Naked Capitalism-
Five years ago this month, GMAC became the first mortgage servicer to announce that they would suspend foreclosure operations, due to irregularities in their document preparation. Within a few weeks every major mortgage servicer in America followed suit. This is usually called the robo-signing scandal, but to be more precise we gave it the name foreclosure fraud. It ended with the five leading servicers, including GMAC, signing the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement.
Except it didn’t end, and this past week I was handed inconvertible proof of that fact. The scenario is so fantastical that if I didn’t have a working knowledge of foreclosure fraud I wouldn’t have believed it. But it appears to be very real.
Bill Paatalo is a former cop who worked in the mortgage industry as a loan officer and, from 2002-2008, the President of Wissota Mortgage in the Midwest. Since 2009, after experiencing his own mortgage trouble through a loan with Washington Mutual, he became a licensed private investigator specializing in securitization and chain of title analysis. He testifies as an expert witness, working with foreclosure defense attorneys and pro se litigants.