Leads To $200,000 Mortgage Reduction

The Legal Services attorneys argued the error was on Landowne's part because the lender drew up the contract. And in the end, that omission cost the Miami mortgage company about $200,000.

HETR The bankruptcy code typically bans the modification of interest rates, principal and other terms on residential first priority mortgages.

But in a case that hinged on how the court would treat a duplex where the homeowner rented part of the property, Cristol ruled in the homeowner's favor and allowed the mortgage modification.

Texas Attorney Tightening Noose around JPMorgan Chase

The attorney is asking for a continuance to arm and ready his Smoking Gun.

We will wait to post the new evidence until the court decides whether it should be filed under seal.

Richard Roman, Esq. "The aforementioned evidence is currently being professionally transcribed into documentary form. This is to ensure its authenticity, admissibility, probativeness and relevance. Then, it will either be filed with the court for an in-camera inspection or under seal.

The defendants will be filing a counterclaim seeking compensation for the catastrophic emotional and marital damage that has resulted at the hands of plaintiff JPMorgan Chase, NA. The defendant's suffering and outrage is to the degree that federal and/or state criminal charges are being considered as well."

5/16/14

An Attorney General, Not Florida, Reveals that Fannie/Freddie Reform is the Key to Foreclosure Relief

Foreclosure is a fraud. A delusion. And the servicers are not in control.

And frankly as long as courts allow the delusion, the fraud of servicers acting as parties that have any interest when in fact they are only straw parties… nothing will really change.

Weidner Law Right now, foreclosure defense attorneys are in the cross hairs….but until courts take a deep breath and realize the impact of the deeper issues….we’re all in trouble…

No solutions will be had, no negotiations, no resolution until the real parties come before the court. An entire system of mediation, set up to fail…untold hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer resources because the real parties were not at the table.
 

Foreclosures may raise neighbors’ blood pressure, study finds

Washington Post "It demonstrates that a phenomenon that we think of as being solely in the financial realm is getting reflected in measured aspects of our physiology,” Arcaya said. “It’s less about how big the increase in blood pressure is and more about the fact that you can put a blood-pressure cuff on a person and see that this is having an effect on their health.”

5/16/14

US foreclosures drive up suicide rate

While other studies have shown links between economic cycles and suicide rates, this is the first to look specifically at foreclosures.

Press Release "Foreclosures are a unique suicide risk among the middle-aged," Houle said. "Middle-aged adults are more likely to own homes and have a higher risk of home foreclosure. They're also nearing retirement age, so losing assets at that stage in life is likely to have a profound effect on mental health and well-being."

5/16/14

Foreclosure is a Fraud, A Judge Explains

CHASE, in the instant action, committed a fraud upon the Court by claiming to be the plaintiff. FANNIE MAE should have been the plaintiff as the owner of the note and mortgage when the BUTLER foreclosure action commenced.

Weidner Law We are all, right now, living through the greatest fraud committed on a nation. “The Banks” don’t have any real interest in most foreclosure proceedings. In fact, “The Banks” are dumping their interest in pesky foreclosures that cause them no amount of trouble as fast as they can…..this evolution brings us the rise of the subservicers like Ocwen and Saxon.

DeKalb Housing Unit Shifts Evictions Case to Federal Court

Superior Court judge Seeliger had issued a TRO, finding the plaintiffs were credible witnesses

Daily Report The Atlanta Legal Aid Society brought the suit in DeKalb Superior Court, claiming the evictions violated residents' due process rights and federal housing rules, and won an injunction halting the evictions from federally subsidized housing.

5/15/14

Court order halts foreclosures conducted by trustee Cal-Western

State officials are charging foreclosure trustee Cal-Western of Washington Inc. with unfair and deceptive business practices, and a temporary restraining order has been issued in King County Superior Court that halts its foreclosures until May 29.

Seattle PI In addition, the investigation found that after discovering the problem in March, Cal-Western didn’t send the affected homeowners amended Notices of Trustee’s Sales or letters informing them of a working telephone number where the homeowners could reach the company.

In addition to stopping mortgage foreclosures until May 29, the agency is seeking restitution for homeowners whose properties have been foreclosed on and fines.

4/15/14

Banks That Are Criminals Remain in Business

In being treated that way, the banks will receive the same breaks other banks have come to expect when they are caught violating rules or laws.

NY Times Credit Suisse is expected to admit that it helped Americans evade taxes, and BNP Paribas is expected to admit that it did business with countries blacklisted by the United States. Regulators will not enforce statutes that would seem to bar the banks from some activities.

To put it another way, the Justice Department has gone to great lengths to guarantee that convicted banks will not be treated as criminals.

Deutsche Bank drags its loss to the Ohio Supreme Court 

Last March, the Holdens won their appeal to the 9th District Court of Appeals.

Ann Holden Deutsche claims this case is of great public importance.

PROPOSITION OF LAW NO.1: 

If standing is challenged, a party seeking to foreclose a mortgage based on a defaulted promissory note is only required to demonstrate an interest in either the note or mortgage.

You Have a Contractual Right to Defend Your Title

It’s contractual … and you’ll find it in your Mortgage or Deed of Trust just before the covenants begin … possibly near the phrase TRANSFER OF RIGHTS IN THE PROPERTY.

Clouded Titles The problem is … most borrowers don’t realize what they’ve done until they miss a mortgage payment … then the MERS business model (used by the MERSCORP members … noticed MERSCORP isn’t mentioned in your contract?) kicks into overdrive and the servicer is generally the one that makes up (that’s right … manufactures) a document (an assignment) that says you owe some trust in New York or Delaware that you’ve never heard of … and they file it in the land records where your property is located. This starts the “process” of what I’m about to discuss now … how MERS allegedly and tortuously interferes with contractual relations (this is a real tort folks) … I’ll share it with you in detail so you “get it”:

5/15/14

Bankruptcy Court Corruption

“Bankruptcy court corruption is not just a matter of bankruptcy trustees in collusion with corrupt bankruptcy judges.” — former U.S. AG John Ashcroft

Deadly Clear Every day I hear more stories about alleged corruption in the courts, not only when it comes to foreclosures, but also bankruptcy – especially when families are trying to protect their homes. It is more than obvious that the system is flawed.

You cannot tackle tyranny, cronyism and corruption in our legal systems without incurring the wrath of nearly every lawyer on the block. They will argue that a judge said this, or a court said that or the police did not arrest anyone; thus no crimes could have occurred – Correct?

5/14/14

Massachusetts AG threatens to sue FHFA over buyback law

GSEs in violation of law designed to keep homeowners in their homes

According to Coakley’s letter, Fannie and Freddie have failed to comply with a Massachusetts law called “An Act to Prevent Unnecessary and Unreasonable Foreclosures.”

Coakley's letter

Housing Wire “To date, the GSEs have not complied with this provision, which has unfortunately impeded the ability of buyback programs to maximize the number of borrowers they can assist, which in turn has hindered the broader goals of neighborhood stabilization and revitalization,” Coakley says.

From the letter: A related statute, Massachusetts G.L. c. 244, § 35C(h), prohibits a creditor that sells a property to a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization from conditioning such sale on a requirement that the property not be resold or rented to the former homeowner. To date, the GSEs have not complied with this provision, which has unfortunately impeded the ability of buyback programs to maximize the number of borrowers they can assist — which in turn has hindered the broader goals of neighborhood stabilization and revitalization. 

Fannie and Freddie Slammed by Massachusetts AG

Virtually every foreclosure is merely the court’s complicity in the continuing fraud.

Living Lies Watch the banks back peddle as they reject the money in favor of their much needed foreclosure judgment and sale so they can report the loan was a bust — and therefore the money the banks received in servicer payments to the investors, insurance tot he banks, guarantees and other proceed from other obligors won’t need to be paid back.

5/14/14

Green Tree Servicing Fails Mortgage Settlement Tests

Smith said Wednesday that Green Tree had failed more metrics at any one time than all of the other banks and servicers.

National Mortgage News Green Tree's bad report card comes as regulators and lawmakers are scrutinizing nonbank servicers that have aggressively purchased mortgage servicing rights from banks. In February, Ocwen's strategy was upended when New York regulator Benjamin Lawsky put a halt to a deal to buy a servicing portfolio from Wells Fargo. This week, the American Bankers Association repeated its calls for regulators to change Basel III requirements that have caused many large banks to sell servicing rights to nonbanks.

5/14/14

ResCap Sues BofA, RBC Mortgage Over ‘Defective’ Loan Sales

Residential Capital LLC, the defunct mortgage company, sued Bank of America NA, RBC Mortgage Co. and other lenders, claiming they sold it poor-quality loans that led to its bankruptcy.

Bloomberg In lawsuits filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, ResCap said it’s seeking to recover “billions of dollars in liabilities and losses” over the “defective” loans. It wants the banks held responsible for more than 24 lawsuits alleging ResCap securitized bad loans, as well as for hundreds of claims, including securities fraud and breach of warranty, that it faced in bankruptcy.

 

5/14/14

Are Foreclosure Cases Rigged? 

The financial ties that many judges have to banks raise questions about conflicts of interest and a bias against homeowners victimized by mortgage fraud.

The Gaines case was one of thousands of similar losses by California homeowners in state courts during the past several years. The legal setbacks have demoralized homeowners and their attorneys and caused them to question the integrity of California's justice system.

Some attorneys who have sparred with the giants of the real estate industry say California's courts exhibit an institutional bias in favor of the banks: The banks are said to be too big to fail and too big to jail.

Records show that Bank of America wasn't judge Grimes' only large investment in the banking sector. She also owns between $100,000 and $1 million of stock in Wells Fargo and US Bank, and between $10,000 and $100,000 in Citibank, giving her potentially a multimillion-dollar interest in the profitability of the mortgage lending industry.

NOTE: According to the state Code of Judicial Ethics, judges are required to disqualify themselves from any case in which they own stock or bonds with a fair market value exceeding $1,500.

East Bay Express One of the appellate court judges on the three-judge panel that heard the case penned a dissenting opinion. "This case was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of lawsuits that grew out of the financial meltdown," explained Justice Laurence Rubin. Writing that he would have reversed the superior court's ruling entirely, Rubin concluded, "[I]n my view the dismissal of this lawsuit under the circumstances described defeats the substantial ends of justice. Instead, it rewards parties who, it would appear, have played a major and unlawful role in the theft of someone's home."

Adams believes that the deference most judges have shown to the banks has done enormous damage to the economy. "Had courts enforced the law against the lenders the Great Recession did not have to occur," he said. "Many of us were after the New Centurys, the Ameriquests, and Countrywides well before the collapse. Even after the economy imploded, most judges did their best to protect the business interests of the predatory lenders by cynically not wanting to let the consumers off the hook" for taking out loans they had trouble paying back.

Homeowners, of course, weren't the only parties in court looking out for their economic interests. The banks have resisted lawsuits brought under state consumer protection laws in order to maximize their profits from the foreclosure crisis.

5/14/14

This man made millions suffer: Tim Geithner’s sorry legacy on housing


Forget the book tour designed to polish his legacy. Tim Geithner's record on housing will forever live in infamy

David Dayen Keep in mind that this was the guy who handed hundreds of billions of dollars over to banks with basically no strings attached, suddenly worried about fairness when homeowners get a break on their mortgage payments. The White House was certainly chilled by the Rick Santelli rant about “the loser’s mortgages,” and mindful of giving money to the “wrong” people, but that was a political problem, one that could be solved by a stronger economic recovery, like through preventing foreclosures.

Wells Fargo Needs to Answer for Bad Home Loans, DOJ Says

Money News The court should reject the bank’s arguments that the national agreement limits new claims, DOJ department attorney Lindsey Powell said.

“All of the loans at issue in that case contain material violations” of underwriting standards and other mortgage regulations and are fair game for the government, Powell said.

SUMMARY JUDGMENT FILED BY NEW YORK COMMUNITY BANK DEFEATED IN PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA

There is no endorsement of any kind on the Note. NYCB filed two “Allonges”, the first of which identified another bank which was not identified in the Complaint, the MSJ, or the Plaintiff’s Affidavit. Multiple stamps of different banks appeared on this Allonge.

Foreclosure Defense Nationwide The second Allonge was signed twice by one Christine Ackley, who simultaneously claimed to be the “attorney in fact” for the FDIC as assignor as well as the “authorized agent” for NYCB as assignee. No corporate resolution, conflict of interest waiver, or any other document was filed by NYCB authorizing Ms. Ackley to wear both hats on the same day in the same document for 2 different entities where she herself purported to represent both the transferor and the transferee.

Feds: Lies and wiretaps linked former SC State top lawyer to homecoming kickback scheme

The State| Ed Givens of Columbia, a former attorney and chief of staff at S.C. State University, pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday morning in Charleston to misprision of a felony. Could get 3 years.
 

5/13/14

Geithner Must Give S&P Documents in U.S. Fraud Suit

Bloomberg Harold W. McGraw III, chairman of S&P parent McGraw Hill Financial Inc. (MHFI), said in a court statement that Geithner called him days after S&P downgraded the U.S. debt in August 2011 and told him that the company would be held accountable for it. McGraw said Geithner told him there would be a “response” for the downgrade, which the government said was based on an error.

5/13/14

Bank of America Loan Modification Mistakes Continue in 2014

MICHAEL NAZARINIA Since July of 2013, the homeowner, one with a good paying job, wage earner, same line of work for many years, has had one mistake after another made during the loan modification application process going on 11 months now.

5/13/14

Don’t Restore Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Says Their Former Regulator

WSJ In his talk, Mr. DeMarco made an impassioned plea to abandon the housing-finance system dominated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the companies he oversaw as the FHFA’s acting director for the past five years. “Rather than striving to preserve a system that failed so spectacularly and in so many ways, we need to find our courage and our creativity to build a new system.”
5/13/14

Fannie, Freddie’s regulator won’t cut loan limits

Market Watch Mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t be directed to lower the limits for home loans that they back, the head of their federal regulator said Tuesday in a move aimed to avoid derailing the housing market’s recovery.

5/14/14

Hooker Case Flirts With Reality

It is interesting to watch the evolution of thought in the Courts. But it is also infuriating. They treat false claims of securitization as a novel issue; but in fact, there is nothing novel about Ponzi Schemes, and other types of fraud. Yet the Courts continue to ponder the issue, probably wondering how they could possibly explain their prior decisions, the millions of foreclosures that have already occurred, and the 15 million people who were ejected from homes and lifestyles, jobs, and even lives (murder-suicides).

Living Lies I commend to your reading, the short Hooker Case (Link below) and the Amicus Brief (link below). While not exactly what we would like to see both provide compelling evidence of a movement on the bench toward reality and away from the smoke and mirrors of the largest economic crime in human history.
The implications for both pleading and discovery are, I believe, self evident. HINT: I have it on good authority that the IRS form mentioned in the Amicus Brief is feared by Wall Street as the lynchpin of their position: once pulled, the whole thing falls apart as it becomes obvious that the “trusts” neither received funds from the investors nor did they receive loans from the aggregators. That Amicus Brief also contains the only valid diagram of the actual practice of securitization in existence

5/13/14

Fannie, Freddie Offer Lenders a 'Get Out of Putbacks Free' Card

By easing up on mortgage buyback requests, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just went a long way toward encouraging lenders to make more loans to borrowers with lower credit scores.

National Mortgage News The most significant change to the government-sponsored enterprises' policies is that lenders now can get relief from buybacks following a quality control review of a loan within 30 to 120 days. Fannie and Freddie will provide written notice of a successful review. Think of it as a "Get Out of Putbacks Free" card.

They will no longer be on the hook to repurchase defective loans if a borrower is 30 days late on a mortgage payment once or twice in the first three years after the loan was originated.

5/13/14

Common-law defenses to a borrower’s liability under a note generally survive a trustee’s sale 

Morgan Financial v. Gotses

ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS DIVISION ONE 
This is a deficiency action following trustee’s sales of two parcels of real property. The borrower asserted common-law defenses to liability under the promissory notes. The superior court held that these defenses had been waived and the lender’s successor-in-interest was entitled to summary judgment. We reverse and remand. We hold that common-law defenses to a borrower’s liability under a note generally survive a trustee’s sale and may be asserted in a deficiency action.

They are right back at it. Nothing changed - it was just delayed for a bit.

Derivatives Markets Growing Again, With Few New Protections

DealBook Despite slow economic growth in the United States and most of Europe still in or hovering around recession, global derivatives markets are 20 percent larger than in 2007. The Bank for International Settlements announced late last week that global derivatives markets is about $710 trillion. The wealth of the planet is only $70 trillion. ???

5/13/14

Wells Fargo Shuns Peers’ Settlement in U.S in Mortgage

Following two years in which its big-bank peers paid almost $2 billion to resolve fraud accusations by the FHA, Wells Fargo has decided it isn’t giving up so easily.

Bloomberg Today, the most profitable bank in the U.S. last year is set to tell a federal appeals court in Washington that the FHA lawsuit was a “brazen attempt” to impose “massive fraud liability” only six months after it paid $5 billion as part of the national accord, according to court papers.

In the FHA lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, the agency, which insures loans to help lower income individuals buy homes, alleged that it paid hundreds of millions of dollars on defaulted mortgages because Wells Fargo didn’t properly vet the origination of individual loans.

5/13/14

Sallie Mae, Justice Department in $60M Settlement

Sallie Mae has agreed to pay $60 million to resolve allegations that it charged military service members excessive interest rates on their student loans.

Federal officials estimate that roughly 60,000 service members will supposedly be eligible for compensation as part of the settlement. An independent administrator will be assigned to distribute the reimbursements.

Daily Report "We are sending a clear message to all lenders and servicers who would deprive our service members of the basic benefits and protections to which they are entitled: this type of conduct is more than just inappropriate; it is inexcusable," Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference. "And it will not be tolerated."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said students who have taken out loans "should have the peace of mind" that borrowers lenders will treat them fairly.

5/13/14

Millions of Nonperforming Loans Resolved, Millions to Go

Millions of distressed mortgage assets have been resolved. But millions remain unresolved, enough to fuel sales of nonperforming loans for at least three years.

National Mortgage News At the height (or trough) of the market there were about 6.6 million overdue mortgages at the end of 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Now, there are some 4.4 million, meaning more than 2 million have been cured, modified, liquidated through short sales, or gone through foreclosure. So, how long will it take to process the remaining volume? 3-5 years.

5/13/14

The High Frequency Trading Lawsuit That Has Wall Street Running Scared

The firm’s biggest threat to Wall Street is that it actually knows how to define securities fraud to a court, what to ask for in discovery, and it prepares its cases on the basis that they may go to trial – producing deep archives of smoking gun documents.

Pam Martens

Wall Street on Parade

Robbins Geller is no slouch either and here’s where their case gets dicey for Wall Street. They have taken the allegations that have been made by Lewis and a raft of other insiders on Wall Street; dissected the fraud into digestible bites for the court; and provided the correct names and descriptions for the various types of manipulation that have been taking place for the past five years under the nose of the SEC. 

High Frequency Trading Lawsuit Filed by City of Providence, Rhode Island

5/13/14

Bank of America settlement could be coming soon

Bank of America was one of five "bombs" to be defused when Geithner took over, with the Charlotte bank being labeled a "financial death star." 

  The U.S. Justice Department is appears to be increasing its pace as it moves toward a multi-billion settlement with Bank of America and criminal pleas from two European banks, the Wall Street Journal reports. Justice officials met with BofA last week to hammer out details.

5/13/14

Why They Sue as Holder and Not as Holder in Due Course

Parties claiming a right to foreclose allege they are the “Holder” and do not allege they are the holder in due course (HDC) because they are ducking the issue of consideration required by both Article 3 and Article 9 of the UCC.

Living Lies So far their strategy of confusion is working. They are directly or impliedly claiming they are the holder of the NOTE. They cannot claim they are the holder of the MORTGAGE, because no such status exists — they either own the mortgage encumbrance because they paid for it or they didn’t. If they didn’t pay for it, they cannot enforce it even if they still can enforce the note.

The confusion over the term “originator” has allowed millions of foreclosures to be completed despite the fact that the “holder” neither paid for the note nor could they claim they were ignorant of the borrower’s defenses.

5/12/14

Seattle woman arrested trying to save her former home

Woman says a bank promised to help her on past-due mortgage payments, but ultimately foreclosed on her home so a developer could tear it down. Seattle police ultimately arrested Dana Ventura as she joined housing activists in a last-ditch effort to save her home.

Komo News Ventura explained how Chase Bank promised to work with her on back payments. In the end, she says they tricked her into foreclosure.

"When I tried to get help from Chase Bank, they said, 'Well you need to miss three payments before we can help you.'"

A Chase Bank spokesperson is looking into the allegations but says they typically do not advise clients to miss payments. LIES LIES, LIES!

5/12/14

BACHLS v. MAPP

TWELFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO Mapp won his earlier appeal. When the case was remanded back to the trial court, Bank of America added "newly forged" evidence to win.

Additional docs are included.

Telling Off the C.E.O., Once a Year

Since the financial crisis, the annual meetings of Wall Street banks have become focal points for shareholder anger about foreclosures, taxpayer bailouts and income inequality.

DealBook Some of the banks say they are holding their meetings in cities where they have operations and have large pockets of shareholders.

But critics say these far-flung meetings are the banking world’s version of destination weddings — meant to keep the attendance low because they often require shareholders to travel long distances to attend.

At the meeting last week, Mr. Davet raised concerns that banks still depended on the government-sponsored entities to guarantee many mortgages — a practice that fueled loose lending practices in the run-up to the financial crisis.

5/12/14

Truth in Lending rule now available in easier-to-navigate format 

CFPB We’re launching an intuitive, easy-to-navigate electronic format of Truth in Lending regulations (Regulation Z), which will make it easier to implement and use the recently adopted mortgage rules. The eRegulations tool presents the text in clear, readable form, is easy to navigate and allows the user to compare different versions to identify changes. 
5/12/14

Behind the Cover Story: Andrew Ross Sorkin on Timothy Geithner, the Bailout and the Banks

6th Floor For better or worse, I’m resigned to the idea that people who like Geithner will continue to like him and those that hate him will continue to hate him. My goal wasn’t to change anyone’s mind either way; it was to provide a nuanced, textured and hopefully enlightening look at this man and his tenure. Readers can make up their own minds about how history will judge him.

5/12/14

Using the Best Evidence Rule As You Follow the Money

The problem with foreclosure litigation is that the homeowner is dealing with rebuttable presumptions about the testimony and the documents admitted into evidence. They are admitted into evidence because there is no timely objection from the homeowner or the foreclosure defense attorney.

Living Lies The note, mortgage and assignment are presumed to be valid instruments if they conform to the requirements of law as to form and content. In that case they are facially valid. That means there is a rebuttable presumption that there was a valid underlying transaction. Therefore. as a matter of law, the paper presented is not just facially valid but also presumptive evidence that the transaction existed. This gets tricky in application and is one of the many reasons why lawyers should study up on courtroom procedures, evidence and objections.

5/12/14

NM lawmakers tackle high price of foreclosure

He says it’s in everyone’s best interest to help people keep their homes and their jobs.

KRQE New Mexicans are losing big time in the housing market with $2.1 billion dollars in home foreclosures between 2009 and 2012. It’s affecting some areas more than others, but now, lawmakers are taking action. It displaces families, increases crime, lowers property values and drains economic energy. Home foreclosures aren’t going away, but a state senator says there could be ways to soften the blow.

5/12/14

Law to clear Maine’s foreclosure backlog has its doubters

The state’s changes will help but don’t do enough to speed up a very slow legal process, banks say.

Press-Herald One of the most troubling statistics revealed in the report was that the median length of time it took to complete a home foreclosure increased by 75 percent between 2010 and 2013, from 218 days to 381 days.

As a result, a backlog of pending foreclosures has bogged down the court system, strained the state’s financial resources and forced many homeowners and lenders to wait months for a hearing, state officials said

 

NY judge: JPMorgan/Bear Stearns committed MBS fraud; dismisses case anyway

Altered due diligence report to make mortgage pool look safer.

 

MBIA v. JPMorgan Bear Stearns

Housing Wire So it appears that Bear Stearns did, in fact, alter the report to make the mortgage pool look safer, but because MBIA can’t prove that it used the fraudulent report in its decision process, Scheinkman issued a summary judgment of dismissal.

But Scheinkman did note that MBIA can re-file the case if it amends its complaint.

So JPMorgan isn’t out of the woods yet. This case could very well end up becoming yet another check that the company has to write to right the wrongs of the late 2000’s mortgage market. 

5/9/14

A smoking gun in debate over consumer class actions?

Alison Frankel The biggest obstacle in evaluating class actions involving inexpensive consumer products is the frustrating lack of empirical data. Sure, we can compile statistics on case filings, dismissals, settlements and attorneys’ fees, but publicly available evidence about whether these cases actually benefit the people who bought the supposedly flawed products is scant indeed.

5/9/14

SUMMARY JUDGMENT DENIED TO BANK OF AMERICA IN PHILADELPHIA

Foreclosure Defense Nationwide BOA took the typical position of “we have the Note, endorsed in blank”, etc. The claimed “endorsement” bore the name/stamp of Michelle Sjolander, who has testified under oath in a deposition in another case that she never signs endorsements and never places them on promissory notes. The “endorsement” was also undated and had no other authenticating information.

5/11/14

Thousands in Pierce County trapped in underwater mortgages

Tens of thousands of Pierce County homeowners have mortgages higher than their homes are worth. There are few options for relief.

News Tribune “We have done everything right, and no one has an answer,” Michelle Allen said in an interview last month. “We don’t qualify for principal reduction. We’re current on our mortgage, and we can pay it, so the only way we could get help is if we walk away. And we’re not going to do that.
5/11/14

Dinged-up JPMorgan CEO may seek exit: analysts

The latest setbacks at the largest US bank, employing 250,000 worldwide, are so stark, they could force CEO Jamie Dimon to throw in the towel, analysts say.

New York Post “It’s just beginning to hit them over the head,” said Nancy Bush, a consultant and strategic adviser at NAB Research. She believes JPMorgan is also caught up in massive global deleveraging, which is shrinking the entire financial system — and it’ll reverberate through trading markets. “Consumers have reduced their debt,” Bush said. “The government leveraged up to fill in that hole and is now going to start deleveraging. There’ll be layoffs at JPMorgan.”

L.A. registry criticized over run-down foreclosures

"This ordinance has been in effect for four years, and they haven't collected one cent. We're sick and tired of it."

LA Times The city has never imposed the up to $1,000-a-day penalty that the registry law allows on negligent owners who fail to live up to city codes. Nor has it issued one of the $250-a-day penalties the law created for failing to register a foreclosure.

The bigger issue, Zamperini said, is a lack of funding for day-to-day enforcement.

REPORT

Banking on shaky ground


Australia’s big four banks and Land Grabs

As food prices have spiked, commercial interest in land has grown, with large-scale land deals accelerating astonishingly.

Oxfam Over the past 13 years, nearly 36 million hectares of land — an 
area almost the size of Germany — has been snapped up in 
large-scale land deals.
These deals have shifted land from 
local farmers, communities and forests to companies, largely driven by the international demand for agricultural commodities like sugar, palm oil, soy and timber. 

2 Banking Giants Implore U.S. Authorities to Go Easy

The pitch was simple. The executives and lawyers warned that a guilty plea could wreak havoc on BNP and the broader economy well beyond France’s borders.

Reuters The argument — playing on the fear that criminal charges could prompt regulators to revoke a bank’s license to operate, the corporate equivalent of the death penalty — helped the British bank HSBC escape criminal charges in 2012. It also stoked a public outcry that Wall Street giants have grown so large and important that they cannot be charged.

 

5/11/14

Check your State's equivalent:

Florida Statute 701.4 Cancellation of mortgages, liens, and judgments.

Within 14 days after receipt of the written request of a mortgagor, the holder of a mortgage shall deliver to the mortgagor at a place designated in the written request an estoppel letter setting forth the unpaid balance of the loan secured by the mortgage, including principal, interest, and any other charges properly due under or secured by the mortgage and interest on a per-day basis for the unpaid balance. 

Florida Senate Whenever the amount of money due on any mortgage, lien, or judgment shall be fully paid to the person or party entitled to the payment thereof, the mortgagee, creditor, or assignee, or the attorney of record in the case of a judgment, to whom such payment shall have been made, shall execute in writing an instrument acknowledging satisfaction of said mortgage, lien, or judgment and have the same acknowledged, or proven, and duly entered of record in the book provided by law for such purposes in the proper county. Within 60 days of the date of receipt of the full payment of the mortgage, lien, or judgment, the person required to acknowledge satisfaction of the mortgage, lien, or judgment shall send or cause to be sent the recorded satisfaction to the person who has made the full payment. In the case of a civil action arising out of the provisions of this section, the prevailing party shall be entitled to attorney’s fees and costs
 

5/7/14

THE $6 MILLION WINNER: INTERVIEW WITH MARY MCCULLEY

By throwing me in jail for investigating my own fraud, when the FBI wouldn’t help me, and to punish me instead of the actual people that did forgeries and stuff, I think that is a very sad statement,” Ms. McCulley said in an interview. 

The depressing part is that, even though she has this monumental victory under her belt, she is now incarcerated in a Montana correctional facility on what many believe are dubious charges. 

Clinton Kirby and Glenn Augenstein Those charges apparently stem from complaints filed by Tom Cahill, formerly of American Land Title Company, and Attorney J. Robert Planalp, who made appearances on behalf of American Land Title Company. American Land Title Company, and U.S. Bank of Montana, were named as Defendants in a civil suit brought by Ms. McCulley in June of 2009. That is to say, even though U.S. Bank of Montana was found to have defrauded her, Ms. McCulley is the one doing jail time—not anyone at the bank, or anyone else who may have been involved in the fraud against her.

The deed of trust to her property had been altered by Tom Cahill (formerly of American Land Title Company) without her knowledge or consent. 

5/11/14

Neil Barofsky: Geithner, in His Forthcoming Book, Resorts to Already Discredited Factual Mischaracterizations and Name Calling

Lambert Strether Mr. Geithner apparently concludes that our little agency was “damaging” to his efforts to persuade the American people to support his program. While I take it as a compliment that he thinks that our team had such a disproportionate impact, I suspect that the truth is slightly different. The American people considered TARP an unfair giveaway to the largest banks and a failure for Main Street because, in fact, that is exactly what it was.

5/9/14

Bank Watch roundup: Tim Geithner ‘refused’ to fire Ken Lewis

Charlotte Observer Geithner refused to force out former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis since he was close to retirement anyway, The New York Times reports. A counselor had told Geithner he didn't owe Lewis any favors and should push him out the door. The whole piece is worth a read. Another part says that Geithner shot down a Larry Summers suggestion that the administration "pre-emptively nationalize" banks like Bank of America during the crisis.
 

5/9/14

PUBLISHED

Wells Fargo piles on 4 appellate attorneys to go against a Pro Se homeowner... AND STILL LOST

Acuff v. Wells Fargo et al

Commonwealth of Kentucky
Court of Appeals
Acuffs argued that the added endorsement page lacked any
identifiable information connecting it to their note, such as the date of transfer,
“property address, loan number, parcel identification number, or borrower’s
name.”

In its published opinion, the court wrote: We would be remiss if we did not point out that Wells Fargo asserted in its initial complaint that it was the holder of both the Acuffs’ mortgage and note
when, in fact, the mortgage was not assigned until several weeks after the
complaint was filed
.

5/9/14

'Quiet Death' Likely Awaits GSE Reform Push

National Mortgage News The chance of any housing finance reform bill moving in Congress this year—as well as in the foreseeable future—is now seriously in question after six key Democrats have apparently rejected the plan offered by Senate Banking Committee leaders.

 

Why is the White House backing Bank of America’s $9 million man?

Credo Even for those of us used to the obscene spectacle of corruption known as the revolving door between government and big business, this is both eye-popping and scandalous.

Let’s be clear, the $9 million was not a normal yearly bonus. It was an extra bonus on top of a $5.1 million incentive bonus given to him for his job performance. And it was given to him right as he was poised to gain the power to write Bank of America’s interests directly into our trade agreements.

5/8/14

A.G. Schneiderman Announces Settlements With Two Major Consumer Debt Buyers For Unlawful Debt Collection Actions

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that his office has secured settlements with two major debt collectors, Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, and Sherman Financial Group, LLC, for repeatedly bringing improper debt collection actions against New York consumers. 

NY AG For years, the two companies had sued New York consumers and obtained uncontested default judgments against the individuals who failed to respond to these lawsuits, even though the underlying claims were untimely under New York law. 

The settlements require Portfolio Recovery Associates and Sherman Financial Group to vacate the improper judgments with the court and cease any further collection activities on the judgments, make key enhancements to their debt collection practices, and pay civil penalties and costs to the state in the amounts of $300,000 and $175,000, respectively. All told, nearly three thousand improper judgments, totaling approximately $16 million, that had been entered against New York consumers will be vacated under the settlement agreements.

5/8/14

A Mangled Case of Justice on Wall Street

Pam Martens

Wall Street on Parade

She charged in her lawsuit that when she turned in a negative assessment of Goldman Sachs, she was bullied and intimidated by colleagues at the New York Fed to change her findings. When she refused, she was terminated from her job in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises, according to her lawsuit.

5/8/14

Banks Are Too Big to Fail or Jail: Barofsky

Business Week Neil Barofsky, partner at Jenner & Block, examines the potential risk to the financial industry of bringing criminal charges against banks and whether or not U.S. banks could be next in line for charges

5/8/14

How to Fix the Mortgage Market

The Senate bill is fatally marred by two provisions buried in the text. One, named the “investor immunity” provision, is ostensibly aimed at protecting mortgage investors from legal liability for transgressions by lenders, guarantors or other participants in the mortgage process

NY Times But it is so broadly worded that it could shield most mortgage-market participants from liability for a broad range of transgressions, including violations of the federal Truth in Lending Act and of new laws, enacted after the crisis, requiring lenders to verify a borrower’s ability to repay before making a loan and to treat delinquent borrowers fairly.

Both provisions need to be struck from the bill before it is worthy of a yes vote by banking committee members.

NOTES FROM THE RACE FOR ASSESSOR/RECORDER COUNTY CLERK

You may think that because you don’t live in San Diego County that this isn’t relevant to you. We need to bring the heat and the light to this in a deliberate effort to erode property rights and make renters of as many people as possible.

No Dirty Deeds Look what has happened. The equity vanished, the prices went down and Wall Street came in with investor’s cash and pushed first time buyers and owner occupants out of the market.

Homeownership is in decline, and as property ownership declines, more power is concentrated in the wealthy.

5/8/14

Citigroup Must Face Fraud Claim Over $1 Billion in CDOs 

Business Week Citigroup Inc. failed to persuade an appeals court to throw out a lawsuit that claims it lied about the riskiness of securities valued at almost $1 billion, as the world’s biggest banks continue to defend against allegations they misled investors in the run-up to the financial crisis.

5/8/14

Fannie, Freddie Warn They Are Running 'With No Cushion'

The GSEs are required to pay all their profits to the government, under terms of the 2008 bailout and subsequent amendments, and so cannot retain earnings. (except for the big fat paychecks and the money-laundering to politicians)

National Mortgage News Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives warned that their solid first-quarter profits are unsustainable and the government-sponsored enterprises remain in a precarious condition because they are restricted from building capital.

"It's a matter of fact that we're going to have recessions and the GSEs have no capital so they will clearly have to tap into Treasury at some point," Stevens says. "What today's earnings should tell us all is that the status quo may be the most dangerous and precarious place to be for those that worry about a government guarantee on 30-year mortgages."

5/8/14

No Evidence Justice Department Will Prosecute U.S. Banks Responsible for Financial Crisis

naked capitalism Bill Black is in particularly fine form in this Real News Network video. Black recounts the various excuses for not prosecuting the parties that blew up the global economy, and gives a new one from the Justice Department: that regulators told them that yanking bank charters would blow up the global economy. Of course that’s a straw man; Black and others who’ve been serious about prosecution have stressed the importance of targeting individuals.

5/8/14

Lopsided Approach to Wall Street Fraud Undermines the Law

The two task forces that the Obama administration formed (which never had a significant investigative capacity) were more for public show than substantive criminal investigations.

former senator Ted Kaufman The fact that the Justice Department has failed to even try to adequately hold individual Wall Street bank executives accountable has deeply eroded trust in equal justice under the law.

Under the department’s guidelines, prosecutors are supposed to consider “collateral consequences.” Again, I consider that to be a false issue, as the focus of the investigations should have been on individual executives, not institutions.

Bank of America Lies to Montana Supreme Court:

Montana Supreme Court allows lawsuit against Bank of America to proceed

They said a Bank of America representative told them to deliberately skip a payment to qualify for the federal Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP). The bank has said no written record of that conversation exists.

The Morrows made a reduced payment of $1,240 in December 2009 and for the next 14 months.

The bank then tried to foreclose on their home, the Morrows said.

Missoulian “In essence, Bank of America claims the Morrows were entitled to rely on one set of statements, but not the other,” McGrath wrote. “The conflicting communications issued by Bank of America raise genuine questions of material fact whether the Morrows’ reliance was justified.”

Morrow v. Bank of America, BACHLS, Countrywide

The Morrows remained current on their payments until November 2009. They claim that in October 2009, a Bank of America employee informed them they should intentionally miss the following month’s payment to become eligible for a modification.

The big lie: 

Bank of America denies its employees would instruct a borrower to intentionally default. THEY HAVE ROUTINELY DONE THAT TO MANUFACTURE THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS INTO DEFAULT!

5/7/14

JPMorgan Wins Dismissal of MBIA Suit Over Securities

The judge saying the bond insurer can revise and refile the case.

Bloomberg The case is one of many still pending against banks over alleged misrepresentations in the packaging and sale of mortgage-backed securities that helped bring on the 2008 financial crisis. JPMorgan, which acquired Bear Stearns in 2008, agreed in November to pay $13 billion to settle Justice Department allegations it defrauded investors in the securities.

5/7/14

Shareholders grill BofA executives over $4B mistake

Bank CEO Brian Moynihan called the error "disappointing," and said the bank is committed to finding out why it occurred and making sure it doesn't happen again.

WSOCTV That wasn't good enough for some shareholders, who asked pointed questions to the bank's executive team. Richard Davet blasted the board of directors and senior staff. 
"It's $4 billion this time. What is it going to be next time?" Davet said. Asked if he has confidence in Bank of America's management team, Davet responded "not at all."

5/7/14

U.S. risk council warns about asset managers, mortgage servicers

The focus on asset management activity will likely frustrate the industry, which fears the FSOC might designate large firms such as BlackRock or Fidelity as "systemic."

Reuters Some banks have sold their servicing businesses in recent years to nonbank firms such as Ocwen Financial Corp and Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc.

The report says nonbank servicers do not have the same capital, liquidity or risk oversight as banks. As a result, it said the failure of a nonbank servicer could hurt investors in mortgage-backed securities.

5/7/14

Seeking Tough Justice, but Settling for Empty Promises

Don’t get too excited about bank indictments.

ProPublica The Justice Department is working on charges against Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, two overseas banks under scrutiny for violations of United States law. Leave aside the appearance that prosecutors can only go after doggone foreigners. After all of this hype, it will be an enormous embarrassment if Justice ends up settling for a fine and some kind of deferred prosecution agreement.

5/7/14

JPMorgan shuts foreign diplomats’ accounts and a World-Famous Economist's Bank Account With No Warning

“Friday was hell for me,” Ocampo told the FT. “I had all my money frozen. I am being treated like a criminal.”

Business Insider The bank says Ocampo's account was shut down because JPM is reevaluating its business with "politically exposed persons" like non-U.S. former high-level diplomats (think the Tony Blairs of the world) because of high compliance costs. It's all part of a new effort at the bank to clamp down on any potential for money laundering or security breaches.

5/6/14

Watchdog report: More problems for Ocwen customers

We sat down with four couples from West Michigan who have had experiences with Ocwen from as far back as 2007.

WZZM You may remember the Grand Rapids area couple we told you about having trouble with the new company now servicing their mortgage. Ocwen almost immediately raised their monthly payment but the company could not or would not tell them why.

While trying to clear up the confusion, the homeowners were hit with late fees and a negative credit report; it's a story that's happened all around the country.

5/6/14

FHFA COO arrested, charged with threatening Ed DeMarco


Also banned from FHFA's offices

Housing Wire Richard Hornsby, the chief operating officer of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was charged with threatening to kidnap or injure a person after he allegedly threatened the agency’s former acting director, Ed DeMarco, at the agency’s headquarters last week.

5/6/14

Think you will own your house someday? Think again. How to check your chain of title

Despite having never missed a mortgage payment and even paying early, the bank is coming to take away your home.

Marinka Peschmann This fate could be awaiting millions of more Americans because of a bankruptcy that is happening right now in Judge Martin Glenn’s U. S. Bankruptcy Court, in the Southern District of New York where 51 residential mortgage companies have simultaneously gone bankrupt.

With a stroke of his pen and a bankruptcy court order any chance of obtaining the deed to your home could be gone forever.

  No More Mortgage?

Local man Darran La Vine explains how it is possible.

Click Orlando Pat and Sandy Barrett of Apopka took on Bank of America, asking the lender to produce the note for their mortgage debt. The documents were filed in January 2013.

Two months later, Pat and Sandy Barrett were issued a quiet title In Orange County Circuit Court that reads in part: “Settling quiet title to plaintiff’s property in plaintiff’s favor now and for all time.”

5/6/14

Behind Fidelity's Black Knight / LPS Maneuver

National Mortgage News Following the LPS acquisition, Fidelity combined it with its ServiceLink unit to form a new company, Black Knight Financial Services. But the new subsidiary actually consists of two legal entities: Black Knight, which focuses on technology, data and analytics; and ServiceLink, which focuses on transaction services like appraisal, title, closing, escrow, and flood insurance determinations, as well as default services and asset management.

Ice Said to Seek Mortgage-Swap Rebirth for Dodd-Frank Age

Bloomberg IntercontinentalExchange Group Inc. (ICE) is pitching Wall Street on new derivative contracts allowing investors to wager on U.S. homeowner defaults, six years after subprime-mortgage swaps helped fuel the financial crisis.

“Fraud” in Foreclosures, Revisited Nationstar vs Rita Lawhorn: Another Trial Win by The Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen

(Documents, evidence and transcripts attached.)

Evan Rosen, Esq. `Nationstar v. Rita Lawhorn

While investigating the court file in this matter, we quickly and easily discovered evidence of fraud – a very poorly photo-shopped note was attached to the amended complaint.

We knew it was photo-shopped for a few reasons. One, the original note, filed on May 29, 2009, almost two full years before the Amended Complaint, contained two indorsements, not one. 

5/5/14

Woman About To Lose Her House Wins $1 Million, Reacts Appropriately

Huff Post "Oh my goodness," says Pompa, a mother of four children. "We have so much debt. Literally, before I fell asleep this morning I just was praying, that I needed help, and this ... this is just God."

"I'm losing my house," she says, struggling to hold back happy tears. "This is truly a miracle. You don't understand. Oh thank you. Thank you so much. "
 

5/5/14

Florida loan modifications set to expire beginning this year

Palm Beach Post

(subscription)

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners nationwide and in Florida will be hit with higher mortgage payments as loan modifications granted during the early days of the housing crisis begin expiring this year.

5/5/14

Default Mode: How Ocwen Skirts California’s Mortgage Laws

"Violating the law makes more financial sense to them than following it."

Ocwen doesn’t give a hoot about the Homeowner Bill of Rights,” the lawyer told me. “They ignore the statute. It’s cheaper for them to ignore than to implement.

Capital and Main Ocwen is one of the worst servicers in the state,” says Kevin Stein, Associate Director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit advocate for low-income communities.
Ocwen may not even be aware of the rules of the road. One lawyer described a conversation with one of the company’s specialized home retention consultants. The lawyer asked the Ocwen representative about the servicer’s HBOR compliance efforts and the representative replied that she had never heard of the statute, had no training for it and knew of no process established to conform to it.

Criminal Fraud at the Root of Mortgages and Foreclosures

Living Lies I Tip My Hat to you and those who have the courage to fight, and hopefully we will see major changes in law enforcement agencies across our great country, as well as courts, to stop the outrageous methods banks have developed to enrich their own financial positions at the cost of our countries Dream of Home ownership.

5/5/14

BANK OF AMERICA INVESTIGATION INITIATED BY FORMER LOUISIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL

KSF’s investigation is focusing on whether Bank of America and/or its officers and directors violated state or federal securities laws.

Market Watch

Press Release

If you have information that would assist KSF in its investigation, or own a significant amount of Bank of America stock that was purchased recently and would like to discuss your legal rights, you may, without obligation or cost to you, e-mail or call KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn ( lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com ) or KSF Partner Melinda Nicholson ( melinda.nicholson@ksfcounsel.com ) toll free at 1-877-515-1850

5/5/14

Help Elizabeth Warren Change Wall Street and Pass the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act

We urge you to co-sponsor and work for passage of the 21st-Century Glass Steagall Act. Like its New Deal-era namesake, this bill would erect a wall between traditional banks and the risky world of investment banks and hedge funds.

Public Citizen More than five years after the financial crisis, the biggest banks are bigger than ever, and still engaged in large-scale financial speculation. Not enough has been done to end their "Heads I win, tails the public loses" practices. 

This legislation would make banks less massive and complex, and curtail their ability to use government guarantees to fuel Wall Street speculation. It would be a big step toward ending the era of banks that are Too Big to Fail – and jail, manage, or regulate.

Opening the flood gates to make it easier to forge and alter legal documents.

Wording of FHA E-Sign Rule Confuses Industry

Paperless mortgage advocates welcomed the Federal Housing Administration's decision to begin accepting electronic signatures but warn the wording of the new policy is confusing and will likely require further clarification for lenders to adopt it.

National Mortgage News The FHA's Mortgagee Letter reads: "Mortgagees must ensure that documents signed electronically cannot be altered. The documents must be tamper sealed to ensure their validity."

But the industry standard has long been to require tamper-evident seals, not tamper-proof ones.

"We've always defined the tamper-evident seal because it's virtually impossible to say you can completely prevent a document from being tampered with." 

5/5/14

Too Big to Jail Continues: DOJ May Charge Two Banks with Criminal Acts, But Not Hold Them Criminally Accountable

Truth-Out Federal prosecutors are nearing criminal charges against some of the world’s biggest banks, according to lawyers briefed on the matter, a development that could produce the first guilty plea from a major bank in more than two decades.

In doing so, prosecutors are confronting the popular belief that Wall Street institutions have grown so important to the economy that they cannot be charged. A lack of criminal prosecutions of banks and their leaders fueled a public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are “too big to jail.”

5/5/14

LEAKED: Docs show how a Wall Street giant is guaranteed huge fees from taxpayers on risky pension investments

Pando An increasing number of those pension funds are being stealthily diverted into high-fee, high-risk “alternative investments” that deliver spectacular rewards for the Wall Street firms paid to manage them – but not such great returns for pensioners and taxpayers.

Robo-Signing' Claims May Stick to U.S. Bank

U.S. Bank must face claims that it illegally "robo-signed" docs related to two residential mortgage-backed securities trusts originally worth more than $51 million, a federal judge ruled.

Courthouse News The regional bank later sued U.S. Bank, the trustee, in Newark, N.J., alleging it tainted the trusts with "robo-signing."
U.S. Bank and nonparty Wells Fargo, the master servicer, signed mortgage-related documents "in assembly-line fashion, often with a name other than the affiant's own, and swearing to personal knowledge of facts which the affiant has no knowledge," VNB says.

VNB REALTY v. US BANK

5/5/14

Holder Signals Criminal Charges Coming Against Some Banks (Foreign banks)

Bloomberg U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said his department is readying criminal cases against banks that show financial institutions aren’t too big to prosecute.

Holder, in a video message posted today on the department’s website, said improved coordination with regulators is creating a relationship that “will prove key in the coming weeks and months” as prosecutors pursue charges. 

5/3/14

At Bank of America, a $4 Billion Wet Blanket on the Party

Gretchen Morgenson

NY Times

But the failure to account properly for losses still confounds. The mistake was in a portfolio of debt securities acquired by the bank when it bought Merrill Lynch all the way back in 2008. And the bank’s capital position, overstated by the error, is crucial to its ability to raise its dividend or to conduct other activities that could benefit shareholders. Indeed, the bank had to put off the planned dividend increase and share buyback after disclosing the mistake.

5/3/14

Banksters Pretend that Prosecuting Wall Street Crime Will Blow Up the Economy

Are Americans stupid enough to fall for it?

Washington's Blog Indeed, prosecuting the individual Wall Street executives who knowingly committed criminal fraud won’t harm the economy. After all, the main driver of economic growth is a strong rule of law. And numerous Nobel prize winning economists have said that prosecuting Wall Street white collar is necessary for a prosperous economy.

5/2/14

Palm Beach County foreclosure court order relaxed, remains controversial

An order meant to speed foreclosure cases through Palm Beach County’s courts was relaxed this week after complaints from homeowner attorneys, but a controversial passage regarding abandoned cases remains.

Pam Beach Post Foreclosure defense attorney Tom Ice had asked the Florida Supreme Court to weigh in on Colbath’s original order, saying the chief judge overstepped his rule-making authority. Ice said he will fight the new order also because it still puts the onus on the homeowner to move cases to resolution and still allows a judge to deem a case abandoned.

Colbath said he issued the original order because neither the banks nor the homeowners seem inclined to move the cases either to a final judgment, dismissal or settlement.

5/2/14

Shell Game in Full Swing: Loans in Motion

Who is foreclosing, who is getting the proceeds of sales, who is getting the money, the title, the insurance, and the rest of the third party payments?

Living Lies Judges continue to assume that the borrower is the bad guy instead of realizing that the judiciary is being used as the final nail in the financial coffin of pensioners whose money was advanced for loans that were professionally managed but never given the documentary protection they were promised and who are now facing shortfalls in the near future when pensions become due and payable. Or maybe judges know the borrower is not the bad guy and simply feel that someone must pay for all this and it might just as well be the middle class.

5/2/14

US Economy Is A House Of Cards 

The US economy is a house of cards. Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics.

Such an insouciant and passive people are ideal targets for looting, and their economy, hollowed-out by looting, is a house of cards.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Capitalism has been transformed by powerful private interests whose control over governments, courts, and regulatory agencies has turned capitalism into a looting mechanism. 

Wall Street no longer performs any positive function. Wall Street is a looting mechanism, a deadweight loss to society. Wall Street makes profits by front-running trades with fast computers, by selling fraudulent financial instruments that it is betting against as investment grade securities, by leveraging equity to unprecedented heights, making bets that cannot be covered, and by rigging all commodity markets.

5/2/14

Push for mortgage bankster prosecutions heats up


Feds gearing up for prosecutions before time runs out?

The Department of Justice and the U.S. Secret Service has some jurisdiction over the alleged crimes.

Housing Wire The Department of Justice – under some pressure from other law enforcement – may be finally ramping up criminal prosecutions for individual senior bankers for their role in peddling toxic and subprime mortgage-backed securities.

Word on the streets and in Washington is the prosecutors are trying to line up a string of criminal cases against individual bankers.

5/1/14

Why Juries See What Judges Won’t

Despite having the law and the facts on their side, homeowners who challenge a fraudclosure rarely get justice from a judge. Combined with the fact that ninety-six percent of all foreclosures go unchallenged you have the perfect business model for organized crime.

Candidate for County Recorder

George Mantor

I thought that, as time went by, the truth would be uncovered. But now, years later, after billions in penalties (little of which went to the victims) books, movies, and talk shows, most judges continue to rule in favor of the bankstas.

I fear we have gone past a tipping point.

I didn’t see this coming. I thought we could or would stop them. 

5/1/14

'It just doesn't look legitimate, nothing about it looks right'

KBOI "When you find something hanging on your door, get a phone call, or receive an email," said Dixon. "We are always encouraging people to be suspicious don't just take at face value what you see. Do some follow up find a number on your own call it to verify."

We contacted Bank of America and they confirmed in a statement the number listed on the flyer is one of their customer service lines.

5/1/14

HSBC Demands to Know How Customers Spend Their Money

Banks are becoming spies for the state

Prison Planet The story is yet another illustration of how major banks are beginning to function more and more as spies for the state, quizzing their customers on their income and spending habits while demanding paperwork and explanations for them to take out their own cash.

5/1/14

Criminal Charges Against Banks Risk Sparking Crisis

As U.S. Justice Department prosecutors angle to bring the first criminal charges against global banks since the financial crisis, they’ll have to stare down warnings of uncontainable collateral damage. NONSENSE!

Bloomberg “Companies, especially financial institutions, will do almost anything to avoid a tough enforcement action and therefore have a natural and powerful incentive to make prosecutors believe that death or dire consequences await,” he said. “I have heard assertions made with great force and passion that if we take any criminal action, the skies will darken; the oceans will rise; nuclear winter will be upon us; and the world as we know it will end.”

5/1/14

Important Decision on federal rule amendments favors the "little guy" versus corporations

Consumer Law & Policy Blog The Advisory Committee recently rejected the proposed limits on discovery. This is an important victory for the "little guy" -- be it a consumer, an employee, or a civil-rights plaintiff -- because it avoids placing new restrictions on the lesser-informed party's ability to gather the information she needs to litigate her case.

Federal Advisory Committee Report

5/1/14

Implosion of Housing Bubble 2 Hits Six Cities in the West

Our phenomenal housing bubble that, when it blew up spectacularly, helped topple our financial system, threw the economy into the Great Recession, caused millions of jobs to evaporate, and made people swear up and down: never-ever again another housing bubble.

Wolf Richter Steps in the Fed, and trillions of dollars get printed and handed to Wall Street, and asset prices become airborne, and Wall Street jumps into the housing market and buys up hundreds of thousands of vacant single-family homes, drives up prices, and armed with free money, shoves aside first-time buyers and others who would actually live in these homes, and turned them instead into rental units. Now in over 1,000 cities, prices are, or soon will be, as high as they were at the peak of the last housing bubble.

The difference? Last time, all that craziness was called a “bubble” with hindsight. This time, it’s called a “housing recovery.”

5/1/14

Since When Does Refusing to Put Fraudulent Banks into Receivership Help the Economy?

First, no banker is “too big to jail.” They are easily replaceable and removing a fraudulent bank CEO from power is the single most productive act that regulators and prosecutors can accomplish. Breuer and Attorney General Eric Holder were involved in a con when they claimed that their failure to prosecute the senior bank officers leading the frauds was in any way related to “too big to fail.”

Prof. Bill Black Hilariously, they even applied the “rationale” for non-prosecution to former bank officers – as if a bank would fail “because” its former officers were prosecuted. It is a testament to the weakness of the reportage that this claim was not treated with ridicule.

Second, valid fraud prosecutions do not “cause” a business to fail. The fraud causes them to fail. They should fail when their “profits” arise from fraud. In particular, they should fail in the case of accounting control fraud because their “profits” are the fictional product of accounting fraud. The markets and the economy are greatly improved when fraudulent enterprises are destroyed.
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