Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Obomba to Preserve Gov't Role in Mortgage Mkt.
News Alert: Obama plans to preserve major government role in mortgage market
August 15, 2011 9:01:13 PM
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President Obama has concluded that the federal government must continue to play a significant role in the nation’s mortgage market, a milestone in the effort to craft a new housing policy from the wreckage of the mortgage meltdown. According to people familiar with the matter, a proposal now being developed by the administration could preserve, though with significant new constraints, mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which some critics say contributed to the financial crisis.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/5O5UA2/XTVC7T/MUU756/53Q8EN/7BZR2/4O/h
For more information, visit washingtonpost.com
August 15, 2011 9:01:13 PM
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President Obama has concluded that the federal government must continue to play a significant role in the nation’s mortgage market, a milestone in the effort to craft a new housing policy from the wreckage of the mortgage meltdown. According to people familiar with the matter, a proposal now being developed by the administration could preserve, though with significant new constraints, mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which some critics say contributed to the financial crisis.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/5O5UA2/XTVC7T/MUU756/53Q8EN/7BZR2/4O/h
For more information, visit washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 5, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
OCC Takes Enforcement Action Against Eight Servicers for Unsafe and Unsound, Including $hitiBank!!!
http://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2011/nr-occ-2011-47.html
Links to The Orders below
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 13, 2011
Contact: Robert Garsson
(202) 874-5770
OCC Takes Enforcement Action Against Eight Servicers for Unsafe and Unsound
Foreclosure Practices
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today announced formal enforcement actions against eight national bank mortgage servicers and two third-party servicer providers for unsafe and unsound practices related to residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing.
The eight servicers are Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. The two service providers are Lender Processing Services (LPS) and its subsidiaries DocX, LLC, and LPD Default Solutions, Inc.; and MERSCORP and its wholly owned subsidiary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS).
"These comprehensive enforcement actions, coordinated among the federal banking regulators, require major reforms in mortgage servicing operations," said acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh. "These reforms will not only fix the problems we found in foreclosure processing, but will also correct failures in governance and the loan modification process and address financial harm to borrowers. Our enforcement actions are intended to fix what is broken, identify and compensate borrowers who suffered financial harm, and ensure a fair and orderly mortgage servicing process going forward."
The enforcement actions require the servicers to promptly correct deficiencies in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure practices that examiners identified in reviews conducted during the fourth quarter of 2010. The actions require the servicers to make significant improvements in practices for residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing, including communications with borrowers and dual-tracking, which occurs when servicers continue to pursue foreclosure during the loan modification process. The enforcement actions require the servicers to ensure that foreclosures are not pursued once a mortgage has been approved for modification and to establish a single point of contact for borrowers throughout the loan modification and foreclosure processes. In addition, the actions require servicers to establish robust oversight and controls pertaining to their third-party vendors, including outside legal counsel, that provide default management or foreclosure services.
The OCC's actions also require each servicer to engage an independent firm to conduct a multi-faceted review of foreclosure actions between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2010. This requirement includes a comprehensive "look back" to assess whether foreclosures complied with federal and state laws, whether foreclosures occurred when grounds for foreclosure were not present, such as when loans were performing, and whether any errors, misrepresentations or other deficiencies resulted in financial injury to borrowers. The actions also require each servicer to establish a process for borrowers who believe they have been financially harmed by such deficiencies to make submissions to be considered for remediation. Each servicer must also submit a plan to remediate all financial injury to borrowers caused by any errors, misrepresentations, or other deficiencies identified in the independent consultant's findings.
The OCC based its enforcement actions on the findings of examinations conducted as part of the interagency horizontal reviews undertaken by the federal banking regulators in the fourth quarter of 2010. Examinations of these eight national bank servicers identified significant weaknesses in mortgage servicing and foreclosure governance that resulted in unsafe and unsound practices. The scope and degree of these practices differed among the servicers; however, based on the sample of files reviewed by OCC examiners, borrowers in the sample were seriously delinquent at the time of foreclosures and servicers held the notes and documents required to foreclose. A summary of the findings of the interagency reviews is available in the Interagency Review of Foreclosure Policies and Practices, which was produced by the OCC, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
The enforcement actions do not preclude determinations regarding assessment of civil money penalties, which the OCC is holding in abeyance.
Go here for Related Links as listed below; http://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2011/nr-occ-2011-47.html
Interagency Review of Foreclosure Policies and Practices (PDF)
Consent Order for Bank of America (PDF)
Consent Order for Citibank (PDF)
Consent Order for HSBC Bank (PDF)
Consent Order for JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for LPS; DocX, LLC; and LPD Default Solutions, Inc. (PDF)
Consent Order for MetLife Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for MERSCORP and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) (PDF)
Consent Order for PNC Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for U.S. Bank National Association, U.S. Bank National Association ND (PDF)
Consent Order for Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Links to The Orders below
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 13, 2011
Contact: Robert Garsson
(202) 874-5770
OCC Takes Enforcement Action Against Eight Servicers for Unsafe and Unsound
Foreclosure Practices
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today announced formal enforcement actions against eight national bank mortgage servicers and two third-party servicer providers for unsafe and unsound practices related to residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing.
The eight servicers are Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. The two service providers are Lender Processing Services (LPS) and its subsidiaries DocX, LLC, and LPD Default Solutions, Inc.; and MERSCORP and its wholly owned subsidiary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS).
"These comprehensive enforcement actions, coordinated among the federal banking regulators, require major reforms in mortgage servicing operations," said acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh. "These reforms will not only fix the problems we found in foreclosure processing, but will also correct failures in governance and the loan modification process and address financial harm to borrowers. Our enforcement actions are intended to fix what is broken, identify and compensate borrowers who suffered financial harm, and ensure a fair and orderly mortgage servicing process going forward."
The enforcement actions require the servicers to promptly correct deficiencies in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure practices that examiners identified in reviews conducted during the fourth quarter of 2010. The actions require the servicers to make significant improvements in practices for residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing, including communications with borrowers and dual-tracking, which occurs when servicers continue to pursue foreclosure during the loan modification process. The enforcement actions require the servicers to ensure that foreclosures are not pursued once a mortgage has been approved for modification and to establish a single point of contact for borrowers throughout the loan modification and foreclosure processes. In addition, the actions require servicers to establish robust oversight and controls pertaining to their third-party vendors, including outside legal counsel, that provide default management or foreclosure services.
The OCC's actions also require each servicer to engage an independent firm to conduct a multi-faceted review of foreclosure actions between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2010. This requirement includes a comprehensive "look back" to assess whether foreclosures complied with federal and state laws, whether foreclosures occurred when grounds for foreclosure were not present, such as when loans were performing, and whether any errors, misrepresentations or other deficiencies resulted in financial injury to borrowers. The actions also require each servicer to establish a process for borrowers who believe they have been financially harmed by such deficiencies to make submissions to be considered for remediation. Each servicer must also submit a plan to remediate all financial injury to borrowers caused by any errors, misrepresentations, or other deficiencies identified in the independent consultant's findings.
The OCC based its enforcement actions on the findings of examinations conducted as part of the interagency horizontal reviews undertaken by the federal banking regulators in the fourth quarter of 2010. Examinations of these eight national bank servicers identified significant weaknesses in mortgage servicing and foreclosure governance that resulted in unsafe and unsound practices. The scope and degree of these practices differed among the servicers; however, based on the sample of files reviewed by OCC examiners, borrowers in the sample were seriously delinquent at the time of foreclosures and servicers held the notes and documents required to foreclose. A summary of the findings of the interagency reviews is available in the Interagency Review of Foreclosure Policies and Practices, which was produced by the OCC, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
The enforcement actions do not preclude determinations regarding assessment of civil money penalties, which the OCC is holding in abeyance.
Go here for Related Links as listed below; http://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2011/nr-occ-2011-47.html
Interagency Review of Foreclosure Policies and Practices (PDF)
Consent Order for Bank of America (PDF)
Consent Order for Citibank (PDF)
Consent Order for HSBC Bank (PDF)
Consent Order for JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for LPS; DocX, LLC; and LPD Default Solutions, Inc. (PDF)
Consent Order for MetLife Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for MERSCORP and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) (PDF)
Consent Order for PNC Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Consent Order for U.S. Bank National Association, U.S. Bank National Association ND (PDF)
Consent Order for Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (PDF)
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
JP Morgan v. Harp
Court finds bank improperly foreclosed on homeowner
http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=177148
http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=177148
Monday, April 11, 2011
Home Values Drop for Sixth Consecutive Period, The Shameful Mortgage Paperwork Fiasco
CK Hunter April 11, 2011 at 9:55 am URL: http://wp.me/pzpRW-2O0 Copyright 2011-3011 Alternative News Forum, All Rights Reserved. I cannot promise you that you won't be infuriated when you watch this clip from CBS "60 Minutes." What has been done to American home owners is criminal beyond description. It is my most urgent desire to see these crooks working in banks, in mortgage brokerages, on Wall Street and in any profession that has contributed to the fleecing of US home owners get theirs in court and spend the rest of their days confined in prison. I was speechless when I watched this video. I never thought that business people in America were able to stoop this low. More and more it appears we no longer have an actual banking and mortgage industry. Instead we have some sort of crime cabal of corrupt mafia men masquerading as Wall Street investment houses, banks and mortgage brokers. If these people are not identified, located, and finally prosecuted then what hope of any kind of justice do we have for any crime commited, whether it's a crime of hidden high finance, or an open heist. A heist is a heist is a heist. And what these people have done to American home owners is an all out heist. My heart really goes out to people who are going through this kind of agony trying to stay in their homes. If we create enough outrage, hopefully the criminal justice system will swing into gear and begin prosecuting these rotten bankers and Wall Street paper pushers who not only devastated the mortgage market with their criminal back room deals, buying and selling mortgages, but then added the final injustice by losing the original mortgage papers and forging copies instead. Share this video with those you know and love. Chase Kyla Hunter http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf
Saturday, April 9, 2011
NY S. Ct. Upholds MERS Standing to Foreclose
New York Supreme Court upholds MERS ability to foreclose
by JON PRIOR ·
*Ongoing MERS lawsuits may hurt current RMBS; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/28/ongoing-mers-lawsuits-may-hurt-current-rmbs
*MERS to members: Don’t foreclose in our name; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/17/mers-to-members-don%e2%80%99t-foreclose-in-our-name
*New Hampshire court latest to uphold MERS right to transfer mortgage; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/25/new-hampshire-court-latest-to-uphold-mers-right-to-transfer-mortgage
*Lost in New York, MERS claims victory in Kansas; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/16/lost-in-new-york-mers-claims-victory-in-kansas
*Alabama judge denies securitization trustee standing to foreclose; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/04/01/alabama-judge-denies-securitization-trustee-standing-to-foreclose
Monday, March 14th, 2011, 10:43 am
The Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled in favor of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems last week, validating the company's ability to foreclose on a mortgage and assign it. Judge Lucindo Suarez found in the case Bank of New York v. Sachar the Bank of New York Mellon has standing to foreclose based on a MERS assignment and the delivery of the note. Suarez said in his ruling the bank showed enough documentation to do so. "Plaintiff has shown that the assignment of the mortgage was not made retroactively," Suarez wrote. "Although the assignment refers only to an assignment of the mortgage, physical delivery of the note is sufficient to transfer the obligation, and plaintiff has established that the note was delivered to it prior to the commencement of this action." Adam Levitin, associate professor of law at Georgetown University, said the case could still go to the Court of Appeals, the top court in the state. "This ruling muddies the waters, but doesn’t really change things," Levitin said. A judge in a lower New York bankruptcy court ruled in February that MERS had no right to transfer the mortgage and thus no right to foreclose on the loan; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/14/merscorp-lacks-right-to-transfer-mortgages-judge-says In the middle of February, MERS told its members not to foreclose on residential mortgages in its name; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/17/mers-to-members-don%E2%80%99t-foreclose-in-our-name Consumer attorneys across the country continue to challenge this ability, but victories for MERS continue to emerge. MERS has already won cases in New Hampshire; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/25/new-hampshire-court-latest-to-uphold-mers-right-to-transfer-mortgage California; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/23/mers-rights-upheld-in-largest-foreclosure-state and Kansas http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/16/lost-in-new-york-mers-claims-victory-in-kansas However, Virginia legislators are pushing to phase out the company and its role in tracking Ginnie Mae guaranteed mortgages; http://www.housingwire.com/2010/12/16/bill-aims-to-end-gse-affiliation-with-mers Email author @ jon DOT prior@housingwire.com
by JON PRIOR ·
*Ongoing MERS lawsuits may hurt current RMBS; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/28/ongoing-mers-lawsuits-may-hurt-current-rmbs
*MERS to members: Don’t foreclose in our name; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/17/mers-to-members-don%e2%80%99t-foreclose-in-our-name
*New Hampshire court latest to uphold MERS right to transfer mortgage; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/25/new-hampshire-court-latest-to-uphold-mers-right-to-transfer-mortgage
*Lost in New York, MERS claims victory in Kansas; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/16/lost-in-new-york-mers-claims-victory-in-kansas
*Alabama judge denies securitization trustee standing to foreclose; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/04/01/alabama-judge-denies-securitization-trustee-standing-to-foreclose
Monday, March 14th, 2011, 10:43 am
The Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled in favor of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems last week, validating the company's ability to foreclose on a mortgage and assign it. Judge Lucindo Suarez found in the case Bank of New York v. Sachar the Bank of New York Mellon has standing to foreclose based on a MERS assignment and the delivery of the note. Suarez said in his ruling the bank showed enough documentation to do so. "Plaintiff has shown that the assignment of the mortgage was not made retroactively," Suarez wrote. "Although the assignment refers only to an assignment of the mortgage, physical delivery of the note is sufficient to transfer the obligation, and plaintiff has established that the note was delivered to it prior to the commencement of this action." Adam Levitin, associate professor of law at Georgetown University, said the case could still go to the Court of Appeals, the top court in the state. "This ruling muddies the waters, but doesn’t really change things," Levitin said. A judge in a lower New York bankruptcy court ruled in February that MERS had no right to transfer the mortgage and thus no right to foreclose on the loan; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/14/merscorp-lacks-right-to-transfer-mortgages-judge-says In the middle of February, MERS told its members not to foreclose on residential mortgages in its name; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/17/mers-to-members-don%E2%80%99t-foreclose-in-our-name Consumer attorneys across the country continue to challenge this ability, but victories for MERS continue to emerge. MERS has already won cases in New Hampshire; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/25/new-hampshire-court-latest-to-uphold-mers-right-to-transfer-mortgage California; http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/23/mers-rights-upheld-in-largest-foreclosure-state and Kansas http://www.housingwire.com/2011/02/16/lost-in-new-york-mers-claims-victory-in-kansas However, Virginia legislators are pushing to phase out the company and its role in tracking Ginnie Mae guaranteed mortgages; http://www.housingwire.com/2010/12/16/bill-aims-to-end-gse-affiliation-with-mers Email author @ jon DOT prior@housingwire.com
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
At Last! Word from $hiti!
After waiting months and months (after filing complaint with Comptroller of Currency on 10/21/2010) we finally (on 3/21/2011) got a call from Shila Jones of the Executive Response Team at $hitiFinancial who asks that we reeturn her call....at 877-245-2511 Ex. 1803231.
Which I did return today (just now at approx 11:40 am EST) but got a message that Shila will be out of the office until wenesday. So left a message that we had returned her call and would appreciate a call back on wenesday when she returns to the office.
Which I did return today (just now at approx 11:40 am EST) but got a message that Shila will be out of the office until wenesday. So left a message that we had returned her call and would appreciate a call back on wenesday when she returns to the office.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Bless a Little Fraud and More Will Surely Follow
By George W. Mantor
On Thursday, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee released its long awaited report on how the destruction of the middle class was engineered.
If you listen to three dissenting members, it was a form of suicide. Like Lemmings, we raced to the cliff of financial destruction and hurled ourselves into poverty because all of the rest of the Lemmings were doing it.
Not with a bang, but a whimper did this nearly seven hundred page whitewash land with a thud in the halls of congress.
In the days leading up to the release of the report, some of the dissenting members…those who didn’t think there was quite enough whitewash…came out ahead of the report and blamed it all on the goal of homeownership.
Wait a minute! They want us to believe that Americans’ desire to own the roof over our heads destroyed the global economy?
It wasn’t the inflated appraisals, the predatory servicing fraud, the new and improved loan terms designed to assure default?
Nor, apparently, was it the fact that Wall Street bet massive amounts of other people’s money that the economy would collapse; it did, and they got huge bonuses.
All of that was said in testimony before the committee. It’s all in the report, as they say.
But, there has been no call for prosecutions or to apply the law equally to the middle class.
As to “foreclosure gate”, you have to pile through over 400 pages to get to this relating to MERS; but, it is exactly what I have been saying for nearly two years. The following italicized section is directly from the report.
“The standing of MERS or its designees to foreclose has been called into question by courts and academics, however. In a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the foreclosure crisis, New York State Supreme Court Justice F. Dana Winslow testified that “standing has become such a pervasive issue that I frequently use the term ‘presumptive mortgagee in foreclosure’” to describe MERS. Because of “multiple unrecorded transfers of the legal ownership of the mortgage,” it is unclear whether MERS continued to be the mortgagee after subsequent sales of the loan, according to Winslow.
Moreover, courts have held that MERS does not own the underlying note and therefore cannot transfer the note or the deed of trust, or foreclose upon the property.
Winslow also highlighted other deficiencies in MERS’ standing, many involving sloppy paperwork: the failure to produce the correct promissory notes in court during foreclosure proceedings; gaps in the chain of title, including printouts of the title that have differed substantially from information provided previously; retroactive assignments of notes and mortgages in an effort to clean up the paperwork problems from earlier years; questionable signatures on assignments and affidavits attesting to the ownership of the note and mortgage; and questionable notary stamps on assignments.
Recently, a bankruptcy court ruled that the Bank of New York could not foreclose on a loan it had purchased from Countrywide, because MERS had failed to endorse or deliver the note to the Bank of New York as required by the pooling and servicing agreement. This ruling could have further implications, because it was customary for Countrywide to maintain possession of the note and related loan documents when loans were securitized.
Across the market, some mortgage securities holders have sued the issuers of those securities, demanding that the issuers rescind their purchases. If the legal challenges succeed, investors that own mortgage-backed securities could force the issuers to buy them back at the original pricepossibly with interest. The issuers would then be the owners of the securities and would bear the risk of loss.
The Congressional Oversight Panel said it is on the lookout for such risks: “If documentation problems prove to be pervasive and, more importantly, throw into doubt the ownership of not only foreclosed properties but also pooled mortgages, the consequences could be severe.”
This sentiment was echoed by University of Iowa law professor Katherine Porter who has studied foreclosures and the law: “It is lack of knowledge of how widespread the problems may be that is turning the allegations into a crisis. Lack of knowledge feeds speculation and worst-case scenarios.”
Adam Levitin, a Georgetown University associate professor of law, has estimated that the claims could be in the trillions of dollars, rendering major U.S. banks insolvent.”
Well, we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
It sounds too dire. And so, the question becomes what to do about it. Apparently, nothing.
There is so much guilt involved that it touches the majority of the privileged class.
Consider this ominous sign: Iowa Attorney General, Tom Miller, is heading the 50 state investigation into this fraud. At the beginning of the investigation, he was gung ho to keep families in their homes and put bankers in jail.
Then, last week, they propped his hollowed out former persona in front of the cameras and from his eyes you could see that the fire was out. Like a Stepford Wife, he appeared to have been “gotten to”.
Hey, Tom it doesn’t matter. The banks cannot be saved. They are already on life support and will succumb whether we pull the plug or not. But, we will never forget where you and others whose job it is to enforce the law took your paychecks and blessed the fraud.
Do the math. Foreclosing on 15 million homes won’t help; it actually will make things worse. Banks are already abandoning homes before the final sale all over the country because they have learned that if you seize too many, they aren’t worth much.
But, it wouldn’t matter if they foreclosed on every home in America. There isn’t enough equity to ever dig out of the massive global asset bubble they created.
So, we have a dilemma. The proverbial slippery slope. Do we let the banks get away with it and create a tidal wave of homelessness, or do we uphold the laws that make all of this a crime?
All of the above constitutes a massive fraud perpetrated on investors, borrowers, and law enforcement. The prospectuses are full of lies; the pooling and servicing agreements were routinely violated by the very people who wrote them. Tax and securities laws were repeatedly broken. Then, they forged documents and proffered perjured testimony to complete the final chapter of the business plan.
The evidence obtained by the committee through sworn testimony proves that there was, and continues to exist, numerous crimes in progress, and yet, there is little in the committee report that suggests that it will be anything but business as usual.
What ever happened to our lofty ideals about America being “a nation of laws”? Even more perplexing, how can someone who studies the law and chooses to become an “officer of the court” have as little regard for the law than the lawyers who represent financial intermediaries who routinely commit fraud upon the court?
But, where the real problem lies is with the judges who look the other way as foreclosure mills submit obviously forged documents and commit perjury for the most sinister of purposes.
Some won’t. Not judges Schack or Long or Tepper or Buford or Dawson whose levelheaded decisions have reverberated around the country; but still, people who never missed a payment are losing their homes to a system that cannot be stopped.
While foreclosure mills implement the final stage of a business plan based on illegally seizing 15 million homes and emptying all pension funds, a handful of court cases suggest that the banks may not be too big to fail after all.
Although most foreclosures, about 95%, go uncontested, a few have finally made their way through a more thorough review of the facts, and well-informed, fair-minded judges are concurring that, in most cases, the foreclosing entity lacks the legal right to do so.
The reason isn’t something that can be fixed by simply altering county recordings. The chain of title was willfully and deliberately breached in order to pledge the receivables, principal and interest payments, to multiple pools.
In order to save the banks, all of the following frauds will have to be blessed.
Fraud by mortgage originators against lender/investors.
Here are but two of hundreds of examples.
Bank of America Inc.’s Countrywide Financial unit, acquired by the bank in 2008, was accused of “massive fraud” in a lawsuit by investors who claim they were misled about mortgage-backed securities.
TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Co., New York Life Insurance Co. and Dexia Holdings Inc. are among a dozen institutional investors who filed complaints in New York State Supreme Court.
The investors claim they bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Countrywide mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007 because they wanted conservative, low-risk investments. They said they relied on term sheets, prospectuses and other materials provided by the firm that were recklessly or knowingly false.
“Countrywide was an enterprise driven by only one purpose to originate and securitize as many mortgage loans as possible into MBS to generate profits for the Countrywide defendants without regard to the investors that relied on the critical, false information provided to them with respect to the related certificates,” according to the complaint.
In October, Mozilo agreed to pay a record $67.5 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he misled investors.
Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Recently, a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of shit.”
Fraud upon the courts in submitting forged documents.
Fraud upon recording agencies where the bogus paperwork has been filed.
Fraud upon the IRS by violating numerous tax laws in the process of issuing and managing the investments.
Fraud upon accounting rules and regulations.
Fraud upon shareholders who suffer reduced earnings as a result of the crimes of senior executives.
Fraud upon securities laws.
Taken altogether it weaves a rich tapestry of overlapping frauds starting, not at the bottom, but the top.
And yet, there is wide spread belief that the consequences of holding the perpetrators accountable would be so horrific that lawmakers at every level are scrambling to see if there isn’t some way to retroactively change a host of laws.
Maybe we can’t do anything about it, but I did see where Al Qaeda is thought to be targeting executives of the big banks. The American middle class appears to be getting a new ally.
George W. Mantor
The Real Estate Professor
Founder, American Foreclosure Resistance Movement
http://www.realtown.com/gwmantor/blog
1611A South Melrose Drive, #134
Vista, CA 92081
760-758-0802
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi
__._,_.___
On Thursday, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee released its long awaited report on how the destruction of the middle class was engineered.
If you listen to three dissenting members, it was a form of suicide. Like Lemmings, we raced to the cliff of financial destruction and hurled ourselves into poverty because all of the rest of the Lemmings were doing it.
Not with a bang, but a whimper did this nearly seven hundred page whitewash land with a thud in the halls of congress.
In the days leading up to the release of the report, some of the dissenting members…those who didn’t think there was quite enough whitewash…came out ahead of the report and blamed it all on the goal of homeownership.
Wait a minute! They want us to believe that Americans’ desire to own the roof over our heads destroyed the global economy?
It wasn’t the inflated appraisals, the predatory servicing fraud, the new and improved loan terms designed to assure default?
Nor, apparently, was it the fact that Wall Street bet massive amounts of other people’s money that the economy would collapse; it did, and they got huge bonuses.
All of that was said in testimony before the committee. It’s all in the report, as they say.
But, there has been no call for prosecutions or to apply the law equally to the middle class.
As to “foreclosure gate”, you have to pile through over 400 pages to get to this relating to MERS; but, it is exactly what I have been saying for nearly two years. The following italicized section is directly from the report.
“The standing of MERS or its designees to foreclose has been called into question by courts and academics, however. In a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the foreclosure crisis, New York State Supreme Court Justice F. Dana Winslow testified that “standing has become such a pervasive issue that I frequently use the term ‘presumptive mortgagee in foreclosure’” to describe MERS. Because of “multiple unrecorded transfers of the legal ownership of the mortgage,” it is unclear whether MERS continued to be the mortgagee after subsequent sales of the loan, according to Winslow.
Moreover, courts have held that MERS does not own the underlying note and therefore cannot transfer the note or the deed of trust, or foreclose upon the property.
Winslow also highlighted other deficiencies in MERS’ standing, many involving sloppy paperwork: the failure to produce the correct promissory notes in court during foreclosure proceedings; gaps in the chain of title, including printouts of the title that have differed substantially from information provided previously; retroactive assignments of notes and mortgages in an effort to clean up the paperwork problems from earlier years; questionable signatures on assignments and affidavits attesting to the ownership of the note and mortgage; and questionable notary stamps on assignments.
Recently, a bankruptcy court ruled that the Bank of New York could not foreclose on a loan it had purchased from Countrywide, because MERS had failed to endorse or deliver the note to the Bank of New York as required by the pooling and servicing agreement. This ruling could have further implications, because it was customary for Countrywide to maintain possession of the note and related loan documents when loans were securitized.
Across the market, some mortgage securities holders have sued the issuers of those securities, demanding that the issuers rescind their purchases. If the legal challenges succeed, investors that own mortgage-backed securities could force the issuers to buy them back at the original pricepossibly with interest. The issuers would then be the owners of the securities and would bear the risk of loss.
The Congressional Oversight Panel said it is on the lookout for such risks: “If documentation problems prove to be pervasive and, more importantly, throw into doubt the ownership of not only foreclosed properties but also pooled mortgages, the consequences could be severe.”
This sentiment was echoed by University of Iowa law professor Katherine Porter who has studied foreclosures and the law: “It is lack of knowledge of how widespread the problems may be that is turning the allegations into a crisis. Lack of knowledge feeds speculation and worst-case scenarios.”
Adam Levitin, a Georgetown University associate professor of law, has estimated that the claims could be in the trillions of dollars, rendering major U.S. banks insolvent.”
Well, we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
It sounds too dire. And so, the question becomes what to do about it. Apparently, nothing.
There is so much guilt involved that it touches the majority of the privileged class.
Consider this ominous sign: Iowa Attorney General, Tom Miller, is heading the 50 state investigation into this fraud. At the beginning of the investigation, he was gung ho to keep families in their homes and put bankers in jail.
Then, last week, they propped his hollowed out former persona in front of the cameras and from his eyes you could see that the fire was out. Like a Stepford Wife, he appeared to have been “gotten to”.
Hey, Tom it doesn’t matter. The banks cannot be saved. They are already on life support and will succumb whether we pull the plug or not. But, we will never forget where you and others whose job it is to enforce the law took your paychecks and blessed the fraud.
Do the math. Foreclosing on 15 million homes won’t help; it actually will make things worse. Banks are already abandoning homes before the final sale all over the country because they have learned that if you seize too many, they aren’t worth much.
But, it wouldn’t matter if they foreclosed on every home in America. There isn’t enough equity to ever dig out of the massive global asset bubble they created.
So, we have a dilemma. The proverbial slippery slope. Do we let the banks get away with it and create a tidal wave of homelessness, or do we uphold the laws that make all of this a crime?
All of the above constitutes a massive fraud perpetrated on investors, borrowers, and law enforcement. The prospectuses are full of lies; the pooling and servicing agreements were routinely violated by the very people who wrote them. Tax and securities laws were repeatedly broken. Then, they forged documents and proffered perjured testimony to complete the final chapter of the business plan.
The evidence obtained by the committee through sworn testimony proves that there was, and continues to exist, numerous crimes in progress, and yet, there is little in the committee report that suggests that it will be anything but business as usual.
What ever happened to our lofty ideals about America being “a nation of laws”? Even more perplexing, how can someone who studies the law and chooses to become an “officer of the court” have as little regard for the law than the lawyers who represent financial intermediaries who routinely commit fraud upon the court?
But, where the real problem lies is with the judges who look the other way as foreclosure mills submit obviously forged documents and commit perjury for the most sinister of purposes.
Some won’t. Not judges Schack or Long or Tepper or Buford or Dawson whose levelheaded decisions have reverberated around the country; but still, people who never missed a payment are losing their homes to a system that cannot be stopped.
While foreclosure mills implement the final stage of a business plan based on illegally seizing 15 million homes and emptying all pension funds, a handful of court cases suggest that the banks may not be too big to fail after all.
Although most foreclosures, about 95%, go uncontested, a few have finally made their way through a more thorough review of the facts, and well-informed, fair-minded judges are concurring that, in most cases, the foreclosing entity lacks the legal right to do so.
The reason isn’t something that can be fixed by simply altering county recordings. The chain of title was willfully and deliberately breached in order to pledge the receivables, principal and interest payments, to multiple pools.
In order to save the banks, all of the following frauds will have to be blessed.
Fraud by mortgage originators against lender/investors.
Here are but two of hundreds of examples.
Bank of America Inc.’s Countrywide Financial unit, acquired by the bank in 2008, was accused of “massive fraud” in a lawsuit by investors who claim they were misled about mortgage-backed securities.
TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Co., New York Life Insurance Co. and Dexia Holdings Inc. are among a dozen institutional investors who filed complaints in New York State Supreme Court.
The investors claim they bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Countrywide mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007 because they wanted conservative, low-risk investments. They said they relied on term sheets, prospectuses and other materials provided by the firm that were recklessly or knowingly false.
“Countrywide was an enterprise driven by only one purpose to originate and securitize as many mortgage loans as possible into MBS to generate profits for the Countrywide defendants without regard to the investors that relied on the critical, false information provided to them with respect to the related certificates,” according to the complaint.
In October, Mozilo agreed to pay a record $67.5 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he misled investors.
Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Recently, a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of shit.”
Fraud upon the courts in submitting forged documents.
Fraud upon recording agencies where the bogus paperwork has been filed.
Fraud upon the IRS by violating numerous tax laws in the process of issuing and managing the investments.
Fraud upon accounting rules and regulations.
Fraud upon shareholders who suffer reduced earnings as a result of the crimes of senior executives.
Fraud upon securities laws.
Taken altogether it weaves a rich tapestry of overlapping frauds starting, not at the bottom, but the top.
And yet, there is wide spread belief that the consequences of holding the perpetrators accountable would be so horrific that lawmakers at every level are scrambling to see if there isn’t some way to retroactively change a host of laws.
Maybe we can’t do anything about it, but I did see where Al Qaeda is thought to be targeting executives of the big banks. The American middle class appears to be getting a new ally.
George W. Mantor
The Real Estate Professor
Founder, American Foreclosure Resistance Movement
http://www.realtown.com/gwmantor/blog
1611A South Melrose Drive, #134
Vista, CA 92081
760-758-0802
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi
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