ATTORNEY GENERAL GEORGE JEPSEN
STATEMENT BY ATTORNEY GENERAL GEORGE JEPSEN
CONCERNING MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE INVESTIGATION
For immediate release ……………………………………..TUESDAY MAY 17, 2011
“The multistate investigation of the nation’s largest mortgage servicing companies confirms what my office has been told by thousands of Connecticut consumers, that these banks have done an incredibly poor job in dealing with the mortgage foreclosure mess they were instrumental in creating. As a result, millions of families have needlessly suffered, homeowners have lost billions of dollars in equity, and the real estate market continues to stagnate. Time is of the essence to fix this problem.
“Thus far, the national servicers have been unwilling to step up to the plate with the money necessary to address the full scope of the problems they themselves created. I believe they face substantial legal liability for their clearly illegal behavior should states be forced to sue. After being bailed out by American taxpayers, the banks owe those same taxpayers a real effort to partner with state and federal officials to clean up this mess.”
Attorney General Jepsen is a member of the National Association of Attorneys General multi-state task force seeking resolution of the mortgage foreclosure crisis
[Source: http://www.ct.gov/ag/site/default.asp]
© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.
Typical politician, saying NOTHING and DOING nothing.
Surely he doesn’t think homeowners don’t already have this revelation about the banks.
Look at this maybe opportunity for us?
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NewsSportsEntertainmentBusinessRestaurants & FoodLivingVideoClassifiedsShoppingYour MoneyMarket StatsYour TechBusiness WiresHighest-Paid CEOsTop WorkplacesCollectionsPhiladelphia gathering looks at the present and future of real estate fraud
May 11, 2011|By Alan J. Heavens, Inquirer Real Estate Writer
Fraudsters. Fraudulators. Scammers. Even knuckleheads.
Call them what you will, those who have found ways to prey upon people who have lost the most in the housing-market collapse, they are motivated by just one thing: greed.
“It is the one thing behind it all,” Pennsylvania’s deputy banking secretary, David Bleicken, told a summit on housing fraud Tuesday at St. Joseph’s University.
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It was Bleicken who called them “knuckleheads.” Since his department has issued “a whole load” of cease-and- desist orders against some of the worst mortgage-modification companies in the state, he ought to know.
Bleicken was one of a group of speakers at the summit, sponsored by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Philadelphia.
The points every participant emphasized were that fraud in the real estate industry was not going away and that the perpetrators perfected ways to carry out these scams for years before they were caught.
The situation that created the fertile field for fraud – the housing-market collapse and the resulting harvest of record mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures – has not gone away.
While emphasizing the continued seriousness of the financial situation, Ira Goldstein, director of policy solutions at the Reinvestment Fund in Philadelphia, said state and local authorities were in a position to tackle fraud.
“They are close to the problems and familiar with the victims,” he said. Financial reform will give states more responsibility “to fight the bad guys” in their jurisdictions.
Fraud comes in all shapes and forms, however, and Kelly Gastley, supervising attorney of Philadelphia VIP, focuses on “tangled titles” and related issues.
Her group, which provides pro bono legal services to those who cannot afford a lawyer, handles a variety of cases, from soured lease-purchase agreements to fraudulent conveyances, in which a signature on a deed is forged and the “fraudulator” transfers the property – often to unsuspecting third parties.
Then there are the mortgage-rescue scams, in which homeowners are told to sign over title to the rescuer, who promises to pay off the mortgage, rent the property back to the homeowners, and once a certain amount is paid, return the title.
“It’s too good to be true,” Gastley said.
Why such scams succeed, said assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Tsao, is that “the fraudsters know what the victims want to hear.”
Tsao has spent years working to convict Gennaro Rauso, who was able to get scores of troubled borrowers facing sheriff sale to sign their houses over to him in return for rent payments lower than their loan payments.
The lenders were unaware of this, however, and tried to foreclose, but Rauso, who is awaiting sentencing in June, had homeowners give him power of attorney to file for bankruptcy in their names, which delayed sheriff sale.
“Most victims I talked with had no idea what they were doing,” Tsao said. “They lost their homes and the last chance to work out their situation with lenders.”
Foreclosures are frequently a symptom of a larger problem, Bleicken said, and many victims, “curled up in a ball in the corner,” make themselves ripe for mortgage scammers.
“Desperation can affect the quality of decisions.”