Posts Tagged ‘mortgage fraud’

JP Morgan Chase CEO Is A Chameleon And A Snake

Monday, May 14th, 2012
Spiderman

Jamie Dimon may present himself as a apologetic CEO, but that is not his true face.

The Jamie Dimon Apology Tour is in full swing.

Perhaps you caught the first stop on this weekend’s Meet the Press. The chairman of JP Morgan Chase is trying to play us for suckers, publicly apologizing for his bank’s $2 billion loss.

He called it an “egregious mistake”. He claims he want to get rid of “Too Big To Fail”, and that he supported “portions” of the Dodd-Frank rule.

It might be one of the best acting performances I’ve seen all year. I think his chances of taking home an Oscar are all but guaranteed.

Maybe he had David Gregory fooled, (The NBC host’s lack of tough follow-up questions would seem to indicate it) but I am not buying it.

The reality is had JP Morgan not lobbied so hard against Dodd-Frank, and paid the lobbyists as much as they did, Dodd-Frank would have been much, much tougher, and Dimon would have $2 billion more in his coiffures.

It’s irony in its purest form.

This loss, which came on some very risky trades, is a perfect symbol of Wall Street’s hubris and greed. And it just goes to show you that the big banks have learned nothing from the crisis of years past.

And neither has Dimon. His apology on Meet The Press was the vocal equivalent of crocodile tears. He is another Chameleon, another Two-Face, putting on a public show for the masses, while privately lambasting anyone who is really looking to end “Too Big To Fail” when he thinks we are not paying attention.
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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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Foreclosure Crisis: Will Government Right This Sinking Ship?

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Photo Courtesy:Reuters

We’ve all been reading with horror about the developing situation in Italy with the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that capsized last Friday, killing several people.

What really caught our attention is the actions of the ship’s captain Francesco Schettino, who reportedly abandoned ship in the middle of the evacuations. He’s been blamed for causing the tragedy by recklessly taking the ship off-course and too close to shore

We can not compare the loss of life with the foreclosure crisis, but an argument can certainly be made that there is a parallel between the captain’s actions and that of big banks.

Banks have also been reckless, taking the economy from its intended destination and showing a complete lack of disregard with their shady real estate and foreclosure practices. We believe they have abandoned the homeowner and the taxpayer, while failing to consider their well-being and solely worrying about their own self-preservation.

Whereas the cruise line’s executives have quickly held the captain accountable, we’ve yet to see our federal government do the same to the banks, despite countless opportunities to do so.

In this excellent editorial published in the New York Times, the paper calls on President Obama to steer this ship back on course by forming an inter-agency task force to investigate the banks for their actions, many of which could be considered criminal.

Yes there’s been investigations and settlements, but there’s been very little accountability for the top executives, who’ve been rarely held personally responsible. For example Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide, didn’t have to admit to any wrongdoing when he settled civil fraud charged level by the SEC. Yes he had to pay a 67.5 million dollar fine, but that’s a fraction of the 521.5 million he’s reported to have received between 2000 and 2008, according to the NY Times.
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Banks Go Straight to Jail? Defrauding Investors out of Millions gets Chance Card

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Banks continue to draw the lucky Get out of Jail Free card! South Florida Law Blog’sForeclosure Defense Attorney Roy Oppenheim asks: If the government is truly interested in reducing mortgage fraud, why not go after the ones who cause a larger impact on the economy and affect homeowners on a national scale? It seems the banks get the chance card and the little guys go directly to jail.

Last week Citigroup agreed to pay $285 million in a settlement agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.). Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle S.E.C. Complaint – NYTimes.com. That’s pocket change for a giant bank that has made over $3.8 billion in profits just last quarter. The defrauded investors contributed to a $ 1 billion portfolio stuffed with high risk mortgage investments. What these unsuspecting investors didn’t know is that Citigroup bet against these investments in hopes that they would lose value. Not only did Citigroup bet against the portfolio, but it was responsible for selecting the mortgage investments that would make up the portfolio.

With all the questionable bank practices that have come to light since the housing market bubble bursts, the S.E.C. has done little to reprimand giants such as Citibank. Not only has the S.E.C or the Justice Department failed to go after the banks, they also have done little to prosecute banking executives who were no doubt involved in criminal activity stemming from the banking crisis. While a bank can’t be sent to jail, the high ranking executives directly responsible for these unethical banking practices should not be able to escape criminal liability. And yet, while the powerful banks and senior executives appear to be above the law, the government has not hesitated in going after individuals who lack powerful political influence on Washington.
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Meet the Wall Street Enablers: Credit Rating Companies

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Word on the street is credit rating companies are committing mortgage fraud, and ‘the street’ is none other than Wall Street.

With a foreclosure fraud financial crisis this intense and prolific, there’s certainly enough blame to go around for everyone, but we have one more culprit to add to the list! News broke this week that the SEC is investigating and considering civil fraud charges against credit rating companies for their role as “key enablers” of our country’s financial meltdown.

Critics of the leading credit rating companies like Standard and Poor’s argue that these firms fueled the $1 trillion Wall Street mortgage-securities machine before the boom ended.

Regulators, however, should not be free from blame: there is clear evidence of incompetence and deliberate neglect by the SEC in keeping credit rating companies in line. The fact is that credit rating companies and the SEC itself have served as co-conspirators with Wall Street banks to bury us in this seemingly insurmountable hole.

According to the Wall Street Journal, SEC officials are finally investigating whether the ratings companies committed fraud by failing to do enough research to be able to adequately rate the pools of subprime mortgages and other loans that underpinned mortgage-backed securities.

Allegations continue to swirl that the credit rating companies relied on incomplete or out-of-date information about the pools of loans in the mortgage-backed securities or ignored obvious problems among subprime loans to give unduly high ratings to slices of deals, known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), that were then sold to investors.
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Budgetary Hardball Almost Forces Court Closures: Courts’ Reliance On Foreclosure Fees Exposed

Saturday, April 9th, 2011

Courts Reliance on Foreclosure Fees ExposedThe Florida Court system, including judges, nearly faced mandatory furloughs and unpaid vacations due to an emergency shortfall in its budget. Court employees faced up to 30 days of unpaid vacation through the end of May. The reason for the short fall was the precipitous drop in foreclosure filings, which generated the fees the courts relied upon for the majority of their budget. With the huge numbers of foreclosures in years past, the estimated revenue from the foreclosure fees meant that the Florida legislature allocated less money from the general state funds to the courts. This reliance on foreclosure filings fees resulted in the courts seeming a bit too amenable to the big banks and the rushing through of foreclosures that would have benefited from more scrutiny. Knowing that the courts were not examining the documents carefully, big banks were able to forge the required paperwork on a massive scale. The forging continued until the document mill scam was uncovered.

With the major banks virtually halting all of their foreclosures due to the document mill scandals, the fees have dried up and now we can see the impact of the courts falling asleep at the switch. The tremendous irony in the matter is that the failure of the courts to properly scrutinize fraudulent foreclosures, leading to the halting of new foreclosures and the drying up of the courts’ fees, would have lead to new foreclosures. Only this time, court employees would have been processing their own foreclosures. According to the Sun-Sentinel, most of the hardship of the court furloughs would’ve been felt by low income employees who are already struggling to make ends meet.
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Oppenheim Law Weekly Winners and Losers: Pending Home Sales, Mortgage Fraud, Job Markets and Subprime Bonds

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Reporting on the winning and losing headlines, South Florida Law Blog brings you the break down and what this means to the Florida homeowner.

While South Florida is #1 for mortgage fraud and foreclosure settlement talks between banks and the Obama administration appear futile at best, this week’s new was not all doom and gloom.

Check out Oppenheim Law’s and Weston Title’s picks in the week’s winners and losers for Florida foreclosure, real estate and the economy.

Winners

Pending home sales up 18% in Miami-Dade
Pending home sales rose 18 percent in Miami-Dade County over the course of the past month, according to new data released today by the Miami Association of Realtors.

Pending home sales, which include single-family home and condominium unit sales, were also up 3.24 percent month-over-month in March, the figures show.

“Increased pending sales reflect the existence of pent-up demand and should result in strengthening home values as distressed housing inventory continues to be absorbed,” said Jack Levine, chairman of the board of Miami Realtors.

Hiring Shows Growing Strength
The American job market is starting to show some muscle, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The jobless rate, our most politically salient measure of economic health, edged down to 8.8% in the fourth consecutive monthly decline despite the fact that more Americans entered the job market.
“It’s a very solid report that shows the labor market gaining momentum,” said David Greenlaw, an economist with Morgan Stanley in New York.

The public sector remained a weak point, as local governments shed 15,000 jobs last month in an effort to close budget gaps, but many other sectors showed strong growth, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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