Posts Tagged ‘fraud’

Schneiderman And Mortgage Fraud Task Force: Are We Being Hoodwinked?

Friday, April 20th, 2012

 

Are we being hoodwinked by the mortgage fraud unit?

Courtesy:Cesar Cabrera Photography

When President Obama stood before Congress and the American People three months ago and promised to hold those behind the housing crisis ‘accountable’, I was hopeful.

In the days that followed, his new field general Eric Schneiderman was unveiled and almost immediately action was taken.

When Schneiderman issued subpoenas, just days after the President appointed him to run his new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, I thought that perhaps, FINALLY, a corner had been turned.

But it’s becoming clear to me now that the train that is the RMBS Working Group hasn’t left the station, and depending on who you believe, there may not even me a station built yet!

After those few weeks of full-court press by Schneiderman, there hadn’t been a peep about the status of the Working Group’s investigation. Yes it may have only been three months, yet I fear that the bold vision you and I were sold might turn out to be just another empty promise.

The press only turned its attention back to the Working Group after a brutal Op-Ed in the New York Daily News. The co-directors of the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a citizens coalition group, called Schneiderman out and said they had yet to see any footprint of the RMBS Working Group’s investigation.

The 55 staff members promised by Attorney General Eric Holder were nowhere to be found, the pair claimed.

Yet even this Op-Ed could only draw Schneiderman’s mouthpiece out of the woodwork, rather than the Attorney General himself.

Spokesman Danny Kanner refuted their claims, saying that attorneys and other investigators had already been hired, that we shouldn’t draw any conclusions by the lack of public announcements.
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Eric Schneiderman: This Millennium’s Elliot Ness?

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman

We here at the South Florida Law Blog decided to clock in a few hours this weekend, because if we didn’t we’d probably fall behind President Obama’s new man-in-the trenches Eric Schneiderman.

The New York Attorney General, only days into his appointment as the head of the newly-formed Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group has already issued subpoenas to 11 financial companies.

President Obama only announced this new investigative unit during Tuesday’s State of the Union, yet the “check”, or in this case the subpoena, is already in the mail.

If you were skeptical that Obama was still interested in the status-quo when it comes to the banks and doing business, may we present Exhibit A.

Eric Schneiderman is turning himself into a modern-day Elliot Ness.

You remember Ness don’t you?

The federal agent whose team of “Untouchables” couldn’t be bought off and helped bring down Al Capone?

Schneiderman too has the era of a man who will not be co-opted. If anyone can stay above the fray and not be reeled in by the banks and their money, he can.

Investigation Going After Cause of Housing Crisis

Schneiderman has stood up to the President before, openly opposing the settlement agreement that we here at the South Florida Law Blog have railed against. And now he is Obama’s point man for placing blame and creating accountability for causing the worst economic crisis in the US since the Depression.

Elliot Ness

The Huffington Post is reporting that outside of claims directly relating to robo-signing fiasco, the banks will not be released from the threat of prosecution for the vast majority of securities-related crimes.
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Fraud Probe Has Real Teeth, Banks Are Running Scared

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Like the characters in "The Blair Witch Project", the banks are running scared!

Well what a wild week it has been. When we came to work on Monday we feared President Obama would put the housing crisis to bed without ever holding the banks’ feet to the fire.

The settlement with the banks, which we have blogged about ad nauseam this week, seemed as sure as a chip-shot field goal.

But thanks to President Obama’s suddenly get-tough approach, as evidenced by his State of the Union speech, we’ve seen the banks’ kick go wide-right and now all bets are off.

Can There Be Real Change In Mortgage Industry?

Now we are not completely sold that things will play out exactly as homeowners would like, this is of course the federal government we’re talking about, but for the first time we have a true sense of optimism. The President may finally be seeing things our way, and we want to throw our full support behind him.

There is no doubt cages have been rattled in the mortgage industry, and nerves have been frayed. If Obama’s plan to re-write the foreclosure rules didn’t have some kind of teeth, then we doubt we’d be seeing the type of reverberation thorough the media and the top echelons of government that we’ve detected in the last few days.

Banks Are Fearful of Settlement Collapse


The settlement could be falling apart at the seems, at least JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon thinks so. He told CNBC this morning that Obama’s announcement to investigate the packaging and servicing of mortgage loans could stop the settlement cold.
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Foreclosure Mills, Bank Fraud and the Housing Market — 2011′s Top Headlines Pt. 2

Saturday, December 31st, 2011
Continuing our list here’s Pt. 2 of our Top 10 stories for 2011 —

As 2011 got underway we were presented with a fascinating yet disturbing report by the Florida Association of Court Clerks called “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases”. It brought these horrible practices into the harsh light of day.

“What we got from this is the state has had the opportunity to see where the laws have been broken,’ Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock said at the time, “and frankly, it is in large part thanks to the work of the defense attorneys.

We cited April Charney from the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Peter Ticktin and many others wonderful attorneys who have taken bank officers’ depositions, challenged judges rulings and fought the good fight for the Florida homeowner.

#4 — Cracked! Humpty Dumpty, Chase and GMC, the Bank Fraud Foreclosure Crisis Continues to Fall!

Somewhere along the line, the overly ambitious bankers on Wall Street had the “great idea” of slicing and dicing the interest of the Promissory Note and literally severing it from your Mortgage. Why? Convenience,expediency, and, arguably, greed. And much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall, the banks couldn’t bring the mortgages and their corresponding Notes all back together again. The banks were accused of fraud and perjury trying to do just that.

# 3 — Housing Market Poll: When Will Florida Recover?

If Americans are right, 2012 will finally be the magic year for the housing market. Over 2,000 adults were polled by Trulia and RealtyTrac , and the majority, 22 percent, said most Americans think the housing market will fully recover in the new year. A mere 10 percent thought a recovery would happen this year, while nearly a quarter of those surveyed predicted a bumpy road until 2015 and beyond.
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