News related to Mortgage & Foreclosure Fraud

*Date*	Article (Recent Additions)	*Source*	*Comment*
2/19/11	Case on Mortgage Official Is Said to Be Dropped What a complete farce! Sounds like federal prosecutors couldn't find sawdust at a sawmill.	Gretchen Morgenson NY Times	A suit filed earlier this year against Bear Stearns by Ambac, an insurance company that guaranteed mortgage securities, cited an August 2008 e-mail from a former Countrywide executive. He explained to a friend that he had not recognized the financial cataclysm on the horizon because “we were having too much fun” processing risky mortgage instruments “and getting loaded on Miller Lite.”
2/18/11	Homeowners: Few options amid foreclosure crisis Bank of America told him to call the law firm of David Stern, the largest foreclosure mill in the state that has since been shut down and is under investigation for massive fraud.	Anthony Clark Gainsville.com	Despite facing a banking giant in court on his own, Ference is determined to fight the foreclosure. "I'm going to go through this because I know I'm right."
2/18/11	One Step Closer To The End: MERS Corporate Secretary Demoted	Tyler Durden Zero Hedge	MERS is finished. A month after CEO and President R.K. Arnold was the first rat to jump the sinking fraudclosure enabling ship, the company's (and we use the term loosely - typically companies actually do stuff instead of just handing out $25 stamps) Corporate Secretary has Bill Hultman was just shown a purple slip, by being demoted to Senior Vice President. Although following earlier news that MERS is basically suspending its operations, we are surprised that anyone pretends there is even a business model behind the fraud
2/18/11	Bill aims to plug MERS gaps in Utah property records	TOM HARVEY Salt Lake Tribune	County Recorder Ott, lawyers and other critics say that MERS introduced serious gaps in the nation’s 300-year-old property recording systems, subverted state laws and clouded property titles.
2/18/11	Foreclosure Hero: Man Pesters Executives, Saves Friend's House	Laura Bassett Huffington Post	"He had been trying to work with CitiMortgage and OneWest bank to get a loan modification, and they made it extremely difficult for him.
2/17/11**	BofA Unit’s Utah Foreclosures Violate Law, State Says A Bank of America Corp. unit is breaking the law by foreclosing on homeowners in Utah because it doesn’t meet state requirements, the state attorney general’s office said in a federal appeals court case.	David McLaughlin Bloomberg	ReconTrust Co., a subsidiary of Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, isn’t a member of the state bar or a title insurance company and is unqualified to carry out trustee foreclosures, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff wrote in court papers filed yesterday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver.
2/17/11	MERS Exits Stage Left, Tells Members Not To Foreclose In MERS' Name Includes MERS* Announcement to its criminal conspirators.*	Tyler Durden Zero Hedge	After the MERS Valentine's Day Massacre, where Judge Robert Grossman found that MERS has no right to transfer mortgages, the company appears to have proceeded with the logical next step: professional Harakiri. In an announcement sent out to all MERS Members, the company will require "members not to foreclose in MERS' name."
2/17/11	Steven J. Baum firm Dominates Foreclosures, But Faces Growing Criticism Click here for more information on Steven J. Baum	Andrew Keshner New York Law Journal	Several judges have faulted the Baum firm's lawyers for what the judges said was the firm's failure to prove its clients owned properties on which they were seeking to foreclose.
2/17/11	Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan CEO, Gets $17 Million Pay Day [for stealing homes and money from investors and pension funds. MSF]	Huffington Post	Dimon's bonus follows huge compensation boosts earlier this month for the heads of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc., as many big banks _and their stocks – have rebounded from the financial crisis.
2/17/11	Philadelphia Man Forecloses On Wells Fargo	Yepoka Yeebo Huffington Post	After he got no reply to three letters asking why he was being forced to pay a home insurance premium for a $1 million house when he bought his 3-story Victorian home for $180,000, he decided to force Wells Fargo to pay attention,
2/17/11	Big Banks Face Fines on Role of Servicers	N I C K T I M I R A O S V I C T O R I A M C G R A N E R U T H S I M O N WSJ	The penalties against Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and 11 other home-loan servicers being investigated since last fall over breakdowns in procedures for payment collection, loan modifications and foreclosures could include fines and changes in how the companies operate.
12/11/10	Criminal Prosecutions Of Sale Leaseback Peddlers In Equity Stripping Foreclosure Rescue Deals	Home Equity Theft Reporter	This post is an attempt to organize the links for some of the posts appearing on this blog on criminal prosecutions of alleged sale leaseback, equity stripping scams by the various law enforcement authorities throughout the country
2/16/11**	Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."	Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone	All of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industry-wide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft.
2/16/11**	New York's U.S. Bankruptcy Court Rules MERS's Business Model Is ILLEGAL!	Randal Wray Huffington Post	That would mean not only the end of MERS, but also the end of the banks holding unenforceable mortgages because they were not, and cannot be, "perfected". MERS and the banks screwed up big time, and there is no "do over" -- there is no valid lien on the property, so owners have got their homes free and clear.
2/16/11	The Countrywide Subpoena Rep. Issa wants the names of VIP-loan recipients.	WSJ	Taxpayers wanting the whole story of how Countrywide Financial used its VIP loan program to grease politicians and reward its partners at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may soon have it.
2/16/11	Nev. attorney general expands mortgage fraud unit Nevada's attorney general is doubling size of a mortgage fraud investigation team, even while the department is cutting its budget by nearly 30 percent.	Associated Press	Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is using federal funds to hire two prosecutors and four investigators to handle thousands of complaints against more than 200 companies accused of loan modification schemes or predatory lending.
2/16/11	Jamie Dimon’s ‘Biggest Disaster’ Is Waiting:	Simon Johnson Bloomberg	Too many bankers assert some version of the refrain:Fannie Mae made me do it. As the FCIC’s report makes clear, it was the private sector that led us into the financial crisis by making massive subprime bets and then using complex derivatives deals to magnify the downside risks.
2/15/11	U.S. Trustee To Federal Judge: "Fidelity Operated An Affidavit-Execution Process That Systematically Caused The Execution Of False Affidavits!"	Home Equity Theft Reporter	Fidelity operated an affidavit-execution process that systematically caused the execution of false affidavits. That Fidelity considered this a valuable service to its clients is made manifest in an article co-authored by Ms. Goebel appearing in Fidelity’s corporate newsletter The Summit. In the article, published in September, 2006, Fidelity trumpeted the efficiency and benefits that its “document execution” process offered to servicer clients. Trial Ex. 17.
2/15/11	UBS Lehman Brothers: What Did They Know—and When?	Gordon Gibb Lawyers & Settlements	It is not what you know, but when you knew it that can get you in hot water. The withholding of important information at the worst possible time can have a devastating affect, as is alleged by investors who purchased UBS Lehman Principal Protected Notes prior to the collapse of the once-proud bank in 2008.
2/15/11	New Ga. attorney general seeks legislative changes Sam Olens seeks mortgage-fraud subpoena.	Walter Jones Morris News Service	Olens is also seeking subpoena power to help his office prosecute cases of alleged mortgage fraud through HB 237 sponsored by Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna. He said his office gets as more than 100 calls on some days from homeowners complaining about their mortgage company, but that he has little authority to help them.
2/15/11	New York Courts Vow Legal Aid in Housing	DAVID STREITFELD NY Times	New York court officials outlined procedures Tuesday aimed at assuring that all homeowners facing foreclosure were represented by a lawyer, a shift that could give tens of thousands of families a better chance at saving their homes.
2/15/11	Legal Fees at Fannie Are Called Avoidable Testifying before the subcommittee, Ohio AG DeWine characterized the legal defense of the company and its executives as “a feeding frenzy.” At depositions in the case, he said, Fannie officials have brought 13 lawyers, many of whom said nothing during the interviews.	GRETCHEN MORGENSON NY Times	The contracts for Fannie Mae and its former executives are typical of those across corporate America. Under these deals, executives are indemnified against having to pay “reasonable” legal bills arising from lawsuits associated with their work for the company. If the executives are found liable for wrongdoing, however, they are required to return the amounts advanced for their defense.
2/14/11	Foreclosure Crisis + Legal Aid Cuts = @#$%!	Kat Aaron Mother Jones	Over the past few years, a perfect storm of conservative attacks, shrinking budgets, and recessionary demand for legal services has left those who can least afford it fending for themselves against the financial behemoths.
2/14/11	Fed Official Calls For Major Foreclosure Reforms A top federal regulator told bankers on Friday that a major investigation into Wall Street's foreclosure system has revealeda "broken" process that takes advantage of homeowners... further intensifying the debate over regulatory remedies to potential foreclosure fraud.	Zach Carter Huffington Post	Mortgage companies accused of submitting fraudulent paperwork in the foreclosure process. This spectacle has undermined public faith in President Barack Obama's signature foreclosure -relief effort. The National Consumer Law Center estimates that half of the foreclosure cases it takes on are driven by improper actions by mortgage servicers, rather than fundamental problems with a borrower's ability to pay off a mortgage.
2/14/11	LEGAL ETHICS Judge Axes Foreclosure, Bans Do-Over, Holds Lawyer in Contempt - Fannie Mae Pulls Files from Firm	Martha Neil ABA Jounal	After originally saying the original note and mortgage were lost, the firm then filed the so-called original note and original mortgage months later, said the judge. She called this issue alone "a fraud upon the court" in a show-cause order requiring the law firm to explain why it should not be held in contempt. However, that issue "pales in comparison" to further problems--the mortgage and note are for a different property, and are improperly signed and notarized, she wrote.
2/14/11**	BIG NEWS! Merscorp Has No Right to Transfer Mortgages, U.S. Judge Says	Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	Merscorp Inc., operator of the electronic-registration system that contains about half of all U.S. mortgages, has no right to transfer the mortgages under its membership rules, a judge said.
2/14/11**	STATUS OF 50% OF ALL MORTGAGES NOW QUESTIONABLE MERS Has No Right To Transfer Mortgages, Finds Entire MERS Process Illegal	Living Lies	This clearly means that the requirements for a clear chain of title are left unsatisfied. Any certificate or deed issued in which MERS was previously named in the chain of title is probably void (not voidable). Any homeowner who thinks they lost their home in foreclosure probably still legally owns that home. Any petitioner in bankruptcy whose estate included a home on which there was a purported encumbrance with MERS named as nominee had a much larger estate than the one filed with the help of automated computer schedules.
2/13/11	House Bills aim to protect homeowners in foreclosure	Griselda Nevarez Cronkite News	"We have to hold abusive mortgage providers accountable for their unethical practices that are resulting in the problems that we're seeing today," said Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix
2/13/11	TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE HOMEOWNER SOLUTIONS	Living Lies	Here are some rules of thumb to detect when you have been approached by someone with a “solution” to your mortgage problem, when in fact, at best, they are mistaken, and at worst, they are scam operators:
2/12/11	Disputed foreclosure ruling could bog down courts Many homeowners in Pinellas and Pasco counties could get at least a temporary reprieve from foreclosure pending the outcome of a case now before a Florida appeals court.	Susan Taylor Martin Tampa Bay	"In most of these cases nothing has happened, they're just sitting there," he said. "It sort of begs the question — if it's not a final order and the case isn't dismissed, then why isn't the plaintiff's lawyer doing anything?"
2/12/11	Lawyer held in contempt over 'fraud' in foreclosure filing Judge Lando said the so-called original note and original mortgage were filed months after the bank said those documents were lost. "That in itself is a fraud upon the court," Lando wrote	KIMBERLY MILLER CHRISTINE STAPLETON Palm Beach Post	A day after federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae fired the prominent law firm of Ben-Ezra & Katz, a Miami judge found the firm's founding partner, Marc Ben-Ezra, in contempt of court for filing "sham" foreclosure documents and "wasting the court's time." The judge dismissed the foreclosure case and banned the lender from refiling it.
2/12/11	Who Was Astroturfing Forged Letters Against FinReg? Washington County, Arkansas judge Marilyn Edwards, whose name appeared on one of the letters, said she didn’t send it. “I have had nothing to do with that,” she said. “That is certainly not my signature on the bottom. I am not a very happy camper about this.”	Barry Ritholtz Ritholtz.com	The scam is a firm (likely a bank) hires a PR firm, who then hires a sub-contractor, who hires a sub sub-contractor. They send letters to congress, signing them to individual business people as well as Judges and Sheriffs — despite the fact that impersonating law enforcement personnel is a a felony.
2/11/11	Judge rejects ex-Wachovia banker’s fraud plea, says Naples woman negligent, not criminal	AISLING SWIFT Naples News	A former Wachovia bank branch manager who admitted she was negligent for not verifying bank deposits on a trusted customer’s mortgage application form has pleaded guilty for a second time
2/11/11	SEC charges former IndyMac executives with fraud	Yian Q. Mui Washington Post	The Securities and Exchange Commission charged three top executives of failed mortgage giant IndyMac on Friday with misleading investors as the firm was faltering during the financial crisis.
2/11/11	When Banks Outsource Foreclosures, Nothing Good Happens The insanity of the Wilson case Article contains many links to documents.	Abigail Field Daily Finance	Trying to Foreclose on a Current Loan The Wilson case began when the couple declared bankruptcy in October, 2007. In January, 2008, Option One bank's LPS-network counsel, the Boles firm, asked the bankruptcy court to let it foreclose on the Wilsons' house, claiming that they hadn't made a mortgage payment since October. The debtors objected, saying they were current on the loan. The judge denied Option One's request.
2/11/11	Administration Seeks Smaller Federal Role in Mortgages	Sewell Chan NY Times	The Obama administration released a broad outline on Friday for the future of housing finance in the United States, calling for a substantial reduction in government support for the mortgage market but providing few concrete details about how it should be accomplished.
2/11/11	The State Attorney General Goes MIA So far, nothing but silence from our crime fighters in Trenton. Robo-signing and fraudulent foreclosures will cost some 65,000 New Jerseyans their homes this year	NJ Spotlight	While the attorney general is understandably transfixed by the scandal at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, the state's top lawyer seems to have forgotten about a disgrace that smells every bit as bad: the massive fraud committed by Big Banks against tens of thousands of New Jerseyans who are losing their homes in faulty foreclosures.
2/11/11	Hawaii House approves moratorium on foreclosures	Associated Press Forbes	The Hawaii House of Representative has passed a measure that would prohibit non-judicial home foreclosures for five months.
2/10/11	CPAC Chief Is Partner In Law Firm Defending Foreclosure Mill David J. Stern, Served on Board of Fannie Mae	Zach Carter Huffington Post	The new head of the American Conservative Union, the group which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, has ties to the ongoing controversy surrounding fraud in the foreclosure process.
2/10/11	New Study Shows How Google Aids Mortgage Rescue Ripoffs Prompting Consumer Watchdog to Call for FTC to Intervene	PRNewswire-USNewswire	"Because Google so far has turned a blind eye to these fraudsters, perhaps because of the substantial revenue such advertising can generate, we ask that the FTC investigate Google's role as a facilitator of deceptive and fraudulent advertising and act to prevent the Internet giant from continuing its harmful behavior,"
2/10/11	Property Task Force Protects Homeowners	DOMENICK RAFTER Queens Tribune	Homeowners will be able to stay alert on possible fraud as well. In order to help homeowners detect possible mortgage fraud involving their own homes, the Financial Crimes Task Force is teaming up with the Dept. of Finance to institute a program that will allow homeowners to be alerted when any transaction involving their property is entered into the City's database. Homeowners can receive an email, text message, or letter by mail, any time certain property related documents are filed with the City, so homeowners will immediately know if unauthorized transactions are taking place. Homeowners can register at nyc.gov or by calling 311.
2/10/11	Fannie Mae fires second South Florida law firm The termination of its relationship with the Fort Lauderdale firm of Ben-Ezra & Katz, P.A. was announced today in a notice to loan servicers	Kimberley Miller Palm Beach Post	Federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae has cut ties with a second South Florida law firm handling its foreclosure cases, requiring an immediate transfer of those files to other attorneys and likely causing more turmoil in the state's foreclosure courts.
2/10/11	TAKE THE MONEY AND THE HOUSE TOO. WHAT A DEAL! The sole reason they didn’t want to produce the original documentation was that it would not conform to the deal proposed to the investor and did not conform to the deal made with the borrower. Better to say you lost it or accidentally destroyed it than to admit criminal fraud.	Comments by Neil Garfield	The ACTUAL TRANSACTION between the homeowner and the ACTUAL source of funds was never disclosed to either the lender nor the borrower, nor ever committed to writing. Hence the representation that there ever was a secured loan was false, and through no fault of the borrower. The documentation from the closing was neither lost nor destroyed, but often described as one or both.
2/10/11		New York Times
2/10/11**	Morgan Stanley and Citi Were Closer to Brink Than Thought This week the commission will release another set of documents on its Web site, including an interactive timeline that goes back to the Great Depression.	SUSANNE CRAIG BEN PROTESS NY Times	The site will also feature hours of previously unreleased audio recordings of interviews with major players in the crisis, like Joseph Cassano of the American International Group, who was at the center of the credit-default swaps business.
2/9/11	The Truth About the Financial Crisis, Part I	Barry Ritholtz Ritholtz.com	Last week, I began musing here, about mining the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report to confront the top ten urban myths about the Financial Crisis. Expecting to dash off a blog series in a day or so, I found that my eyes were bigger than my brain capacity. Though I had read a good portion of the Report, it took many days longer to digest all 530 or so pages.
2/10/11*	The Truth About the Financial Crisis, Part II	Barry Ritholtz Ritholtz.com
2/10/11	Protecting the Whistle-Blowers	NY Times	All those Capitol budget hawks searching out waste, fraud and abuse should first find out why some mystery lawmaker killed a long-needed whistle-blower protection bill in the final hours of the last Congress.
2/9/11	California Appeals Court Rules Oral Promises Are Binding A California appeals court ruling could have far reaching effects for servicers who believe oral promises do not carry weight.	Joy Leapold DSNEWS	Last month, the three judges hearing the case of Aceves v. U.S. Bank found that the bank had promised to negotiate a loan modification for a customer while intending to proceed with the foreclosure on the customer’s house.
2/9/11	Banks Could Face $60 Billion Tab on Bad Mortgage Loans	Ben Protess NY Times	The exposure stems from risky loans that the banks packaged and sold as securities at the height of the mortgage bubble. The terms of the mortgage security deals often required lenders to repurchase loans that failed to meet certain underwriting criteria.
2/9/11	LPS Document Scheme Easy Target for CFPB Enforcement	David Dayen FDL	Richard Cordray cannot wait until July to acquire enforcement capabilities at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In a way, he wants to finish something he’s already started. Cordray was one of the most aggressive Attorneys General while serving in Ohio at taking on foreclosure fraud. He sued GMAC and got state courts to stop servicers from merely substituting documents instead of re-filing cases where robo-signing was found. Now the head of enforcement at CFPB, Cordray won’t change his approach.
2/9/11	Banks Could Face $60 Billion Tab on Bad Mortgage Loans	BEN PROTESS NY Times	The exposure stems from risky loans that the banks packaged and sold as securities at the height of the mortgage bubble. The terms of the mortgage security deals often required lenders to repurchase loans that failed to meet certain underwriting criteria.
2/9/11	Fla. investigating 3 law firms after consumer complaints about defaulted mortgages Kahane & Associates, as well as the Tampa firms of Daniel C. Consuegra, and Albertelli Legal	KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post	Investigators give the firms 45 days to hand over all consumer complaints received in a two-year period beginning in April 2008, employee directions as to the handling of foreclosures, and correspondence regarding remedies taken to assure proper methods are being followed in filing foreclosures
2/9/11	New York Fed Economists Say Bush-Era Bankruptcy Law Fueled Over 200,000 Foreclosures	Zach Carter Huffington Post	Economists at the New York Federal Reserve have concluded that a controversial 2005 law backed by banks and credit card companies pushed more than 200,000 people into foreclosure and exacerbated the subprime mortgage crisis.
2/9/11	Subprime Foreclosures and the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform	Donald P. Morgan, Benjamin Iverson Matthew Botsch New York Fed	After the bankruptcy abuse reform (BAR) took effect in October 2005, foreclosures on subprime mortgages surged nationwide.
2/8/11**	Will Florida Finally Punish Banks and Lawyers for Foreclosure Document Fraud?	Abigail Field Daily Finance	Foreclosure proceedings in courts nationwide have exposed a swamp of fraudulent documents, and in some cases -- though perhaps far too few -- those bad docs have sunk attempts by banks to take people's homes.
2/8/11	OHIO FALSE CLAIMS ACT; QUI TAM OHIO, QUI TAM, WHISTLEBLOWER LAW, WHISTLEBLOWER OHIO Momentum Grows For Ohio False Claims Act If you agree, Sign the petition we will pass the results on to the members of the Ohio General Assembly and Governor Kasich: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ohiofalseclaimsact/	DANNLAW.com	This should be the easiest vote of the 2011-2012 legislative session. By enacting an Ohio False Claims Act the Ohio Legislature can enact a bill that will close the state budget deficit and root out fraud and corruption. The only thing standing in the way are the industries that have been fleecing Ohio taxpayers for generations.
2/8/11	SEC, Courts Still Circling Foreclosure Fraud, But Hopeless to Stop Without Real Penalties	David Dayen FDL	The SEC’s current conception of “enforcement,” with the occasional splashy headline on relatively minor crimes, while relieving the perpetrators of the really large crimes of the need to admit wrongdoing, or outright failing to prosecute the most massive and obvious crimes around, really works well for Wall Street.
2/8/11	Title Company Missed Mob Ties, Investors Say	Courthouse News Service	North American Title also served as title company and escrow agent for the plaintiffs, in an investment that was part of a larger, pooled mortgage investment, in properties in Travis County, Texas, according to the complaint in Dallas County Court.
2/8/11	Mortgage Fraud Ring Unravels	Courthouse News Service	The former president of GuyAmerican Funding Corp, a Queens mortgage broker, was sentenced Monday to 30 months in prison for mortgage fraud. David Ramnauth pleaded guilty in August to his role in the $23 million scheme involving 44 properties in the New York metro area.
2/8/11	Desperate homeowners seek free legal help fighting foreclosure Desperate and indignant, about 30 homeowners met Saturday with a Royal Palm Beach law firm offering free foreclosure defense to the most compelling cases.	Paul Owers Palm Beach Post	One homeowner said her lender, Bank of America, sent her a letter telling her that it had canceled the January foreclosure sale. A few days later, though, she received another letter informing her that Bank of America had repossessed the property. Another homeowner said Bank of America told her to stop making payments for three months and then offered her a forbearance plan. After completing that program, Millett said Bank of America stopped taking her mortgage payments and later filed for foreclosure in September.
2/8/11	Lenders compound court errors Scores of Palm Beach County homes were foreclosed on with faulty paperwork that banks are now trying to sidestep with a legal maneuver experts say doesn't even exist.	KIMBERLY MILLER Christine Stapleton Palm Beach Post	A Palm Beach Post review of court documents filed after last fall's robo-signing scandal found 116 Palm Beach County cases in which attorneys for banks have asked a judge to ratify a final foreclosure judgment even though flawed documents "may" have been used to foreclose on the property. "You can't ratify a final judgment that was based on fraud." attorney Henry Trawick
2/8/11	Citigroup Settles Fraud Cases Tied to Texas Mortgage Assigner “They’ve got to show me more than their swearing that they have the right,” “They’re going to have to connect up the dots back to the note and the security agreement, which would be the mortgage.” - BK Judge Lunden	Donal Griffin Dakin Campbell Bloomberg	Citigroup Inc., the third-largest U.S. bank, settled or lost at least five claims in 2010 brought by borrowers who accused the bank of filing fraudulent mortgage documents provided by a Texas firm. In the most recent settlement in December, a homeowner challenged Citigroup’s use of a mortgage “assignment,” which shows the transfer of ownership of a mortgage. It was signed by an employee at Orion Financial Group Inc., a Southlake, Texas, firm that provides document services to lenders.
2/7/11	Class action suits filed against US Bank and Bank of America by Attorneys Marc Dann and Jim Douglass for failure to fulfill obligations under the Federal Home Affordable Modification Program	Attorneys Marc Dann James Douglas	On February 7, 2011, attorneys Marc Dann and James Douglass filed two similar class action lawsuits – one against US Bank Home Mortgage and the other against Bank of America and BAC Home Loan Servicing, LP. Both banks have failed to offer permanent loan modifications to eligible homeowners participating in good faith in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) despite entering into agreements with these homeowners and accepting Federal funds to participate the program.
2/7/11	Citigroup Settles Fraud Cases Tied to Texas Mortgage Assigner	Donal Griffin Dakin Campbell Bloomberg	“They’re afraid of going through the process,” she said. A risk-based analysis may focus on the question, “Do I risk going in front of the judge and getting an order that is going to beam around the whole world?” she said.
2/7/11	Foreclosures: The Hits Keep Coming	Robbie Whelan WSJ	“The hose is kinked at the end, at foreclosure sale,” LPS says. This could lead to a wave of houses moving from the “shadow inventory” of houses that come with distressed loans but are not yet for sale, to the for-sale market, which could further depress prices across the board.
2/7/11 MUST READ	U.S. Mortgage Crisis: Where Does The Homeowner Stand?	FDL	There is one aspect of the home mortgage disaster that no State will be able to avoid though. This involves the mismanagement and fraud relating to mortgage loans that largely occurred after the loan closed and was recorded in the local courthouse as a lien on the property along with the new deed of ownership. This unlawful activity affects in some substantial way the validity of the great majority of mortgages issued over the past 20-years throughout the country, whether the loan payments are current or delinquent.
2/6/11	NJ Court slams Wells Fargo in Wells Fargo v. Sandra Ford; Ohio was first in Wells Fargo v. Jordan, will NH be next with Jeanne Ingress case? Video includes court hearing.	Sandra Ford	On appeal, defendant argues that (1) Wells Fargo failed to establish that it is the holder of the negotiable note she gave to Argent and therefore lacks standing to pursue this foreclosure action; (2) even if Wells Fargo is the holder of the note, it failed to establish that it is a holder in due course and therefore, the trial court erred in concluding that Wells Fargo is not subject to the defenses asserted by defendant based on Argent’s alleged predatory and fraudulent acts in connection with execution of the mortgage and note; and (3) even if Wells Fargo is a holder in due course, it still would be subject to certain defenses and statutory claim defendant asserted in her answer and counterclaim.
2/6/11	Court's stance on foreclosure case could have big impact	William E. Lewis Highlands Today	Should the case be accepted by the Florida Supreme Court and a decision rendered in favor of Pino, thousands of cases could be impacted as allegations of document fraud run rampant throughout the state. In their foreclosure complaint, the Bank of New York alleged that it was the owner of Pino's mortgage note through an assignment from another lender, but did not include said assignment as part of its original complaint.
2/6/11	Court's stance on foreclosure case could have big impact	William E. Lewis Highlands Today	"We conclude that this is a question of great public importance, as many, many mortgage foreclosures appear tainted with suspect documents," the appeals court wrote in certification to the Supreme Court.
2/6/11	The Rise and Fall of a Foreclosure King The man who made millions foreclosing on houses could end up in the biggest house of all	Michelle Conlin AP	The rise and fall of Stern, now 50, provides an inside look at how the foreclosure industry worked in the last decade — and how it fell apart. It also shows how banks, together with their law firms, built a quick-and-dirty foreclosure machine that was designed to take as many houses as fast as possible.
2/5/11	Foreclosure Defense Attorney Mike Wasylik talks Foreclosure Fraud on Bay News 9	Bay News 9	An interview into the fraud found in foreclosures. This has created more work for lawyers and the courts because these cases will have to be redone.
2/5/11	Why Aren’t Geithner And Holder Acting On Failure To File Suspicious Activity Reports On Mortgage Fraud?	masaccio FDL	Darcy Parmer, a former quality assurance and fraud analyst at Wells Fargo, the second largest mortgage lender from 2004 through 2007 and the largest in 2008, told the Commission that “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fraud cases” that she knew were identified within Wells Fargo’s home equity loan division were not reported to FinCEN. And, she added, at least half the loans she flagged for fraud were nevertheless funded, over her objections.
2/5/11	NJ \| SHERIFF’S OFFICERS ACCUSED OF EMPTYING WRONG HOME IN BOTCHED FORECLOSURE Includes Claim filed against the county	4closurefraud.org	A 76-year-old Hillside woman has filed a claim for damages against Union County, alleging that officers of the county sheriff’s department illegally entered her home and removed the entire contents because they had the wrong address of a foreclosure.
2/5/11	Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine sees office as a "bully pulpit": Plain Dealing "We will vigorously continue the GMAC case," DeWine vows.	Sheryl Harris The Plain Dealer	DeWine is turning his attention to the office's main mission, protecting Ohio's consumers. He wants to make sure more scammers face criminal prosecution and, he says, press on with the state's lawsuit accusing GMAC Mortgage of filing false documents with Ohio's courts to speed along foreclosures.
2/5/11	Indiana Man Dies During Foreclosure Eviction; Six Hour Police Standoff Begins With Gunshots, Ends In Flames	The Star Press	Sheriff’s deputies were called to Stein’s home Monday afternoon to stand by while a bank representative changed the locks on the house, which was in foreclosure proceedings.
2/5/11	BofA Sets Mortgage Cleanup Unit	DAN FITZPATRICK WSJ	Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Brian Moynihan shook up his mortgage team Friday, tapping adviser Terry Laughlin to run a new unit responsible for cleaning up the bank's mortgage mess. The Legacy Asset Servicing group will monitor the bank's 1.3 million delinquent loans, handle oversight of foreclosure efforts and deal with investor demands to repurchase bad mortgages.
2/4/11	Where are the Handcuffs? A Talk with Shahien Nasiripour	Dylan Ratigan MSNBC	The American People DEMAND JAIL TIME!
2/4/11	Deutsche Bank Financial Fraud On Wall Street & US Mortgage Scam Just The Tip of the Foreclosure Iceberg Linked To Stern Law Firm.	foreclosureblues	Deutsche Bank in New York was selling what it knew were toxic waste or junk mortgage bonds on US subprime mortgages to “stupid German investors in Duesseldorf” as one Deutsche Bank New York bond trader told Lewis.
2/4/11	In a jam, more skip mortgage payments *(The banks' fatal errors and outright fraud leaves homeowners in their homes - and without a legal party to foreclose. MSF)*	Jenifer B. McKim Boston Globe	Housing advocates say the extended time it takes to foreclose upon a property and evict someone gives homeowners an opportunity to save their homes or put away money to rent an apartment, and prevents neighborhood blight by reducing the number of abandoned properties. But economists worry the unresolved ownership of so many properties will imperil an already fragile real estate market.
2/4/11	Eye on Loan Modifications Dems: Obama Broke Pledge to Force Banks to Help Homeowners	Paul Kiel Olga Pierce ProPublica	Before he took office, President Obama repeatedly promised voters and Democrats in Congress that he’d fight for changes to bankruptcy laws to help homeowners—a tough approach that would force banks to modify mortgages. “I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes,” Obama told supporters at a Colorado rally on September 16, 2008, the same day as the bailout of AIG.
2/4/11	Rico is finally catching on	Jason Werner	It seems the judges are finally either throwing the bribes back at the crooked debt collector attorneys, or maybe the debt collector attorneys merely do not have enough cash, etc. with which to bribe the judges.
2/4/11	Financial Crisis Prosecutions On Wall Street Slow To Develop Despite Cries For Justice About $1 trillion worth of home loans made from 2005 to 2007 were "fraudulent," commission said	Shahien Nasiripour Huffington Post	People need to go to jail," said Liz Ryan Murray, policy director of National People's Action. "If you steal something, you go to jail. If you falsify documents, you go to jail. Why doesn't that apply to big bank executives?"
10/23/10	Suit seeks to void MERS' foreclosures and return property to homeowners	Attorney David Ates	The complaint seeks to overturn all MERS foreclosures in the state of Georgia and return the property to its lawful owners or in the alternative if the property has been sold to an innocent third party, money damages for wrongful foreclosure.
2/4/11	Trustee: J.P. Morgan Abetted Madoff The lawsuit	MICHAEL ROTHFELD WSJ	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ignored or dismissed warning signs about the Madoff fraud even as it earned hundreds of millions of dollars from its relationship with his firm, according to a lawsuit unsealed Thursday.
2/3/11	Attorney Chases Justice in Foreclosure Crisis "Obviously this is a national disgrace," says Narkin, whose firm specializes in hunting down boogie men involved in everything from securities fraud to consumer protection law.	Brenda Craig Lawyers & Settlements	Got to hand it to attorney John Narkin. He’s got this foreclosure crisis thing figured out—well, near as anyone can figure it out. The 113-page class-action suit on behalf of distressed homeowners filed by Narkin's firm, BHN Law in Philly, lays out the whole sorry story in amazing detail, complete with links to video clips.
2/3/11	Explosive: Foreclosure Fraud Case Sent to Florida Supreme Court	STOPForeclosureFraud	We conclude that this is a question of great public importance, as many, many mortgage foreclosures appear tainted with suspect documents.
2/3/11	Case involving alleged foreclosure fraud headed to Florida Supreme Court A South Florida homeowner who is fighting a mortgage foreclosure could end up reshaping state law.	Peter Franceschina Sun Sentinel	If the case is taken up by the Supreme Court and results in a decision in favor of the homeowner, legal experts who specialize in foreclosure law say the case has the potential to affect thousands of foreclosures across the state where there are allegations of document fraud.
2/3/11	Rescission Without Tender Under TILA Survives Summary Judgment Includes court opinion	Dean Operative Bite	Judge Brown noted in her memorandum: “In light of the purpose of the statutes to protect consumers from predatory lending tactics, however, the Court declines under these circumstances to foreclose Plaintiffs' pursuit of the remedy of rescission at this time.”
2/3/11	Public Demands State AG's Prosecute the Criminal Side of Foreclosure "Most foreclosures contain evidence of criminal acts"	MSFraud.org	Most foreclosures are a theft by deception scheme that contain evidence of criminal acts that include tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud, mortgage fraud, and other acts considered state jail felonies.
2/2/11	Florida Judge Bans Free Speech and Justice I explained that I did not know about this order, but obviously the educational materials that are handed out have struck a nerve with the judicial system.	figa.org	This appears to be an intimidation tactic by a bully issued under color of law to circumvent the First, Fifth, and Seventh Amendments to the United States Constitution.
2/2/11	Hawaii house advances Mortgage Foreclosure Moratorium bill	Rep. Robert Herkes, Hawaii House of Representatives	The House Joint Committees on Consumer Protection & Commerce and Judiciary advanced a bill this afternoon which places a moratorium on all non-judicial foreclosures in Hawaii. The moratorium would last 5 months from the effective date of the bill’s enactment.
2/2/11	Foreclosed Homeowners Go to Court on Their Own	DAVID STREITFELD NY Times	Lawyers are scarce and free legal assistance is overwhelmed in New Mexico, so a community center here is offering an hour-long class in how to download the correct forms, decipher the lingo and mount a defense, however tentative and primitive, against a multibillion-dollar bank.
2/2/11	California Woman May Receive Damages in Foreclosure Suit A California woman whose home was foreclosed may be able to obtain financial damages as a result of wrongly being dealt with by U.S. Bank in the foreclosure of her home, a federal court has ruled.	Kevin Chiu Housing Predictor	U.S. Bank reneged on its promise to negotiate with the woman and her husband over their home’s mortgage, giving the homeowners cause to sue for bank fraud in a ruling that could set a court precedent for victims mistreated by banks and bank servicing companies.
2/2/11	Fraudclosure: Will state AGs step up to their moment in history? They can book the crooks and force top officers to trade pinstripes for jail stripes.	PressTV	Americans know that the big banks and the mortgage service providers got us into this hole by pursuing an array of financial crimes. The SEC settlements alone have revealed a plethora of illegal, predatory and deceptive lending related to mortgages, securities fraud, accounting fraud, insider trading, brokerage fraud, bribery of government officials, criminal conflict of interest, deception of shareholders and investors, and more.
12/23/10	Are Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac (Government Controlled Lenders) At the “Heart” of the Mortgage Mess?	BEREL News Team	The two GSEs set the precedent for fast, perhaps overly-effective and aggressive foreclosure methods that ultimately led to Foreclosure-Gate and the robo-signing fiascos currently being endured and investigated on multiple fronts throughout the country.
2/1/11	Activists Plan National Call-In to Pressure State Attorneys General on Foreclosure Fraud	David Dayen FDL	Many consumer advocates and direct-action groups have been dismayed at the fraying of the 50 state AG investigation into foreclosure fraud. Initially this was seen as the best opportunity to see real action on the banks, and the Attorneys General at the head of the probe were well-liked and respected. But to date, no real investigations of servicer practices have been undertaken.
2/1/11	Aceves ruling: Foreclosed homeowner has cause to sue bank for fraud What could become a landmark foreclosure ruling appears to be both a win and a loss, for mortgage servicers and foreclosure defense attorneys alike.	Kerry Curry Housing Wire	A California appeals court ruled that a former homeowner's lawsuit against U.S. Bank for fraud may continue after the bank allegedly reneged on a promise to negotiate a mortgage modification, opening the door for claims from potentially thousands of similarly situated troubled borrowers in the Golden State.
2/1/11	Bet on Foreclosure Boom Turns Sour for Investors Shares of the company, which were worth $14 apiece last summer, trade now for about 50 cents on the Nasdaq exchange.	JULIE CRESWELL BARRY MEIER NY Times	DJSP faces a lawsuit from investors who claim they were misled about its financial prospects, an accusation the company has denied. Separately, former employees of DJSP who performed back-office work related to Mr. Stern’s law firm have sued, contending that the company failed to follow federal regulations in laying them off; the company filed a motion to dismiss the claims.
2/1/11	Groups Say Iowa AG Retreats From Promise To Be Tough On Robo-Sign Banks "In our first meeting with AG Miller we felt like we had a champion that was ready to go toe to toe with the big banks," Hugh Espey, director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement said in a statement. "This time we left wondering if the big banks had knocked the wind out of our state's top law enforcer.	Yepoka Yeebo Huffington Post	The attorney general leading the investigation into "robo-signing" mortgage companies may be backtracking on promises to help Americans wrongly foreclosed on stay in their homes. Iowa Attorney General Tim Miller is no longer promising to press criminal charges against bank officials who fraudulently foreclosed on homes, according to Iowa community groups. Community groups grew concerned after a meeting on Tuesday, when Attorney General Miller did not repeat promises he made last December to help families back into their homes or prosecute bank staffers if there was evidence of fraud
2/1/11	Lawyers' Carelessness Was Key to the Mortgage Mess Were Lawyers Co-Conspirators? I wonder when the malpractice suits will start. And when -- if ever -- the state bar associations will start reviewing the ethics of the attorneys involved.	Abigail Field Daily Finance	Two of my biggest concerns about the mortgage mess involve the conduct of lawyers at every stage, from creating the toxic securities to foreclosing on homes, and that so far the major players haven't been held accountable for their actions in creating the crisis. Both concerns are neatly encapsulated by an enforcement action taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of last week against Greenberg Traurig.
2/1/11	Florida Bar says foreclosure lawyers must report fraud to court When fraud is suspected, an attorney's duty to the court supersedes the attorney's duty to the client, said Cynthia Booth, an ethics attorney with the Florida Bar.	CHRISTINE STAPLETON KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post	In an opinion that could have unfathomable consequences in countless foreclosure cases, The Florida Bar says attorneys must notify a judge about potential fraud — including robo-signed affidavits and forged notary stamps — even if a foreclosure case is closed and the home has been sold at auction.
2/1/11	Wells Fargo suffers setback in N.J. foreclosure case	JOE TYRRELL Newsroom Jersey	In blunt language, a three-judge appellate court rejected the bank's attempt to foreclose on a Westwood property. Significantly, the case began in 2006, raising questions about mortgage and foreclosure practices well before the collapse of the national housing bubble.
2/1/11	JPMorgan Faces Texas Sheriff in Showdown Over Eviction Case Fees Read the Judgment HERE	Prashant Gopal Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	“JPMorgan doesn't have a problem putting my client out in the street,” Roman said. “But when somebody prevails against a bank, they pull every string in the book to avoid paying.”
1/31/11	New Jersey Courts Take Steps to Ensure Integrity of Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Process While the emergent nature of those amendments did not provide the opportunity for public comment prior to the Court’s action, the Court now is seeking public comment on those rule amendments.	4closureFraud.org	The Supreme Court in its January 31, 2011 order published with this notice seeks public comment on the emergent amendments to Rules 1 :5-6, 4:64-1 and 4:64-2 that the Court adopted by order dated December 20, 2010. The Court adopted those amendments in light of irregularities in the residential foreclosure practice as reported in sworn testimony before Congress and in depositions in New Jersey and other states, which were presented to the Court in a submission by Legal Services of New Jersey.
1/31/11	I helped cause the financial crisis, and I'm sorry.	open salon	There are few things that I regret in my life. Among those regrets are a handful of loans that I should never have agreed to make. I would have lost my job, but it wasn't worth the money I made from them. No one has apologized to you, and we all should. We hurt people who were much more honest and hardworking than we ever will be, only for money. I am truly sorry, and I will never hurt people for money again.
1/31/11	Attorneys Attack Rights of Citizen Journalists	The Daily Censored	Naturally, the Bar decided to try to fool everyone, including the Justices of the Florida Supreme Court, by disguising its proposed rule as one prohibiting electronic recording by jurors. However, the Bar’s proposed rule allows judges to prohibit everyone other than employees of the traditional news media and official court reporters from recording proceedings.
1/30/11	Local judges get tough on foreclosure documents In response to a national outcry over fraudulent foreclosure filings, three Franklin County judges are requiring lawyers to verify that all of the documents in residential foreclosure actions are valid. Six of the lawyers affected by the order are fighting back.	JOHN FUTTY The Columbus Dispatch	They have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to prohibit the judges from requiring them to sign "certifications" on behalf of their clients. The dispute could slow the processing of some foreclosure cases. The complaint, seeking what is known as a writ of prohibition, was filed by the lawyers in December. The Franklin County prosecutor's office, which is defending the judges, has until Monday to file a response.
1/29/11	It's Time the Bad Guys Pay for the Financial Meltdown: Bring On the Class Actions!	Abigail Field Daily Finance	Homeowners -- whether steered into expensive mortgages when they qualified for more affordable ones, or who were honest with a mortgage broker who in turn fraudulently filled in their paperwork, or were told to default in order to get a modification and were then foreclosed on -- are going to have a hard time forming a class, because so many individual issues are involved in each case. But some attorneys are trying, and if they have success, I imagine more will follow.
1/29/11	Fannie, Freddie and Foreclosures: Exploring the True Costs to the US taxpayer	Conservative Daily News	Yet once again, a company deemed “too big to fail” by our government was in effect bailed out by the U S taxpayers. Whatever happened to investors that do not monitor their investments properly, being made to accept the loss here? Why should our government step in and make the taxpayer bear this debt burden?
1/29/11	FCIC Explains Some Bankster Crimes The failure to file a SAR as required is a crime. 31 USC § 5322.	FDL	Suspicious Activity Reports are required by 31 USC § 5318(g) and 12 CFR § 22.11. When a covered financial institution, like a bank or brokerage firm, detects a known or suspected federal criminal violation involving the bank as an intended victim or in a transaction conducted through the institution, it has to file an SAR on this form (.pdf), or electronically. If the suspect is identifiable, the floor for reports is $5000, and if the suspect cannot be identified, the floor is $25,000. This would include mortgage fraud. Reports are filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, a bureau in the Treasury Department.
1/29/11	A Bank Crisis Whodunit, With Laughs and Tears For those who might find the report’s 633 pages a bit daunting for a weekend read, we offer a Cliffs Notes version	Gretchen Morgenson NY Times	Providing chapter and verse, for example, on the bumbling and siloed management at the nation’s largest banks is enlightening, in that many of these institutions are even bigger than they were before. With too-big-to-fail institutions now larger than ever, we are almost certain to go through another episode like 2008 in the not-too-distant future.
1/28/11	Did Bear Stearns Know Its Mortgage Securities Were a House of Cards? "Bear Stearns disregarded loan quality to appease its trading desk's ever increasing demand for loans to securitize." It also underscores exactly why EMCis apparently stonewalling Wells Fargo's efforts to look at its loan files. I can't wait to see how EMC responds to the Wells Fargo suit.	Abigail Fields Daily Finance	Bear told its employees to simply stop reviewing certain loan files and just securitize them. And not just any loan flies -- the instruction to stop reviewing applied specifically to mortgages Bear had already purchased from lenders whose standards were so poor that Bear wouldn't buy any more from them. You read that right: Bear knew some lenders were making such risky mortgages that it would no longer buy from them, but rather than risk getting stuck holding the loans it had already bought from them, it securitized those loans while purposely not reviewing their quality -- or so the evidence cited by the lawsuit says.
1/28/11	Bank of America: Overturn order halting 8,900 Nevada foreclosures The lies by Bank of America and Turbo-tax Timmy are disturbing.	Steve Green Las Vegas Sun	"Courts have repeatedly rejected challenges to a notice of default on the grounds that a party was substituted as trustee after it issued the notice of default when the party substituted as trustee filed the notice of default as an agent of the beneficiary, not as the trustee," the filing said. Bank of America also disputed claims by North that ReconTrust must be licensed in Pahrump and with the state of Nevada to execute foreclosures, saying that as a national bank it's exempted from such licensing rules. Read ReconTrust's website and decide.
1/28/11	Ex-FBI official: Mortgage fraud agents need help "We really felt this was an early warning," Swecker told the Observer Thursday. "We were sure looking for some listeners and couldn't get it."	Rick Rothacker Charlotte Observer	He said he has seen prosecutions of lower-level mortgage frauds but would like to see more attention on higher-level activities, such as the packaging of mortgages into securities for investors. In that area, "we've seen a lot of civil fraud cases, but very few criminal ones," he said.
1/27/11	Clash of the Titans: RMBS Edition And so it begins. We're about to witness the main event in financial institution internecine warfare: investment funds (MBS buyers) vs. banks (MBS sellers).	Law Professor Alan Levitin	We have the first A-list litigation. We have TIAA-CREF, New York Life, and Dexia suing Countrywide (and assorted other defendants). And it alleges invalid chain of title--the mortgage-backed securities are actually non-mortgage backed securities!
1/27/11	The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008; Mortgage Lender’s Fraud; TARP; HAMP, SIGTARP’s Inspector General – Neil Barofsky’s Quarterly Report and Testimony	tfitz	It’s easy to get confused: the multiple laws, federal departments, Government-Sponsored Enterprises and Government-controlled corporations as well as the Senate and House congressional committees, federal “independent” agencies, and the enactment of The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) on October 3, 2008, the oversight committees established to monitor TARP and creation of government programs to direct and manage the EESA funds. And then the passage of theDodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank” or “the Act”) on July 21, 2010.
1/27/11	Fannie, Freddie Got $20.9 Billion From Loan Buybacks, FCIC Says	Lorraine Woellert Bloomberg	Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have received about two-thirds of the $34.8 billion they’ve demanded from lenders for mortgages that failed to meet quality standards, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported.
1/27/11	US Bankruptcy Trustee Takes Interest in “Ta Dah” Documents Mysteriously Appearing in Foreclosures (aka Probable Fabrications)	Yves Smith nakedcapitalism	The big problem for servicers and trustees (the parties that are responsible for the trust that holds the assets of the securitization) is that the pooling and servicing agreement which governs the securitization required that the note (the borrower’s IOU) be transferred though a specific set of parties by a specified time not all that long after the deal closed. Increasingly savvy anti-foreclosure lawyers recognize that the party attempting to foreclose may not have the legal standing to do so.
11/10/10	Ties to Insurers Could Land Mortgage Servicers in More Trouble Force-placed policies impose costs on both homeowner, investor "Servicers and insurers have turned this into a gravy train." said Thompson	Jeff Horwitz American Banker	Evidence of abuses and self-dealing in the force-placed insurance industry suggests that there may be far larger problems in how servicers are handling distressed loans than the sloppy document recording that has been the recent focus of industry woes. Behind banks' servicing insurance practices lie conflicts of interest that align servicers and their insurer partners against borrowers and investors. Bank of America Corp. owns a force-placed insurance subsidiary, and most other major servicers receive commissions or reinsurance fees on the very same policies they purchase on investors' and borrowers' behalf. There's no arm's-length transaction here, and that creates all sorts of incentives for the servicer to force-place excessive insurance and overcharge consumers for policies that provide minimal benefit," said Diane Thompson, of counsel for the National Consumer Law Center.
1/26/11	Texas Sheriff Threatens to Foreclose on JPMorgan’s Furniture	MSFraud	Employees and customers at one JPMorgan Chase branch office in El Paso, Texas, may be sitting on the floor tomorrow if JPMorgan doesn’t pay the attorney fees from an eviction case the banks lost.
1/26/11	Goldman Sachs Got Billions From AIG For Its Own Account, Crisis Panel Finds "If these allegations are correct, it appears to have been a direct transfer of wealth from the Treasury to Goldman's shareholders," said Joshua Rosner, a bond analyst	Shahien Nasiripour Huffington Post	The details underscore the degree to which Goldman--the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history--benefited directly from the massive emergency bailout of the nation's financial system, a deal crafted on the watch of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had previously headed Goldman.
1/26/11	Foreclosure Mills Pocketed $50M From Fannie, Freddie	Andy Kroll Mother Jones	Most of that money, $46 million, came from Freddie Mac, the smaller of the two corporations; Fannie paid the controversial firms $2 million. That's quite a hefty sum for Florida's largest "foreclosure mills,"as they're known. But the coziness between Fannie and Freddie and the foreclosure mills doesn't stop there. After all, foreclosure mills wouldn't exist were it not for the creation of the two government corporations.
1/26/11	Dear PHH Mortgage: Stop Screwing up our Credit and our Payments! Stop trying to Steal our Home through Foreclosure! Several attorneys we talked to said unless we were filing bankruptcy, they couldn't help us. (This is the problem; most attorneys do not understand these cases and the homeowner is stuck. MSF)	Denise Richardson GiveMeBackMyCredit	In a story that eerily mirrors my battle to overcome lender errors and erroneous credit reporting, Kendra and Todd have not missed a mortgage payment, nor do they have any financial difficulties. And yet their home is on the path to a wrongful foreclosure and their credit rating has been destroyed. They spend their time in an endless round of phone calls and letters in an attempt to prevent their home from being stolen out from under them. They are terrified they will be unable to get their mortgage servicing company, PHH Mortgage, to finally and effectively correct their accounting errors and clean up the credit reporting mess the bank created--before it's too late.
1/25/11	Money for Nothing and Houses for Free.	conservativedailynews	How would you feel if a burglar was caught inside your home stealing everything of value, and when the police went to make out the police report, you were told that you would have to write a check for $5000.00 to pay for the burglar’s legal fees?
1/25/11	Notaries invoke Fifth Amendment in foreclosure hearings Eighteen current and former notaries public invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify regarding their certification of Dore’s signature on the documents.	The Daily Record	Attorney Thomas P. Dore on Tuesday conceded that five pending foreclosure proceedings should be dismissed because he could not vouch for his signature on documents filed with the Baltimore City Circuit Court. Notaries who knowingly certify false signatures face possible criminal sanctions for misconduct in office or fraud.
1/25/11	Bank of America Sued for Countrywide's Mortgage Sins, Again The Only Standard for a Mortgage: "Can We Securitize It?"	Abigail Field Daily Finance	On Monday, a group of institutional investors sued Bank of America, Countrywide, their affiliates, and various former Countrywide executives including former CEO Angelo Mozillo, charging that Countrywide knowingly sold vast quantities of fraudulent mortgages in order to securitize them and sell them to unwitting investors. The plaintiffs, who include New York Life Insurance Company and TIAA/CREF, the teachers' pension fund, allege violations of federal securities laws and common-law fraud.
1/25/11	The Death of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems MERS	beforeitsnews	as earlier reported by FORECLOSURE DEFENDER, Stanley Silva (a title officer at a title firm) gave a deposition asserting that he never reviewed documents before signing NOD letters. Further, he said he was acting "on behalf of Ticor Title of Nevada, who is agent for LPS title, who is agent for National Default Servicing" who is "apparently" agent for Fidelity National, which is "apparently" a servicer for Wilshire, which acted as agent for Wells Fargo, which claimed to have standing to foreclose! Now that is a nice "daisy chain" that successfully hides the party of interest from the homeowner trying to avoid foreclosure! Heck, the homeowner would need a sleuth better than Sherlock Holmes to find out who holds the interest in the mortgage.
1/25/11**	NOTICES OF DEFAULT The Next Robo-Signing Crisis?	Diana Olick CNBC Real Estate Reporter	It appears Robo-Signing was done in a different part of the process, the Notice of Default, which takes place in the *other* half - i.e. the non-judicial states - this happens before the foreclosure sale. Several lawsuits are now being filed contending that the Notice of Default process was flawed and the foreclosure therefore invalid.
1/25/11	The Biggest Loser	Bank Lawyers Blog	So, the GSEs have proved their point, and maybe it's time to put all this nastiness behind us, link arms, and mosey on down the highway, to a land where the taxpayer picks up Fannie's and Freddie's ultimate tab, which will include not only unrecovered losses on bum loans that weren't repurchased by big banks, but $160 million in legal fees for former officers of Fannie and Freddie who are accused by the government of making massive mistakes, if not engaging in outright wrongdoing
1/25/11	Bank of America Unit Ordered to Halt Foreclosures in Nevada A Bank of America Corp. unit, ReconTrust Co. N.A., was ordered by a Nevada judge to temporarily stop foreclosures in the state that aren’t approved by a court order.	David McLaughlin Bloomberg	Stopping the foreclosures is necessary to prevent the “irreparable injury” that would result from “unlawful” seizure of the plaintiff’s home by ReconTrust Co., the judge wrote JUDGES ARE WAKING UP.
1/25/11	Financial Meltdown Was ‘Avoidable,’ Inquiry Concludes “The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.” The report failed to put blame on judges. Maybe it will be in the 576-page book.	SEWELL CHAN NY Times	The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserveand other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. Since 1996, we have been screaming to everyone that this was happening, but NOBODY would listen!!!
1/25/11**	California Law Restricts Lender's Ability to Collect Deficiency Judgment After Short Sale	Bob Hunt ibtimes	Effective January 1, 2011, California first trust deed mortgage holders who consent to a short sale of residential property (up to four units) are prohibited from seeking a deficiency judgment for the difference between the mortgage balance and the proceeds realized through the sale.
1/25/11	Bank of America’s Mortgage Headaches Won’t End	Shira Ovide WSJ	After more than a week of largely upbeat financial results from banks and brokerages, the markets got solid reminders that the fallout from the home-lending crisis isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Today, CNBC is reporting that Bank of America has stopped issuing initial foreclosure notices to home owners in states that don’t require a judge to sign off on foreclosures.
1/25/11	E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions	Teri Buhl The Atlantic	News of internal whistleblowers coming forward from Bear's mortgage servicing division, EMC Mortgage, was first reported by The Atlantic in May of last year. Ex-EMC analysts admitted they were sometimes told to falsify loan-level performance data provided to the ratings agencies who blessed Bear's billion-dollar deals. But according to depositions and documents in the Ambac lawsuit, Bear's misdeeds went even deeper. They say senior traders under Tom Marano, who was a Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Mortgages for Bear and is now CEO of Ally's mortgage operations, were pocketing cash that should have gone to securities holders after Bear had already sold them bonds and moved the loans off its books.
1/25/11	JP Morgan will have to pay big for Bear Stearns' sins”	Teri Buhl	Bear Stearns Nierenberg Doesn’t Think Cheating Emails are a Big DealThat lawsuit JP Morgan really really didn’t want you to read has just been unsealed and now we see why they used their big bank status to muscle the courts and keep it out of the public eye. The suit shows Bear executives, who all made millions and got great jobs at other banks when Bear Stearns failed, out right stole from their own investors and clients. What‘s worse is JP Morgan covered it up for the last three years.
1/24/11**	THE NON-JUDICIAL FORECLOSURE PROCESS Good News For Foreclosure Victims in Non-Judicial Foreclosure States There is relief in sight for Fraud victims in the Non-Judicial states in the form of a new defense to foreclosure.	beforeitsnews	Every notice of default has a signature on it. But just like the infamously rubber-stamped affidavits in the robo-signingcases, default notices, in at least some instances, have been signed by employees who did not verify the information in them, court papers show. In several lawsuits filed in non-judicial states, defense attorneys are arguing that this is grounds to stop a foreclosure.
1/24/11	Bank of America's Countrywide Accused in Suit of `Massive Fraud'	Karen Freifield Bloomberg	“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.
1/24/11	Why Does JPMorgan Want This Fraud Suit Sealed?	Teri Buhl under Bank Fraud	The problem is the bank, who’s known to have close ties to Obama’s administration, has somehow convinced a judge in the Southern District of New York to seal the complaint. Combing through the legal documents filed before the seal was ordered, we get a glimpse of what has JP Morgan so worried.
1/24/11**	Fed Backs Down From Plan To Gut Mortgage Regulation Following a public outcry from consumer advocates, the Federal Reserve is quietly backing down from a plan to gut the most significant federal remedy for predatory lending.	Zach Carter Huffington Post	The central bank has informed several consumer agencies that it will table its proposal to eliminate "rescission," a critical component of consumer-protection law that strips banks of the right to make money on illegal loans. Under current law, if a borrower wins a rescission case in court, the bank loses the right to foreclose on the home and forfeits all income from the loan's fees and interest.
1/24/11	US judge temporarily delays loan document shredding Two defunct lenders seeking to destroy boxes of records	Scot J. Paltrow Reuters	A U.S. bankruptcy judge temporarily blocked bankrupt subprime lender Mortgage Lenders Network USA from destroying 18,000 boxes of original loan files after federal prosecutors said documents in them may be needed as evidence in more than 50 criminal investigations.
1/24/11	Financial Crisis Commission Finds Cause For Prosecution Of Wall Street	Shahien Nasiripour Huffington Post	The bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to investigate the financial crisis has concluded that several financial industry figures appear to have broken the law and has referred multiple cases to state or federal authorities for potential prosecution.
1/24/11	Requiem for MERS (and the Banks That Created the Frankenstein Monster) The banks used robo-signers to forge documents in the hope they could paper over their home thefts. It is now widely recognized that MERS facilitated fraud by lenders, servicers, foreclosers and securitizers. Even on the most charitable interpretation it is very difficult to believe that MERS was not fraudulent by design	L. Randal Wray Huffington Post	Whenever those who are critical of MERS and the banksters post blogs about the multiple frauds, we are attacked by commentators -- presumably industry hacks -- who try to obfuscate the issues. But recent court cases as well as testimonies before elected representatives confirm our two main claims. First, many or most foreclosures that are taking place are illegal because those doing the foreclosing do not have legal standing. And, second, the practices that created the foreclosure problems also mean that the mortgage backed securities are actually unsecured debt. That means banks must take them back, so they are toast. It all comes back to MERS's business model: it destroyed the chain of title.
1/24/11	Unclean Hands as a Defense to Foreclosure	Attorney Matt Weidner	If you can get the trial court to listen, there are a mountain of cases which would help you prepare a defense to foreclosure based on the Plaintiff’s unclean hands or improper conduct…. “A lender can be estopped from foreclosing on an accelerated basis, however, where the borrower establishes that the lender has unclean hands.
1/24/11	BofA Putbacks May Cost $8.5 Billion as Lawyers `Smell Blood'	Hugh Son Bloomberg	Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, may book an $8.5 billion charge on costs to resolve disputes over faulty mortgages, a figure at the upper end of the range the company gave last week.
1/24/11	Fannie and Freddie Leave Legal Bills to Taxpayers	Gretchen Morgenson NY Times	Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud.
1/23/11	MA Bill in Reaction to Foreclosure Fraud	Citizens Reform Center	“Proposals include a bill supported by Secretary of State William F. Galvin that would require that all foreclosures be approved by a judge, a process that already occurs in 23 states. Galvin has argued that recent examples of sloppy and fraudulent lending practices demonstrate why foreclosures need judicial review Another bill would force lenders to prove they possessed a valid title for a property before an eviction
1/22/11	Merscorp's Arnold Retires as Chief Executive; Bognanno Named Interim CEO No word on whether Arnold's exit papers will be recorded or securitized.	Joe Sabo Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	Paul Bognanno will take the job on an interim basis. Bognanno, former chairman of Radian Guaranty Inc., will lead the search process for a permanent replacement.
1/21/11	Foreclosure Crisis Remedy: A True Inside Job – The Transformation of Consciousness	Connie Baxter Marlow eNewsChannels	Both films show that it was not those “greedy homeowners who bought houses they couldn’t afford” that threw this country and the world into the greatest crisis since the Great Depression. It was Wall Street and the mega-banks, in the crime of the millennium.
1/21/11	Wells Fargo Sues EMC as Trustees Start Playing Ball with RMBS Investors; Servicers Still Holding Out Wells' Complaint	Subprime Shakeout	Wells Fargo is seeking over 2,000 loan files underlying mortgages in Bear Stearns Mortgage Funding Trust 2007-AR2, based on "serious" questions raised by investors in the trust regarding whetherEMC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JP Morgan, complied with its reps and warranties when originating the loans. Wells Fargo further stated in the Delaware complaint that it had received a letter from attorney David Grais on behalf of an unnamed hedge fund purporting to hold 42% of the bonds in this deal. In that letter, Grais stated that he had investigated 1,317 loans held by the trust on behalf of his client and found that 938 breached EMC's reps and warranties--a whopping 71% deficiency rate!
1/21/11	Shamed Into Altering a Mortgage Three times she had gotten a short-term “forbearance agreement” requiring her to fork over thousands of dollars up front while her servicer — first Wilshire Credit, and then, in early 2010, Bank of America — supposedly worked out a modification. A formal loan modification never materialized. In her anxiety over keeping her house, Ms. Roberts sent mortgage checks when her forbearance agreement ran out, only to have them returned uncashed. She constantly got the runaround.	Joe Nocera NY Times	The case involved Lilla Roberts, the 73-year-old retired physical therapist I wrote about last month, whose home in Jamaica, N.Y., had been foreclosed on last summer by Bank of America without her knowledge and turned over to Fannie Mae, which was in the process of trying to evict her. With the help of a young public interest lawyer, Elizabeth Lynch, Ms. Roberts filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping the eviction and reversing the foreclosure, something Ms. Lynch conceded was a long shot.
1/21/11	New Point of Foreclosure Contention: Default Notice A new controversy could complicate foreclosures in the other 27 states.	Kate Berry American Banker	"Whoever signs the NOD needs to have knowledge that there is in fact a default, " said Christopher Peterson, an associate dean and law professor at the University of Utah.The suits also argue that the default notices are invalid because the employees who signed them worked for companies that did not have standing to foreclose.
1/21/11	MERS CEO is Leaving	Tyler Durden Zero Hedge	The company has been under fire by Congress and state officials for its role in the mortgage-document crisis. The firm's board of directors has met in recent days to address the fate of the company and its chief executive, R.K. Arnold, the people said.
1/20/11 Case to Watch	Mass Supreme Court to Consider Whether Buyers of Faulty Foreclosures Actually Own Property	Yves Smith nakedcapitalism	The SJC is considering what has the potential to be another widely-watched case, Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez. Note this case was heard at the lower court level by the same land court judge, Keith Long, that ruled on Ibanez, and the SJC in large measure affirmed Long’s take in that case. The issue is key: whether a buyer can own a piece of real estate acquired from a party that lacked the right to foreclose upon the previous owner.
1/20/11 Case to Watch	Home Buyers Are at Risk in Bad-Foreclosure Case at Massachusetts Top Court Massachusetts’ highest court will consider whether a home buyer can rightfully own a property if the bank that sold it to him didn’t have the right to foreclose on the original owner.	Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	“I have great sympathy for Mr. Bevilacqua’s situation -- he was not the one who conducted the invalid foreclosure, and presumably purchased from the foreclosing entity in reliance on receiving good title -- but if that was the case his proper grievance and proper remedy is against that wrongfully foreclosing entity on which he relied,” Judge Long wrote.
1/20/11	How to Regulate Mortgage Lending Part 1, Part 2, Part 3	William F. Black Benzinga	“Regulating” and “deregulating” are terms that often mislead. My next three columns discuss how to regulate two diverse activities that are critical to our economy – residential mortgage lending and starting small businesses. This column explains the most regulatory approaches essential to regulate residential mortgage lending effectively
1/20/11	Feds Breathing Heavy In Probe Into Suspected Bay Area Foreclosure Sale Bid-Rigging Scams	KTVU.com	OAKLAND, Calif. -- The FBI Tuesday was investigating a dark underside to the Bay Area's mortgage crisis that finds some unscrupulous investors colluding to keep prices low when foreclosed homes are sold at auction.
1/20/11	Legal Wrangle: How Serious Are Banks’ Foreclosure Problems? “The legal system is probably not the right place to work this out,” he said, before delivering a punch line that didn’t amuse most of the assembled bankers: “If anyone thinks this is a market that’s going to solve everything on its own at this point, I’ve got title to some foreclosed properties I can sell you.”	Nick Timiraos WSJ	The hour-long panel offered a civil discussion on the finer points of securitization trust law, with some frank disagreements. One main focus: the recent ruling by Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court that voided two foreclosures. (We won’t rehash these arguments—Levitin’s views are available online, as are those of Platt and his firm.)
1/20/11	Top Corporate Lawyer Claims Mortgage Rates Will Skyrocket Without MERS Platt warned that scoring short-term political points could be the end of affordable housing. [Uhh, we don't have affordable housing... remember? MSF]	David Dayen FDL	At the root, this is a scare tactic. The banks don’t want to change their systems, and they certainly don’t want them found illegal. So they trot out corporate lawyers to make baseless charges that will be taken in Washington as conventional wisdom. And the politicians will scramble to make sure the inaccurate consequences never take place.
1/19/11	FDIC’s Bair: Mortgage Industry Should Compensate Consumers “We need to provide remedies for borrowers harmed by past practices.”	Alan Zibel WSJ	Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, called for a “foreclosure claims commission” to handle complaints from homeowners who say they have lost their homes through errors made by their mortgage companies. The commission, she said, could distribute claims to affected borrowers–much like Gulf Coast oil spill fund–and would be paid for by the mortgage industry.
1/19/11 Class Action	Homeowner Class Action Filed Against Bank of America, Challenging Ownership of Homes Obtained Through Improper Mortgage Foreclosures, Case No. 8-11-CV-000107 The complaint seeks to restore the borrowers’ rights in their homes, and seeks to establish that Bank of America’s claim of ownership can be invalidated.	Lee Atkinson Forizs & Dogali, P.A.	This case is different from other similar lawsuits because it focuses on Bank of America’s current ownership of the foreclosed property. The Plaintiff group includes only borrowers who were improperly foreclosed out of homes which are now, after foreclosure sales, owned by Bank of America. The number of Florida homes which Bank of America now owns after improper foreclosures is unknown, but the Plaintiffs estimate the number in the thousands.
1/19/11	Citigroup Defective-Loan Rate Improves to F+	Jonathan Weil Bloomberg	The best leaks enlighten and inform us in ways we could not have imagined before. That’s what readers of a Bloomberg News story this week about Freddie Mac and Citigroup Inc. were treated to. Whoever made this leak possible, the public is better off for it.
1/19/11	Memo to Banks: You are Toast Banks are not making any money in traditional lines of business—that is, by making loans. No one wants loan.	L. Randal Wray Bensinga	First, the income reports result in large part from reductions to loan loss reserves. Yes, banks are partying like it is 1999 - everything is hunky-dory so there is no reason to sock away reserves against possible defaults. Heck, no one is going to default in 2011. Right? Move those reserves into the profits column.
1/18/11	Insurer fires back at Bank of America	Christina Rexrode Charlotte Observer	In a response filed in district court in Charlotte last week, Old Republic responded that Bank of America submitted claims for thousands of loans that "did not comply with (Bank of America's) own loan underwriting guidelines" and weren't eligible for Old Republic insurance.
1/18/11	Bills target rules on foreclosure Homeowners may get added protection	Jenifer B. McKim Globe Staff	Legislation meant to help troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure is scheduled to be introduced in the State House this week, bolstered by a recent Supreme Judicial Court decision and national focus on alleged bad behavior of banks.
1/18/11	JPMorgan’s EMC Mortgage Sued Over Home Loan Documents The case is Bear Stearns Mortgage Funding Trust 2007-AR2 by Wells Fargo Bank N.A. as Trustee v. EMC Mortgage Corp., CA6132, Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington	Sophia Pearson Bloomberg	JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMC Mortgage, facing homeowner lawsuits over foreclosures, was sued by the trustee of a mortgage portfolio for refusing to turn over documents detailing the quality of loans bought by the trust. EMC Mortgage failed to produce the documents “culminating more than a year of good-faith negotiations and misplaced patience by the trustee in a futile attempt to avoid litigation,” Wells Fargo said in the complaint.
1/18/11	Citigroup 46% Gain Masks Flawed Mortgages Freddie Mac Calls Not Acceptable “There’s a strategic process flaw. How can a report that shows exception rates this high not cause concerns?”	Bob Ivry Bradley Keoun Bloomberg	Three years after bad home loans helped trigger the recession and six weeks after the government cashed in the last of its $45 billion Citigroup investment, the New York-based bank is still selling mortgages that violate quality standards, according to an internal Freddie Mac review obtained by Bloomberg.
1/17/11	JPMorgan Chase admits it improperly foreclosed on homes JP Morgan Chase admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.	Lisa Myers Sarah Heidarpour NBC News	The Rowles' records show that while they kept making payments on their mortgage at 6 percent, JP Morgan Chase wrongly had been charging them at rates above 9 or 10 percent. They kept calling the bank to explain there had been a huge mistake but say no one would listen. They say they kept being harassed for money they did not owe.
1/17/11** BK Decision Overview	MORTGAGE ASSIGNMENTS, MORTGAGE SERVICERS AND SECURITIZED TRUSTS IN BANKRUPTCY CASES Several cases in the first week of 2011 make it clear that fraud by mortgage servicers and securitized trusts, in particular, is now one of the most important considerations in the defense of foreclosure.	Attorney Lynn Szymoniak Fraud Digest	In 2010, the concept of “foreclosure fraud” emerged in case law. Foreclosure fraud differed from mortgage fraud in that foreclosure fraud referred to fraud by mortgage companies, mortgage servicing companies, and banks servicing as trustees for securitized trusts, where mortgage fraud most often referred to fraudulent acts by borrowers, and brokers.
1/17/11	N.Y. artist fights house theft for 7 years	UPI	Although Colleen Kerwick, Gillings's pro bono lawyer at the time, said Gillings's title was restored when Albertina was convicted, Albertina had not admitted her theft was by means of a forgery and there wasn't enough evidence to automatically restore title to Gillings, said Richard Farrell, the head of the Brooklyn district attorney's office real estate fraud unit. (Huh?)
1/16/11	Attorney General Pam Bondi wisely intends to continue the work started by her predecessor to investigate foreclosure malpractice in Florida. UPDATE: (11/11) After Bondi took office, wrongful foreclosures increased 150% (SeeVIDEO) Ferreting out mortgage fraud Attorneys representing the lenders also should be held responsible for any fraud. They like to point the finger at their clients, but lawyers as officers of the court have a responsibility to police the documents they file, particularly when a client is known to have used robo-signers in the past.	St. Petersburg Times	Bondi's office is investigating four law firms that specialize in representing banks and loan servicers in foreclosure actions, two companies that serve homeowners with court summonses, and a servicer that allegedly produces thousands of mortgage assignments every day. The financial sector and its legal representatives have been playing fast and loose with the procedures designed to protect the integrity of the foreclosure process. They should face serious consequences for this intentional lapse.
1/16/11	10,000 GMAC Foreclosures Stopped in Maryland	Foreclosure Hamlet David Dayen FDL	In a major ruling Friday, a coalition of nonprofit defense lawyers and consumer protection advocates in Maryland successfully got over 10,000 foreclosure cases managed by GMAC Mortgage tossed out, because affidavits in the cases were signed by Jeffrey Stephan, the infamous GMAC “robo-signer” who attested to the authenticity of foreclosure documents without any knowledge about them, as well assigning other false statements. The University of Maryland Consumer Protection Clinic and Civil Justice, Inc., a nonprofit, filed the class action lawsuit.
1/15/11	How accurate are property records? Utah Court Quiets Title in Favor of Homeowner Homeowners are getting title to their property even if they owed someone money because of flaws introduced into the nation's property recording system by an entity created by the Mortgage Bankers Association. That could mean in these cases that no one is in a position to try to collect because the actual notes are lost or destroyed, potentially making some promissory notes investors think they hold worthless.	Tom Harvey Salt Lake Tribune	In Utah, when you take out a mortgage loan to buy a home, you sign a promissory note held by the lender and a deed of trust that is recorded at the county recorder’s office. The promissory note gives the holder the right to collect payments on the loan. The recording of the deed of trust gives the lender the right to foreclose on the property if you default on the loan. A trustee appointed by the lender also is recorded with the county and actually holds legal title to your property subject to the conditions of the trust deed.
1/15/11**	Taking Aim at Bonuses based on $23.7 Trillion in Taxpayer Gifts If they earned it, what business is it of ours or the government? On the other hand, if they stole it, why are they not in jail?	Living Lies	If there is money for bonuses it is because of illusory (fake) profits from an illegal scheme that I would call fraudulent. So the bonuses, the “profits” and the “capital of the perpetrators belongs to the taxpayers, the homeowners and the investors — the only real victims in this mess.
1/14/11	When Fraud Doesn’t Apply	Joe Adamaitis Mortgage Servicing News	Remember if we did not bail out the banks, they also would not have been able to pay their rent or mortgage for all those shiny branches. I suspect we all forget that they too have mortgages on real estate and that you and I are now paying while they continue to abuse Americans with their fraudulent paperwork? Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair are you listening?
1/14/11	Mortgage Mayhem: A Special Series by TheStreet	Lauren LaCapra TheStreet	TheStreet's comprehensive investigation of the problems that beset the government program to aid homeowners saddled with mortgage they can't afford.
1/14/11	U.S. Probes Banks' Mortgage Practices	Lauren Tara LaCapra The Street	It's unclear how far the Justice Department has gone in its probes, or which lenders it is targeting, because the investigations often remain under seal for several years. Also, because of the complexity of the mortgage market and how the investigation falls under the False Claims Act (FCA), the scope of lender liability also remains uncertain,
1/14/11	A new act in foreclosure circus What Is The Legal Status Of A Property Bought After An Unlawful Foreclosure? And it presents a series of terrible questions to anyone who bought a foreclosed house from a big bank. Among them: Is my mortgage valid? Will I be able to refinance or sell my home? Do I even really own my house?	Paul McMorrow Boston Globe	Mortgage-servicing banks, which were in the habit of trading mortgages around like cheap baseball cards, will be forced to slow the pace of foreclosures even more, and carefully verify that they actually own the mortgages on the properties they want to foreclose on. But the decision brings uncertainty to buyers of foreclosed properties — buyers who might not have clear title to their homes anymore.
1/14/11**	Fixing Massachusetts Foreclosures Won't Be So Easy The "In Blank" Problem Isn't Easy to Fix	Abigail Fields Daily Finance	The trusts in the Massachusetts case (Ibanez) didn't get the two mortgages at issue when they were securitized -- or any other Massachusetts mortgages, most likely. The way the banks tried to give the mortgages to the trusts was illegal under longstanding Massachusetts law. In Massachusetts, a mortgage owner has to name the person he's selling the mortgage to; assignments "in blank" -- without naming the buyer -- don't cut it. But as the K&L newsletter acknowledges, "assignments in blank" were used in the "typical mortgage loan securitization process.
1/13/11	Novice Florida lawyers draw suspicion in foreclosure mess Nearly half of those working at the state's four largest foreclosure firms have practiced law for less than three years.	CHRISTINE STAPLETON KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post	Some may face Florida Bar investigations that could end their careers, while homeowner advocates wonder whether the foreclosure crisis would have reached its state of disorder if it weren't for legions of novice lawyers doing the legwork.
1/13/11	What Does WikiLeaks Have on Bank of America?	Mary Bottari Campaign for America's Future	Recent new reports suggest that BofA is now moving into high gear on damage control, creating a "war room" and buying up hundreds of derogatory Internet domain names including BankofAmericaSucks.com and BrianMoynihanblows.com (BofA's CEO). Before the big banks start calling for Assange's internment at Guantanamo, the question worth considering is what does Wikileaks have on America's largest bank?
1/13/11	Half Dozen Florida Judge’s Rulings- Florida’s Courts Showing Fairness And Applying The Law Contains court orders you can use.	Attorney Matt Weidner	This post is a great collection of Orders from around the state that shows just how much ground we are gaining in this battle. Please review each Order carefully, print out and include in your case file.
1/13/11	More banks walking away from homes, adding to housing crisis A new type of property is adding to neighborhood blight: the bank walkaway.	Mary Ellen Podmolik Chicago Tribune	When asked to comment generally on bank walkaways, several banks either declined to comment or did not return phone calls. Two lenders, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, said they are working with the city on strategies to deal with these abandoned properties.
1/13/11	DC Puts Its Bankster-Friendly Solution for Foreclosure Fraud on the Table Their proposal, not surprisingly, is yet another bailout.	Yves Smith nakedcapitalism	The memo completely ignores the harm to investors from the bank mistakes and lacks any provisions for damage to investors to be remedied. Moreover, denying borrower rights removes their leverage to obtain deep principal mortgage modifications, which for viable borrowers produces lower losses than costly foreclosures and sales of distressed property. Thus this shredding of contractual protections in mortgages not only hurts borrowers but also harms investors.
1/12/11	Why a New York Judge Is Throwing Out Foreclosure Cases But the question isn't whether the banks will now choose to start complying with the rule: The question is: Will they even be able to?	Abigail Fields Daily Finance	Now, Judge Arthur M. Schack of Brooklyn has taken things a step further. Since the banks in cases before him have yet to begin complying with the new court rules, he has started throwing out foreclosure cases.
1/12/11	Tim Geithner Says The United States Is Insolvent	The Daily Bail	The U.S. government is insolvent. Who says so? Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 6, 2011 asking for the debt limit to be raised. If it is not raised, he warned, the U.S. will default on its debt.
1/12/11** REQUIRED READING	REMIC AND UCC EXPLAINED Under FAS 140, the original lender sold it to the REMIC and forever lost their rights to enforce the note. The promissory note had been converted into a stock as a permanent fixture. Its nature is forever changed. It is now and forever a stock. It is treated as a stock and governed as a stock under the SEC. Since the Deed of Trust secures the promissory note, once the promissory note is destroyed, the Deed of Trust secures nothing. Therefore, the Trust is invalid.	Sui Juris 249 Living Lies	The REMIC holds all the loans together into a pooling and servicing agreement. However, because they chose to avoid the IRS tax rules for double taxing, they pass on the real party of interest/ownership of the asset to the individual shareholders. So neither the REMIC nor the Trustee may foreclose. The Servicer is Not a Real Party of Interest. The Servicer can only collect the money and pass it to the REMIC. That’s the extent of their job. Once a loan has been written off, it is discharge. Once a loan has been securitized, reattachment is impossible for the following reasons:
1/12/11	VA Attempts To Fix Fraudclosure - Banks Go Nuts They're trying to kill this bill folks - get on the phones if you live in VA, and do it NOW.	Karl Denninger Market Ticker	See why the banks don't want to have to actually prove up anything? They can't, and if they're forced to, then suddenly what *really happened* all those years comes out in open court. Maybe this is a small problem and maybe it's a big problem. Maybe it's no problem at all. But if it's no problem at all, *why are the banks raising hell about being forced to prove up the provenance of the alleged debt they seek to enforce the security interest upon?*
1/12/11** MUST READ	Nightmare on Wall Street In a ruling that could be historic, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled against twofraudster banks, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo, who illegally foreclosed on homes. In short, the two banks stole homes to which they had no legal claim. The ruling in Massachusetts (one of the most respected Supreme Courts in the US) affirms that industry practice is fraudulent. Perhaps as many as 66 million mortgages (those tainted by improper industry recording procedures) could be affected by the ruling.	Professor L. Randal Wray Huffington Post	As I have been arguing in a series of pieces (see here and here and here), in their haste to commit lender fraud, the banks that securitized mortgages also perpetrated tax fraud and securities fraud. The inevitable outcome of those frauds is foreclosure fraud. As Lynn Szymoniak and Ray Brown have written, 2010 became the year in which "'foreclosure fraud' emerged in case law' -- defined as 'fraud by mortgage companies, mortgage servicing companies, and banks servicing as trustees for securitized trusts." Foreclosure fraud is not a matter of some pesky little paperwork problems. It is the designated solution to paper-over the lending and securities and tax frauds that the banksters used to bubble-up and then collapse the US real estate sector. To put it simply, the Court found that the practices followed by the industry have made legal foreclosure impossible.
1/11/11	JUDGE SCHACK Dismisses Case With Prejudice Against Citibank Due To Counsel Failure To Comply	STOPForeclosureFraud	ORDERED, that the instant action, Index Number 16214/08, is dismissed with prejudice; and it is further ORDERED that the Notice of Pendency in this action, filed with the Kings County Clerk on June 5, 2008, by plaintiff, CITIBANK, N.A. AS TRUSTEE FOR CERTIFICATEHOLDERS OF BEAR STEARNS ASSET BACKED SECURITIES TRUST 2007-SD3, ASSET BACKED CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2007-SD3 to foreclose on a mortgage for real property is cancelled and discharged.
1/11/11	Florida AG: Update on enforcement actions relating to foreclosure	Florida Attorney General	Florida Attorney General's presentation to the Florida Senate.
1/11/11	Judges Berate Bank Lawyers in Foreclosures With judges looking ever more critically at home foreclosures, they are reaching beyond the bankers to heap some of their most scorching criticism on the lawyers.	JOHN SCHWARTZ New York Times	In numerous opinions, judges have accused lawyers of processing shoddy or even fabricated paperwork in foreclosure actions when representing the banks. Judge Arthur M. Schack of New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn has taken aim at an upstate lawyer, Steven J. Baum, referring to one filing as “incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous.”
1/10/11	2nd DCA- SMACKDOWN! Florida’s Court DENIES BAC Petition for Writ!	STOPForeclosureFraud	Florida’s District Court of Appeal refuses to cave in to the banks and their games… this is HUGE victory for consumers and for the Rule of Law. Justice Prevails in Florida!
1/10/11**	The Bank of America-GSE settlement: Were we robbed, or not?	LINDA LOWELL Housing Wire	The GSEs in particular benefit if they can redeploy finite staff to the task of preserving value in the growing pile of delinquent and defaulted loans repurchased from MBS on which they have no valid recourse.
1/10/11	If you want to foreclose, show us the paperwork	Jesse Singal Boston Globe	Here's a graphical representation from a compelling investigation on foreclosure fraud put together by the office of Florida's Attorney General:
1/10/11	Massachusetts Courts to Banks on Foreclosures: The Law Matters "It's obviously they didn't want the public to know what they were doing, coupled with their greed in trying to deliberately avoid the payment of the required recording fees, has placed them in the mess that they are in today." - Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley	Richard Zombeck Huffington Post	In short, the Supreme Court upheld the March 2009 decision of the lower court that a bank can't foreclose on a home if it doesn't own the mortgage. You can read the 16-page decision here. This simple statement would seem like a no-brainer, but as a result of fast and loose securitized mortgage lending practices, the ownership of a mortgage could potentially be divided and transferred multiple times by the lenders. As I pointed out in a post back in November, in one week alone there were 808 mortgage transfers in just one county in Massachusetts. The documentation for these transfers (i.e., the assignments at the Registry of Deeds) on the other hand often lags far behind - in many cases, months, or even years after the foreclosure has taken place. This makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to determine who owned what and when. Add to an already confusing chain of events, and considering that many notes were signed "in blank", shuffled around from one lender to the next, and put into trusts well past the legal limit allowed, and you've got a mess of epic proportions.
1/10/11	Did Wall Street Just Pull Another Coup?	Ilan Moscovitz Motley Fool	From the Comment section: Too big to prosecute? I think that has already been proven. Texas schools are giving 6-year-olds citations that require them to appear in court for offenses such as disrupting class and at the same time our government is giving Wall Street free bail-out money that weighs in in trillions of dollars for defrauding the entire world and crashing the economies of nearly every country on earth. When's the last time one of these companies has seen the inside of a courtroom? The fact that there have not been 1000s of charges filed shows just how captured out political system is by these banksters. Greed followed, by corruption followed by huge pay checks
1/10/11	FDIC weighing bank mortgage disclosure rule Regulators worry about banks owning servicers and home equity loans. [The time to worry was 15 years ago.]	Ronald D. Orol MarketWatch	Responding to a growing wave of foreclosures, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is considering whether to impose new disclosure requirements on big banks seeking to package and sell mortgage securities to investors. [Wall Street banks would bet loans would default, and then have their servicer manufacture performing loans into default and foreclose. MSF]
1/9/11	Vondran Law Calls for a HALT TO NOTARY FRAUD – It is Time to Call the Notary Crooks Out!! California Notary Complaint form	Foreclosure Defense Attorney Steve Vondran	Don’t stand for this people. It is time to start filing police reports and complaints with attorney generals. The banks have bought off the notaries who gave up their notary stamps for pro
1/9/11	State guilty of 'delusional behavior' in slow response to foreclosure chaos, critics say	KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post	Fed up with the foreclosure chaos, the New Jersey courts demanded that banks prove the integrity of their home repossession systems or face shutdown.
1/9/11	Foreclosure crisis hits home for all	TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA Miami Herald	“I don’t think they realized how long it was going to extend and how deep it was going to go,” said Shari Olefson, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and author of Foreclosure Nation. “People made mistakes rushing into the crisis, but I think people are making the same mistakes trying to rush out of it.” Banks losing track of mortgage notes and foreclosure law firms fabricating documents are perfect examples of those mistakes, she said.
1/9/11	Recent Collin County grand jury and former DA Roach criticize each other The grand jury, on its last day of service Dec. 28, indicted Greg Davis, first assistant district attorney under Roach. The indictment for tampering with a governmental record stems from the DA's investigation of the district clerk's office.	Collin County Observer	Judge Wooten was indicted Oct. 14 on six felony counts of bribery and engaging in organized criminal activity. She is accused of accepting money for favorable rulings in the 380th District Court. She denies the charges. Wooten's indictment came a month after the grand jury she impaneled requested a special prosecutor to investigate possible "criminal wrongdoing" in the DA's office.
1/9/11	Pension Funds Ask Banks to Review Mortgage Practices	Peter S. Green Bloomberg	“The banks’ boards cannot continue to pretend the foreclosure mess is the result of technical glitches and paperwork errors,” Liu said. “There is a fundamental problem in their procedures that endangers not just homeowners, but shareholders, and local economies.”
1/9/11	$432 Billion Pension Fund Coalition Demands Bank Directors Examine Foreclosure Practices "The banks' boards cannot continue to pretend the foreclosure mess is the result of technical glitches and paperwork errors," Comptroller Liu said. " There is a fundamental problem in their procedures that endangers not just homeowners, but shareholders, and local economies.	New York City Comptroller John C. Liu	The coalition of pension funds called for the banks' Audit Committees to launch independent examinations of their loan modification, foreclosure, and securitization policies and procedures. "This will help to prevent future compliance failures and restore the confidence of shareholders, regulators, legislators and mortgage markets participants," the coalition advised in its letter.
1/9/11**	Neil Garfield has an army of magical leprechauns Neil responds to judge Hunt, who attacked Neil in his clueless ruling, where ignorance of the crimes before him, granted judgment in favor of a well-known fraudster the FTC found engaged in "illegal" activity. (BTW, the Order is real.)	Neil Garfield LivingLies	Dear Judge Hunt: It is easy to understand how you and other Judges were both misled and misinformed. The magical beings to which you refer are the fictitious result of an overactive imagination. The documents upon which you issued your ruling were also the fictitious result of an overactive imagination as it became clear right around the time that you issued your order, that the fabrication, forgery and illegal notarizations were revealed and admitted by the very same party (EMC Mortgage) in whose favor you entered your order (robosigning etc.)
1/8/11	Did JP Morgan Chase Ransack A Dying Man's Home? Would anyone be surprised if they did? Is JP Morgan a Skank Bank? More Shameful Behavior Has Been Reported	Gary Anderson Clusterstock	JD Butler was on his death bed in a hospital when Chase invaded the home and ransacked the place. Apparently, Chase hired contractors who acted like thugs to invade the home and carry out valuable artwork. According to the daughter, Celeste Butler, the man was current on payments. At least that is what the bank told her.
1/8/11**	FAIR GAME $2.6 Billion to Cover Bad Loans: It’s a Start While it is unfortunate that the Bank of America deal won’t recoup much for taxpayers, the resolution could have one important benefit. It might just open the door to a much-needed reckoning of the liabilities created by questionable mortgage practices at the nation’s largest banks. These institutions have not yet made a full and realistic accounting of their liabilities.	Gretchen Morgenson New York Times	It seems clear, after all, that Bank of America will not be the only institution forced to buy back billions of dollars’ worth of loans because it did not meet the lending standards promised to buyers. Costs associated with foreclosure improprieties that have come to light in courts across the country — robosigners, forged legal documents — are also likely to be substantial.
1/8/11**	Mortgage modifications daunting for homeowners Wells Fargo filed a claim with the FHA, which provides insurance on loans made by approved lenders. FHA reimbursed Wells Fargo for the $220,000 unpaid principal and approved expenses. "A man isn't supposed to lose his home for $220,000 only to sell it again for $87,000."	MATT VOLZ Associated Press	That left the federal government to unload the house for about a third of Nicholson's unpaid principal. "Who's going to eat the difference between $220,000 and $87,000?" "The lender's out of it because they've turned in their claim on it and got their money." FHA says it's costing the taxpayers nothing because the money used to pay the claims comes from the mortgage insurance payments by the homeowners who borrow under the program.
1/8/11**	Facing Scrutiny, Banks Slow Pace of Foreclosures If the slowdown continued through this month and into the spring, it could be a boost for the economy. Reducing foreclosures in a meaningful way would act to stabilize the housing market, real estate experts say.	DAVID STREITFELD New York Times	Over the last several months, some banks have been reluctant to seize homes from distressed borrowers, economists and government officials say, as they face scrutiny from regulators and the prospect of sanctions when investigations wrap up in the coming weeks and months. “The administration is committed to taking appropriate action on these issues where wrongdoing has occurred,” said Melanie Roussell, an administration spokeswoman.
1/7/11**	OUCH! - Judge Spinner lays down the law against Beneficial The Court is compelled to conduct a hearing to determine possible sanctions.	Judge Spinner	The copy of the mortgage appended to Plaintiff's moving papers bears the signatures of both STEPHEN STEELE and SUSAN STEELE and contains an acknowledgment by a notary public. However, the copy of the Loan Agreement that is appended to Plaintiff's papers raises disturbing issues. That instrument bears the date of October 26, 2006 and recites a principal amount of $ 92,696.60. The Loan Agreement clearly reflects Defendant STEPHEN STEELE as the sole obligor thereunder but, most glaring of all, the Loan Agreement bears no signature whatsoever.
1/7/11**	Wells Fargo Loses Bid to Dismiss Fraud Claims Wells Fargo offered to freeze foreclosure proceedings against them if they signed a modified loan agreement. But after they signed the loan and made payments over four consecutive months, the bank still foreclosed on their home.	Matt Reynolds Courthouse News	Wells Fargo asked the district court to throw out the suit, arguing that the homeowners' breach contract and fraud claims were fatally flawed. Judge Spero instead found that the homeowners may be entitled to damages under California's Rosenthal Act, which protects consumers from improper debt-collection practice
1/7/11**	US Trustee Sides With Borrowers in Foreclosures With Questionable Assignments, MERS Includes U.S. Trustee objection to GMAC and BAC's proof of claim.	Yves Smith nakedcapitalism	As we’ve suggested, a not-well-recognized effect of the widespread publicity on robo-signing abuses and more recently, the widespread failure of securitization industry participants to adhere to their own agreements is more pushback in the courts. It takes a while for new information to trickle into courtroom strategies, but as the abuses get more press, it isn’t just attorneys for borrowers that are taking a new stance, but also some judges and other official watchdogs
LANDMARK RULING 1/7/11**	HUGE NEWS for HOMEOWNERS! Banks Suffer A HUGE Loss At The Massachusetts Supreme Court It's pretty straightforward: The banks didn't have the proper paperwork to foreclose, says the court. Hence, no legitimate foreclosure Ibanez case compendium	Massachusetts Supreme Court	The Massachusetts Supreme Court just dealt a negative ruling to the banks in the closely-followed Ibanez case, which challenged securitization standards. It's pretty straightforward: The banks didn't have the proper paperwork to foreclose, says the court. Hence, no legitimate foreclosure.
	SJC ruling may void thousands of foreclosures	Jenifer B. McKim Globe Staff	The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a contentious land court ruling that puts in question the ownership of hundreds, possibly thousands, of foreclosed properties in the state. Cambridge attorney Paul Collier, who represented one of the homeowners in the case, said the supreme court ruling invalidates thousands of foreclosures, reverting ownership back to the homeowners who lost the homes, at least temporarily.
	NO PROOF - NO FORECLOSURE Court rules against banks in pivotal mortgage case	Michelle Conlin Denise Lavoie Associated Press	"For homeowners and foreclosures in general, it means that any mortgage foreclosure which was initiated by a securitized trust at a time when the trust had not obtained a mortgage assignment which gave it the lawful right to do so is void. Those homeowners still own the property," Collier said.
	Banks Lose Pivotal Massachusetts Foreclosure Case	Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	“We agree with the judge that the plaintiffs, who were not the original mortgagees, failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure,” Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote for a unanimous court.
	Two Banks Lose in Foreclosure Cases	ROBBIE WHELAN ALAN ZIBEL VICTORIA MCGRANE WSJ	Bank stocks fell on worries that Friday's ruling could make it harder for financial firms to foreclose on mortgages that wound up in securities. The defeat also might provide ammunition to mortgage-bond investors who have accused and even sued servicers for what the investors claim is systematically shoddy loan documentation.
	IBANEZ DECISION ANALYZED BANKS DUG THEIR OWN GRAVE ON QUIET TITLE ACTION Whatever they say will be suspect from now on Approximately 50 million transactions over the past ten years that fit this fact pattern. All of them have fatal defects in title. Trustee's may be a tool in a fraudulent scheme.	Attorney Neil Garfield Living Lies	They never did the assignment and later when they tried to correct that problem they found they were in the position of violating the terms spelled out in the PSA, wherein the assignment could be accepted by the pool — as to time, content (non-performing loans) etc. Banks don’t and in my opinion they can’t fix it because factually they did everything wrong, they have already been compensated, and they have cheated not only the borrowers, but the investors who put up the money. Thus this decision helps both investors who filed damage suits against the investment bankers and borrowers who filed slander of title and other tort and statutory claims. This ruling by the Supreme Court corroborates the finding on these pages that the pools are and always were... EMPTY.
1/7/11**	Every dog has its day... Judge faces foreclosure on his lakefront home What got him in trouble was following the advice of officials at JP Morgan Chase & Co., he said.	James F. McCarty The Plain Dealer	The bank advised me that the only way they would consider a loan modification would be if I fell behind on my payments," said Sikora, 59, a judge since 1989. "I took their advice and put the money aside." Sikora said he was surprised when, in June, during the middle of negotiations, JP Morgan Chase filed the foreclosure lawsuit against him seeking $999,000, including $6,400 in unpaid property taxes. "It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this situation," Sikora said. "I've been talking with them for more than a year, but the bank hasn't been responsive."
1/6/11	MBIA Fights Banks for Its Life	Floyd Norris New York Times	MBIA, an insurance company whose very existence is imperiled because it underestimated the risks involved in mortgage lending, says the banks owe it billions because they lied about the mortgages backing securities that MBIA insured. The insurer’s financial statements show it is solvent in large part because that money will be coming in.
1/6/11**	JPMorgan Legal Bills $5.2 BILLION, Menacing Profits The first step in reversing this mess is actually resolving the housing crisis now. The answer is obviously not more foreclosures.	Linda Sandler Bloomberg with comment by attorney Neil Garfield	“They’re under legal attack,” said Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities in Lutz, Florida, who rates JPMorgan’s stock a “buy.” “They’re similar to the asbestos or the tobacco industry, and they’re going to be repeatedly sued in the next few years.”
1/6/11	Bank of America, Chase, other banks urge N.J. court not to halt foreclosures	Bloomberg	Judge Mary Jacobson scheduled a Jan. 19 hearing to consider suspending uncontested foreclosure cases and staying foreclosure sales by the banks. The move “is necessary to protect the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process in New Jersey and to assure the public that the process going forward will be reliable,” Jacobson said in the order.
1/5/11	Bank of America's Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac settlement criticized Storm clouds are gathering for Bank of America despite this week’s settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was designed to help contain BofA’s cost to repurchase bad mortgages.	New Mexico Business Weekly	So-called putbacks, and the prospect of billions of dollars in poorly underwritten mortgages coming back to the banks, hit shares hard last year. In this week’s settlement, BofA agreed to pay $1.28 billion to Freddie for claims involving $127 billion in loans made through 2008 by Countrywide Financial, which it acquired that year. The bank agreed to pay $1.52 billion to Fannie Mae.
1/5/11	Fed To Back New Rules To Rein In Home Foreclosure Abuses	Zach Carter Huffington Post	The Federal Reserve has reversed its opposition to new rules reining in foreclosure abuses, and will support stronger regulations on the nation's largest banks Since banks could push mortgages on borrowers and then sell them to investors, critics say that banks lacked serious incentives to ensure those loans could be repaid.
1/5/11 Case to watch	Foreclosures May Be Undone by State Ruling on Mortgage Transfer This is the case where we asked our readers to donate to the defense fund. Some people who bought from other homeowners -- possibly as long as 15 years ago -- would lose their property because of the bad chain of title, the Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts said in a brief to the high court. The state court, under its practices, is likely to rule by next month.	Thom Weidlich Bloomberg	A victory for the homeowners may invalidate some foreclosures and force loan originators to buy back mortgages wrongly transferred into loan pools. Such a ruling may also be cited in other state courts handling litigation related to the foreclosure crisis. The argument is whether "efficiency" is more important than real-property law. One lawyer said Long’s rulings have wreaked havoc, putting hundreds or thousands of Massachusetts foreclosures in limbo. [The banks seem to take the position that since this exposes SO MUCH FRAUD, the courts should continue to turn a blind-eye to it and let them continue to pillage. MSF]
1/4/11	A Lawsuit That Dirty Debt Collectors Should Be Worried About Judge Chin decided that plaintiffs alleged enough information about the debt collectors in this case -- a law firm, a process-serving company and a debt-buying company -- to sue them for being a criminal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) law. Judge Chin also allowed claims under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.	Abigail Field Daily Finance	And remember, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) whistle-blower Linda Almonte said Chase's records about its customers' debts were often false, and that executives routinely robo-signed debt-related documents. Also, the The New York Times has more generally reported that inaccurate debt records and robo-signed documents are common. Similarly, sewer service is a common enough practice to have a name. So it's hard to imagine that the three businesses at the center of this case are the only ones that have this business model and thus are vulnerable to RICO charges.
1/4/11	Homeowner Beats Bank Of America In Small Claims Court over loan mod	Arthur Delaney Huffington Post	Bank of America mortgage service specialist Anthony Lopez admitted during a Dec. 15 hearing that the bank continued taking Graham's payments even after Graham had no chance of getting a modification.
1/4/11	Attorney General Tom Miller Reneges on Promise to Prosecute Mortgage Fraud (Updated) Less than a month ago, AG Miller promised that he would “put people in jail” Now he’s apparently decided to adopt a “move along, nothing to see here” posture.	Yves Smith nakedcapitalism	So the same pattern continues: we’ll trash the rule of law and throw homeowners under the bus to save bank balance sheets. As reader Duncan put it: So the Too Big To Fail banks win yet again and the powerless taxpayers (what’s left of us) get stuck with the bill and screwed yet again. And the AG’s office is considered “law enforcement”; a sad joke on Americans. What is just as sad, is “we” know this goes beyond “Robo-Signers”, but apparently the AG’s offices across the country have thrown in the towel yet again. The banks and their servicers have done wrong, harm and injustices upon the American people, This “settlement” sends a strong message to financial institutions that they are now in fact, untouchable. Thanks for not having courage when it is needed most by far too many Americans.
1/4/11	Settlement May Be Near In States' Foreclosure Probe Five major lenders said to be talking to state prosecutors	Consumer Affairs	According to the lawsuit, GMAC and its employees committed fraud on Ohio consumers and Ohio courts by signing and filing at least hundreds and potentially thousands of false affidavits in foreclosure cases. The alleged fraud came to public light after Stephan testified in depositions out of Florida and Maine that he signed thousands of affidavits without personal knowledge or verifying the content.
1/4/11	Lawyers for Foreclosing Banks Should be Held Accountable for Telling the Truth The class action complaint	Former Ohio AG Marc Dann	Today, Jim Douglass and I filed suit against Ohio’s largest foreclosure mill, Lerner Sampson and Rothfuss on behalf of several home owners. The goal of the class action lawsuit is to seek damages for the thousands of Ohio homeowners who have had foreclosures filed against them by entities that didn’t have the right to foreclose. The suit alleges that filing lawsuits on behalf of banks and investors who do not actually hold the notes or mortgages that are the subject of the lawsuit is a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act, Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act and constitutes abuse of process. We have also alleged that Lerner Sampson and its staff members created and signed assignments, endorsements and affidavits without having actual knowledge of the facts contained in those documents.
1/4/11	Fed Moves To Gut Predatory Lending Regulation	Zach Carter Huffington Post	The Federal Reserve is pushing a new mortgage regulation that would effectively eliminate the most powerful federal remedy for predatory lending. The regulation would severely limit a practice called "rescission," used to strike down demonstrably-illegal or fraudulent loan contracts and void a bank's ill-gotten gains from such predatory lending practices. When a mortgage borrower wins a rescission case in court, the bank loses the right to foreclose, and has to give up all profits from interest and fees on the loan. The borrower still has to repay the principal -- the original amount of money extended by the bank -- but can't be kicked out of the house.
1/4/11	Top Lenders Set For Foreclosure Settlement: Report	Reuters	The group has had at least one face-to-face meeting with representatives from all five of the largest banks and will reach individual settlements rather than a global agreement with the servicers, Bloomberg reported.
1/3/11	Ohio Ruling: No Substitution of Foreclosure Documents in Robo-Signing Cases	David Dayen FDL	Thanks to an obscure ruling from the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, mortgage lenders in the Cleveland, Ohio area trying to substitute new documents for ones found to be faulty will have 30 days to explain why the cases should not be summarily dismissed. In additions, the signer of any affidavits or documents seeking foreclosure will need the original promissory note in order to prove foreclosure. Mortgage lenders have sought to merely replace “robo-signed” documents with new substitute documents, in order to keep the foreclosure train rolling. This ruling in Cuyahoga County would disallow that. Here’s what it says:
1/3/11	Indiana AG Zoeller petitions Indiana Supreme Court to set new requirements for lenders By some estimates, a sizeable percentage of homeowners facing foreclosure are not represented by attorneys, so no one is looking out for the borrower's interests except the court. We must ensure the process is fair," Zoeller said.	Indiana Attorney General	Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller today filed a petition asking the Indiana Supreme Court to impose new procedures to ensure that borrowers’ legal rights are fully protected and mortgage lenders follow the law. “When some mortgage lenders try to foreclose on distressed homeowners by filing foreclosure documents that are unverified, unauthenticated or riddled with errors, it not only violates the rights of the homeowners but it is also a fraud upon the court,”
1/3/11	Bank Of America To Buy Back Bad Loans From Fannie, Freddie	Tess Stynes Dow Jones	The move represents the latest effort by the banking giant, which acquired mortgage-originator Countrywide in 2008, to respond to the housing crisis. Countrywide's mortgages turned into some of the worst mortgages issued during the crisis and, ever since Bank of America bought the lender, the bank has had to handle growing loan losses
1/2/11**	US Marshals threaten violence against Human Rights defender Related article: Evidence of Bank of America fraud	Debra Dupre' Examiner.com	An advocate for homeowners robbed by banks, and injustices due to court corruption, has released his account of being threatened with violence by unidentified armed federal agents. Evidence showed that neither judges, nor magistrate appeared with a valid Assignment/Referral Order. Without a valid Assignment/Referral Order, judges and magistrates lack judicial authority in a case.
1/1/11	An Extremely Long Metaphor to Explain Mortgage Chaos For those of you wondering why so many localities are broke, here's one small factor in the revenue drain. Counties typically charge a small fee for mortgage registration, roughly $30. Multiply that by 67 million mortgages and you're talking about billions in lost fees for local governments (some estimates place the total at about $200 billion).	Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone	In short this was the perfect ownership structure for a subprime industry geared toward massive fraud and predatory lending, in which mountains of dicey loans were issued factory-style and quickly sold off so that the original lenders could not be on the hook when they blew up. MERS has forty-five people, tracking 67 million mortgages. Does anyone wonder why the system is in chaos?
2011 1/1/11	How the mortgage clearinghouse MERS became a villain in the foreclosure mess In the early 1990s, the biggest names in the mortgage industry hatched a plan for a new electronic clearinghouse that would transform the home loan business - and unlock billions of dollars of new investments and profits.	Ariana Eunjung Cha Steven Mufson Washington Post	In the mid-1990s, some of the recorders lobbied states and Congress for legislation to block the creation of MERS but failed. The collapse of the housing market over the past three years has drawn back the curtains on MERS. MERS created the "illusion of recordkeeping."
12/31/10	Dead Soul Is a Debt Collector Deceased Woman's Name Was Robo-Signed on Thousands of Affidavits Alternate site: Market Ticker	JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG WSJ	Martha Kunkle has come back to life. She died in 1995. Yet her signature later appeared on thousands of affidavits submitted by one of the nation's largest debt collectors, Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc., in lawsuits filed against borrowers.
12/30/10	Why Mortgage-Backed Securities Aren't (Backed by Securities): How MERS Toasted the Banks It is likely that most or even all foreclosures occurring in the US are illegal seizures of property -- home thefts. We are talking about 100,000 completed home thefts per month, with another 250,000 new foreclosures started to steal homes every month. Projections are that 13 million homes will have been "foreclosed" (read: stolen) by 2012.	L. Randal Wray Huffington Post	MERS, a creation of the mortgage banking industry, has effectively destroyed the institution of private property in America. Ironically, MERS was created to facilitate quick and easy and cheap securitization of mortgages -- what are called mortgage-backed securities. In fact, what it did was to eliminate any backing of the securities by mortgages. Of the total securitized asset universe, something like $7 trillion are (supposedly) backed by residential mortgages. However, MERS helped to delink the securities from the mortgages. At best, they areunsecured debt -- there is no property backing the securities. What this means is that foreclosure is not permitted.
12/30/10	WALL STREET'S MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITY FRAUD DESTROYED BOTH THE US AND EU ECONOMIES!	What Really Happened	Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds. The data had previously been secret.
12/30/10	FORECLOSURES JUMP, MODIFICATIONS PLUMMET	Suzanne Kapner with comments by Neil Garfield	Cases that don’t settle are composed of at least one party that has determined they either have an incredibly strong position or that they have nothing to lose by shooting for the moon. In mortgage cases there is an actual disincentive to settle because (1) the lenders are not involved and (2) their “agents” are making money hand over fist by NOT settling. But the main reason is that the wrong parties are at the table. The agents lack both power and any incentive to settle. As a result BOTH the lenders (investors) and the borrowers (also investors under securities laws) are the ones to suffer.
5/6/09	"TAKE YOUR PROPERTY BACK FREE & CLEAR"	California Chronicle	So, you can move to stop the foreclosure, and fight for your home by acquiring a "Forensic Loan Audit" that will identify any possible lender fraud, or Federal violations of the Truth and Lending Act (TILA), or the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). Expose the fraud, stop the foreclosure, and take your home back by fighting your foreclosure!
12/29/10	Collin County First Assistant to the DA, Greg Davis Indicted	Collin County Observer	The charges accuse Davis of falsifying over 40 time records in order to reward DA office employees with paid time off, even though time records indicated the employees were working on certain days – when, in actuality, they were not
12/29/10	GOOD HANDS (ALLSTATE) SLAP COUNTRYWIDE (BOA) FOR $700 MILLION FRAUD	CHAD HEMENWAY Property & Casualty Magazine with comments by Neil Garfield	Hence the conclusion that the trustees are not acting in the interests of the the investors because either there isn’t or never was any trust or because the real show isn’t being run by the trustees at all. The defendants in both the investor and the borrower lawsuits should be the the underwriters fromWall Street and the aggregators like Countrywide. Investors got the message. Now it’s time for the borrowers.
12/29/10	GOP Shifts on Fannie - Freddie Overhaul Republicans Say Quickly Privatizing Mortgage Giants Would Squeeze Access to Home Loans and Depress Sales, Price	Alan Zibel WSJ	"Of all the dumb regulation that caused our economic crisis, none was dumber than that which created the (Fannie and Freddie) monopolies," Mr. Hensarling said in March. Democrats tend to favor a more active role for the government in housing to ensure that underserved communities have access to mortgages.
12/28/10	2011 Will Bring More de Facto Decriminalization of Elite Financial Fraud What has gone so catastrophically wrong with DOJ, and why has it continued so long? The fundamental flaw is that DOJ's senior leadership cannot conceive of elite bankers as criminals. The longer that delinquencies and defaults can be delayed - the more the CEO can loot the bank.	William F. Black	Our best bet is to continue to win the scholarly disputes and to continue to push media representatives to take fraud seriously. If the media demands for prosecution of the elite banking frauds expand there is a chance to create a bipartisan coalition in Congress and the administration supporting prosecutions. In the S&L debacle, Representative Annunzio was one of the leading opponents of reregulation and leading supporters of Charles Keating. After we brought several hundred successful prosecutions he began wearing a huge button: "Jail the S&L Crooks!"
12/28/10	Ohio Attorney General Cordray Re: Fraudulent Foreclosure Affidavit	Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray	As I stated in my October 29 letter, “it is improper for the plaintiff to ask the court to ratify a foreclosure judgment based on a false affidavit after the fact by simply substituting or supplementing what plaintiff now claims is a proper affidavit.” Rather,I believe vacating the judgment is the proper way to handle these cases, as it removes a judgment based on a false affidavit and gives the homeowner an opportunity to contest a new motion for default or summary judgment.
12/28/10	Hall of the Money Kings	YouTube ALR6002	A little history of the financial meltdown and who was behind it.
12/28/10	New California AG could sue banks on foreclosures	Reuters	But while Brown scored an early settlement against banks as home foreclosures mushroomed in California, other states have been more aggressive of late. Borrower activists are hoping Harris will make the most populous U.S. state a more powerful ally against the banks.
12/28/10	Banks Found Guilty Of Foreclosure Fraud As a result of the recent investigation launched by the Florida Attorney General’s office, Bank Of America GMAC Bank,JP Morgan Chase, and others, have all been found guilty of foreclosure fraud.	stock markets review	Depositions by the bank's employees revealed that the banks have been forging, falsifying, and fabricating documents in order to foreclose on millions of homes owned by unsuspecting American homeowners. These are essentially mortgages that the banks knew they did not own, but were willing to break the law in order to put homeowners out on the streets to satisfy their insatiable greed for even more money.
12/27/10	Where Things Stand: Foreclosure Paperwork Scandal	Marian Wang ProPublica	Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller, the point man on a 50-state joint investigation of the foreclosure scandal and mortgage servicing industry, has said that a quick settlement with banks and loan servicers is unlikely and that settlements would be worked out "one bank at a time." He's also said thatcriminal charges are a possibility. "We will put people in jail," Miller told homeowners and advocates in Des Moines earlier this month. The states' joint investigation remains ongoing, and some states have separately sued banks for deceiving homeowners fighting foreclosure.
12/27/10	KC woman lives home foreclosure nightmare	MICHAEL MANSUR Kansas City Star	Kansas Secured Title, which reviewed the deal for title insurance, declined to insure it because Willens had raised questions about whether the mortgage company was the legal holder of the note, said John Conaghan, the title company’s general counsel.
12/26/10	Novice Florida lawyers draw suspicion in foreclosure mess Some may face Florida Bar investigations that could end their careers, while homeowner advocates wonder whether the foreclosure crisis would have reached its state of disorder if it weren't for legions of novice lawyers doing the legwork.	CHRISTINE STAPLETON KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post	And as the state's overwhelmed court system sorts through the foreclosure chaos, many of the attorneys who worked for the now deposed Stern law firmhave been hired at other large companies doing foreclosure work.
12/26/10	No Mortgage with Bank of America? We Foreclosure Anyway!	Erin Africana Online	More and more people are suffering through a foreclosure process on a home that they never bought. False foreclosure complaints are on the rise. These are homeowners that paid their mortgage on time or have even paid off their loans. Now because of careless errors, they are in the midst of an impossible false foreclosure, one that is not so easy to resolve.
12/26/10	Financial institution fraud investigations increasing, says expert	Jim Kouri Examiner	Tomko says that in these investigations, there is tremendous risk for decision makers at banks. In bank fraud cases, there is often little or no controversy as to the acts and who performed them. The key issue is usually whether the target individuals possessed criminal intent at the time. Further, when criminal conduct is proven, the federal sentencing regime provides for lengthy prison sentences.
12/24/10 ***	A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison	Sean Gardiner New York Times	We post this amazing story to show our readers how corrupt our legal system can be, and why you should never give up fighting for your rights and the truth.
2010	Multi-Part Series The Wall Street Money Machine	ProPublica	As the housing market started to fade, bankers and hedge funds scrambled for ways to maintain the lavish bonuses and profits they had become so accustomed to, repackaging mortgages in complex securities called collateralized debt obligations. The booming CDO market masked how weak the housing market was, and exacerbated its collapse.
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The man who made millions foreclosing on houses could end up in the biggest house of all