Another Countrywide Sham Goes Down the Drain

Banks use several ploys to distract the court, the borrower and the foreclosure defense attorney from the facts. One of them is citing a merger in lieu of presenting documents of transfer of the debt, note or mortgage. We already know that the debt is virtually never transferred because the transferor never had any interest in the debt and thus had no authority to administer the debt (i.e., as servicer).

So the banks have successfully pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes by citing a merger, as though that automatically transferred the note and mortgage from one party to another. Mergers come in all kinds of flavors and here the 5th Circuit in Florida recognizes that simple fact and emphatically states that the relationship between the parties must be proven along with proof that the note, or authority to enforce the note, must be proven by competent evidence.

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see Green v Green Tree Servicing Countrywide Home Loans et al 5D15-4413.op

*Judgment for Borrower (Involuntary Dismissal)
*Failure to provide evidence to explain relationships in mergers
*Failure to provide evidence of the terms of the merger and the transfer of the subject loan
* Failure to to provide evidence of standing at commencement of the lawsuit

An interesting side note to this case is that it never mentions the debt, which is the third rail of all claims of transfers and securitization. The opinion starts off with a recital of facts that differs from most other cases, to wit: it talks about how the homeowner signed the note and mortgage, and does not reference a loan made to him by the originator, Countrywide Home Loans (CHL).

The court remains strictly in the confines of who owns, controls or has the right to enforce the note — a fact that is relevant only if the note is evidence of an underlying debt. If no such debt exists between CHL and the homeowner, then the note is irrelevant — unless a successor possessor actually paid for it, in which case the successor could claim that it is a holder in due course and that the risk of loss shifts to the maker of the note under such circumstances.

The Green case here stands for the proposition that the banks may not paper over ownership or control or the right to enforce the note with vague references to a merger. The court points out that a merger might not include all the assets of one party or the other. More particularly, a merger, if it occurred must be proven along with some transfer of the subject note and mortgage.

And very specifically, the court says that entities may not be used interchangeably. The foreclosing party must explain the relationship between the parties affiliated with the “merged” entities.

[NOTE: Bank of America did not directly acquire CHL. CHL was merged into Red Oak Merger Corp., controlled by BofA. One of the reasons for doing it that way is to segregate questionable assets and liabilities from the rest of the BofA. BofA claimed ownership of CHL, and changed the name of CHL to BAC Home Loans. But it didn’t just change the name; it also made assertions, when it suited BofA that BAC was a separate entity, possibly an independent entity, which is also not true. So the Court’s objection to the lack of evidence on the merger is very well taken].

The Court also takes note of the claim that DiTech Financial was formerly known as Green Tree Servicing. That is not true. The DiTech name has been used by several different entities, been phased out, then phased in again. Again a reason why the court insists upon evidence that explains the actual relationship between actual entities, and not just names thrown around as though that meant anything.

Ultimately Green Tree, which no longer existed, was made the Plaintiff in the action. Some certificate of merger was introduced indicating a merger again, this time between DiTech Financial and GreenTree. In this lawsuit Green tree was presented as the surviving entity. But in all other cases DiTech Financial is presented as the surviving entity — or at least the DiTech name survived. There is considerable doubt whether the combination of Green Tree was anything more than rebranding an operation merging out of the Ally Financial bankruptcy and ResCap operations.

A sure sign of subterfuge is when the lawyer for the foreclosing party attempts to lead the court into treating multiple independent companies as a single entity. That, according to this court, would ONLY be acceptable if there was competent evidence admitted into the court record showing a clear line of succession such that a reasonable person could only conclude that the present successor company in fact encompasses all of the business activities and assets of the predecessors or, at the very least, encompasses a clear chain of possession, title and authorization of the subject loan.

[PRACTICE NOTES: Discovery of actual merger documents and documents of transfer should be vigorously pursued against expected opposition. Cite this case as mandatory or persuasive authority that the field of inquiry is perfectly proper — as long as the foreclosing entity is attempting tons the mergers and presumptive transfers against the homeowner.]

 

 

 

Ally-Rescap Dispute Shows the Rest of the Story: Myth vs. Fact

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“The true transaction is the one where investors gave money to borrowers and the borrowers agreed to pay it back either under the terms of the note, the terms of the bond or some combination of the two. That loan is NOT secured but was intended to be secured by both the actual lender (investors) and the actual borrower (the homeowners). ” — Neil F Garfield, Esq., livinglies.me

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“RIFE WITH CONFLICTS AND INFORMATION GAPS”

Editor’s Analysis: It is still too much to fathom for most Judges, lawyers and even homeowners and investors. The scale of theft in the mortgage crisis is not accepted by government either, so it is being replicated by the banks in student loans and commercial loans to businesses where the spigot is wide open with crazy terms.

The Judges ask “where is your evidence” and the answer as set forth in Wigmore and other scholars on evidence is that where the information is exclusively within the care, custody and control of the party against whom the allegation is made, the burden shifts to that party to prove that the allegation is untrue.

But Judges don’t want to do that probably because they still think the debt is real and legitimate between the parties in front of him or her.

The diversion of funds and documents has been working very well for the Wall Street banks for years now and they have essentially stolen 5-6 million homes using sleight of hand financial maneuvers. But some Judges, like the one I was in front of yesterday in Tallahassee are getting on board at least in terms of acquainting themselves with the process of securitization. Most of them are still arriving at the wrong conclusion because the alternative seems preposterous.

But if you examine the disputes between the big boys, the truth is easy to discern. Here we have (see article below) Rescap and Ally fighting over what others regard as preposterous. But it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Rescap claims and other creditors of Ally Financial would not be true since they want to do the deal.

The U.S. Government owns 74% of Ally and is offering to put up $750 Million to cover liabilities relating to mortgages. Why would the bank have liabilities? Because the loans don’t exist or are grossly overvalued and Ally and others shared in tier 2 yield spread premiums that were fraudulently taken from investor money to buy other investments for the banks including insurance payable to the banks and credit default swaps payable to the banks even though the banks were not putting up one nickle and were using the same system of fabrication and forgery to fool counterparties on guarantees of the loan pools which, it turns out, didn’t exist.

Dozens of writers including myself have looked at the settlements with law enforcement and regulatory agencies screaming that the settlements are rounding errors compared with the full scope of the fraud used to promote and cover-up the Wall Street Bank Ponzi scheme. We are ignored. But now the real creditors and the people who really lost money — the investors — are starting to peak under the hood of the brand new car they bought and are finding the shell of a 1965 VW bug with no engine or steering wheel.

They don’t like what they see and they want to know (a) where did all that money go if it didn’t go into mortgages and (b) why isn’t the government or Ally stepping up, facing the music and agreeing to cover the liability and losses that are already in the pipeline and likely to get much much larger as the next five years unfolds.

Unfortunately for Ally and the U.S. Government, the creditors are not stupid and unsophisticated. They understand what happened and are completely unwilling to cover losses that the banks caused by stealing money. For this one company, Ally Financial, whose size is barely comparable to the giants on Wall Street who engineered this catastrophe, Rescap and the other creditors say that the $750 million offer is “a drop in the bucket” compared to the actual liabilities and losses of Ally.

(Small wonder that the shadow banking system has over $700 trillion in nominal value cash equivalents that are not worth much more than $15 trillion. Every dollar reported on those instruments in the shadow banking system is rife with potential liabilities several times the reported value of the instrument.)

So finally we have a bankruptcy court examiner auditing the transaction and accounts and rendering a report in May, 2013. The report is likely to be stunning and will have far reaching effects as the asset side of the balance sheet of Ally drops to a small fraction of what is currently reported. It won’t take more than a few seconds for the high speed traders to crash the stocks of the Wall Street Banks because the accounting for non-existing and overvalued assets on their balance sheets is just as bad or worse than Ally.

And all of that adds up to a reasoning process that takes time, explanation and sometimes crayons in court to get across tot he Judge. The DESCRIBED debt never existed because the “lender” was actually a naked nominee just like all the other naked nominees in the whole mortgage meltdown. When the time comes that the pretender lenders are required to produce cancelled checks and wire transfer receipts and instructions it will be obvious that the paper in the securitization chains is worthless or worse carrying liabilities for fraud and statutory violations. It will be equally obvious that the subservicers, master servicers, trustees of empty pools, and others created an illusion that worked, receiving trillions of dollars in insurance type contracts on transactions that never occurred.

The true transaction is the one where investors gave money to borrowers and the the borrowers agreed to pay it back either under the terms of the note, the terms of the bond or some combination of the two. That loan is NOT secured but was intended to be secured by both the actual lender (investors) and the actual borrower (the homeowners). 

On the other hand neither the lender nor the borrower ever intended to do a deal that was guaranteed to fail — and that would have required true appraisals and true prices that were dead even with the actual value of the property — i.e. if the true value of the property was used, there would have no no crash, the loans would have been smaller and the ability to repay the loans would have been correspondingly enhanced.

In a giant piece of irony, realtors are complaining that appraisers are holding up deals (the way they should have during he mortgage meltdown period) with appraisals that don’t add up to the contract price. In the old days that was it — either the buyer came up with more cash, the seller reduced the price or the bank relented after being given additional collateral. Usually it was some combination of those factors.

By ANDREW R. JOHNSON, Wall Street Journal

Negotiations are breaking down between creditors of bankrupt mortgage lender Residential Capital LLC and its parent, Ally Financial Inc., making it likely the government-owned auto-finance company will face litigation as it seeks to sever ties, people familiar with the matter said.

The creditors, including Wilmington Trust Corp. and other members of a committee representing ResCap’s unsecured creditors, are pushing Ally to provide more money to settle potential liabilities it could face as ResCap’s parent.

Ally, which is 74%-owned by the U.S. government, is working to cap its exposure to the subprime lender’s mortgage business so it can move forward on efforts to repay its $17.2 billion crisis-era bailout and focus on its core auto-lending and online-banking businesses.

At issue is a settlement Ally reached last year with ResCap in conjunction with the mortgage subsidiary’s bankruptcy filing. Under the deal, Ally has proposed paying $750 million to ResCap’s estate in return for a release from potential liability claims from outsiders.

But creditors have blasted the deal, saying the $750 million represents a drop in the bucket compared with what they say are Ally’s true liabilities. They say the parent company stripped ResCap of its most valuable asset, an ownership stake in Ally Bank, as part of a transaction completed in 2009. They insist Ally should retroactively pay more for the deal, among other claims.

A bankruptcy court examiner is investigating that transaction as well as others surrounding ResCap’s May Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The examiner’s report is expected to be completed in May.

“There is no support among the constituencies for the proposed amount of the Ally contribution because the amount is far too small in comparison to the value of the claims that have been and may be asserted against Ally,” Wilmington Trust, a unit of M&T Bank Corp., MTB -0.44% said in a letter to ResCap’s board this month. Wilmington said the negotiation process for the settlement was “rife with conflicts and information gaps.”

See full article at ResCap Creditors Press Ally for Larger Pact

Szymoniak: Honesty Pays $46.5 Million in Whistleblower Suit

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Editor’s Comment and Analysis:  

It was and remains a big lie — the securitization the loans, the origination of the loans, the assignments, alleges and endorsements. $46.5 million sounds like a lot and these whistleblowers will get a “windfall” as a result of it. But it is a drop in the bucket and we need to fill the bucket. And our bucket list should include taking down the big banks, removing money from politics, and getting back to government by the people and for the people.

Schiller, the scholar who has been leading the way in economic analysis of the housing market, has offered an audacious plan that is the last possible way for government intervention to save the economy, which is heavily dependent upon consumer spending, particularly in the housing market. Eminent domain has long been sustain as the right of government to take private property and convert it to public use. Whether it is a highway, downtown redevelopment or other reasons, eminent domain has been played by the banks and developers as a way to get land they need, at a price that could not be achieved using the power of the government behind them. 

While seemingly unusual and audacious, Schiller’s proposition has many precedents in history and should be considered as the last great hope after the 50 attorney generals agreed in the 50 state settlement that now prevents them from further investigation and prosecution against the banks. Schiller’s, the originator of the case-Schiller index showing that median income and income disparity is harmful to the economy and deadly to the housing market, proposes that we use the power of eminent domain to seize the remaining mortgages, and perhaps the property that has already been foreclosed, and remake the deals so that they make sense. Translating that means that the homeowners will get the deal that they should have received when they bought o refinanced their house. And it capitalizes on the inconvenient truth that it was the banks who created risks that neither the investors nor the homeowners signed up for.

By paying the value of the remaining mortgages — more than 30% are reported still under water and when carefully analyzed the figure is closer to 60%, the banks get no more and no less than they should, the investors still get their money — 100 cents on the dollar if they insist on payback from the banks in addition to the money from the new mortgages on the old property, and the homeowner is back in charge of his own home paying principal, interest, costs, fees and insurance and taxes that are fair market value indicators. It is better than the proceeds of foreclosures, so the banks now must argue that they have a right to take less money in order to get the foreclosure.

The banks want the foreclosure because they lied. And with the foreclosure it adds to the illusion that they funded or paid for loans in which they do not have a nickel invested. The fact that the balance sheets of the mega banks are going to take a giant hit is only an admission that the assets they are reporting are either not worth anything or are worth far less than the value shown on their public financial statements. They are still lying about that to investors, the SEC and other regulatory agencies.

So whistleblowers must pave the way and show the lies, show the inequality, show the inflated appraisals that could not stand the test of time and force government to act as it should. The chief law enforcement of the country and the chief law enforcement of each state owes his/her citizens at least that much and more. They must find ways to clear up the corruption of title records that are irretrievably lost. 

And the lawyers who keep turning down these cases because they are too complex or too weak should take a close look at these whistleblower  cases. The settlement, as always, comes before the trial because the fact remains that the banks are o the hook for  their bets on the mortgages and not the mortgages themselves. Lawyers need to show a little guts and seek some glory and wealth from these cases, while at the same time doing their country a service.

We are turning the corner and the banks are starting to lose. Keep up the fight and your effort will probably go well-rewarded.

Whistleblowers win $46.5 million in foreclosure settlement

By James O’Toole

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Getting served with foreclosure papers made Lynn Szymoniak rich.

While she couldn’t have known it at the time, that day in 2008 led to her uncovering widespread fraud on the part of some of the country’s biggest banks, and ultimately taking home $18 million as a result of her lawsuits against them. Szymoniak is one of six Americans who won big in the national foreclosure settlement, finalized earlier this year, as a result of whistleblower suits. In total, they collected $46.5 million, according to the Justice Department.

In the settlement, the nation’s five largest mortgage lenders –Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial — agreed to pay $5 billion in fines and committed to roughly $20 billion more in refinancing and mortgage modifications for borrowers.

A judge signed off on the agreement in April, and in May — Szymoniak received her cut.

“I recognize that mine’s a very, very happy ending,” she said. “I know there are plenty of people who have tried as hard as I have and won’t see these kinds of results.”

Related: 30% of borrowers underwater

Whistleblower suits stem from the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to file lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. when they have knowledge that the government is being defrauded. These citizens are then entitled to collect a portion of any penalties assessed in their case.

The act was originally passed in 1863, during a time when government officials were concerned that suppliers to the Union Army during the Civil War could be defrauding them.

In 1986, Congress modified the law to make it easier for whistleblowers to bring cases and giving them a larger share of any penalties collected. Whistleblowers can now take home between 15% and 30% of the sums collected in their cases. In the cases addressed in the foreclosure settlement, the whistleblowers revealed that banks were gaming federal housing programs by failing to comply with their terms or submitting fraudulent documents.

In Szymoniak’s case alone, the government collected $95 million based on her allegations that the banks had been using false documents to prove ownership of defaulted mortgages for which they were submitting insurance claims to the Federal Housing Administration.

The FHA is a self-funded government agency that offers insurance on qualifying mortgages to encourage home ownership. In the event of a default on an FHA-insured mortgage, the FHA pays out a claim to the lender.

Szymoniak’s case was only partially resolved by the foreclosure settlement, and she could be in line for an even larger payout when all is said and done.

As an attorney specializing in white-collar crime, the 63-year-old Floridian was well-placed to spot an apparent forgery on one of the documents in her foreclosure case, one she saw repeated in dozens of others she examined later.

“At this point, the banks are incredibly powerful in this country, but you just have to get up every morning and do what you can,” she said.

The other five whistleblowers in the settlement came from the industry side, putting their careers at risk by flagging the banks’ questionable practices.

Kyle Lagow, who won $14.6 million in the settlement, worked as a home appraiser in Texas for LandSafe, a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial. He accused the company in a lawsuit of deliberately inflating home appraisals in order to collect higher claims from the FHA, and said he was fired after making complaints internally.

Gregory Mackler, who won $1 million, worked for a company subcontracted by Bank of America to assist homeowners pursuing modifications through the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP. Under HAMP, the government offers banks incentive payments to support modifications.

Mackler said Bank of America violated its agreement with the government by deliberately preventing qualified borrowers from securing HAMP modifications, steering them toward foreclosure or more costly modifications from which it could make more money. He, too, claims to have been fired after complaining internally.

There’s also Victor Bibby and Brian Donnelly, executives from a Georgia mortgage services firm who accused the banks of overcharging veterans whose mortgages were guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, thereby increasing their default risk. Bibby and Donnelly won $11.7 million in the settlement; their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

Shayne Stevenson, an attorney who represented both Lagow and Mackler, said the two weren’t aware of possible rewards when they first brought their evidence to his firm.

“The reality of it is that most of the time, whistleblowers don’t even know about the False Claims Act — they don’t know they can make money,” Stevenson said. Both his clients, Stevenson added, “just wanted the government to know about this fraud, so they deserve every penny that they got.”

A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment on individual cases, but said the national settlement was “part of our ongoing strategy to put these issues, particularly these legacy issues with Countrywide, behind us.” BofA acquired mortgage lender Countrywide in 2008, thereby incurring the firm’s legal liabilities.

The other banks involved either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Related: Foreclosures spike 9%

While the whistleblowers in the settlement scored big paydays in the end, the road wasn’t easy. Stevenson said his clients “were pushed to the brink” after raising their concerns, struggling to find work and beset by financial problems.

“They were facing evictions, foreclosure, running away from bills, trying to deal with creditors that were coming after them,” Stevenson said. “This went on and on and on, and this is part and parcel of what happens to whistleblowers.”

For Robert Harris, a former assistant vice president in JPMorgan’s Chase Prime division, the experience was similar.

Harris accused the bank of failing to assist borrowers seeking HAMP modifications and knowingly submitting false claims for government insurance based on wrongful foreclosures. He was stymied when he tried to complain internally, and says he was fired for speaking out.

While Harris ended up with a $1.2 million payout in the settlement, the father of five says he’s been blacklisted within the industry and exhausted by the ordeal.

“It completely turned my life upside down,” he said. “I’m trying to raise my kids, recover from a divorce, recover from the loss of my career — it just comes to down to surviving and putting this to an end.”

“I guarantee the other whistleblowers, too, have sacrificed a lot,” he added. “But to be able to sit back and sleep at night is worth it.”


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Minnesota AG Backs NY AG: No Amnesty For Banks

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POLITICIANS SMELL BLOOD: RUN AGAINST THE BANKS

“Every single American has paid a very heavy price for the behavior of the financial industry. Ordinary people have lost homes, jobs, income, and financial security because of the actions of this industry,” Swanson said in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post by a spokesman. “I welcome and embrace all efforts to investigate the banks and their executives and to hold them accountable for unlawful activity.”

Minnesota Attorney General Backs New York’s Eric Schneiderman In National Foreclosure Settlement Talks

Minnesota Lori Swanson

First Posted: 9/13/11 12:24 PM ET Updated: 9/13/11 01:40 PM

NEW YORK — As government officials work to settle claims that the nation’s biggest banks illegally foreclosed on American homeowners, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has joined a group of law enforcers pushing for a narrow deal that would leave banks exposed to potential legal action in the future.

In a letter obtained by The Huffington Post, Swanson said any settlement with the group of banks over mortgage practices should exclude a release from claims over the creation of mortgage-linked securities. Swanson’s support for a narrow settlement unites her with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and attorneys general from three other states, who have said the banks’ alleged wrongdoing hasn’t been investigated thoroughly enough to merit a broader release from legal liability.

“[T]he banks should not be released from liability for conduct that has not been investigated and is not appropriately remedied in any settlement,” she said in a Friday letter addressed to Schneiderman, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and Associate United States Attorney General Thomas Perrelli. “For example, a settlement that focuses on mortgage servicing standards should not release the banks or their officers from liability for securities claims or conduct arising out of the securitization of mortgages.”

“[A]ny settlement between government regulators and the mortgage industry should have ‘teeth’ — holding the banks accountable for their wrongful conduct, enjoining future unlawful activity, and helping injured homeowners,” she continued.

The federal government, along with attorneys general from all 50 states, launched an investigation into big banks’ mortgage and foreclosure practices after it emerged last fall that mortgage companies employed so-called “robo-signers,” who signed thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them. Banks temporarily halted foreclosures last October, saying they would review documents for errors.

Settlement talks, which began in the spring, seemed to be moving toward a conclusion during the summer months, even though government officials had initiated only a limited investigation into the banks’ alleged wrongdoing, The Huffington Post reported in July. Elizabeth Warren, a staunch consumer advocate and recently a senior Obama Administration adviser, told a congressional panel that claims of illegal foreclosures may not have been fully investigated.

The banks, which include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial, have pushed for a speedy resolution, as uncertainty over a legal penalty that could reach $20 billion has contributed to persistent slumps in their stock. “When we get that call we’ll be on an airplane, we’ll be down there, we’ll be signing up,” JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said during a conference call in July.

Schneiderman, who has firmly supported a narrow deal, was last month kicked off the committee leading the 50-state talks at the behest of Iowa’s Miller, who is leading the state group, The Huffington Post reported. That news broke a day after the New York Times editorial board voiced support for New York’s attorney general, saying Schneiderman “should stand his ground in not supporting the deal.”

The skirmish among government officials highlights divisions that have emerged, as federal officials and some state attorneys general advocate for a quick resolution, while others are urging the parties not to settle unless there has been a more thorough investigation. Some attorneys general, including Schneiderman, are also pursuing their own investigations.

Law enforcers recently proposed a deal that would effectively release banks from legal liability for securitization practices, the Financial Times reported earlier this month. The banks, which want the broadest possible immunity, called the latest proposal a “non-starter,” according to the FT.

In addition to Swanson and Schneiderman, the attorneys general from Delaware, Massachusetts and Nevada have also raised concerns about a broad release of legal liability for the banks.

“We have received Attorney General Swanson’s letter and agree that any agreement must not prevent attorneys general investigating the mortgage crisis from following the facts wherever they lead,” Danny Kanner, spokesman for the New York attorney general, said in an emailed statement.

“Every single American has paid a very heavy price for the behavior of the financial industry. Ordinary people have lost homes, jobs, income, and financial security because of the actions of this industry,” Swanson said in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post by a spokesman. “I welcome and embrace all efforts to investigate the banks and their executives and to hold them accountable for unlawful activity.”

MERS: A FAILED ATTEMPT AT BYPASSING STATE AND FEDERAL AUTHORITY

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Fannie-Freddie’s Hypocritical Suit Against Banks Making Loans that GSEs Helped Create

Fannie-Freddie’s Hypocritical Suit Against Banks Making Loans that GSEs Helped Create

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Practically everything that the government is doing with respect to the economy and the housing market in particular is hypocritical. If we look to the result to determine the intent of the government you can see why nothing is being done to improve DOMESTIC market conditions. By removing the American consumer from the marketplace (through elimination of available funds in equity, savings or credit) the economic prospects for virtually every marketplace in the world is correspondingly diminished. The downward pressure on economic performance worldwide creates a panic regarding debt and currency. By default (and partially because of the military strength of the United States) people are ironically finding the dollar to be the safest haven during a bad storm.

 The result is that the federal government is able to borrow funds at interest rates that are so low that the investor is guaranteed to lose money after adjusting for inflation. The climate that has been created is one in which investors are far more concerned with preservation of capital than return on capital. In a nutshell, this is why the credit markets are virtually frozen with respect to the average potential consumer, the average small business owner, and the average entrepreneur or innovator who would otherwise start a new business and fuel rising employment.

 While it is true that the lawsuits by Fannie and Freddie are appropriate regardless of their past hypocritical behavior, they are really only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Ultimately there must be a resolution to our current economic problems that is based in reality rather than the power to manipulate events. The scenario we all seek  would cleanup the rising title crisis, end the foreclosure crisis, and restore a true marketplace in the purchase and sale of real estate. We have all known for decades that the housing market drives the economy.

 There is obviously very little confidence that the government and market makers in the United States are going to seek any resolution based in reality. Therefore while investors are parking their money in dollars they are also driving up the price of gold and finding other innovative ways to preserve their wealth. As these innovations evolve it is almost certain that an alternative to the United States dollar will emerge. The driving force behind this innovation is the stagnation of the credit markets and the world marketplace. My opinion is that the United States is pursuing a policy that virtually guarantees the creation of a new world reserve currency.

 The creation of MERS was a private attempt to substitute private business plans for public laws. It didn’t work. The lawsuits by the government-sponsored entities together with lawsuits from investors who were duped into being lenders and homeowners who were duped into being borrowers in a rigged market are only going to result in money judgments and money settlements. With a nominal value of credit derivatives at over $600 trillion and the actual money supply at under $50 trillion there is literally not enough money in the world to fix this problem. The problem can only be fixed by recognizing and applying existing law to existing transactions.

 This means that MERS, already discredited, must be treated as a nonexistent entity in the world of real estate transactions. Nobody wants to do that because the failure to disclose an actual creditor on the face of a purported lean or encumbrance on land is a fatal defect in perfecting the lien. This is true throughout the country and it is obvious to anyone who has studied real property transactions and mortgages. If you don’t have the name and address of the creditor from whom you can obtain a satisfaction of mortgage, then you don’t have a mortgage that attaches to the land as a lien. It is this realization that is forming a number of lawsuits from the investors who advanced money for mortgage bonds. Those advances were the funds that were used to finance pornographic Wall Street profits with the balance used to fund absurd mortgage products.

 This is basic property law and public policy. There can be no confidence or consistency in the marketplace without a buyer or a lender knowing that they can rely upon the information contained in a government title Registry at the county recording office. Any other method requires them to take the word of someone without the authority of the government. This is a fact and it is the law. But the banks are successfully using politics to sidestep the basic essential elements of law. Under their theory the fact that the mortgage lien was never perfected would be ignored so that bank and non-bank institutions could become the largest landholders in the country without ever having spent a dime on loaning any money or purchasing the receivables. Politics is trumping law.

 The narrative and the debate are being absolutely controlled by Wall Street interests. We say we don’t like what the banks did and many say they don’t like banks at all. But it is also true that the same people who say they don’t like banks are willing to let the banks keep their windfall and make even more money at the expense of the taxpayer, the consumer and the homeowner. There are trillions of dollars available for investment in business expansion, government projects, and good old American innovation to drive a healthy economy. It won’t happen until we begin to drive the debate ourselves and force government and banking to conform to rules and laws that have been in existence for centuries.

from STOP FORECLOSURE FRAUD…………….

Lets NOT forget both Fannie and Freddie, like most of the named banks they are suing, each are shareholders of MERS.

Again, who gave the green light to eliminate the need for assignments and to realize the greatest savings, lenders should close loans using standard security instruments containing “MOM” language back in April 26, 1999?

This was approved by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which named MERS as Original Mortgagee (MOM)!

Open Market-

“U.S. is set to sue dozen big banks over mortgages,” reads the front-page headline in today’s New York Times. The “deck” below the headline explains that that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is “seen as arguing that lenders lacked due diligence” in the loans they made.

A more apt description would probably be that Fannie and Freddie are suing the banks for selling them the very loans the GSEs helped designed and that government mandates encourage — and are still encouraging them to make. These conflicted actions are just one more of the government’s contributions to the uncertainty that is helping to keep unemployment at 9 percent.

Strangely the author of the Times piece, Nelson Schwartz, ignores the findings of a recent blockbuster

[OPEN MARKET]

BANKS DEFRAUDING TAXPAYERS FACE FATE OF AL CAPONE

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EDITOR’S NOTE:  Somehow this particular article escaped me when it was published by Huffington Post. Like all the other allegations against the participants in the mortgage securitization hoax, the underlying theme is that the major banks simply lied about the ownership, value and nature of the mortgage assets. In this case the government paid them based upon their naked representation that the mortgage liens had been perfected and properly transferred.

 So far the banks have been successful, for the most part, in convincing the public and the courts that the mortgage liens have been perfected and properly transferred in all cases where claims of “ownership” were based upon securitization of debt. But in every case where professionals have been employed and have taken the time to carefully examine both the money trail and the document trail they have reached the conclusion that the documents and the handling of the money has been at best fatally defective and at worst fraudulent, forged,  and fabricated.

 The victims of this hoax include every taxpayer, consumer, homeowner and business in the entire country. As the lawsuits multiply and as the attorney general of each state comes to realize the political risk of siding with the banks, it will become obvious that we are all affected regardless of whether we are directly involved in the foreclosure process or merely suffering the results of collateral damage.

 The debates regarding the debt ceiling, spending and the tax code are mere distractions from the enforcement of existing tax liability of the participants in the massive securitization hoax. As taxpayers we have given the banks considerable resources to kick the can down the road. But the ultimate result cannot be disputed. Trillions of dollars are owed to the federal government, state governments and local governments on transactions that were either not reported at all or were reported with the intent to deceive those governments and deprive them of revenue.

The missing revenue together with the fraudulent receipt of payments from taxpayers for nonexistent or fraudulently represented mortgages and mortgage assets constitute all of the “deficit” that has been reported for all the governmental  entities that supposedly are in distress, bankrupt were subject to downgrade in their credit ratings.

 Simply stated, the deficit money is sitting on Wall Street or offshore under the control of those who control the Wall Street entities that perpetrated the grand securitization hoax. The same is true for individual consumers and homeowners. The scope of the securitization hoax included but was not limited to home loans, credit cards, student loans, auto loans and virtually every other kind of debt imaginable. Lately we have been receiving reports that the securitization hoax is expanding its scope to include life insurance. By inducing those who would otherwise not purchased life insurance (perhaps because they could not afford it) or who would purchase a contract from a life insurance carrier that was not involved in securitization, Wall Street is creating a vehicle which for the first time institutionalizes the motivation to deprive people of their lives.

 There are many permutations of the securitization hoax. The bottom line is that the vendor of the financial products sold to the consumer is not taking any risk, but is being paid, like an actor. In this way Wall Street is essentially the primary actor in the sale of financial products, like all mortgages or insurance, without being regulated or licensed by the appropriate federal or state agency.

The actors (pretender lenders) are either lending their licenses contrary to law or pretending to be licensed and getting away with it because of the apparent complexity of securitization. There is no need for complex analysis. Either they are a lender or they are not. Either they are a mortgage broker or they are not. Either they are an insurance broker or they are not. And if they acted as a lender when in fact their function was as a mortgage broker they have violated the law. And if they acted as a mortgage originator when in fact their function was a mortgage broker, they have violated the law. The administrative agencies regulating the various professions involved in real estate transactions have lots of work to do, lots of discipline to mete out, lots of fines to collect and lots of restitution to order.

 There are hundreds of millions of transactions in which worthless paper was involved which contained claims to obligations, notes and mortgages (which are interest in real property). The fact that these were fraudulent transactions does not take away from the fact that a profit was made, that documents should have been recorded, and that taxes and fees were due. The only question left is whether there are enough people left in government who are willing to use the tools available to them to correct the mess created by the securitization hoax.

Al Capone, the famed mobster, got away with almost everything including murder — until  he was taken down for tax fraud. It doesn’t matter how his reign of terror was ended. What matters is that it did end. And if government had followed through there would not have been anything to replace him. That is the challenge facing today’s government. And more importantly, it is the challenge to our Republic, where inch by inch, personal liberties have been taken away that are still guaranteed by our most basic law — the American Constitution.

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The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.”

Those violations are likely only a small fraction of the number committed by home loan companies, experts say, citing the small sample examined by regulators.”

Shahien Nasiripour

Shahien Nasiripour shahien@huffingtonpost.com

Confidential Federal Audits Accuse Five Biggest Mortgage Firms Of Defrauding Taxpayers [EXCLUSIVE]

Foreclosure Fraud

WASHINGTON — A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.

The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.

The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government. The audits were completed between February and March, the sources said. The internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which must now decide whether to file charges.

The federal audits mark the latest fallout from the national foreclosure crisis that followed the end of a long-running housing bubble. Amid reports last year that many large lenders improperly accelerated foreclosure proceedings by failing to amass required paperwork, the federal agencies launched their own probes.

The resulting reports read like veritable indictments of major lenders, the sources said. State officials are now wielding the documents as leverage in their ongoing talks with mortgage companies aimed at forcing the firms to agree to pay fines to resolve allegations of routine violations in their handling of foreclosures.

The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.

Two of the firms, including Bank of America, refused to cooperate with the investigations, according to the sources. The audit on Bank of America finds that the company — the nation’s largest handler of home loans — failed to correct faulty foreclosure practices even after imposing a moratorium that lifted last October. Back then, the bank said it was resuming foreclosures, having satisfied itself that prior problems had been solved.

According to the sources, the Wells Fargo investigation concludes that senior managers at the firm, the fourth-largest American bank by assets, broke civil laws. HUD’s inspector general interviewed a pair of South Carolina public notaries who improperly signed off on foreclosure filings for Wells, the sources said.

The investigations dovetail with separate probes by state and federal agencies, who also have examined foreclosure filings and flawed mortgage practices amid widespread reports that major mortgage firms improperly initiated foreclosure proceedings on an unknown number of American homeowners.

The FHA, whose defaulted loans the inspector general probed, last May began scrutinizing whether mortgage firms properly treated troubled borrowers who fell behind on payments or whose homes were seized on loans insured by the agency.

A unit of the Justice Department is examining faulty court filings in bankruptcy proceedings. Several states, including Illinois, are combing through foreclosure filings to gauge the extent of so-called “robo-signing” and other defective practices, including illegal home repossessions.

Representatives of HUD and its inspector general declined to comment.

The internal audits have armed state officials with a powerful new weapon as they seek to extract what they describe as punitive fines from lawbreaking mortgage companies.

A coalition of attorneys general from all 50 states and state bank supervisors have joined HUD, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in talks with the five largest mortgage servicers to settle allegations of illegal foreclosures and other shoddy practices.

Such processes “have potentially infected millions of foreclosures,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair told a Senate panel on Thursday.

The five giant mortgage servicers, which collectively handle about three of every five home loans, offered during a contentious round of negotiations last Tuesday to pay $5 billion to set up a fund to help distressed borrowers and settle the allegations.

That offer — also floated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in February — was deemed much too low by state and federal officials. Associate U.S. Attorney General Tom Perrelli, who has been leading the talks, last week threatened to show the banks the confidential audits so the firms knew the government side was not “playing around,” one official involved in the negotiations said. He ultimately did not follow through, persuaded that the reports ought to remain confidential, sources said. Through a spokeswoman, Perrelli declined to comment.

Most of the targeted banks have not seen the audits, a federal official said, though they are generally aware of the findings.

Some agencies involved in the talks are calling for the five banks to shell out as much as $30 billion, with even more costs to be incurred for improving their internal operations and modifying troubled borrowers’ home loans.

But even that number would fall short of legitimate compensation for the bank’s harmful practices, reckons the nascent federal Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. By taking shortcuts in processing troubled borrowers’ home loans, the nation’s five largest mortgage firms have directly saved themselves more than $20 billion since the housing crisis began in 2007, according to a confidential presentation prepared for state attorneys general by the agency and obtained by The Huffington Post in March. Those pushing for a larger package of fines argue that the foreclosure crisis has spawned broader — and more costly — social ills, from the dislocation of American families to the continued plunge in home prices, effectively wiping out household savings.

The Justice Department is now contemplating whether to use the HUD audits as a basis for civil and criminal enforcement actions, the sources said. The False Claims Act allows the government to recover damages worth three times the actual harm plus additional penalties.

Justice officials will soon meet with the largest servicers and walk them through the allegations and potential liability each of them face, the sources said.

Earlier this month, Justice cited findings from HUD investigations in a lawsuit it filed against Deutsche Bank AG, one of the world’s 10 biggest banks by assets, for at least $1 billion for defrauding taxpayers by “repeatedly” lying to FHA in securing taxpayer-backed insurance for thousands of shoddy mortgages.

In March, HUD’s inspector general found that more than 49 percent of loans underwritten by FHA-approved lenders in a sample did not conform to the agency’s requirements.

Last October, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said his investigators found that numerous mortgage firms broke the agency’s rules when dealing with delinquent borrowers. He declined to be specific.

The agency’s review later expanded to flawed foreclosure practices. FHA, a unit of HUD, could still take administrative action against those firms for breaking FHA rules based on its own probe.

The confidential findings appear to bolster state and federal officials in their talks with the targeted banks. The knowledge that they may face False Claims Act suits, in addition to state actions based on a multitude of claims like fraud on local courts and consumer violations, will likely compel the banks to offer the government more money to resolve everything.

But even that may not be enough.

Attorneys general in numerous states, armed with what they portray as incontrovertible evidence of mass robo-signings from preliminary investigations, are probing mortgage practices more closely.

The state of Illinois has begun examining potentially-fraudulent court filings, looking at the role played by a unit of Lender Processing Services. Nevada and Arizona already launched lawsuits against Bank of America. California is keen on launching its own suits, people familiar with the matter say. Delaware sent Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., which runs an electronic registry of mortgages, a subpoena demanding answers to 75 questions. And New York’s top law enforcer, Eric Schneiderman, wants to conduct a complete investigation into all facets of mortgage banking, from fraudulent lending to defective securitization practices to faulty foreclosure documents and illegal home seizures.

A review of about 2,800 loans that experienced foreclosure last year serviced by the nation’s 14 largest mortgage firms found that at least two of them illegally foreclosed on the homes of “almost 50” active-duty military service members, a violation of federal law, according to a report this month from the Government Accountability Office.

Those violations are likely only a small fraction of the number committed by home loan companies, experts say, citing the small sample examined by regulators.

In an April report on flawed mortgage servicing practices, federal bank supervisors said they “could not provide a reliable estimate of the number of foreclosures that should not have proceeded.”

The review of just 2,800 home loans in foreclosure compares with nearly 2.9 million homes that received a foreclosure filing last year, according to RealtyTrac, a California-based data provider.

“The extent of the loss cannot be determined until there is a comprehensive review of the loan files and documentation of the process dealing with problem loans,” Bair said last week, warning of damages that could take “years to materialize.”

Home prices have fallen over the past year, reversing gains made early in the economic recovery, according to data providers Zillow.com and CoreLogic. Sales of new homes remain depressed, according to the Commerce Department. More than a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage owe more on that debt than their home is worth, according to Zillow.com. And more than 2 million homes are in foreclosure, according to Lender Processing Services.

Rather than punishing banks for misdeeds, the administration is now focused on helping troubled borrowers in the hope that it will stanch the flood of foreclosures and increase consumer confidence, officials involved in the negotiations said.

Levying penalties can’t accomplish that goal, an official involved in the foreclosure probe talks argued last week.

For their part, however, state officials want to levy fines, according to a confidential term sheet reviewed last week by HuffPost. Each state would then use the money as it desires, be it for facilitating short sales, reducing mortgage principal, or using the funds to help defaulted borrowers move from their homes into rentals.

In a report last week, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service predicted that while the losses incurred by the banks will be “sizable,” the credit rating agency does “not expect them to meaningfully impact capital.”

*************************Shahien Nasiripour is a senior business reporter for The Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail; bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed; follow him on Twitter; friend him on Facebook; become a fan; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 917-267-2335.

Fed penalizes 10 banks on mortgage practices

Fed penalizes 10 banks on mortgage practices

By Steve Goldstein
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve said it’s taken enforcement action against 10 banks over “a pattern of misconduct and negligence related to deficient practices in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing. These deficiencies represent significant and pervasive compliance failures and unsafe and unsound practices at these institutions.” The banks are Bank of America /quotes/comstock/13*!bac/quotes/nls/bac (BAC 12.86, -0.27, -2.06%) , Citigroup /quotes/comstock/13*!c/quotes/nls/c (C 4.41, -0.03, -0.56%) , Ally Financial, the HSBC North America unit of HSBC Holdings /quotes/comstock/13*!hbc/quotes/nls/hbc (HBC 53.34, -0.22, -0.41%) , J.P. Morgan Chase /quotes/comstock/13*!jpm/quotes/nls/jpm (JPM 44.89, -0.08, -0.18%) , MetLife /quotes/comstock/13*!met/quotes/nls/met (MET 43.88, -0.25, -0.57%) , PNC Financial Services /quotes/comstock/13*!pnc/quotes/nls/pnc (PNC 61.87, -0.01, -0.02%) , SunTrust Banks /quotes/comstock/13*!sti/quotes/nls/sti (STI 28.15, -0.04, -0.14%) , U.S. Bancorp /quotes/comstock/13*!usb/quotes/nls/usb (USB 25.95, +0.11, +0.43%) and Wells Fargo /quotes/comstock/13*!wfc/quotes/nls/wfc (WFC 29.89, -0.26, -0.86%) . In addition to the actions against the banking organizations, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced formal enforcement actions against Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), a domestic provider of default-management services and other services related to foreclosures, and against MERSCORP, Inc., which provides services related to tracking and registering residential mortgage ownership and servicing, acts as mortgagee of record on behalf of lenders and servicers, and initiates foreclosure actions

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