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Article
Articles
are added several times a day
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Source
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Comment
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3/31/14
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Modifications are like a dirty word in the marketplace. Frustration, chicanery, luring borrowers into default, and crating modifications that are bound to fail so that the banks can get that ever precious foreclosure sale. But there is another side to it:
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David Abellard
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There are hidden programs throughout the country that provide direct financial assistance to those who want to bring their loan current or who need a reduction in principal. The “expert” you are hiring had better know about them or you might turn down a deal that would otherwise be acceptable.
Snatch and Grab: Many of the banks are still secretly scripting their customer service people to lure you into a default with the promise of a modification, even accepting trial payments, and then foreclosing anyway. The courts are not amused and they are getting banged by this practice — but only where the homeowner brings it up loudly.
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Bank defends manual on how to produce files
A number of her past cases involving the bank featured mortgage notes that were not endorsed by anyone, but when she brought it to
Wells Fargo’s attention, the bank would “magically” produce the document, Tirelli said.
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Washington Post
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Banking lawyer Jeffrey Naimon at BuckleySandler, a financial services law firm in Washington, said the law does allow lenders to endorse notes
after filing for foreclosure. He said lenders can transfer ownership of a mortgage by filling out the endorsement or leaving a blank endorsement.
WRONG! Employees and foreclosure
mills are criminally counterfeiting and forging documents that do not
exist!
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Chicago Sun Times
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Cook County has launched a pair lawsuits against two major banks, alleging that they helped cause the Chicago region’s foreclosure crisis by deliberately marketing predatory loans to black and Latino borrowers.
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The five-year-old HAMP was designed to prevent foreclosures at a time when home prices were sinking and unemployment was rising. Yet defaults, the precursor to foreclosures, have occurred at high rates anyway.
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National Legal and Policy Center
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A number of federal officials, especially FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, believed that helping homeowners in over their heads in mortgage debt was defensible and necessary. If banks could receive emergency funds to cover poor lending practices, they reasoned, so could homeowners to whom they made loans.
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3/31/14
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Mortgage Servicing News
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Both Bank of America and James B. Nutter & Co. allowed borrowers to take out more than one HECM loan in violation of program
requirements. The HECM program provides older homeowners with government-insured reverse mortgages in order to help them tap into home equity as a source of monthly income or credit. Borrowers can only take out loans for their principal residence and may not have more than one principal residence at a time.
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3/31/14
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Sadly, most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening.
What about you?
What do you think about all this?
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The American Dream
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The Chinese are on a real estate buying spree all over America. In fact, in some cases large chunks of land are actually being given to them. Yes, you read that correctly. China is on the way to becoming the dominant land owner in the entire country, and that is starting to alarm a lot of people.
When the Chinese purchased Smithfield Foods, they suddenly owned 460 large farms and became the top employer in dozens of communities all over the United States…
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3/31/14
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International Monetary Fund
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Absent reforms, another financial crisis is likely to leave taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of
billions, warns the IMF, estimating the world's biggest banks receive up to $590B in implicit public subsidies because of their TBTF status.
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Who are the victims? Everybody who has an investment in the stock market.
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60 Minutes
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The bombshell ’60 Minutes’ report below just released last night will shake Wall Street to its core. Exposing that Wall Street is rigged to the benefit of certain insiders who have made BILLIONS of dollars via computerized trading, this report should bring Wall Street to its knees.
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3/31/14
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The RBC trading floor had a no-jerk rule (though the staff had a more colorful term for it): If someone came in the door looking for a job and sounding like a typical Wall Street jerk, he wouldn’t be hired, no matter how much money he said he could make the firm.
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NY Times
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Katsuyama had never laid eyes on Wall Street or New York City. It was his first immersive course in the American way of life, and he was instantly struck by how different it was from the Canadian version. “Everything was to excess,” he says. “I met more offensive people in a year than I had in my entire life. People lived beyond their means, and the way they did it was by going into debt. That’s what shocked me the most. Debt was a foreign concept in Canada. Debt was evil.”
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3/30/14
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Gulf Times
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After taxes, BofA estimates the settlement will cut first-quarter income by 21 cents a share. It is surely coincidental that
BofA announced the settlement on Wednesday at the same time investors were preoccupied with the release of Federal Reserve stress-tests results.
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3/30/14
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The budget deal reached by Governor Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers would require New York’s attorney general to cede control of cash obtained from settlements to the governor and legislature.
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BusinessWeek
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“Our concern has always been that the funds from Attorney General Schneiderman’s settlement with
JPMorgan Chase be used for the purposes for which they were intended -- to help struggling homeowners in New York,” said Damien LaVera, a spokesman for Schneiderman, in an e-mail. “We will review the budget proposal through that lens.”
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3/30/14
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Bay News
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"It is an eyesore and it is exactly a zombie home because we don't even know at this point who owns the
homes," said Rita Press, president of Citizens for Ormond Beach.
The group has identified at least 300 foreclosed homes throughout the city, and
numerous abandoned homes with no paper trail that homeowners simply walked away from.
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3/30/14
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nj
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Since last year, town attorneys have been conducting a study of the legal process, also known as “friendly condemnations,” that would allow the township to seize underwater mortgages and restructure them on behalf of homeowners to make payments more affordable.
The resolution approved in a 6-1 vote on Wednesday effectively brings the issue of the radical approach to eminent domain before the township Planning Board, which will now identify properties “in potential foreclosure that may be designated as areas in need of redevelopment,” the resolution states.
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3/28/14
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Not kind words
There is daily and massive evidence in our dealings with the servicers outside of court, in our foreclosure mediation programs and in our court cases, that the
servicers could care less about keeping homeowners in their homes. In fact, in a high percentage of cases where homeowners are demonstrably able to afford loan modifications that would benefit investors, the
servicers work their hardest to deny those modifications.
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Tom Cox, Esq.
Housing Wire
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Don't go blaming the homeowners for this--I am referring to huge numbers of cases where they have either housing counselor assistance or legal assistance, where complete loan modification applications are submitted, and where the servicers, in defiance of the National Mortgage Settlement and now in daily defiance of the new CFPB regulations, fail to review the applications and wrongfully deny them.
What the regulators are doing is trying to stop the extortion by the servicers of homeowners who are qualified for loan modifications but cannot get them.
That extortion comes in the form of wearing down the emotional stamina of homeowners to stay with the modification process until they get fair and honest treatment. I just had a homeowner get a
Freddie Mac modification that she first applied for
five years ago. Most homeowners would have given up in tears of frustration before being able to stay with the process that long.
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The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.
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CBS News
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Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
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Chris Cooley never missed a payment on his mortgage. His application with HAMP
was a success - and cut his payment in half. Wells Fargo had put him on what was only a trial Hamp payment program. He had been rejected for a permanent mortgage modification – only
Wells Fargo never informed him about the
rejection.
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The Guardian
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What followed was what most homeowners would consider a nightmare. While Cooley tried to stave off foreclosure to save his home and livelihood,
Wells Fargo paid the other renters living in the property $5,000 to move out behind his
back, and then denied Cooley further aid – because his income, which he drew from the rentals, was too low.
“They took my income away from me, and then they couldn’t give me a loan because I had no
income,” Cooley said. “What a wonderful catch-22.”
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3/30/14
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Different Versions of the Note
Gets Jammed in Ohio Court of Appeals
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Ohio Court of Appeals
Ninth District
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Ms. Theodoro' s affidavit fails to explain why the copy of the note attached to her affidavit
differs from the one attached to the complaint when, from her averments, the note, while in
Chase's possession, had always contained a blank indorsement from Novastar to
Deutsche Bank.
We concluded that the inconsistencies between the indorsements contained on the submitted notes
created a genuine issue of material fact that precluded summary judgment as we could not
ascertain which lender possessed the note at the time the foreclosure was filed.
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3/30/14
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His Administration Never Intended to Prosecute Bankers
On May 20, 2009, at the signing into law of both the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, President Obama said: “This bill nearly doubles the FBI’s mortgage and financial fraud program, allowing it to better target fraud in hard-hit areas. That’s why it provides the resources necessary for other law enforcement and federal agencies, from the Department of Justice to the SEC to the Secret Service,
to pursue these criminals, bring them to justice, and protect hardworking Americans affected most by these crimes.
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counterpunch
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Then, in the President’s 24 January 2012 State of the Union Address, he said: “Tonight, I’m asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. (Applause.)
This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to
homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.
Privately, Obama had told Wall Street executives that he would protect them. On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House and he assured them that he would cover their backs; he promised
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”. It’s not on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers. What the DOJ’s IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them.
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3/29/14
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A better headline might have been “Justice Department Acknowledges that Rich Bankers Who Committed Fraud Won’t Go to
Jail.”
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Former Senator Ted Kaufman
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I draw two depressing conclusions. First, without a real threat of criminal prosecution, there is no deterrent effect on anyone who commits financial fraud in the future. Second, the lack of action on mortgage fraud takes us a perilous step closer to a two-tiered system of criminal justice – one for the poor and one for the rich. That’s something we cannot allow to happen.
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NBC
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The changes shift the financial burden for the next destructive hurricane, tsunami or tropical storm onto the neighbors of these wealthy beach-dwellers — and ultimately onto all American taxpayers.
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They’re playing with house money. But they could still lose big.
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NY Post
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“I would only consider the reverse mortgage as a last resort. They cost a lot, and there are better ways to pay for retirement,” said Charles Hughes, a financial adviser.
“Gone are the days of gleefully burning the mortgage and passing the home on to the
children.”
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3/29/14
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Timothy McCandless, Esq.
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Dewey & LeBoeuf collapsed in 2012, becoming the largest U.S. law firm to file for bankruptcy. If convicted of the top counts against them, the executives each face up to 25 years behind bars.
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Reuters
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The records offer a new peek into the government's case against top executives at the defunct elite international law firm and how key witnesses might testify against them.
They were charged with taking part in a scheme to cheat banks and investors as they struggled unsuccessfully to keep the law firm alive.
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REFinBlog
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The court did not find that foreclosure of the note was appropriate, “until the
Court determines which of the costs, advances, and other charges requested by the
Plaintiff [HSBC Bank] are allowable in the interest of justice.”
The Judgment Entries of the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas, dismissing the Teagardens’
counterclaims, are affirmed; the
Entry entering summary judgment in favor of HSBC Bank on the note is reversed, and
this matter is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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3/28/14
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NY AG Office
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I joined Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and Congressman Brian Higgins to detail efforts to assist
homeowners and localities with their ongoing recovery from the mortgage crisis. From funding
land banks to connecting families to our Homeowner Protection Program.
We can ensure no community or individual New Yorker has to face the pain of foreclosure alone.
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3/28/14
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What about Florida's
5-year statute of limitations?
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Herald Tribune
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Tearful homeowners also arrived, holding court orders and stacks of mortgage bills, not knowing what to expect. Before they could even get a word out, their cases were tossed.
Nobody was there to fight it.
The dismissals give homeowners more time, as the lenders now have to start over.
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Science Daily
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People who care about justice are swayed more by reason than emotion, according to new brain scan research. Psychologists have found that some individuals react more strongly than others to situations that invoke a sense of justice — for example, seeing a person being treated unfairly, or with mercy. The new study used brain scans to analyze the thought processes of people with high “justice sensitivity.”
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3/28/14
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"Although we appreciate the Bar’s diligent work on this issue, we do not adopt the proposal because we do not have the authority to prohibit a lawyer
from doing non-legal work." Fla.Sup.Ct.
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Florida Supreme Court
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The Bar proposed amending Rule 3-6.1 (Employment of Certain Lawyers or
Former Lawyers; Generally) by adding new subdivision (d)(4) to prohibit
suspended attorneys and former attorneys who have been disbarred, or whose
disciplinary resignations or revocations have been allowed, from representing
clients in administrative proceedings and before administrative agencies which
allow nonlawyer agents or “qualified representatives” to represent clients in certain
circumstances.
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3/28/14
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Da’vid Abellard
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Most people don’t even think about credit restoration when the servicer proposes a settlement or modification because they are so emotionally torn up, the only thing they can think about is keeping their house.
Credit restoration should be part of any modification or settlement deal.
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3/28/14
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Of the 18 PLS suits filed in 2011, FHFA now has claims remaining in seven suits against various institutions and remains committed to satisfactory resolution of these pending actions.
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National Mortgage Professional
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The cases alleged violations of federal and state securities laws in connection with private-label, residential mortgage-backed securities (PLS) purchased by
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between
2005 and 2007. Allegations of common law fraud were made in the Countrywide and Merrill Lynch cases.
The Agreement provides for an aggregate payment of approximately $9.33 billion by Bank of America that includes the litigation resolution as well as a purchase of securities by Bank of America from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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3/6/14r
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One industry insider told us that all non-Fannie Mae or
Freddie Mac mortgages were transferred improperly. In other words, the ownership of potentially millions of mortgages is in question.
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Hannah Appel & JP Massar
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First, simply the prospect of turning the table on the banks by forcing them to prove ownership (which they most likely cannot) is itself a significant step in the right direction.
Second, as one lawyer we consulted for this article put it: ...these are issues of power. Create enough political leverage, and these nebulous and complex issues get
resolved in favor of the people. Judges and policy makers have to understand that correct decisions are the only thing standing between them and 40,000 people marching in the street.
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3/28/14
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WELLS FARGO NOTICE FAIL
Wells Fargo failed to satisfy the notice requirement of section 22 of the
mortgage as a condition precedent to foreclosure.
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Florida Court of Appeals Fifth
District
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Wells Fargo contends that it “substantially” complied with the contractual notice
requirements, an argument we cannot credit. None of the cases cited by Wells Fargo
involved compliance with pre-acceleration notice requirements contained in a mortgage.
Its own mortgage specified the important information that it was bound to give its borrower
in default, and it simply failed to do so.
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3/27/14
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The Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations for reverse mortgages require banks offer survivors the option to settle the loan for 95% of the home’s current fair market value.
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Consumerist
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Because reverse mortgage loans are tied to the equity in one’s home, it is a finite amount, which can fluctuate with the changing home value.
Additionally, lenders must offer survivors up to 30 days from when the loan becomes due to decide what to do with the property, and up to six months to arrange financing.
Isabel says she was never given that option.
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3/27/14
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The government’s strategy for punishing big banks for the misdeeds of the financial crisis has revolved around filing civil lawsuits and imposing harsh financial penalties that
ultimately fall on shareholders.
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Business Week
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman revealed his own $25 million settlement with the bank and its former chief executive,
Kenneth Lewis, over allegations that both were less than forthright with shareholders over the 2009 purchase of Merrill Lynch. Lewis
agreed to a $10 million fine and a three-year ban on serving as an officer or director of a public company
Lewis might experience some irritation writing that $10 million check, but it isn’t likely to last long:
When he announced his resignation in September 2009, he was due to receive pension benefits of $53 million,
as well as $81 million in stock.
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3/27/14
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Ballard Spahr says industry hasn’t seen anything yet.
Lawsky also turned his sights on the mortgage servicing business, where banks have been fleeing the MSR business in favor of nonbanks, arising from an unintended consequence of Basel III.
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Housing Wire
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Lawsky, notably, is the “zealous” regulator who put the brakes on Ocwen Financial Corp.(OCN) and
Wells Fargo (WFC) in their $2.7 billion MSR deal.
“It is appropriate for regulators, where warranted, to halt the explosive growth in the nonbank mortgage servicing industry
before more homeowners get hurt,” Lawskey told the New York Bankers Association Annual Meeting and Economic Forum in February.
Lawsky said companies like Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
(NSM) and Walter Investment Management (WAC) are in his sights and drawing his scrutiny.
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Never underestimate the willingness of banks to find new and creative ways to cheat customers, particularly when big bucks are at stake.
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naked capitalism
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Reverse mortgages have long been seen as a quasi-predatory product: you really need to read the fine print very carefully and even then, it’s not hard to miss something critical. But the behavior Silver-Greenberg describes has nothing to do with sneaky contract language. It’s
flat-out fraud. Here are the critical parts of her article:
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Contrary to the dissent’s assertion, Galope’s standing does not turn on
whether she actually made interest payments that were adjusted in response to the
allegedly manipulated LIBOR rate. Galope’s cognizable injury occurred when she
purchased the loan, not upon payment of LIBOR-affected interest.
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9th Circuit California
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We reverse the district court’s ruling that Galope failed to establish injury
in-
fact necessary for Article III standing on her LIBOR-based claims. Galope
adequately alleged that she would not have purchased her loan had she known that
the Defendants were manipulating the LIBOR rate. Article III standing exists when a plaintiff purchases a product she would not have otherwise purchased but
for the alleged misconduct of the defendant.
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3/27/14
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The lawsuit is one of thousands filed against Goldman and other banks over mortgage securities that collapsed in value in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
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NBC News
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Offering documents for the securities said lenders reviewed whether borrowers would be able to meet their monthly payments, when in reality mortgages were issued without regard to borrowers' ability to pay, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit also said that lenders inflated borrowers' incomes and that appraisers submitted falsely inflated property appraisals.
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3/27/14
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The recommendation to toss out a Justice Department lawsuit over a soured mortgage deal at Bank of America
could inspire other banks to test their luck in court.
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DealBook
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Ultimately, it could also undercut the Justice Department’s use of a novel legal theory against Wall Street.
The Justice Department has enjoyed success when invoking the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, or Firrea. Facing the obscure statute — which requires a criminal violation but uses the lower burden of proof of a civil case — banks are typically cowed into large settlements.
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For the last TWO YEARS, this 80-year-old woman has been in fear of losing her home to foreclosure despite
never having missed a mortgage payment.
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WSVN
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Her attorney says Bank of America filed for foreclosure over two payments that were each one penny short, payments that the bank deducted from her account.
Tom Murphy: "Well, Bank of America shortchanged the payment that they were making to themselves for her mortgage."
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Mortgage industry profitability took a big hit in the fourth quarter as the average profit per loan is about 7% of what it was one year ago.
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Mortgage Servicing News
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The average profit of $150 per loan is the lowest since the Mortgage Bankers Association started doing its performance studies in 2008. The average is down from
$743 in the third quarter and $2,256 in the fourth quarter of 2012, the MBA says.
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3/26/14
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Attorney General Will Continue To Pursue Its Claims Of Fraud Against Bank’s Former Chief Financial Officer Joe L. Price
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NY AG Office
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Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a $25 million settlement with
Bank of America Corporation and its former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Kenneth D. Lewis, regarding the bank’s actions as it sought to merge with
Merrill Lynch & Co in 2008. Despite its top executives’ specific knowledge of mounting losses at Merrill Lynch that were forecast at more than $9 billion, Bank of America failed to disclose that information to shareholders prior to their vote on a proposed merger with Merrill Lynch.
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3/26/14
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Thanks to bank misconduct, odds are that trouble will present itself again soon. And this is what it will look like
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David Dayen
Salon
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To be sure, danger still lurks in the mortgage market. The latest get-rich-quick scheme, with private equity firms buying up foreclosed properties and renting them out, then selling bonds backed by the rental revenue streams
(which look suspiciously like the bonds backed by mortgage payments that were a proximate cause of the last
crisis), has the potential to blow up. And continued shenanigans with mortgage documents could lead to major headaches.
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The court further concluded that MERS would be injured if the default
judgment was left to stand because MERS would lose its interest in the property at issue.
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Montana Supreme Court
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Lastly, the District Court agreed that MERS had a meritorious defense to the quiet title
complaint because the Trustee’s Sale by which JAS acquired the property was defective,
there having been no Affidavit of Mailing recorded prior to the date of the sale, as
required under § 71-1-315(2), MCA. Having concluded that all four prongs of the test set
forth in Blume were satisfied, the District Court granted MERS’s motion to set aside the
default judgment.
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3/26/14
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On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House and he assured them that he would cover their backs; he promised “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”.
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Global Research
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then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,” he said. “And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.” According to one of the participants, he then said, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.”
No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals.
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3/26/14
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ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR RELIEF AND VACATING FINAL JUDGMENT AND JUDICIAL SALE
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h/t Stop Foreclosure Fraud
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No motion has ever been made which seeks to challenge or set aside the entry of
default against the Defendant, and the time to do so based on excusable neglect has expired.
Accordingly, it is hereby ORDERED AND ADJUDGED:
1. The final judgment of foreclosure is vacated and set aside. The judicial sale
is likewise set aside.
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3/26/14
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Bloomberg
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American Homeowner Preservation, a Chicago-based investment firm, purchased the mortgage for less than half of what Ragusa owed. Chief Executive Officer Jorge Newbery called the father of three in August with an offer:
Pay $5,000 and the company will drop the foreclosure case and erase the more than $100,000 of unpaid principal and penalties
amassed.
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3/26/14
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Market Watch
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In return, FHFA’s pending lawsuits will be dismissed with prejudice and Bank of America and its affiliates
will be released from all securities law and fraud claims, as well as certain other claims related to the private-label RMBS in dispute.
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from comments: Why is Ken Lewis not in jail?
Bank of America has been playing this game since 1988. Except now they are taking more and more. Where is the accountability? What has happened to business integrity?
Remember your nation's Total National Debt was $16 Trillion at the time of this Bailout...
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DealBook
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Our national debt could have been eradicated or the monies could have been distributed directly to the public rendering every many woman and child $135,000.00 each!!! Instead, new jets, vacations, bonuses for the execs..... ..'“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president.” (Sen. Bernie Sanders)..
We the public were told of an $850 Billion dollar bailout... not $16
Trillion... anybody else feel lied to just a little bit.....???
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3/26/14
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NOTICE FAIL
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OHIO COURT OF APPEALS
NINTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT
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Liberty Savings failed to meet its initial burden under Dresher to demonstrate the
absence of a genuine issue of material fact as to whether it complied with all applicable HUD
regulations. Accordingly, the Bowies’ first assignment of error is sustained.
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The same loans that were supposed to help their elderly parents stay in their houses are now pushing their children out.
Some lenders are moving to foreclose just weeks after the borrower dies, many families say.
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DealBook
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Under federal rules, survivors are supposed to be offered the option to settle the loan for a percentage of the full amount. Instead,
reverse mortgage companies are increasingly threatening to foreclose unless heirs pay the mortgages in
full, according to interviews with more than four dozen housing counselors, state regulators and 25 families whose elderly parents took out reverse mortgages.
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3/26/14
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The judge dealt a huge blow to bankers pretending to be lenders and servicers pretending to be bankers. For him the issue was simple. And he is right. His opinion contains irrefutable logic.
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Living Lies
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His reasoning is simple and bulletproof — the borrower sued Ocwen
stating that it had committed various wrongdoing. Ocwen by all accounts is only a servicer and
never has been a lender notwithstanding its prior assertions in court, which many judges have rubber stamped and
now wish they didn’t.
Because Ocwen is a non-party the
Mortgage, it cannot enforce the Jury Trial Waiver.
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DealBook
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The bank agreed to pay that sum to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of the two government-sponsored mortgage finance firms by their regulator, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency. As part of the settlement,
Bank of America will also repurchase mortgage securities from
Fannie and Freddie that are valued at about $3.2 billion.
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3/26/14
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Mortgage Servicing News
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The loans are no longer insured, but the successful bidders are forbidden to foreclose for at least six
months (until documents get forged). This restriction is designed to encourage the new servicer to restructure the loans and keep the borrowers in their home.
(How nice.)
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3/26/14
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Taking Note
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The study, by Joăo Santos, a New York Fed vice president, finds that the biggest American banks got a significant break on their borrowing costs from 1985 to 2009. That funding advantage, a.k.a. unwarranted taxpayer subsidy, was due to investors’ belief — correct it turned out — that behemoth banks would be bailed out by the federal government if they ever got into trouble.
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Ouch!
Also see: Bank of America's Lawyer Plays Dirty, Suit Charges
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FOX Carolina
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The suits allege that Bryan Cave committed malpractice and breached its fiduciary duty in advising the debtors on how to conduct their business operations in light of allegations of violations of complex real estate and securities laws. The unpublished decision reversed the District Court's determination that the doctrine of "in pari delicto" ("in equal fault") precluded the trustees from pursuing their claims against Bryan Cave on the merits.
From the transcript:
Bryan Cave allegedly made EFI aware of the fraudulent
behavior that was going on. And the allegation is Bryan Cave said it was okay to go ahead and continue that
fraudulent behavior.
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3/25/14
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The largest U.S. banks and their lobbyists have been trying hard to counteract the growing impression that they present an unacceptable threat to the economy. In a new series of papers, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York offers some evidence that they probably won’t like.
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Bloomberg View
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Critics of the big banks assert that repeated government bailouts have created a perverse incentive: The bigger and more systemically important a bank becomes, the more certain its creditors can be that they will get rescued in an emergency. Such too-big-to-fail status, the logic goes, allows banks to borrow more cheaply than they otherwise would -- a taxpayer subsidy that encourages them to take the kind of risks that lead to disasters.
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Fox Business
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A landmark study by Federal Reserve economists found that large U.S. banks enjoy a "too-big-to-fail" advantage in financial markets, confirming the suspicions of many Wall Street critics more than five years after the financial crisis.
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3/25/14
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CheatSheet
|
Ruth E. Moya filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan earlier this month in Florida’s
Southern District, alleging the bank’s return to “robo-signing”
procedures after she was hit with a judgment greater than her past due
balance.
Instead of the highly criticized technique being used to rush mortgage paperwork without checking for accuracy, as is alleged to have been at the heart of 2010’s foreclosure crisis, Moya accuses
JPMorgan of employing the same methods to quickly produce paperwork needed to initiate lawsuits against credit card holders.
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3/25/14
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The Ability To Repay rules create incentives that could lead to incremental risks for RMBS trusts.
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National Mortgage Professional
|
“The broad scope of the ATR rules allows borrowers to claim they were wrongly given loans that they would not be able to
repay.” (Which does what?)
Since the RMBS trusts bear the costs of Ability To Repay claims raised by borrowers
as a defense to foreclosure, the incremental risk for losses increases as the trust covers expenses to defend against the claim, and penalties if the claim is successful.
Moody’s new approach will identify potential underwriting flaws that could result in ATR violations or disqualification of loans’ QM status.
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3/25/14
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The inspectors who decide whether homes have been abandoned and are ready for foreclosure are doing such a terrible job that the whole system requires a major overhaul, and maybe should be scrapped altogether, a government watchdog warned on Tuesday.
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Huff Post
|
Once directed to a property, they are supposed to take photos, talk to neighbors and take other steps to determine if a home in default is abandoned. Too often, homeowners and state officials allege, inspectors and other workers sent to fix broken windows or shore up a house against cold weather are disregarding obvious signs of habitation, such as mowed lawns and electric meters still running, and forcing their way into homes still in the legal possession of their owner. Once inside, some help themselves to whatever they find -- heirlooms, artwork, or even a kid's piggy bank.
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3/25/14
|
A real estate thief + title company = Fraud
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Housing Wire
|
In 2009, Altisource spun off of Ocwen Financial
to become a publicly traded REO and title insurance company. Business ties remain, however, and as Ocwen continues to buy mortgage servicing rights. New revenue trickles down to Altisource for handling properties
Ocwen foreclosed on.
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CNBC
|
The prevalent belief is that these are failed companies with failed structures that
exacerbated the American housing crisis that flared up in 2008 and therefore they must be expunged from the system.
(That part is true.)
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3/25/14
|
Garbage by any other name would stink just as badly, if not
worse seems applicable to the “reform” of the government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just introduced. The media often describe this plan as “ending” Fannie and Freddie.
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Daily Caller
|
And yes, it does “end” them in the sense that there will no longer be entities named Fannie and
Freddie. But most of their functions would simply be transferred to a new giant government entity called the
Federal Mortgage Insurance Corporation. Not only would the government’s role in subsidizing and micromanaging housing not be reduced, in some ways it would substantially be increased.
Worst of all, and sending the worst possible signal to potential private sector investors in the housing market,
Fannie and Freddie common and
preferred shareholders would be wiped out permanently under the bill’s Section 604.
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Consent
Order
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Lexology
|
On January 16, 2014, the CFPB issued a Consent Order resolving a claim that Fidelity Mortgage Corporation, a mortgage lender, and its president, Mark Figert,
violated RESPA Section 8 by paying illegal kickbacks to a bank in exchange for mortgage loan referrals.
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Long before the 2008 mortgage meltdown, Shea–Stonum said, bankruptcy judges knew something was amiss.
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Plain Dealer
|
One case that’s bedeviled her is the unwinding Fair Finance, a Ponzi investment scheme that defrauded more than 5,000 Ohioans. Shea-Stonum has exhorted the trustee from the bench to find some money to return victims, something that hasn’t yet happened. “I’ve been tearing my hair out over this,” she says of a case that she will hand off to her successor.
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3/25/14
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Journal Star
|
“It’s not that we couldn’t make our payments,” says Bryan. “We were just following instructions.”
The Kellys say they got caught in a Catch-22: months of contradictory messages from
PHH Mortgage Services that left them falling behind in payments and falling into foreclosure.
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Home inspectors are likely scamming taxpayers out of millions by submitting false reports to federal officials in charge of mortgage delinquencies, a new report has found.
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Washington Times
|
In 2012, the inspector general found that one home inspection company had scammed the government out of $12.7 million from false reports and claims. Now the inspector general is warning that the practice hasn’t stopped, and taxpayers could still be vulnerable for millions in loses.
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Foreclosure attorney Tom Cox
When the Savings
& Loans Crisis hit the U.S. in the late 1980s, Cox worked with the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation collecting faulty loans from members of his small Maine community.
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Fortune
|
"I was stunned by the abuses I was seeing," he says. "I saw extraordinary sloppiness and outright deceivability of the legal
system."
"It is hard to describe the feeling of saving someone's
house," Cox says. "Knowing that if I had not contributed, what all those people would have lost is really powerful."
"My future wife is kicking me," he says. "I am working way more than 40 hours a week, but I am loving it. I am thriving on it."
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3/25/14
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Inspectors turned in manipulated and fraudulent reports.
In another case, an inspector submitted photographs that were dated April 2007 for a report submitted in December 2012. In several cases, dates on photographs were changed to reflect the date of the inspection.
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Housing Wire
|
In another case, an inspector submitted a series of inspection reports that appeared to have information about the property that was copied from previous reports. “OIG also identified a series of inspection reports for a single property that claimed the property’s grass height was exactly 8 inches for 7 months,” the report says. “In this example, further illustrated in Figure 3, it appears the inspector copied old inspection report information onto each subsequent month’s inspection form.”
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3/24/14
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Loan Shortage Pushes Mortgage Firms to Accept Lower Credit Scores
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Housing Wire
____
Mortgage Servicing News
|
Carrington Mortgage Services lowered its minimum FICO score to
550 and expanded its guidelines on a number of FHA, VA and USDA loan programs in order to better focus on underserved borrowers, typically those in the sub-640 FICO score range.
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3/24/14
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How many of the young men at Rikers Island ended up there in part because of the wreckage in the economy caused by that crisis and the subsequent cuts in services demanded by people like Lloyd
Blankfein?
Perhaps we could create a social impact bond focused on sending criminal bankers to prison. The more who end up serving time, the more the bondholders will get paid. That would be a very interesting experiment. Any takers at Goldman Sachs?
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And while we’re at it, shouldn’t we be focused on putting criminal bankers in jail instead of adolescent males who smoke pot?
You really hit the nail on the head there! We all know by now that a great way not to end up in jail is to be a powerful banker, so perhaps instead of cognitive behavioral therapy, the Rikers program could offer to send young adolescent men to business schools where they could learn to become financiers. Top Goldman executives appear to have engaged in plenty of misconduct that might well deserve to be prosecuted as crimes, but our two-tiered justice system ensures that they not only don’t go to jail – but they continue to be repeat offenders.
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3/24/14
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Modesto Bee
|
The inspector general apparently didn’t focus on efforts in the Eastern District of California. This is odd, given that some of the worst fraud took place in the Central Valley – i.e., Modesto, Merced and Stockton.
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3/24/14
|
The head of Ocwen Financial runs a slew of companies that profit from foreclosures.
__________________________
The explosion of non-bank mortgage servicers is hurting American homeowners.
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In These Times
|
Ocwen has become ground zero for regulatory shelling by government agencies—and some members of the investment community aren’t happy with
Erbey, either.
According to Richard Cordray, head of the CFPB, “Ocwen took advantage of borrowers at every stage of the
process.”
________________________
Discontinuities,
lost paperwork and outright errors can lead to more pain for homeowners already
caught in a labyrinthine and punishing process.
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3/24/14
|
McLeod v. Deutsche Bank
Self Represented Homeowners WIN Quiet Title to
$800,000 Home
|
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA
|
"That the subject property is hereby awarded to, and title quieted in
favor of Plaintiffs Kenneth McLeod and Carol Ann McLeod...
... That Defendant SABR is permanently enjoined and prohibited from
recording any documents affecting or purporting to affect title of the
subject property; and, any acts or recordings now or in the future by
Defendant SABR relating to the subject property shall be of no force or
effect."
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3/24/14
|
Wall Street banks were afraid of fraud --- that if the originators could touch the money, they might have faked a number of closings and taken the money. In short, the investment banks were afraid that the originators would not use the money the way it was intended.
Wonder where they got that idea?
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Living Lies
|
The fact that money was on the table at the time of the alleged closing of the loan can only mean that the homeowner owed money to repay the source of the money. This duty to repay arises by operation of law and extends from the homeowner to the investor despite the lack of any documentation that explicitly states that. The result is false documentation in which the homeowner was induced to sign under the mistaken belief that the payee on the note and the mortgagee on the mortgage was the source of funds.
If you receive funds from John Smith and the note and mortgage are drafted for the benefit of Nancy Jones as “lender” would that bother you?
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3/24/14
|
somehow, banks are allowed to collect death benefits on terminated workers right under the nose of State insurance regulators. The explanation is likely the secrecy which surrounds these policies, limiting knowledge of death payments to just the bank and the insurance company.
|
Wall Street
on Parade
|
Families of young JPMorgan Chase workers who have experienced tragic deaths over the past four months, have been kept in the dark on many details, including the fact that the bank most likely held a life insurance policy on their loved one – payable to itself. Banks in the U.S., as well as other corporations, are allowed to make multi-billion dollar wagers that their profits from life insurance policies on employees will outstrip the cost of paying premiums and other fees. Early deaths help those wagers pay off.
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3/24/14
|
HSBC's predatory residential mortgage lending targeted minority homeowners, and triggered urban blight in black and Hispanic neighborhoods when the housing bubble burst.
|
Courthouse News
|
Its predatory lending, especially in the subprime residential mortgage market, directly led to the housing market's collapse in 2008, causing "tremendous tangible and intangible damage to plaintiff including the erosion of plaintiff's tax base; the loss of property tax revenue; out-of-pocket costs relating to abandoned or vacant properties; the loss of certain intangible property recording fee income; and many other injuries to the fabric of plaintiff's communities and residents arising from the resulting urban blight," according to the
108-page lawsuit.
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3/23/14
|
A federal judge in New York blasted mega-bank Wells Fargo for submitting a “fraudulent” foreclosure document to the court
under penalty of perjury, according to a hearing transcript.
|
NY Post
|
At issue in Carssow Franklin’s case are the assignment of mortgage and endorsement of the note, documents that transfer ownership when a loan is sold.
Tirelli challenged the endorsement, and questioned how robo-signor
Kennerty could have transferred a Washington Mutual asset in 2010, since the bank failed in September 2008.
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Daily Kos
|
More than five years after Wall Street crashed our economy, the banksters continue to get away with a slap on the wrist—while families lose their homes.
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3/22/14
|
Why have regulators done so little to rein in the credit rating agencies? Other institutions that contributed to the mortgage debacle have submitted to new rules and compliance requirements, but
Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s and their peers remained relatively untouched.
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Gretchen Morgenson
NY Times
|
During the housing boom, however, the firms slapped high grades on complex mortgage securities that were filled with garbage. The ratings abetted Wall Street’s corrupt mortgage machine and did enormous damage to investors in those securities, which inevitably failed. The reverberations were felt in the economy as a whole.
In the scrutiny after the financial crisis, it became clear that not only were the ratings inflated, but also that the business model of the rating agencies contained a troubling conflict of interest:
The rating agencies are paid by the very issuers whose securities they are
rating.
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The Court is not persuaded by the new affidavit, finding that the failure to refer to the sale of the loan to
Freddie Mac on the original motion was more than an insignificant oversight.
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Supreme Court, Columbia County, NY
|
Remarkably absent from Ms. Frye's affidavit is any explanation as to what the Court viewed as a serious discrepancy —
that the loan was transferred or sold or no longer belonged to Wells
Fargo, and yet the Note remained it its possession.
Accordingly, it is
ORDERED, that the motion by plaintiff Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. for leave to renew and reargue the prior motion for summary judgment, and for summary judgment on its Complaint is
denied.
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3/22/14
|
Those statistics were a fraud.
Inspector general says criminal charges were exaggerated, as were other claims.
Stacy Wisser of Lehighton isn't surprised, based on her experience with other federal authorities that were supposed to investigate accusations of another type of mortgage fraud — banks botching foreclosures.
She told me her family lost its dream home to foreclosure about five years ago after, she says, it was misled by a
bank.
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The Morning Call
|
In 2012, they saw hope in a program established by the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision. It was supposed to take a second look at how foreclosures were handled and compensate homeowners if mistakes were found.
But that initiative, the Independent Foreclosure Review, was halted before it ever really got going.
"They didn't do a damn thing," Wisser told me last week.
Only a fraction of eligible homeowners applied for the program, and as the process dragged on, the large auditing, accounting and bank consulting firms hired by the banks to conduct the reviews were getting paid but homeowners weren't.
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3/21/14
|
If they didn’t pay for it, they have nothing against the property.
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Living Lies
|
Allowing a party who did not acquire the mortgage rights for value would enable strangers to the transaction to acquire property for free, except the costs of litigation. Thus the
“free house” argument is specious. It is a distraction from the real facts as to who is getting a free house.
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3/21/14
|
No surprise here...
According to Madoff, one Wall Street bank knew long before then that something was wrong — and chose not to do anything.
|
Politico
|
But a group of shareholders is hoping to prove — with Madoff’s help — that the bank knew more about his shady dealings than it has admitted.
Last month, they filed a lawsuit in the Southern District Court of New York against current and former JPMorgan
executives. The complaint alleges that the bank was “uniquely positioned for 20 years to see Madoff’s crimes and put a stop to them” and that top executives
“chose to turn a blind eye” to his behavior.
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The settlement’s broader goal was to stop banks from abusing homeowners going forward. As Smith’s previous reports show, it failed to deliver that kind of change. These same companies continue to violate the settlement.
|
Think Progress
|
Chronic violations of the deal forced the settlement’s oversight board to rewrite some of the terms of the deal because banks weren’t living up to the terms.
All of this fits the Obama administration’s ugly pattern of exaggerating its Wall Street accountability accomplishments. Other mortgage relief programs have failed to reach their goals.
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3/21/14
|
"At the very least, I think now this document gives the New York attorney general free access to every attorney who’s ever followed this manual and hold them accountable, because it is illegal.
We cannot knowingly produce false documents and submit them into a court of law."
Attorney Tirelli
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Democracy Now
|
Reading it, my jaw just dropped. As I see it, it’s clearly outlining procedures, not just for the $12-an-hour
robo-signers that we’ve heard about all these years,
but for the lawyers, who need to be held accountable to a much higher degree. It’s the manual for the lawyers to actually fabricate documents, as I see it, and request that documents that are lacking be fabricated by
Wells Fargo. It’s absolutely appalling. Attorney
Tirelli
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3/21/14
|
The American Homeownership Dream is officially dead...
|
Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
|
With home-ownership rates collapsing and the likelihood of 'wealth taxes' potentially weighing on even the oligarchs and 1%-ers willingness to throw cash at US housing, we thought the following rusting hulks of a bye-gone era in a
storage yard deep in Middle America summed it all up...
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Judgment Reversed for Notice Fail
|
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA
COUNTY OF SANTA CLARA
APPELLATE DIVISION
|
The judgments entered on March 16, 2012, are REVERSED and the trial court is instructed to entered judgments in favor of Appellants. Appellants are the prevailing party and
are entitled to costs on appeal.
Appellants were tenants.
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3/21/14
|
Dangled TARP dollars, then defrauded hundreds of homeowners.
Isaak Khafizov, 27, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for operating a fraudulent mortgage modification operation that defrauded hundreds of struggling homeowners out of more than half a million dollars.
|
Housing Wire
|
“Khafizov thought he had found his meal ticket scamming struggling homeowners during the height of the housing crisis, and he now has the next nine years in federal prison to think about how he destroyed so many peoples’ lives,” said Christy Romero, Special Inspector General for
TARP.
Tell us this doesn't sound like what
the banks did: Promised modifications, repeatedly took millions from TARP,
did nothing, and destroyed peoples' lives.
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The former owner of a mortgage loan modification business was sentenced Friday to
nine years in prison for defrauding hundreds of distressed homeowners and their lenders...
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Mortgage Servicing News
|
... while the DOJ allows individual
bankers and attorneys to defraud MILLIONS of homeowners.
Over half a million dollars in fees were taken from homeowners who lost their property to foreclosure as a result of this scheme.
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DealBook
|
Mr. O’Neil has a background in white-collar cases. His Justice Department career began in Manhattan, where he worked as a federal prosecutor on cases involving financial fraud.
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DealBook
|
Credit Suisse said on Friday that it had reached an $885 million settlement to resolve claims that it sold questionable loans to the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the lead-up to the financial crisis.
|
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White Paper
|
|
National Title Clearing
|
This paper is designed to give step-by-step guidance on how to use property records to ensure
a clear title conveyance and reduce the risk of
buyback or inability to foreclose.
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3/21/14
|
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Mortgage Servicing News
|
A federal judge gave the Department of Housing and Urban Development more time to come up with a fix to help
widows and widowers facing foreclosure on federally-insured reverse mortgages.
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|
3/21/14
|
The Texas Attorney General's Office promptly-and, indeed, unlawfully-diverted most of
$134 Million in settlement funds away from Texas homeowners and into, among others, the
Texas Judicial Fund.
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MSFraud
|
The money diverted to the Texas' Judicial Fund is meant to fund criminal
indigent defense programs across Texas. Yet, Texas has projected a large
budgetary surplus for 2014 and beyond and has given no indication regarding
this budget item, that it should be replenished using the diverted funds, now or
ever.
TEXAS IS STEALING FROM HOMEOWNERS.
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|
3/20/13
|
This article is to show why some are better than others and to seek out any bad mortgage loan modifications to try to fix the defects before they cause more distress to homeowners, investors, and communities all across America.
|
LoanSafe
|
The intended audience is anyone interested in learning more about loan modifications and why they could be considered bad versus being good and what can be done to correct a bad modification.
We are looking for bad loan modifications that meet the following parameters listed below.
You must be able to provide the full permanent Loan Modification Agreement for any of the following banks or lenders and dates:
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10/18/13
|
Complaint is included.
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Plain Dealer
|
Controversial Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes may be "suffering from a mental illness that substantially impairs her ability to perform her duties as a judicial officer," a complaint filed by the Supreme Court of Ohio's Office of Disciplinary Counsel concludes.
The 49-page complaint states that Stokes abuses court resources, abuses lawyers and court staff and defendants who appear before her.
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3/21/14
|
The scheme began in the summer of 2004
|
Gulf Live
|
A federal investigation into Colson's activities revealed that Colson, through his business entities, willfully diverted funds from trust accounts for his own personal use, and concealed shortfalls in those accounts by co-mingling funds from other accounts when making payments to financial institutions.
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3/20/14
|
Surprised?
|
MarketWatch
|
The banking industry was already bludgeoned by accusations that it “robo-signed” its way through mortgage-default paperwork, shuttling struggling homeowners closer to foreclosure without giving them their due process.
Now, accusations are cropping up that banks engaged in similar practices with credit-card customers.
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3/20/14
|
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Buffalo News
|
The picketing, which is designed to “hold the PHH Mortgage
Corp. accountable for firing workers and stealing our taxpayer dollars,” according to a press release from CEJ. “PHH is breaking its promises to workers and the community.”
PHH Mortgage, a subsidiary of outsourcing company PHH Corp., took over the mortgage operations and loan servicing from
HSBC Bank USA
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3/20/14
|
Wall Street’s seven sins -- size, secrecy, regulatory capture (when government supervisors identify more with the industry they police than with the people they’re supposed to protect), excessive pride, complexity, impunity, and a predatory greed --
risk the second avoidable economic cataclysm of the baby boom era.
|
Bloomberg
|
She hadn’t lived there for more than a year, but she got the tax bill, too. Her lender, a division of
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) called EMC
Mortgage, never took ownership (but EMC
was foreclosing???). The house was technically still hers.
So few people are better off financially than they were before the 2008 crisis, and so few of the lessons have been learned from that near-death experience, that it may take another plummet before the people in charge do something meaningful to repair this broken system.
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3/21/14
|
Instead, what Bank of America did, as we see so often from all the loan servicers, was to have her complete financial forms as part of the HAMP application process, time and time again, without any real intention of allowing her to qualify for HAMP relief. In other words, BOA was violating federal law.
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Sandusky Register
|
In Rose’s case, the servicing of her loan was recently transferred to an outfit called
Select Portfolio Servicing (SPS). With regard to SPS, it is bound by the same HAMP requirements as was BOA before it. There is no doubt that Rose will get the HAMP relief she is entitled to under the law. The only question is how quickly we will be able to convince SPS that it has to play by the rules and grant that relief to Rose, or otherwise face serious consequences if it refuses
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3/21/14
|
Appeals Court says technicality meant woman hadn't waived right to get copy.
|
Daily Report
|
A Georgia Court of Appeals panel decision says a woman appealing a order holding her in contempt in a child custody case must be allowed to access a hearing transcript even though she didn't pay her share of the court reporter costs.
Friday's decision does not say that a litigant always has the right to a transcript in a civil case.
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3/21/14
|
Another issue is at stake: the criminal behavior of one of its bankers draws attention to other criminal behavior at the corporate entity. For instance, earlier this year, the U.S. government fined
Bank of America $2.1 billion in penalties after a jury considered the
bank liable for fraud when its Countrywide unit sold defective mortgages
|
Seeking Alpha
|
Elaina Patterson has pleaded guilty to charges of larceny and will face from three to five years in a state
prison.
During the hearing, Patterson wept bitterly, apologized profusely, and asked for forgiveness. However, the judge and victims remained unsympathetic
because of numerous testimonies about how she had ruthlessly executed her schemes to fund a luxurious lifestyle.
Her victims included people who had won her trust like aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as elderly people. Eight of the elderly were in their 60s, while six were over 80. One elderly victim said that Patterson talked her out of $100,000 only a week after her husband had died from cancer.
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3/20/14
|
Deutsche Bank AG has failed to win the dismissal of four U.S. lawsuits seeking to force it to pay damages or buy back troubled home loans it had packaged into residential mortgage-backed securities prior to the 2008 financial crisis.
|
Reuters
|
HSBC, a unit of HSBC Holdings Plc had accused Deutsche Bank of dumping a "massive number" of home loans into the four trusts that it knew breached its representations and warranties, and ignoring its contractual duty to buy back, fix or substitute for the bad loans.
The cases, all in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, are: ACE Securities Corp Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2007-HE3, by HSBA Bank USA NA as Trustee v. DB Structured Products Inc, No. 13-1869; Series 2007-WM2, No. 13-2053; Series 2007-HE4, No. 13-2828; and Series 2007-HE5, No. 13-3687.
|
In Effect
|
from our Legislative page
From Dann Law: These amendments are great news for our clients for two reasons. First, they give us the opportunity to ask for some extremely helpful information regarding the servicing of your loan. Through this new procedure we will be able to request and obtain information which lenders and servicers have traditionally attempted to withhold.
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CFPB
|
Having this information will greatly help in defending your case. Second, if your servicer or lender fails to comply with the requests, there are now strict penalties that we will be able to enforce for each violation.
Essentially, these new regulations give us a no-risk procedure for obtaining helpful information to aid in the defense of your case. Moreover, these regulations have the potential for us to form claims against your servicer in order to
collect money damages. The other great part about these claims is that the regulations provide that the servicer would have to cover any legal expenses in bringing and prosecuting these claims.
|
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3/20/14
|
The report finds that many consumers complain that they are being hounded by debt collectors about debts they do not owe. Top complaints also include debt collectors’ use of aggressive communication tactics and threats of illegal actions.
|
National Mortgage Professional
|
“Consumers should never be hounded about debts they do not owe,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “We will not tolerate companies harassing consumers or threatening illegal actions in the debt collection market. We will continue to work hard to ensure that consumers are treated with dignity and fairness.”
|
|
|
Lee Farkas, 61, hid billions of dollars through phony accounting and triple-selling mortgages to various financial institutions.
|
Business Insider
|
He is serving a 30-year prison sentence at Butner Federal Penitentiary in North Carolina and supposedly withering away.
Farkas, who says he is lonely and suffering from depression said, "You're not really alive in here, you're a zombie—just a body walking around, eating, sleeping and being yelled
at."
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|
3/20/14
|
Since 2010, the Federal Housing Finance Agency failed to submit the Federal Home Loan Banks’ director expense data to Congress, as required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act.
|
Housing Wire
|
Despite the FHLBanks submitting the required information to the FHFA, a review of the data found that it contained
inconsistencies and limitations that diminish its usefulness.
The FHFA realized it was not reporting this information when it was being evaluated and
said it would begin doing so in its 2013 annual report.
|
|
3/20/14
|
Lazy workers and poor management at the IRS mean tax evaders have an easier time escaping notice, Kim wrote. “Rather than fixing the situation by forcing the non-workers to actually work for their salaries, management[,] knowing that the working attorneys face an impossible workload, is advising us to give up cases worth millions of dollars,” she said.
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This is no different than robo-signing. The documents initialed by “Wanda” presumably get submitted as evidence in tax court cases. I don’t know whether or not Wanda in any way legally attests that the underlying information in the legal documents is correct, but if errors routinely get found after the fact, some documents in all likelihood deliver false information to the court. No wonder nobody in Washington cared that much about
robo-signing, I hadn’t entertained the possibility that it was official government policy.
|
|
3/19/14
|
We have so much invested in fraud now, it would be foolish to turn back now and try to prosecute fraud. And of course every time they try to prosecute fraud, the bankers and the brokers whip out their threat to crash the economy and to crash the markets.
And they have done this a few times to get their way.
|
Keiser Report
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And of course the politicians (and judges) are invested in these same stocks and bonds and options and they are not going to argue against their own interests having been invested themselves in the fraud.
So you won't see any progress in correcting the fraud, but you will see the consequences of the fraud, which is enormous wealth and income gaps, and the elite who feel they have the right to commit all kinds of additional crimes, because once you
allow them to commit fraud with impunity - they simply extend that to other areas of everyone's lives.
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3/19/14
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A couple recently came back to their “snowbird” home away from home to find themselves locked out, eviction-style.
Mel and Harriet found a lock box on their door, the power turned off, and items missing from their kitchen. It turns out the whole thing was a mistake.
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WebProNews
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Mel and Harriet, whose property was paid off 15 years ago, had been visited by such a “property preservation” contractor. But it turns out that contractor had the wrong address. Upon further investigation, however, it was discovered that the lockout had been authorized by
SafeGuard Properties, in Valley View, Ohio.
SafeGuard has been the subject of legal actions in 31 states due to “illegal
break-ins” resulting from mistaken foreclosures.
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3/19/14
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We all know the facts behind the historic foreclosure crisis the world is still facing.
When the house of cards collapsed, the reckless, greedy sociopaths, who call themselves Wall Street executives, were allowed to fly off into the sunset on their private jets, fortunes intact with millions in new bonuses to boot, while so many of us got wiped out and are still struggling to put the financial pieces of our lives back together.
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Evan Rosen Law
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All the subsequent lawsuits and settlements which resulted from banks being caught red handed breaking laws and its own contracts, followed by more lawsuits and settlements from banks breaking preceding settlements and it’s enough to make your head spin. It’s outrageous and I’m still angry. I know the court’s role in our society is to resolve disputes, and to interpret and apply the law as passed down by the other two branches. Its role is not to police the banks or punish them within a single foreclosure case because of their improprieties in other matters. Yet, I want the courts to hold banks accountable, and as part of their role in our government, they can.
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3/18/14
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KATU
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A Southern Oregon housing agency will pay nearly $100,000 to a family that faced eviction because it had a puppy being trained to detect blood sugar levels in a 5-year-old girl with diabetes, state officials said Tuesday.
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3/18/14
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What the mainstream media reports on this don’t tell you is that the $50 billion number is wildly inflated: for example, it includes $12 billion worth of deficiency waivers in non-recourse states, which the IRS confirmed have no value whatsoever. But I didn’t know just how inflated these numbers were, and how empty the promises, until I went through them all.
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David Dayen
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Joseph Smith, in his final statement, has the gall to say that “in many cases, the banks exceeded” their requirements under the settlement. That speaks to how flawed the settlement was in its design more than anything.
The servicing standards, which have gone so well that Attorneys General have threatened to sue the banks for non-compliance, will continue until the end of 2015. But they are largely duplicated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s servicing rules. So in effect, the book has closed on
the National Mortgage Settlement, one of the most shockingly awful examples of government cowardice and corruption in recent American history.
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3/18/14
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It is becoming increasingly apparent that the the intermediary banks were hell bent for foreclosure regardless of what was best for the investors or the borrowers.
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Living Lies
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This included, fraud, fabrication, unauthorized documents and signatures, perjury and outright theft of money and identities.
The Bush and Obama Administrations didn’t have a clue. And they were relying on Wall Street to report on its own behavior. But I’m sure the agreement did not even contemplate the actual crimes committed. I think it is time for US attorneys and the Atty. Gen. of each state to revisit the issue of prosecution of the major Wall Street banks.
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The misinformed are still out there...
Non-profits are suing California for portion of the $25 billion that was taken from banks.
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Jillian Kay Melchior
National Review Online
|
Only a miniscule portion of the $25 billion went to a few homeowners who had truly been wronged — in large part because such victims were scarce, despite what politicians proclaimed.
In reality, most of those who lost their homes lost them for justifiable reasons. Many borrowers had taken out steep loans on properties more lavish than they could afford and were in default on their mortgages, at a time when the vast majority of responsible Americans continued to pay on time.
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Marks the 11th in a rash of reports of banker, financial suicides
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Housing Wire
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Kenneth Bellando, who worked at Levy Capital since January, was found dead on the sidewalk outside his East Side building on March 12 after allegedly jumping from the sixth-story roof, sources said. The Post reported that Bellando’s brother is John Bellando, the chief investment officer with
JPMorgan.
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SHOW US THE REAL MONEY!
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Reuters
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"I will say, as we have come to the end of all of this, I am satisfied and actually, happy,"
Joseph Smith, the person assigned to monitor banks' compliance with the settlement terms, said of the value of the mortgage debt the banks agreed to reduce for distressed borrowers.
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3/18/14
|
Fannie Mae posts new job with interesting timing.
The government-sponsored enterprise put out a job posting Tuesday seeking a Mortgage Fraud Investigator.
HINT: Fannie
Mae's own business model and manuals demonstrate how it commits
fraud.
The job description reads:
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Housing Wire
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Apply comprehensive knowledge of mortgage fraud schemes. Operate with considerable latitude to substantiate suspicion of fraud relating to single or multifamily originations, servicing or REO, and other frauds involving Fannie Mae financial
instruments (but not Fannie's Fraud). Perform highly complex duties related to planning, conducting, and documenting inquiries into allegations of mortgage fraud. Reconcile fraud risk or recommend investigation. Utilize wide-ranging experience to conduct research and problem-solving on highly significant matters. Prepare and review complex reports.
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FoxBusiness
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Wells Fargo has a 150-page instruction
Manual that is a blueprint on how to fabricate documents to illegally foreclose
on homes. CFPB, NY AG, U.S. Trustees are all investigating.
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Sounds like a class-action against the “Independent” Foreclosure Review folks may be in order for perpetrating a fraud on the American public for at least an intentional nondisclosure of a conflict of interest.
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Foreclosure Defense Nationwide
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Rebecca Marione, the executive who “looked the other way while her company,
Bank of America removed every removed every speed bump, road block, and toll gate” (read: the regulations as to the proper origination and sale of mortgage loans under the law) is now in the position of reviewing whether all of the proper procedures were followed during the foreclosure process.
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from 2013
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While on the topic:
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Mortgage FlimFlam
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Do an internet search on mortgage fraud and try to find even a single case of a
prosecutor going after a mortgage broker or lender for defrauding a
borrower. There are plenty of cases involving straw buyers and others who have defrauded the lenders
- but no prosecutions where the borrower was defrauded. There have been no significant prosecutions for mortgage origination fraud, yet that is the precise crime that precipitated the
Great Recession and the near total collapse of the economy.
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3/18/14
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Because I don’t feel the coverage so far has plumbed the depths of this corruption, and because it’s still happening, it’s not worth going silent just yet. It’s probably spitting into the wind, yes, but I’ve got the time and the spit, so I want to note a few things.
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David Dayen
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This was all part of the same overall scheme. Even if the DoJ did a “good” job on mortgage fraud as defined by this report, it wouldn’t have touched Wall Street, because the definition mostly comprises lying on loan applications. In a way, the FBI’s compartmentalizing here shows how the law enforcement apparatus was never going to get to the bottom of the scandal. They placed a false frame on it, one that inherently goes after the little guy and not the bigger players.
Of course, as we see, DoJ couldn’t even be bothered to get the small spade work done (which could have led them to the top). And if they wouldn’t prosecute small-time fraud, they weren’t going to prosecute anything.
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3/18/14
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Is this California lawsuit nothing more than a show of vanity, destined to fail?
Absolutely not. In fact, by a strict reading of the case law and the documents in the case, the plaintiffs should win in a walk.
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David Dayen
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There is no question that the $369 million at issue was required to be deposited into a Special Deposit Fund. There is no question that this sum was supposed to be devoted to the specific purposes for which the Special Deposit Fund was created, as expressly recited in the pertinent settlement documents co-signed by the California
AG's Office. There is no question that most of the money was instead diverted to the State’s General Fund to pay off the State’s general debts. And there is no question that the Governor has projected a large budgetary surplus for 2014 and beyond, but has given no indication in his budget that he intends to replenish the diverted funds, now or ever.
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3/18/14
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Full post
Last Friday, a former Wells Fargo branch manager, sales manager and loan officer, Robert
Serao, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charge stems from Serao’s involvement in a $40.8 million mortgage fraud scheme
during his time at Wells Fargo. Allegedly working in concert with at least nine others, Serao used “straw buyers” to obtain underwriting approvals of what in actuality were fraudulent loan applications.
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Lexology
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In the pre-2008 mortgage boom, if a potential homebuyer lacked sufficient credit to obtain the necessary loan, unscrupulous loan officers and real estate brokers enlisted (or sometimes created) an individual with good credit (i.e., a “straw buyer”) to pose as the loan applicant, in the stead of the actual buyer. In exchange for allowing his name and credit profile to be used in connection with the loan application, the straw buyer received a kick-back from the loan proceeds. Meanwhile, officers such as Serao, who approved the loans, benefitted from increased commissions from loans to borrowers that, but for the scam, would not have qualified for the loan for which he or she was applying.
Serao faces a maximum potential penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for his involvement in the conspiracy.
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3/17/14
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General Electric Co.'s retail credit business is facing a pair of probes from federal regulators over possible violations of consumer financial laws.
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Dow Jones
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Synchrony Financial, the new name of GE's consumer-credit arm, said in filings with securities regulators last week that it is in discussions with the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau related to "debt cancellation products" and marketing practices for those services. It is also in talks with the Justice Department to resolve a separate issue investigated by the CFPB involving a potential violation of federal lending discrimination laws for excluding Spanish- speaking customers from settlement offers.
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Reuters
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A former personal banker at Bank of America Corp pleaded guilty on Monday to stealing more than $2.1 million from 31 people in a Ponzi-like scheme.
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3/17/14
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A judgment against the Boca Raton-based Fidelity Land Trust
Co. clears the titles of hundreds of homes statewide that were signed over to the firm in what the Florida attorney general says was a foreclosure-rescue scheme.
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Palm Beach Post
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“Fidelity made false and deceptive or unfair promises and representations to consumers in order to induce consumers to transfer title to their homes to Fidelity for no consideration and to pay Fidelity thousands of dollars in advance fees for services that could not be delivered,” the judgment says.
“The damage done by these scams is not only to the consumers who are taken by them, but to the justice system overall because it muddies the water for other consumers and judges as to what constitutes a legitimate defense to foreclosure,” said
attorney Tom Ice.
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3/17/14
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A group of Walter Investment common stockholders is alleging that the company made false and misleading statements that violate Federal Securities Law.
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Housing Wire
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The group filed a lawsuit which alleges that between May 9, 2012 and Feb. 26, 2014, Walter Investments made false and misleading statements, failed to disclose that the company lacked adequate internal controls over financial accounting, was in violation of applicable laws, rules and regulations and that its business practices violated consumer financial protection laws and jeopardized future revenues and profits.
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3/17/14
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Wells Fargo is being accused of developing a
150-page manual for generating bogus mortgage documents to justify home foreclosures
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Housing Wire
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Tirelli’s lawsuit alleges that Wells Fargo used the manual – the copy she entered into evidence was dated February 24, 2012 –
to falsely create evidence of ownership, known as the note, and on how to proceed with a foreclosure when crucial documents are
missing.
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3/17/14
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A St. Louis Fed paper is being cited as 'proof' that affordable housing goals did not contribute to the subprime mortgage boom. While it might delight some lawmakers by supporting their position,
the paper’s analysis is mistaken.
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The American
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The affordable housing goals created substantial demand for subprime loans, a
high percentage of which — as the paper notes — met the technical
requirements of the goals. For this reason, Fannie and
Freddie, the two GSEs
were, by far, the largest buyers of securities backed by such loans. Indeed, as shown in the chart below, the
GSEs bought more than 40 percent of all these securities issued in 2004, a dramatic increase from their purchase share only three years earlier. To achieve this rise in market share, the expansion of
GSE purchases in 2002, 2003, and 2004 accounted for more than half of the growth in the market for private mortgage-backed securities (PMBS) backed by subprime mortgages.
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Washington Post
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“This is a blueprint for fraud,” said Tirelli, who attached a copy of the manual as evidence in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y.
“The idea that this bank is instructing people how to produce these documents is
appalling.”
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3/16/14
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The loan was among more than 60 million that were sold by originating lenders to investment banks through a securitization between
1998 to 2009.
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Garden Island
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Defendant Wachovia alleges it is the holder and owner of the Pascua’s note and also the beneficiary of the mortgage. However, the suit states that
Wells Fargo is identified as the note and mortgage holder and no documents show a legal transfer prior to closing.
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Daily
Report
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Alberto Acevedo Jr. appeared in court Monday and has admitted he was caught in an FBI investigation into suspected corruption at the Bexar
County courthouse.
Acevedo is scheduled to be sentenced in June and faces a maximum 10-year sentence and $250,000 fine. He was released on bond pending his sentencing.
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In recent years the government has been accused of not doing enough to go after the kind of conduct that fueled the housing crisis, including mortgage fraud.
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Raw Story
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The trio asked to review the report’s findings with Holder and discuss steps the agency will take to improve its efforts to prosecute the crimes.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and representatives Elijah Cummings and
Maxine Waters are seeking an audience with Holder
over a new watchdog report that said the FBI ranked mortgage fraud as a low threat after the height of the financial crisis, even though the Justice Department had said investigating that crime would be a top priority.
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3/16/14
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Business Insider
|
"The biggest threat from foreclosures going forward is properties that have been lingering in the foreclosure process for years, many of them vacant with neither the distressed homeowner or the foreclosing lender taking responsibility for maintenance and upkeep of the home - or at the very least facilitating a sale to a new homeowner more likely to perform needed upkeep and
maintenance."
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3/16/14
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For Bill of Albuquerque, the steady stream of emails began last month, carrying the eye-popping headings of “Notice to quit,” “Vacate notice” and “Move out notification.”
Each one urged him to click on a link to read the “official notification from the court.”
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ABJ
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“We have been receiving these emails off and on throughout February,” he informed me by email earlier this month. “Needless to say we have not clicked the link. You might want to let people know through your column that this fraud is occurring and to NOT click on the link.”
Kudos to him for observing one of the key rules in protecting yourself and your computer from email scams: Never click on a link or an attachment contained in an unsolicited email, particularly if the subject or header makes you suspicious.
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NJ
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Legislation that would create a fund to help low and moderate income families afford foreclosure prevention services was passed out of committee Thursday and can now be voted on by the entire Assembly.
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3/15/14
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"The Mortgage Law Group gave them six months of stories about, 'Don't worry about your mortgage.
We got you covered. We got your back. Don't make your payments, just pay us,'" said Ann Saccoccio of the DuRant Law Firm, who is trying to help the Williamses keep their home.
"They were able to rob this couple of their home and their trust."
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WRAL
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The Attorney General's Office also is investigating Legal Helpers and another company possibly linked to The Mortgage Law Group, Consumer First Legal Group.
The law firm representing BB&T didn't give a reason why Friday's foreclosure sale was postponed. The reason isn't important for the Williamses, who hope to attract a private lender in the next few weeks to help them stop the sale altogether.
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3/16/14
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Full post
Wells Fargo, is being investigated for allegedly setting up detailed internal procedures to fabricate foreclosure papers on demand.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and three major regulators are handling the investigation into the foreclosure manual, which the lender maintains does not violate any rules.
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The Real Deal
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“Wells Fargo’s foreclosure processes — today and back in 2012 — are appropriate [and] legal. To allege otherwise is simply misrepresenting the facts,” a Wells Fargo spokesperson said. “Wells Fargo’s Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual provides guidelines for outside attorneys to be compliant with state and regulatory requirements.”
But according to the New York Post, lawyers, forensic accountants and consumer advocates have long suspected that banks were habitually fabricating documents to prove ownership of loans — something foreclosure defense lawyers call a “ta-da endorsement,” which describes the miraculous appearance of documents as needed by the bank in a foreclosure case.
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3/16/14
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This speaks volumes about the nature of justice in the United States today.
The folks who were constructing the securities are all smart people who know what a good mortgage looks like. They surely knew that many of the mortgages they were throwing into the pools were not properly documented and almost certainly fraudulent. In these cases the
Justice Department investigators would ask the Harvard MBAs whether they are really stupider than rocks.
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Center for Economic and Policy Research
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Since this was a widespread practice and not the work of a few rogue agents, presumably office managers told these agents to get mortgages and that proper documentation did not matter. Faced with the risk of jail for committing fraud, it is likely that many agents would be prepared to testify that they were acting on instructions from their branch manager. The investigators would then confront their branch managers with the testimony from their employers and ask them what prompted them to tell employers to ignore standard procedures and pass through improperly documented mortgages. Again, faced the prospect of several years in jail, it is likely that many branch managers would be prepared to testify against their bosses at the corporate headquarters.
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3/15/14
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The public
demands criminal prosecutions!
In the years since the financial crisis of 2008, the Justice Department has been regularly questioned about a lack of criminal prosecutions related to the mortgage mess.
Adam J. Levitin, a professor at the Georgetown University Law School, said the report was troubling not only because of what it revealed about past cases, but also because it suggests that there will be few consequences for those who commit financial fraud in the future.
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Gretchen Morgenson
NY Times
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“We found that, despite public statements by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force and the department about the importance of pursuing financial fraud cases, including mortgage fraud, the F.B.I. Criminal Investigative Division ranked complex financial crimes as the lowest of the six ranked criminal threats within its area of responsibility, and ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest subcategory threat within the complex financial crimes category. Additionally, we found
mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not listed as a priority, for F.B.I. field offices in the locations we
visited.”
Got that? Complex financial crimes were the lowest priority for the criminal investigative division.
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Three nonprofit groups offering homeowner counseling sued Gov. Jerry Brown of California on Friday, demanding the state replace $369 million that had been earmarked to help troubled borrowers but was used instead to pay down the state’s debt.
“To this day, countless California victims of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis and their supporters are waiting to receive any benefit, much less the full benefit, of the settlement the attorney general obtained for the state of California as compensation for the harms the victims suffered and continue to suffer,” the complaint said.
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NY Times
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Under California law, the suit said, money placed in a so-called special deposit fund, as the $369 million was, can be transferred to the state’s general fund only “if the transfer does not interfere with the object for which the special fund was created and the transferred amount is repaid when feasible.”
It is not clear how many other states have such clear restrictions that could allow similar lawsuits to be mounted.
The nonprofit organizations are represented by Neil Barofsky, a partner at Jenner & Block and a former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
In a statement, Mr. Barofsky said, “It is an honor for us to represent such an impressive and courageous group of petitioners as they seek through this action to bring some measure of relief and justice to the struggling homeowners who continue to suffer as the front-line victims of the financial crisis.”
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3/15/14
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Lawyers, forensic accountants and consumer advocates have long suspected that
banks were systematically creating improper documents to falsely prove ownership
of loans.
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NY Post
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Four major watchdogs have taken notice. New York’s attorney general,
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the New York State
Department of Financial Services and the United States Trustee Program
— a unit of the Department of Justice that oversees bankruptcy courts —
have obtained copies of the 150-page
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Foreclosure
Attorney Procedures Manual cited in the allegations filed in federal court
in New York, sources said.
Foreclosure defense lawyers use the term “ta-da endorsement” to describe situations in which they say a document appears, as if by magic, in the bank’s possession as needed in a foreclosure case — even though the proper endorsement was not included in the original foreclosure filing.
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Lawyers & Settlements
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Banks and mortgage lenders who thought their use of force-placed insurance on homeowners would be an easy way to increase profits might be thinking twice, following numerous settlements in force-placed insurance lawsuits. According to reports, settlements have been reached in lawsuits filed against
Bank of America, HSBC Holdings
Plc, Citigroup and Wells
Fargo, concerning their use of force-placed insurance.
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3/14/14
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FDIC claims the banks committed fraud and violated U.S. antitrust laws in fixing the Libor benchmark. It seeks unspecified damages.
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Bloomberg
|
Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. (C) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) were among more than a dozen banks sued by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for allegedly manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate from 2007 to 2011.
The case is Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. v. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), 14-cv-01757, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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3/13/14
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The Reuters story revealed that thousands of borrowers across the country were the unwitting owners of zombie homes. Many were on the hook for thousands of dollars of mortgage debt, code violations and municipal services like water and trash.
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Reuters
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"There is direct borrower harm if a borrower believes a foreclosure on their property has been conducted and they are no longer responsible, and months or years later find out that they are, that there was never a foreclosure and they have large financial responsibilities that they never knew about."
The CFPB also said that it has joined a task force, led by several industries, to identify the hundreds of thousands of homes that have become zombie foreclosures.
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3/13/14
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Bloomberg
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The judge who heard the arguments today in Manhattan federal court said he’ll take his time analyzing their rationale since the case is the first time the U.S. went to trial against a bank alleging a violation of a civil fraud statute enacted during the
Savings-and-Loan Crisis of the 1980s.
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AUDIT
REPORT
3/13/14
|
The U.S. Justice Department used faulty statistics to overstate its mortgage-fraud prosecution efforts and ranked mortgage-fraud last in its list of priorities
despite public pledges to combat these types of crimes.
Also: Audit: Justice Department, FBI, failed to jail mortgage fraudsters
Inspector General publicly shames law enforcement
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L.A. Times
____
Housing Wire
|
Thursday's report undercuts contentions by the federal government made four years ago that it would aggressively investigate cases of mortgage fraud, which proliferated following the housing bubble and eventual crash.
President Obama in 2009 signed an executive order creating the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task
Force, an inter-agency group that included 25 federal and state agencies, regulators and inspectors general. The task force was headed by a Justice Department official and among its missions was to ensure cooperation with the myriad of agencies.
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The US Department of Justice has been criticized for “immensely” overstating the success of a homeowner fraud programme and failing to
prioritize mortgage fraud, according to an internal watchdog.
AUDIT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE’S EFFORTS TO ADDRESS MORTGAGE FRAUD
|
FT
|
It found the DoJ overstated the results of a 2011 initiative targeting fraud against distressed homeowners. In an October 2012 press conference led by Eric Holder, attorney-general, the DoJ said 530 individuals were charged for frauds exceeding $1bn.
In reality, the audit found, only 107 people were charged for distressed homeowner frauds
totaling $95m, 91 per cent lower than stated. The audit said DoJ officials almost immediately became aware of problems with the statistics but failed to correct public statements for 10 months.
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Administration Won’t Name Offending Prosecutors
The violations include instances in which attorneys who have a duty to uphold justice have, according to the internal affairs office,
misled courts, withheld evidence that could have helped defendants, abused prosecutorial and investigative power, and violated constitutional
rights.
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POGO
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The violations include instances in which attorneys who have a duty to uphold justice have, according to the internal affairs office, misled courts, withheld evidence that could have helped defendants, abused prosecutorial and investigative power, and violated constitutional rights.
From fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2013, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) documented more than 650
infractions.
In the majority of the matters—more than 400—OPR categorized the violations as being at the more severe end of the scale: recklessness or intentional misconduct, as distinct from error or poor judgment.
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3/13/14
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Scammers advertise with mail, phone calls
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KOAT
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Scammers advertise by mailings and phone calls, including a mailing titled
"Payment Reduction Notification." The homeowner is promised a lower home loan payment. The scammers tell the consumer to send money orders or cashier's checks to an address in Long Beach, California and to make the payments to
"US Recovery Program" or "Legal
Department."
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3/13/14
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Mortgage Servicing News
|
The Treasury Department has directed mortgage servicers to notify borrowers 120 days in advance of upcoming increases in monthly payments on loans previously reworked through
the HAMP ruse.
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3/13/14
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Marketplace
|
"They're sitting vacant," said RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist of these so-called zombie properties. "The bank is not claiming responsibility, the homeowner is not claiming responsibility, the property is falling into disrepair. The property taxes aren't being paid. So it's causing an eyesore in the community, and also potentially dragging down home values of surrounding properties."
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3/13/14
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NPR
|
Foreclosures are at a seven-year low nationwide. In California, however, the number of notices of default, which is the first step in the foreclosure process, jumped.
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3/3/14
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WORTH WATCHING
This is a great piece to share with friends and who still aren’t sure why we had a crisis or are predisposed to blame it on greedy borrowers, as opposed to greedy and reckless financial services industry players.
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Criminologist and former financial regulator
Professor
Bill Black
|
Black explains how banks caused the financial crisis and why it was completely avoidable.
Savings & Loan fiasco and Ameriquest
mentioned. DOJ gets hammered!
"Remember there is no Fraud exorcist. Once it starts out a fraudulent
loan, it can only be sold to the secondary market through more frauds."
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3/13/14
|
We have seen cases dating back to the 1990′s that have not been prosecuted and judges in all states are dismissing for failure to prosecute
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Living Lies
|
We have reached a turning point where courts and others are saying to the banks, “if your claims are real, why didn’t you prosecute them for years?”
The essential problem that is now bubbling to the surface after years of suppression is this: the lender is receiving payments based upon a different deal and computation than the deal and computation the borrower is required to pay. The lender’s right to repayment comes from the bond indenture on the mortgage bond issued by a REMIC trust that never had any money, assets, income or expenses.
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3/13/14
3/12/14
|
The notion was clearly to complete as many foreclosures as cheaply as possible, the law be damned.
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naked capitalism
|
Wells Fargo has consistently been arrogant and obstructionist. So as much as Wells allowing her to proceed with discovery will be a longer, harder road than a quick and quiet settlement, it has the potential to do a tremendous amount of good for beleaguered borrowers by exposing the deliberate, orchestrated nature of Wells’ bad conduct. Stay tuned.
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According to court papers, the Manual details “a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.”
If the allegations in Tirelli’s court filing are true, this manual represents the first time ‘ta-da’ endorsements are “being described and admitted to be a procedure” at a major bank.
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NY Post
--------
h/t Deontos
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The manual, a copy of which was obtained by the Post, appears to provide step-by-step instructions for a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage
“Default Docs Team” and foreclosure attorneys if a blank endorsement is in a file and the attorney wants that note executed. In addition, the manual outlines steps for attorneys and the Default Docs Team to create allonges, endorsements to a note on a separate sheet of paper when there is no room left at the bottom of the note. Step 3 under the header “Allonge” on page 17 reads: “WFHM Default Docs Team: If file was ordered and received, review … to determine what entities the attorney needs the note endorsement to reflect.”
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NY Post
|
A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the
seventh suicide of a financial professional this year.
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3/12/14
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There is this madness that is burning all across the State of Florida, across the country. The madness is that millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on a court system that works to return properties in foreclosure to “The Banks”. But it’s not really “The Banks” that will take back the properties.
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Weidner Law
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Even though “Bank of America” or “Wells Fargo” or “Citi” may “win” the auction….these nominal plaintiffs don’t take anything….they aren’t the real party in interest in these proceedings…..these plaintiffs are straw parties, place holders….the bag men of the debt collecting/foreclosure world. The real party in interest…the real entity that owns the notes and mortgages are hiding behind the scenes. Fannie or Freddie or any of the other shadowy and concealed aggregate debt owners who themselves don’t actually own the debt they are pimping.
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3/12/14
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San Jose Mercury News
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Starting in 2009, the Obama administration helped hundreds of thousands of Americans avoid foreclosure by reducing their monthly mortgage payments for five years.
Time is running out. Many of the beneficiaries of the Home Affordable Modification Program will see their payments go up starting this year, and there are indications that some may lose their homes now anyway.
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3/12/14
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Armando Granillo viewed the kickbacks as commonly accepted behavior and did not intend to defraud Fannie Mae, his lawyer says.
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L.A. Times
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It was unclear whether evidence from Cecelia Carter, another Fannie Mae foreclosure specialist in Irvine, would be introduced to bolster Granillo's contention that
kickbacks were widespread and tolerated at the government-backed company.
In a pending state court lawsuit, Carter contends Fannie Mae
fired her in 2011 after she tried to expose widespread corruption, including her belief that Mary Irvine, a supervisor who oversaw both her and Granillo, was among those accepting kickbacks for property listings. She and Granillo have said they discussed the kickbacks and the agency's lack of interest in doing anything about them.
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3/12/14
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Opinion:
In Re: Dorsey v. Vanderbuilt Mortgage
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Kentucky Appellate Court
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"It appears that the chain of title of the Note was not properly proved and therefore the party entitled to enforce the Note is not the Appellant. As neither a holder of the Note nor a non-holder with the rights of a holder, Vanderbilt cannot enforce the Note. Because “a mortgage is valid and enforceable only if the underlying debt continues to be an enforceable obligation,” the Mortgage is no longer enforceable under Kentucky law."
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William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, criticized banks for their
“lack of respect for law, regulation and the public trust.”
There is evidence of deep -seated cultural and ethical failures at many large financial institutions.
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NY Times
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Money laundering, market rigging, tax dodging, selling faulty financial products, trampling homeowner rights and rampant risk-taking — these are some of the sins that big banks have committed in recent years.
Now, some government authorities are publicly questioning whether such misdeeds are not just the work of a few bad actors, but rather a flaw that runs through the fabric of the banking industry.
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Bloomberg
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“The Association of Mortgage Investors remains committed to the rights of investors,” Chris Katopis, executive director of the group, said by telephone.
“We are currently reviewing action against a number of servicers for their actions that have been harmful for both investors and
borrowers.”
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3/12/14
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Mortgage Servicing News
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to address the growing problem of vacant and abandoned properties that banks and mortgage servicers have walked away from to avoid maintaining the homes.
Some borrowers are being harmed when a mortgage servicer starts a foreclosure but then fails to complete it, leaving borrowers on the hook for the mortgage debt, taxes and maintenance even though they may have already moved out
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3/12/14
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The South Florida couple thought they were getting the perfect home at a bargain thanks to the continuing foreclosure crisis. Instead they claim they walked into a real estate nightmare.
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NBC Miami
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Now, there’s yet another hurdle to clear the title – a $40,000 lien a construction company owner has slapped on the property because he says FASTP didn’t pay him.
Real estate attorney Norman Powell told NBC 6 these kinds of situations are happening across South Florida.
“It’s extremely common,“ he said.
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3/12/14
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What is striking about Holland’s investigation is how little rigorous work has been done in this area, despite its importance to ordinary Americans. The few previous empirical studies have been small in scale, limited to single counties or courts, and thus could easily be brushed off as not representative (the one exception was not as in depth as the Holland study). This is the first large-scale statistical analysis of this type.
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naked capitalism
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Peter A. Holland
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
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In the overwhelming majority of cases, these are junk claims that could be beaten if the borrower had the means. In many cases, the debt is invalid by being too old (the statute of limitations has expired), previously discharged (the borrower actually paid it or it was wiped out in bankruptcy). And even when it might be valid, debt collectors can rarely meet the legal standards needed to enforce the obligation (which includes a copy of the original agreement with the borrower’s signature, the payment history that proves the amount owed, and the complete documentation to substantiate all the transfers of the debt from the original lender to the current holder). To add insult to injury, the debt collectors typically can’t begin to prove how the borrower came to owe the amount it says is due. But broke borrowers aren’t in a great position to pay legal fees.
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3/12/14
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Damage awards for wrongful foreclosure are rising across the country.
For every one of these judgments that are reported, I hear about dozens of confidential settlements that are of similar nature, to wit:
clear title on the house, damages and attorneys fees.
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Living Lies
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Where a loan is subject to claims of securitization, and the investment banks lied to insurers, investors, guarantors and other co-obligors, they most likely have been paid many times for the same loan and never gave credit to the investors. By not crediting the investors they created the illusion of a higher balance that was due on the loan. They also created the illusion of a default that probably never occurred. But by pursuing foreclosure and foreclosure sale, they compounded the illusion and avoided claims for refund and repayment received from third parties and created claims for recovery of servicer advances. In many foreclosures that I have reviewed, payments received from the FDIC under loss-sharing were never taken into account. Thus the bank collects money repeatedly for a loss it never incurred.
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3/12/14
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DealBook
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Hedge funds like Fairholme Capital Management have urged Washington to revitalize
Fannie, the mortgage finance giant, which along with
Freddie Mac was kept alive with nearly $190 billion of taxpayer cash in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The prospect has pushed up the price of Fannie’s preferred stock more than tenfold in 18 months. But according to a Breakingviews analysis, even cheerful assumptions suggest
Fannie’s business isn’t worth enough for shareholders to get much if anything back.
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3/12/14
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The "big fix" that fixes nothing.
Must Read: GUARANTEED
TO FAIL
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WSJ
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The government is going to dress Fannie/Freddie in new clothes, call it
something else, and use the same fatally-flawed business model that Paulson and
Soros said "Simply does not work".
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3/12/14
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... because the people with the power to stop (elected officials, judges,
regulators and lawyers are profiting from it.
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Washington Post
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After all the increases take effect, the median monthly payment would rise by about $200 at the national level. But many borrowers face steeper increases.
In California and Hawaii, which have a high concentration of HAMP modifications, the median increases will be $300 and $356, respectively. In California,
payments will jump by as much as $1,724 in some cases.
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3/12/14
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The Nevada Attorney General is teaming up with the state's top housing counselors to help you keep your home.
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KOLOTV
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The program protects homeowners from becoming victims. One of the biggest problems Nevadans face is mortgage fraud due to the foreclosure
crisis the banks created.
"People have been prayed upon because they have been trying to save their homes and you have some disreputable person or company coming along saying, 'I can help you, but in order for you to do that you have to pay me some money," Cortez Masto said.
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3/11/14
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Unless HSBC can produce a Power of Attorney or some other written document signed by
Intervale granting Decision One the proper authority to indorse, or transfer rights to promissory note, to another party, then it most likely will not be able to succeed in prosecuting the foreclosure.
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McGookey Law
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In short, our client will have put a major dent in HSBC's
plan to take his home away. Only when HSBC realizes it has not successfully passed it slipshod paperwork under everyone's noses will it come to the table and treat our client fairly. And this brings us to one of the biggest tragedies of our time; in the
world of securitized lending, one's bank is not the owner of the loan, but merely a loan servicer.
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3/11/14
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Under the outline, private interests would take the first 10 percent of any mortgage losses, before an emergency government backstop would kick
in that the taxpayers would have to pay AGAIN.
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NY Times
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Under the proposal, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be wound down and replaced with a new government reinsurer called the Federal Mortgage Insurance
Corporation, which would provide assistance only after private creditors had taken a hit. The entity would be financed by fees on lenders who want the government backstop.
They are going to put a new dress on Fannie
& Freddie, give it a new name,
and use the same business model that has already been widely publicized as
FATALLY FLAWED and DOES NOT WORK.
The GSE is a cash cow for criminals and
another bill for taxpayers.
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3/11/14
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Mortgage Servicing News
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Hope LoanPort has started new collaborative partnerships with several national organizations, including the
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Loan Modification Scam Prevention
Network, to collectively provide foreclosure related fraud prevention assistance to homeowners.
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3/11/14
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Off-topic
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Brennan Center for Justice
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Law enforcement officers should not be allowed to search the contents of a cellphone without a warrant when they arrest someone, argues the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) in an
amicus brief filed Monday.
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3/11/14
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The answer to that question is that probably nobody has the right to execute a satisfaction of mortgage. That is why the mortgage deed needs to be nullified.
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Living Lies
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The execution of fabricated, forged and unauthorized assignments or endorsements does not mean that there is any underlying business transaction with offer, acceptance and consideration. Hence, when a Court order is entered requiring that the parties claiming rights under the note and mortgage prove their claim by showing the money trail, the case is dropped or settled under seal of confidentiality.
This is why so many cases get settled after the borrower aggressively seeks discovery.
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3/11/14
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Dickenson had worked for Swiss Re since March of 2002 according to his LinkedIn profile. One would think that out of respect for his service to the company, it would release a statement of sorrow for the family, his age and bio. A search of Swiss Re’s web site turned up no media release.
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Pam Martens
Wall Street on Parade
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JPMorgan’s ties run deep with Zurich Insurance Group. JPMorgan is a market maker in the stock of Zurich Insurance Group, which raises
red flags since it also puts out overweight, underweight and neutral ratings on the company which can move the share price up or down. JPMorgan also serves as an investment banker to the company, raising still more
red flags for potentially conflicted research. (This is all a reminder of just how little has changed under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the U.S.)
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3/10/14
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Bernanke’s appointment calendar suggests two things: (1) that the depth of the crisis began on Friday, March 7, 2008 and (2) that Bernanke played a far greater role than previously known.
By Thursday, March 13, as a full blown run on the liquidity of Bear Stearns took place, there is a 6 inch long black box redaction of everyone the Fed Chairman spoke to or met with from 4:30 p.m. that day.
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Wall Street on Parade
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What we do know is that sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning, the
Fed and JPMorgan hatched a plan to inject liquidity backstopped by the Fed into
Bear Stearns. An announcement of the plan to the press early Friday morning was meant to stabilize things. Instead, the stock of
Bear Stearns dropped 46 percent that day. By Sunday night, JPMorgan had agreed to take over
Bear Stearns with billions in backstop guarantees from the Fed.
Unfortunately for the American people, what men on the payroll of the U.S. government, earning $199,700 a year and a pension, do during their workday is apparently off limits to public scrutiny.
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3/10/14
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to use a case involving mortgage-backed securities to rule on the time limits that apply to some fraud suits filed by investors.
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Bloomberg
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The issue centers on the three-year time limit that typically applies to suits over securities offerings. The Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, known as MissPERS, argues in its appeal that the period should be extended in its case because Wyoming officials had filed a similar class action suit.
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3/10/14
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Servicing becomes more of a shadow industry:
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Market Watch
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The government, unimpressed by banks’ previous handling of troubled mortgage loans, has been pushing banks out of the mortgage-servicing industry. But that’s creating a market that’s wide open for hedge funds and other non-bank financial companies to step in, which has some advocates just as worried.
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3/10/14
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Florida consumers need an attorney general that will support the interests of consumers. But we don’t have that. Florida currently has an attorney general that works with banks and big business….and in doing so does such harm to Florida’s consumers. It’s just disgusting. Bondi is nothing but an extension of the universally reviled corporate demon Rick Scott.
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Weidner Law
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When the Attorney General takes the continuing big-dollar support from Donald Trump and his rich friends, people can’t have confidence in any decision she makes. Now she is shamelessly doubling down on her pay-to-play ethics.”
Three days after Bondi said she was reviewing a complaint against a Trump organization, the Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to an organization Bondi’s campaign set up called “And Justice for All.”
Three days after the money came in, Bondi decided NOT to pursue the complaint against Trump, according to the Tampa Tribune.
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3/10/14
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Longtime foreclosure defense lawyer Dan McGookey rejects the idea of a fast-track, noting the courts are the only way to reveal the bad actions that led to the foreclosure crisis.
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Newark Advocate
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McGookey said “there is fraud in every case,” and he pointed to the “robo-signing”
scandal. He added that more than half the clients at his Sandusky and Columbus offices were, he believes, illegally denied assistance from a loan-modification program by the lender.
“If you’re fast-tracking foreclosures, that form of fraud is not going to get exposed either,” McGookey said.
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3/10/14
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The Requirements of Due Process.—Although due process tolerates variances in procedure “appropriate to the nature of the case,”694 it is nonetheless possible to identify its core goals and requirements. First, “[p]rocedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or
property.”
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Living Lies
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Thus, the required elements of due process are those that “minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations” by enabling persons to contest the basis upon which a State proposes to deprive them of protected
interests. The core of these requirements is notice and a hearing before an impartial tribunal. Due process may also require an opportunity for confrontation and cross-examination, and for discovery; that a decision be made based on the record, and that a party be allowed to be represented by counsel.
688 Ballard v. Hunter, 204 U.S. 241, 255 (1907); Palmer v. McMahon, 133 U.S. 660, 668 (1890).
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2/24/14
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Depression, stress, burnout, a profession filled with workaholics. Does the work drive lawyers to kill themselves?
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Texas Center for Legal Ethics
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Although there is no single thread that unites the instances of suicides among lawyers, the American Psychological Association says depression generally is the most likely trigger. Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than non-lawyers, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death among practicing attorneys.
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2/24/14
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Georgia Supreme Court
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We grant the voluntary petition and suspend Watson from the practice of law in Georgia for 91 days
nunc pro tunc to June 5, 2013.
In his petition, Watson asserts that in Florida he maintained a high-volume
foreclosure practice representing lenders, but admits that he failed to take
reasonable steps to supervise and train his employees.
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Professor Dale Whitman posted a commentary on Quintana v. Bank of
America.
Synopsis: A borrowers who is “jerked around” by a mortgage servicer may have claims in fraud or on other theories.
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REFinBlog
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Karoly Quintana’s home mortgage loan was serviced by Bank of
America, When she began having difficulty making her payments in 2009,
she was told by B of A that she would have to miss three payments to be considered for a loan
modification, and that the servicer would forbear foreclosure while it did so. She missed the payments and applied for a modification, but (she alleged) B of A did not consider it, and instead accelerated her loan and commenced foreclosure.
In general, of course, there’s no legal right to a modification. But this court holds that a false promise to consider a modification is enough to make out a claim of
fraud.
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3/10/14
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There are a lot of legal errors and omissions in this document most notably UETA Section 16 is misquoted. Basically, it's a handbook on how to foreclose faster.
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Weidner Law
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The filing of a forged document warrants disbarment. The Florida Bar v.
Hall, 49 So. 3d 1254, 1259 (Fla. 2010)
Fraud - Elements of fraud must be pled using specific, ultimate facts.
Moreover, fraud cannot form the basis for recovery of damages unless the damages
directly arise from the fraud and are causally connected to the fraud. Simon v.
Celebration Co., 883 So. 2d 826, 829 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004).
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3/9/14
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Mr Lawsky’s office is now investigating the rapid growth of non-bank mortgage servicing companies
Ocwen and Nationstar. He is also looking into possible sanctions violations by several banks and the consultants that advise them.
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FT
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New York’s aggressive banking regulator who is campaigning to clean up Wall Street, is turning his sights on the individuals as well as the institutions who squeeze struggling homeowners or help banks violate US sanctions.
“People who did the conduct are going to be held accountable.”
Mr Lawsky’s name-and-shame strategy taps into a wave of popular discontent in the US and Europe over the fact that few individual bankers have been personally sanctioned for the bad decisions that led to the global financial crisis. Taxpayers have been forced to stump up hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue banks brought low by reckless behaviour
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3/9/14
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If you’re a banker today, many who once looked up to you as a success now think you’re evil; maybe you’re even the type who caused the economy to crumble.
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NY Post
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On top of that, you hear politicians from the president on down blaming “Wall Street and bankers” for the crisis, as if they were all the same, when in reality it was only five or six individuals very high up at places like
Bear Stearns and Lehman
Bros. who share responsibility.
Today many Wall Street bankers are in the midst of their own emotional and economic crises.
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3/9/14
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The documents are noteworthy because Credit Suisse, unlike many other major banks, has refused to settle large lawsuits stemming from the mortgage crisis.
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Gretchen Morgenson
NY Times
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The emails are part of a newly released trove of internal communications and documents, mostly from
2006 and 2007, that paint a troubling picture of how Credit
Suisse, a major player in the American mortgage market, operated as the housing bubble inflated.
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3/6/14
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The plaintiffs in this case lost their home to a foreclosure in May 2011. Although plaintiffs tried to avoid foreclosure by negotiating with
Wells Fargo’s servicing company, America’s Servicing
Company, U.S. Bank nevertheless foreclosed and sold their home at auction. Despite seeking information from U.S. Bank and ASC concerning why ASC refused to provide them with a modification after entering into several trial loan modification plans, plaintiffs lost their home of over 25 years in March 2011.
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Bergman & Gutierrez
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Deborah Gutierrez argued Junod v. MERS et al., before a 3 judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case involves issues similar to those in
Glaski v. Bank America– whether a homeowner can challenge a foreclosure by claiming that a post-closing date transfer into a securitized trust governed by
New York Trust law was void. While this issue involves a complex analysis of California law, New York trust law, and IRS codes, the issue is relatively simple. The theory advanced by the Plaintiffs in this case was that as
U.S. Bank as Trustee for the CSMC Trust Mortgage Backed 2006-6
did not actually own the mortgage loan on which it foreclosed. More specifically, the Plaintiffs claimed that the Assignment of Deed of Trust, dated April 16, 2010, purporting to assign their mortgage loan to a securitized trust with a “closing date” of June 29, 2006, was void since the trust had closed years before in 2006. Thus,
U.S. Bank as the trustee, could not have validly accepted the untimely transfer of the mortgage.
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3/9/14
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What if the S.E.C. doesn’t bring a successful case based on a whistle-blower’s complaint but another law enforcement agency does, using the same information?
The answer appears to be this: The whistle-blower may get no award at all.
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Gretchen Morgenson
NY Times
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Late last month, deep in the annual financial statement filed by SunTrust Banks — there was this nugget of news: The Justice Department is investigating mortgages that
SunTrust, a large bank holding company operating in the Southeast, underwrote and sold to
Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, the home loan finance giants.
The whistle-blower said, SunTrust failed to alert investors to buyback risks on
“tens of billions” worth of loans.
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Aurora Loan Services v. Hunter
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Weidner Law
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See this very powerful video…it really drills down into the important issues in a foreclosure trial.
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3/8/14
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Wells Fargo foreclosed on the family home despite the accidental death insurance policy the bank sold his father along with the mortgage – conduct an Albuquerque judge said was so
“highly reprehensible” she slapped the company with a judgment awarding the Dollens estate $2.7 million in punitive damages.
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ABQ Journal
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Judge Beatrice Brickhouse, who also awarded damages of $15,633 under the New Mexico Unfair Trade Practices Act,
used words like “shocking” to describe conduct by Wells
Fargo, summing up evidence from a bench trial in December 2012 and March 2013.
She also awarded $390,000 in fees to the law firm that has been litigating the case on behalf of the estate, along with almost $50,000 in costs, though attorney Katy Duhigg-Kennedy says it may be years before they see any of it since Wells Fargo has said it will appeal.
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3/8/14
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Regulators worry that non-bank lenders will jeopardize people's homes
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Quartz
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The emergence of non-traditional bank lenders (paywall) in the US home lending market has drawn intense scrutiny from regulators, and a look at the eye-popping growth of one non-bank mortgage lender,
Ocwen Financial, can help explain why.
A person familiar with Lawsky’s review of the mortgage servicer said that the company has at times been slow to deliver loan documents requested by the DFS. Ocwen did not immediately return calls requesting comment
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VC Star
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Bank of America's finances have been improving. Last year its profit more than tripled to $10.08 billion,
while worsening unemployment by cutting staff and focusing on its core
business of stealing homes it doesn't own and ripping off more of its
customer base. Its balance sheet and shadow banking improved after the
Justice Department announced it is simply too frail and undereducated to stop
the banks' theft by deception and manipulation scheme.
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3/7/14
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The government said it ultimately had to cover millions of dollars of losses after some of the bank's loans went sour, resulting in evictions and foreclosures nationwide.
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Reuters
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In the February 4 settlement, JPMorgan admitted that for more than a decade it submitted thousands of mortgages for insurance by the Federal Housing Administration or the Department of Veterans Affairs that did not qualify for government guarantees.
JPMorgan also admitted that it had failed to tell the agencies that its own internal reviews had turned up problems.
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Saccoccio v. JPMorgan Chase
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GCG
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Who Is Included in the Settlement Class?
The Settlement Class consists of all borrowers in the United States who,
between January 1, 2008 and October 4, 2013, were charged by the Chase Defendants as insureds or additional insureds under a hazard lender-placed insurance
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3/7/14
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GKW
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This case, in combination with other legal arguments will help tip the outcome in many cases for years to come. And it reveals some simple concepts that are not being discussed in the main stream of legal writing. The main thing is the simple idea that banks cannot lure people into default, foreclose on them and get away with it. Where the Glaski case in California shows that the banks can and should be liable for wrongful foreclosure, the Steinberger decision shows one of the ways that can be mapped out in your pleadings.
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3/7/14
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The researchers warn, however, that it is difficult to draft legislation that balances the interests of creditors and homeowners because it "requires the input of creditors, attorneys, communities and the judiciary."
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Mortgage Servicing News
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Legislators in some judicial foreclosure states have attempted to address these deadweight losses by creating foreclosure fast-tracking programs. Ohio is one example where legislators created a private mortgage foreclosure fast-track for tax foreclosures in 2006, and are now considering a pilot foreclosure fast-track for properties abandoned by the homeowner.
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3/7/14
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The debt is backed by liens on homes created as consumers are given funds for work such as weather sealing, insulation upgrades or solar-panel
installations, called Property Assessed Clean Energy assessments.
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Bloomberg
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The notes might incur losses if the overseer of government-backed mortgage guarantors
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decides to challenge the priority status of the liens in federal court, Kroll said.
With the liens that are similar to tax assessments said to rank more senior than mortgages, giving them a greater right to foreclosure proceeds, the Federal Housing Finance Agency told Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac in 2010 to avoid guaranteeing new loans on properties with them. Last year, after facing opposition from California’s attorney general, the FHFA defeated a court challenge to the directive.
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3/3/14
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Consumerist
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On Friday, a federal judge signed off on a settlement that will have JPMorgan Chase paying out at least $300 million to around 750,000 mortgage borrowers. It’s the first of what could be several large settlements with major lenders over the issue of forced-place insurance.
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3/7/14
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IndyMac's PETITION FOR REVIEW
OF A SPECIAL ACTION DECISION OF THE COURT OF APPEALS
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Arizona Supreme Court
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IndyMac claims THE APPELLATE COURT'S DECISION IS
INCONSISTENT WITH THIS COURT'S REJECTION OF "SHOW-ME-THE-NOTE"
CHALLENGES TO NON-JUDICIAL FORECLOSURES.
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There are dozens of programs available in many of the states that could help thousands of homeowners. The problem is that nobody is making application to those programs.
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Living Lies
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So I am publicizing facts about those programs in an effort to encourage homeowners and attorneys to do their homework and to make proper application. It is probably a good idea to utilize the services of the law firms that have already started to concentrate on these programs. These firms are willing to cocounsel with other lawyers who have been litigating cases or web clients that might benefit from these programs.
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3/6/14
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One industry insider told us that all non-Fannie Mae or
Freddie Mac mortgages were transferred improperly. In other words, the ownership of potentially millions of mortgages is in question.
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Hannah Appel & JP Massar
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First, simply the prospect of turning the table on the banks by forcing them to prove ownership (which they most likely cannot) is itself a significant step in the right direction.
Second, as one lawyer we consulted for this article put it: ...these are issues of power. Create enough political leverage, and these nebulous and complex issues get
resolved in favor of the people. Judges and policy makers have to understand that correct decisions are the only thing standing between them and 40,000 people marching in the street.
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3/6/14
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Reuters
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Victims of Bernard Madoff's epic fraud may be able to recoup only a small portion of the billions of dollars he allegedly funneled to selected customers in the last years of his Ponzi scheme.
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Washington Informer
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“Servicing transfers where the new servicers are not honoring existing permanent or trial modifications will not be tolerated. There will be no more shell games where the first servicer says the transfer ended all of its responsibility to consumers and the second servicer says it got a data dump missing critical documents.”
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3/6/14
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We all know that consumers continue to suffer gross abuses at the hands of the banks and a court system which has largely reached the conclusion that banks must be rewarded with Final Judgments of Foreclosure no matter what the facts.
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Weidner Law
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Largely missing from this consideration is the long term and disastrous consequences for the entirety of the judicial system because in order to continue with this madness of providing rewards to the banking institutions in spite of and in the face of their gross misconduct, Florida’s courts are dispensing with due process and ignoring all sense of balance and equal justice under the law.
Recently a judge simply signed a Final Judgment of Foreclosure despite the fact that the bank witness didn’t have a single piece of paper with him in court. No note. No mortgage. No evidence of amounts due and owing…..NOTHING.
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3/6/14
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The cases are Hall v. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), 12-22700, Lopez v. HSBC Bank USA NA, 13-21104, and Fladell v. Wells Fargo Bank
N.A., 13-60721, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
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Bloomberg
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So-called force-placed insurance is taken out on homes by banks or mortgage servicers when, for example, a homeowner’s policy lapses or the bank decides the borrower doesn’t have enough coverage. The homeowners alleged in class-action lawsuits that the banks got a financial windfall by cutting deals with insurance companies and over-charging borrowers for the coverage.
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3/6/14
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A jump in lender-paid policies would come at an inopportune time for the industry, which faces new regulatory requirements for such insurance, underscoring the need to educate borrowers why it is necessary.
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Mortgage Servicing News
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A 2012 law designed to stabilize the National Flood Insurance Program's finances could have the unintended consequence of dramatically increasing the price of coverage for borrowers in flood zones. This in turn could result in more borrowers failing to pay or renew flood coverage, requiring lenders to force-place coverage, says Tom Elder, the program manager for financial institutions at the wholesale insurance brokerage All Risks.
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NY Times
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In addition to low-down-payment financing and priority status for owner-occupants, the
government controlled mortgage giant has begun offering closing-cost assistance to qualified
buyers WITHOUT DISCLOSING THE TITLE IS TAINTED!
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3/6/14
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Bankruptcy Law Network
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Has anyone ever offered you $500, $1,000, $2,000 or more for you to sign your name – no strings attached?
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3/5/14
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Dunn's firm ended up dropping the underlying foreclosure action a few months after the incident.
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NY Daily News
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The bizarre brouhaha unfolded on March 6, 2013 after Dunn, representing the Bank of New York Melon for Hogan Lovells law firm, was summoned to a conference room on a foreclosure case.
After the referee read a five-page ruling that suggested Dunn’s firm and the bank acted in bad faith, the attorney attempted to storm out of the cramped quarters and walked all over his adversary who was sitting next to him, court papers said.
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3/5/14
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Go Banking Rates
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In a mortgage investigation led by the federal government, it was found that Atlanta-based
SunTrust Bank made alleged mistakes processing applications for loan modifications under the Home Affordable Modification
Program (HAMP).
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3/5/14
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How much time will the foreclosure-mill
lawyers get?
A Doylestown, Pa., lawyer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for his role in a $14.6 million mortgage fraud scheme that affected 35 homeowners.
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According to the indictment, the defendants targeted financially distressed homeowners facing foreclosure, falsely promised them help in saving their homes, engaged in real estate transactions with straw purchasers, and obtained dozens of fraudulent mortgages. The defendants, according to prosecutors, took whatever equity the homeowner had left, funneled it through various shell corporations they controlled, used some of it to pay the new mortgages, and put the rest of the equity into their own bank accounts.
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dallasnews
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The suit alleged that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System — founded by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and several large U.S. banks in 1995 — was a conduit for buying and selling mortgages by lenders. The suit said
MERS avoided paying recording fees to the county when mortgages changed hands, as required by law.
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2/28/14
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The right to a trial before an impartial jury of citizens is the fundamental principle of our judiciary system under the U.S. Constitution. When a jury verdict or the actions of a court raise questions about the law, the state appellate courts provide a forum to consider, interpret and rule on those questions. Tragically, in recent years, Texans have witnessed the denigration of juries and the erosion of the judiciary by the very body entrusted to protect both—the Texas Supreme Court.
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SacBee
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During the decade spanning 2000-2010, the members of your Texas Supreme Court found that Texas juries—made up of every day, hardworking
Texans - were wrong an astonishingly 74 percent of the time, overwhelmingly favoring the position of corporate defendants over small businesses, consumers and families. This lopsided practice is further revealed in a recent edition of the Baylor Law Review, in which the author notes: "[O]f the thirty-one major causation opinions the court has issued since [1995],
only four decided the causation issue in favor of the plaintiff. The remainder found a way to benefit the defendant, most overturning jury verdicts, and many overturning courts of appeals' decisions that found sufficient evidence of causation."
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3/5/14
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Morning Call
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Bucks County sheriff's deputies peacefully ended a standoff Wednesday afternoon on East Cherry Road in Richland Township and removed a man from a home that was foreclosed upon and sold at sheriff's sale last year.
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3/5/14
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A dog was found dead, frozen on its pet bed, in a foreclosed home in Sheboygan County, and the dog's owner now faces
charges.
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jsonline
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Kimberly Fidlin, 39, was charged with animal cruelty and neglect after a maintenance worker found her dog, a beagle named Lucky, in the foreclosed home. The dog died from starvation, authorities said.
Fidlin said she walked away from all of her possessions, including the dog, when the home went into foreclosure.
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Full Opinion in Case No. 2D12-6255:
Hoffman v. BankUnited
Hoffman appeals the final judgment of foreclosure entered in favor of BankUnited, FSB, and raises four issues. As to the three issues regarding the
sufficiency of the evidence to support the final judgment, we conclude that Hoffman is
not entitled to relief and affirm without discussion.
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Florida Court of Appeals Second
District
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On the fourth issue, we agree that the foreclosure sale of the property must be set aside because the
sale was conducted while Hoffman's timely motion for rehearing was
pending. See Wollman v. Levy, 489 So. 2d 1239, 1239 (Fla. 3d DCA 1986). Accordingly,
we vacate the foreclosure sale.
Because the trial court disposed of the rehearing motion some time after the sale, the
court may again order the foreclosure sale of the property on remand. Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded with directions.
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BONY took no action for over one and a half
years. Finally, on August 31, 2012, it moved pursuant to rule 1.540(b) to vacate the quiet
title judgment on grounds that it was void because the complaint failed to state a cause of action to quiet title.
because the appellee failed to move for relief within a year of the judgment, it was not
entitled to have the judgment vacated. We reverse.
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Florida Court of Appeals Fourth
District
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The bank argued that because it was void, the one year limitation which applied to the other grounds for relief
under rule 1.540(b), did not apply. See M.L. Builders, Inc. v. Reserve Developers, LLP, 769 So. 2d 1079, 1081 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000) (a motion to
vacate a void judgment may be made at any time). The bank argued that a complaint to quiet title must allege not
only the association’s title to the property and how it obtained title, but
must also show why the bank’s claim of an interest in the property is invalid and not well founded.
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White paper
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Fannie, Freddie, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance
Since the book-----FHFA has "settled" trillions for
millions allowing voodoo accounting to allow Fannie
to "show a profit" to start chapter two. without the FHFA
write-downs the GSEs would have been shut down
All this demonstrates not only government involvement from the
onset as well as the more incriminating current conduct of cover up FHFA
write-downs under the color of "settlements".
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Prof. Acharya, Richardson,
Vannieuwerburg
and White
|
A decade later, we know how it all turned out: the worst financial crisis since the 1930s
and bailouts so large that we no longer consider the savings and loan debacle to have been much
of a financial crisis. This is not to argue that all of the blame should be placed on the doorstep of
Fannie and Freddie. There is plenty of blame to go around at other large, complex financial
institutions including Bear Stearns, Lehman
Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG,
Wachovia, and Citigroup, among others.
The financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008 led to one of the most sweeping government interventions in private financial markets in history. The bailout has already cost American taxpayers close to $150 billion, and substantially more will be needed. The U.S. economy--and by extension, the global financial system--has a lot riding on Fannie and Freddie. They cannot fail, yet that is precisely what these mortgage giants are guaranteed to do. How can we limit the damage to our economy, and avoid making the same mistakes in the future?
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3/5/14
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DealBook
|
New York’s superintendent of financial services, said his office had received “hundreds of complaints from New York consumers” about problems related to the
Nationstar’s mortgage modifications, improper fees and lost
paperwork.
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3/5/14
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Former bank prosecutor Lanny Breuer is back defending corporate clients. Wait 'til you see what his new job prizes
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David Dayen Salon
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Covington (which also counts Attorney General
Eric Holder as an alumnus) routinely defends the very white-collar clients
Breuer was supposed to be pursuing with criminal charges in
Washington. That potential for conflict of interest should be even clearer when you see how
Covington & Burling promotes themselves to colleagues and potential clients.
Continued mismanagement and fraud by banks around the globe ensures a steady stream of business to Covington & Burling in white-collar defense. And as they proudly brag, they’re experts at knowing how to keep their clients out of jail with no damage greater than a petty fine, experience gained from a lifetime on both sides of the negotiating table between regulators and Wall Street banks.
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3/5/14
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As if as on cue, news broke just yesterday that Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to
Citigroup in a money-laundering investigation, a topic with which the bank is intimately familiar.
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Wall Street on Parade
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During Fischer’s stint at Citigroup, from February 2002 through April 2005, he “amassed a personal fortune of between $14.6 million and $56.3 million” according to Bloomberg News. During that same period,
Citigroup was repeatedly charged with fraud and embarked on its own exotic financial shenanigans that would end up collapsing the firm in 2008.
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3/4/14
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Housing and consumer activists warn that Wall Street is about to crash the housing market -- again.
Last fall, HuffPost uncovered that renters were moving into homes, then discovering major plumbing and other household repair flaws that their Wall Street landlords wouldn’t fix.
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Huff Post
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This time, gun-shy bankers are hard-pressed to give anyone but the most stellar borrowers a mortgage, said the groups, which include California Reinvestment Coalition and the National Consumer Law Center. Yet, home prices are rising again.
That's because Wall Street investors with deep pockets and the ability to pay cash for homes are muscling out ordinary buyers in places hard-hit by the housing crisis, like Phoenix and Atlanta. Once these wealthy investors have bought the homes, they flip them into rentals -- often covering up large issues like plumbing and mold with cosmetic fixes.
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3/4/14
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“When someone starts filing complaints way in excess of their market share you know there’s a problem,” Thomas said.
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South Florida Business Journal
|
The other non-banks that got many CFPB complaints from Florida were Nationstar
Mortgage and credit reporting agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
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3/3/14
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JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging, yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater, sapping homeowners' budgets, the housing market and the economy.
Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to
homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands.
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Ellen Brown, JD
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Banks have signaled that if Richmond or another city tries the eminent domain gambit, they will rush to court seeking an injunction. Their grounds: an unconstitutional taking of private property and breach of contract.
You first need to grasp the massive fraud perpetrated on homeowners. It is how you were duped into paying more than your house was worth, why you should not just turn in your keys or short-sell your underwater property away, why you should urge Congress not to legalize the
MERS scheme, and why you should insist that your local government help you acquire title to your home at a fair price if the banks won't.
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White paper
11/13/13
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Foreclosing on Nothing:
The Curious Problem of the Deed of Trust Foreclosure Without
Entitlement To Enforce the Note
Most lawyers familiar with the process of mortgage foreclosure in the United States would
probably have regarded it as a satisfactory, if not somewhat dull, area of the law. Foreclosure did not generate much
appellate litigation, and those few lawyers who specialized in the field, mostly representing lenders, had little difficulty
in getting the results they needed from the mechanisms of
foreclosure.
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Dale A. Whitman
Professor of Law, University of Arkansas
Drew Milner
|
That process has now changed radically. The foreclosure crisis resulted in the creation of a new kind of
lawyer: the foreclosure-defense specialist.
As these specialists began to poke and prod at the foreclosure process, they
found plenty of weaknesses. They raised dozens of questions about precisely what
sort of evidence or proof, and in what form, needed to be adduced by those instigating foreclosure, particularly when the loan had been
sold on the secondary-mortgage market. For example, they forced the courts to focus
on issues such as whether a chain of mortgage assignments (recorded or not) was required as
a prerequisite to foreclosure.
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UPDATE:
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George Mantor
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Citizens have lost their right to due process as 96% of all foreclosures go uncontested because of forged documents. IT MUST STOP! "The integrity of land title records and the rights of the public now hang in the balance. It’s time to occupy the Recorders office. We need to identify and develop our own candidates to challenge bank-owned incumbents."
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3/4/14
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All homeowners who were foreclosed upon since 2005 or are currently in the foreclosure or modification process are encouraged to review their original loan paperwork for signs of a wrongful foreclosure.
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United Law Center
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What was the date of your Assignment of Deed of Trust? Look in your county's property records to see if an Assignment of Deed of Trust was filed. If so, it is likely that your lender does not own your note. If the recording date of the Assignment is over 90 days past the inception of the loan,
then the bank had no legal right to foreclose.
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3/4/14
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FAILURE TO APPEAR BRINGS SANCTIONS & DISMISSAL
with PREJUDICE
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MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT
|
To the extent that a testimonial hearing would have permitted Bayview to show that its
third failure to appear was the result of an inadvertent error of counsel, the court concluded that such an error was not excusable in light
of Bayview’s previous failures to appear at mediation. Moreover,
Bayview does not contest any of the material facts found by the court. The court did not err or
abuse its discretion.
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3/3/14
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Bloomberg
|
PNC disclosed more details about three subpoenas it received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office
related to National City Bank, the Cleveland-based subprime home lender PNC purchased in 2008. Two of the investigations were in connection with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration as well as some non-FHA-insured practices. The third probe is tied to costs for foreclosure counsel related to loans insured by the FHA,
Fannie Mae or Freddie
Mac, according to the filing. PNC disclosed that U.S. officials were investigating the unit last year.
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3/3/14
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Chase Class
Action Force-placed Insurance Information
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Consumerist
|
The class-action lawsuit had alleged that the high rates on forced-place policies purchased by
Chase weren’t just a matter of the insurance company,
Assurant, charging more, but also of the bank receiving kickbacks and commissions. Thus, the plaintiffs claimed that
Chase had a financial stake in seeing that homeowners were charged a higher premium.
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3/3/14
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thfj
|
The trash included over 200 tires. This is a small home in a residential neighborhood of modest homes, many still occupied.
Tired of the bad publicity, BOA decided to address the situation.
They hired a team of guys to move all 200 plus tires into the house, then board up the
house. Who but a big bank would have chosen that solution?
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3/3/14
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Syncora brought several cases against JPMorgan to recover losses on securities created and sold by the former
Bear Stearns and Co and its EMC Mortgage affiliate. JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns in 2008.
The bond insurer claimed the bank misrepresented the quality of loans underlying the securities and that it was deceived into insuring them.
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Reuters
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Home loans such as those issued by the Bear Stearns "securitization machine," as the bond insurer's lawsuits have called it, were at the center of the financial crisis. As the loans became delinquent, mortgage-backed securities collapsed, helping to trigger a wider market meltdown.
The cases are Syncora Guarantee v. EMC Mortgage
Corp, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 09-cv-3106; and Syncora Guarantee v. JPMorgan Securities, Syncora Guarantee v.
EMC Mortgage, and Syncora Guarantee v. EMC
Mortgage, New York state Supreme Court, New York County, Case Nos. 651566/2011, 650420/2012 and 653519/2012.
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3/3/14
|
Pay to Play
Mortgage servicer reaches agreement with regulators
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Housing Wire
|
The modification program includes underwater borrowers at imminent risk of default and is designed to be sustainable for homeowners while providing a net present value for mortgage loan investors that is superior to that of foreclosure.
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3/3/14
|
Hopefully all the criminal ones.
"It’s a proposed gift to community banks in an election year," said Isaac
Boltansky, a policy analyst at Compass Point Research and Trading.
Critics argue that the Basel III provision is further accelerating the transfer of mortgage servicing business from banks to nonbanks—a move that is already under way due to a number of market forces.
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Mortgage Servicing News
|
"In the last couple of years, the nonbank servicers have exponentially grown, and are now controlling about half of the
market," said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics.
Banks also face a squeeze from another direction. Several large institutions were hit hard with enforcement actions over their servicing practices for dealing with delinquent loans after the financial crisis and servicers now face tough new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—providing more rationale for banks to consider moving away from the business, which can be risky and expensive when loans sour.
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3/3/14
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Municipal officials, lawyers, and housing counselors have all pointed to a related phenomenon:
foreclosure cases never finalized, or judgments never taken to sheriff’s sale, with homes sitting
vacant. In December 2010, state Chief Justice Stuart Rabner ordered major lenders to demonstrate that their foreclosure practices are clean.
“It’s important that the judiciary ensures that judges are not rubber-stamping documents of questionable
reliability,” he said at the time.
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NJ Spotlight
|
That dramatic wave of dismissals became possible once the court system automated its tracking of foreclosure cases, according to Kevin Wolfe, administrator of the civil practice division.
The system flags those cases where there has been no action for a year or
more, he said.
Notices go out to lawyers on those cases, giving them “30 days to file an appropriate pleading or a certification of exceptional
circumstances, such as when a defendant has filed for bankruptcy,” said Kathryn Shabel, an attorney in Wolfe’s division. Without a timely reply from the plaintiff attorneys, the case gets booted, she said
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3/3/14
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This battle continues because U.S. Bancorp refuses to give up, appealing at every turn. After the jury ruled against the bank last March, it not only appealed, but filed a new lawsuit against Mr. Rosenberg.
A judge in one of the many cases found that U.S. Bancorp improperly used a series of special-purpose entities “to artificially create six creditors for the improper purpose of attempting to satisfy the provisions of bankruptcy code that allow creditors to file involuntary bankruptcy petitions.”
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DealBook
|
“If they can do this to me,” he said, “imagine what they do to people that can’t defend these
actions. I’m truly learning that it doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong because they keep filing more and more appeals and motions. It’s getting to the point that I can’t afford the legal fees and I can’t ask my attorneys to work for free.”
Like some foreclosure cases: The bank, according to Mr. Rosenberg, even
privately approached his lawyers and offered to pay their fees, which Mr. Rosenberg is in arrears on,
if they would stop representing him. The bank has denied this.
Mr. Rosenberg draws parallels between his situation and the homeowners who lost their houses through foreclosure.
“When you compare it to the mortgage business, it’s exactly the same issue,” he said. “The little guy that owns a mortgage and has been assigned to a million different people and nobody knows who the debt is really due to, can’t afford to go fight it.”
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FTC
|
Fifteen "abusive, unfair and deceptive" collectors have illegally taken millions of dollars from purported debtors, using the words "Federal," "US," "American" or "State" to imply or state "that they are affiliated with federal, state, or local government," the FTC claims in a federal lawsuit.
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Opinion addresses:
Standing, and Have the Wilsons alleged a Void or Voidable Mortgage
Assignment?
|
First Circuit Court of Appeals
Massachusetts
|
A void mortgage assignment is one in which the putative assignor "never properly held the mortgage and, thus, had
no interest to assign." We have also found that a party who challenges a mortgage
assignment on the grounds that the assignor was but a nominee for the mortgage holder and "never possessed a
legally transferable interest" in the mortgage alleges a void, as opposed to merely voidable,
assignment.
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3/3/14
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Countrywide, as it argued to the Court at the outset of the case.
see MBIA PowerPoint Presentation
|
Living Lies
|
Judges, attorneys, title agents, and other experts have examined this issue and concluded that
we are headed for a crash of the recording system that will undermine the title and priority of owners and lenders.
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3/3/14
|
|
Wall Street on Parade
|
In the past three months, at least eight JPMorgan Chase
employees, aged 22 to 39, have passed away, including the three highly publicized, suspicious deaths of Gabriel Magee, Ryan Crane and a young man the media is now calling Dennis Li.
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2/28/14
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Full Post
A North Texas lawyer has been sentenced to seven months in prison and must repay more than $2.1 million for his role in a bank loan fraud scam.
Goh must report to prison by May 26.
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NBCDFW
|
A federal judge in Dallas on Monday sentenced 51-year-old Jerry Goh, of Allen. Last April Goh pleaded guilty to
misprision of a
felony, or concealing another person's felonious act, related to the fraud scheme.
Prosecutors said Goh, with law offices in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, acted as an escrow officer and allowed the fraudulent transfer of some funds involved in a loan.
Two other North Texas residents have pleaded guilty and await sentencing in the case involving fraud against the lender — Prosper Bank.
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3/2/14
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Plaintiffs “challenge HUD’s failure to protect them and other surviving spouses of reverse mortgage borrowers from foreclosure and displacement, as required by the reverse mortgage
statute.”
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Reverse Mortgage Daily
|
The new suit seeks relief for a class of borrowers who faced situations similar to those detailed in the earlier lawsuit; namely those who faced foreclosure of their homes because they had been removed from the home title or were not named on the title prior to the closing of the reverse mortgage and had survived their borrower-spouses.
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3/2/14
|
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Motley Fool
|
The legal fracas over toxic mortgages pumped out by Countrywide in years past hasn't died down just yet.
Ambac Financial, recently emerged from bankruptcy, is looking for more than $2.5 billion from
B of A for damages related to junk loans underlying disintegrating mortgage bonds.
Ambac, which insured these mortgages, has been paying out on these loans – and it wants its money back, not only for what it has already forked over, but also for "future claims it has paid or claims it will be obligated to pay under the policies, increasing over time as it pays claims under relevant policies, plus unspecified punitive damages."
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Give this video to your attorney, regardless of what state you are in.
Bradburn
v. ReconTrust (Defendants' Opposition
brief)
Letter
from the Court
Banks stealing homes DO NOT want
the public to know how they are doing it.
|
Susanne Posel
|
This is Scott Stafne's 41st win. Scott fought the case based
on constitutional law, which is almost a rarity these days. Scott is trying to set precedent so that other attorneys across the country can use this as secondary law in order to fight and keep the homeowner in their home or that they
can sue for damages for the the house being illegally seized and sold. In 2013, foreclosures dropped 30% because people are standing up and taking the banks to court.
Bank of America named the MERS system as the beneficiary. MERS is a computer system -not a sentient being, so it cannot be a beneficiary for a foreclosure. They changed their tactics and named
Recontrust as the beneficiary, but it is a subsidiary of BA, creating a conflict of interest.
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3/1/14
|
Daino’s lawyer, Renee Cadmus of MFY Legal Services, alleges that Wells
Fargo prefers to collect foreclosure fees instead of resolving the
case.
|
New York Post
|
Since January 2013, Daino has been trying to sign over the deed, plus a $25,000 insurance check, to her bank and be released from liability. She wants to move on.
But Freddie Mac, which (allegedly) owns her loan, and
Wells Fargo, her servicer, won’t let Daino sign over the deed, and aren’t completing the foreclosure on an essentially worthless property.
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|
3/1/14
|
|
Gretchen Morgenson
NY Times
|
Given some of the management missteps at JPMorgan in recent years — most notably the London Whale mess — and its regulatory run-ins, it certainly seems appropriate to ask shareholders whether they think the institution is too big to manage. Even as simply a point of information, such a vote could be revealing.
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3/1/14
|
Glaski
A California Supreme Court decision could help more than a million people keep their homes after a breakthrough ruling on home foreclosures.
Lawyers for the financial institutions claimed the decision could be catastrophic for the banking industry.
More here:
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KCRA
|
With an estimated 1.3 million California homeowners in foreclosure, a Roseville attorney says the state Supreme Court has made a decision that could ultimately keep many from losing their homes.
A Fresno homeowner fought foreclosure in court and won in the case known as
Glaski v. Bank of
America. In the case, the homeowner claimed the bank trying to take his home didn't have the right to because the loan was improperly transferred to a securities trust.
"These are no joke," Foondos said. "That's why the banks have been aggressively trying to suppress this information from the
public."
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January | February
| March | April
| May | June
| July | August | September | October | November | December
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MSFraud.org
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