Archive for the ‘Foreclosure Fraud’ Category

Friday Round-Up; Still No Settlement; Schneiderman Looks at REMICs, Judge Loses Cancer Battle

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Will Schneiderman bring down the banks the same way the Feds nabbed Al Capone?

Big Foreclosure Settlement Still Not Really, Truly, Finally Done

And here we go again. Last month I wondered when we were going to see the documentation behind the ‘$25 billion’ mortgage settlement. Despite the massive action this settlement is now supposedly leading to, there didn’t seem to be a huge rush to get the deal finalized.

The same day I posted my blog it was reported that prosecutors would likely be filing the documents in the courts by the end of the month.

Well February has come and gone, and it appears we’re no closer to seeing the final settlement document. March has started more like a lamb then a lion.

Just as it did when it went up last month, the government’s settlement website still says coming soon where the document should be.

HUD secretary Shaun Donovan told the Senate Housing Committee Tuesday that they shouldn’t worry, that there were just a few i’s to be dotted and a few t’s to be crossed.

Uh huh. Isn’t that what they said the last time? Until the settlement is signed, sealed and delivered, there will still be lingering doubt about it’s language.

Schneiderman Could Focus on REMICs

We’re still seeing just how Eric Schneiderman’s RMBS working group will come together. Today it was reported that Congressman Brad Miller will not become it’s staff director, as the group is seeking an “experienced prosecutor for the job”.

But Chris Whalen of HousingWire offered his idea on how Schneiderman will go after the banks, and as I have also speculated, he believes its tax fraud that could ultimately bring them down.
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Florida Fair Foreclosure Act? Fair to Whom?

Friday, February 24th, 2012
Gavel on House

Photo by The-Lane-Team

Banks need to get their massive foreclosure backlog off the books. There are over 368,000 cases in Florida. I get that.

Getting these properties into the hands of families who can afford them, that is what I want to see. It’s needed to jump start the economy, and no one wants to see the banks out of the neighborhoods more than me.

But it can’t be allowed to happen on the backs of other homeowners plain and simple. Lenders have tried to thrust these homes back onto the market before, and that’s why they just shelled out $25 billion.

The banks were penalized for being unethical, untrustworthy and fraudsters, and it doesn’t look like they have learned their lesson.

Yet a series of proposed bills now making their way through the Florida House and Senate offer banks unjust control over the foreclosure process, all in the name of getting abandoned homes back on the market.

The Senate version, which would create the “Florida Fair Foreclosure Act”, was passed by a judiciary committee earlier this week by a 5-2 vote. There is a similar bill making their way through the House.

But are they really ‘fair’ to homeowners? Absolutely not.

These bills are being pushed by banking industry shills. They make it easier for lenders to foreclose, and allows them to do so faster.

Have the politicians in Tallahassee learned nothing from the settlement? The $25 billion isn’t even in the mail, yet some are back to their old tricks, turning a blind eye to the plights of their constituents and denying them due process.
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MERS is Dead! Humpty Dumpty Won’t Be Put Together Again!

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Humpty Dumpty Foreclosure Fraud Oppenheim LawHumpty Dumpty has had his great fall, thanks to an outstanding bankruptcy judge who has all but dismantled the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) thanks to his recent ruling.‪​‪

Last week New York Judge Robert Grossman ruled that all of MERS’ business practices are illegal.

It’s a staggering blow to the banks and their endless efforts to circumvent due process. ‪​‪It has the potential to once again slow down the foreclosure process. ‪​‪

The foreclosure registry was set up by the banks with one purpose in mind, to make securitizing mortgages easier for them.

And homeowners, as is usually the case with matters relating to bundled mortgages, were getting screwed. ‪​

Here’s the short explanation. MERS allowed the banks to bypass public record keeping, all in an effort to streamline the records that banks were using to foreclose.

Local record keeping regulations might have been cumbersome for the banks to keep up with, but it protected the homeowners and provided transparency. ‪​‪

By allowing the banks to essentially hijack an important part of the record keeping process, namely the recording of each time a mortgage was sold to a different investor, banks had much greater control then than they ever should have been allowed to.
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Banks can talk about streamlining the process as the reason behind MERS all they want, but the effect was that it was much more difficult for homeowners to see who currently owned their mortgage, and it just allowed the banks to be sloppy with their records, and they were. ‪​‪

MERS was separating the notes from the mortgages, again so they could be securitized, yet in the case that was brought before Grossman, their lawyers argued they could still foreclose because in theory, the mortgage follows the note. ‪​
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Homeowner’s Super Bowl — Clock Winding Down on Robo-Signing Settlement

Monday, February 6th, 2012

Courtesy: New York Giants

The clock may have run out on this year’s Super Bowl (Way to go Giants!!) but there’s still a few minutes left in this year’s REAL grudge match, the Banks vs. the Attorney Generals.

It’s 4th and Inches, the score is tied, and it would be nice to avoid overtime.

Today we could learn whether the much-discussed robo-signing settlement with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Ally Financial and CitiGroup will come to pass, and in what form.

With California AG Kamala Harris returning to the negotiating table, the deal looks closer than ever to being sealed. Harris, who represents the state with the largest amount of foreclosed homes, has rightfully been hesitant to sign off because her state has the most to gain, or lose, from this deal.

We were initially very hesitant to see this deal go through ourselves, but the time has come for it to put to bed.

Why?

Because we feel the deal in its current form does a lot. Does it help every single homeowner who’s underwater? Of course not. There is no deal that will.

But here is who it does help. The homeowners who have fought to keep their homes from day one, who were at the forefront of these legal challenges against the banks. Much of what we have learned about robo-signing and the lack of standing banks had to bring foreclosure, would not have come to light without these crusaders, and its time they got a reprieve.

In theory it also helps the responsible homeowners, the ones who paid their mortgages on-time and whose homes went underwater through no fault of their own. They too need to be rewarded.
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