NOTE: We’ll take the $17 Billion over the AG’s “settlement”!
If settlement happens, they SHOULD prohibit any of them from coming at you with a deficiency!
WSJ-
State attorneys general told the nation’s five largest banks on Tuesday they face a potential liability of at least $17 billion in civil lawsuits if a settlement isn’t reached to address improper foreclosure practices, according to people familiar with the matter.
The figure doesn’t cover additional billions of dollars in potential claims from federal agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Justice Department. State and federal officials haven’t proposed a specific comprehensive settlement figure, but Tuesday’s …
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency met with the 14 mortgage servicers Friday over details in the recently signed consent orders, sources familiar with the matter confirmed.
The orders are meant to settle recent foreclosure investigations. According to the orders, servicers must retain an independent firm to review foreclosure actions pending between Jan. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2010. The review will be conducted to determine any financial injury to borrowers caused by the errors, misrepresentations or other deficiencies.
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
Mistakes happen, of course. And loan servicers like to contend that if errors occur, they are rare and honestly made. But after sifting through the data produced by this investigation, Mr. White disagreed that problems are rare. “In Senate testimony, an executive from Countrywide said its error rate was 1 percent,” Mr. White recalled. “The mortgage servicer industry error rate might be 10 times higher, based on the number of cases we are looking at.”
“There are continued flaws in the process, and they are not merely technical,” Mr. White continued. “Those flaws undermine the integrity of the bankruptcy system. Many homeowners have been harmed, including where the lender has come in and said ‘we want to lift the stay and go back into foreclosure proceedings,’ even though they lacked a sufficient basis to do it.”
The investigation conducted by the OCC and the Fed included a review of just 100 foreclosure files.
Housing Wire-
When mortgage servicers signed consent orders with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, these companies were required to hire outside firms to conduct “look back” evaluations of questionable foreclosure practices.
But these reviews will not be made public, according to an OCC spokesman.
To: Members of the Media
Fr: Massachusetts Register of Deeds John O’Brien and North Carolina Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen
Re: FDIC Chair Shelia Bair concurs with O’Brien and Thigpen that damages to consumer’s “has yet to be quantified”
This story has to be told: No settlements with the Big Banks until we know the “extent of the problem” and until the amount of exposure is “quantified”.
Bloomberg News
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair
The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is warning that flaws may have “infected millions of foreclosures” and questioned whether other regulators’ inquiries into problems at the nation’s mortgage-servicing companies have been thorough enough.
“We do not yet really know the full extent of the problem,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said Thursday in written remarks submitted to a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee. “Flawed mortgage-banking processes have potentially infected millions of foreclosures, and the damages to be assessed against these operations could be significant and take years to materialize.”
Federal and state officials launched numerous investigations last autumn after revelations that, to process foreclosures, banks used “robo-signers” who didn’t review documents prepared by their colleagues. Banking regulators’ have said their reviews of a sample of 2,800 foreclosure cases have found a small number of improper foreclosures.
Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh said last month that the problems were limited in scope. They include cases that shouldn’t have gone forward under a law blocking foreclosures on military personnel, ones in which the borrower was in bankruptcy and cases in which borrowers were already on the verge of having their loans modified.
But Ms. Bair, who is departing her position in July, argued that other regulators likely missed homeowners who should have been provided loan assistance but who were improperly denied such help. The FDIC, she said, has found a “not insignificant” number of such cases. “There needs to be much more aggressive action,” she told lawmakers.
Under consent orders that 14 banks and thrifts reached with regulators in March, financial institutions are required to hire a consultant to review their foreclosures over the past two years to identify any borrowers who were harmed by foreclosure-processing problems.
Ms. Bair, however, questioned whether those reviews will truly be independent. Such consultants “may have other business with [banks] or future business they would like to do with them,” Ms. Bair said. “This is a huge issue.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in response to questions from lawmakers at the hearing, didn’t address this criticism directly, but reiterated that regulators plan to fine banks as a result of the inquiry into foreclosure problems. He noted that the foreclosure crisis is “at some level” a problem of bank regulation, but noted it is “also a macroeconomic problem.”
Ms. Bair also raised the possibility that banks may be forced by government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy back more defaulted loans.
Fannie and Freddie have been pressing banks to do so, and numerous investors have filed lawsuits with similar demands. “A significant amount of this exposure has yet to be quantified,” she said in her prepared remarks.
REGISTERS O’BRIEN & THIGPEN SAY “PUT THE BRAKES ON ANY SETTLEMENT WITH THE BIG BANKS … REGISTERS OF DEEDS NEED TO BE AT THE TABLE”
Southern Essex County (MA) Register of Deeds, John O’Brien and Guilford County (NC) Register of Deeds, Jeff Thigpen, are today publicly asking Iowa’s Attorney General, Tom Miller, who has been coordinating the National Association of Attorneys General (“NAAG”) investigation into the banks’ improper mortgage dealings to stop settlement negotiations until there is a full accounting of the damage that the bank’s practices have inflicted upon the land recordation system and consumers chains of title across the nation and have again asked for the Registers of Deeds to have a seat at the negotiation table.
O’Brien and Thigpen, wrote to Miller in early April, asking that the Registers of Deeds be represented at any settlement talks. They have not heard back from Miller, and they find that very disturbing. “We represent Main Street, in contrast to Wall Street, and that constituency needs to be heard” said O’Brien.
Register O’Brien, who is leading the nationwide effort against the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (“MERS”) and its member banks said, “We need to take a long hard look at the damage that these banks have caused, not only to our economy but also to people’s chains of title. There can be no settlement for pennies on the dollar.” O’Brien points to MERS and their failure to record documents in the local registry of deeds in order to avoid paying billions of dollars in recording fees, thereby corrupting the chains of title of hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the country, as well as the alleged fraud associated with the robo-signing, as reasons for putting on the breaks. “That is why it is so important that the Registers of Deeds be brought into the room. We need to bring our knowledge of the land recordation system and consumer’s problematic chain of title issues to the table.” Common sense mandates that if a bridge collapses and there is a meeting to re-build that bridge, that the structural engineers must be invited to the table. “Why the Registers of Deeds have not been involved in these negotiations is puzzling” according to O’Brien and Thigpen
Thigpen’s office sent Attorney General Miller and Federal Regulators 4,500 potentially fraudulent and/or forged documents recorded in his Registry by Doc X. Doc X is owned by Lender Processing Services, which was acting on behalf of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and MERS, among others. “I am but one county, however I feel confident based upon my research that this is a disaster of epic proportions, for homeowner’s chains of title in the United States. As a result, it needs to be clearly established that citizens can no longer be harmed by the reckless disregard that the major banks and MERS have had for the American consumer and the integrity of public recording offices. People need to be assured that their ownership rights are secure and protected, that people who sign legal documents are who they say they are, and that there is transparency and fair dealing by all. I don’t think we are there yet.” stated Thigpen.
In addition, O’Brien and Thigpen are concerned about the reports that Miller has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from banks, finance, insurance, and real estate contributors since he announced that he was leading the NAAG investigation. O’Brien and Thigpen said, “Without questioning Millers integrity, Miller should consider either returning the contributions or voluntarily stepping aside so that there would not be even the slightest appearance of a conflict of interest.”
These Registers want to know “Why is there such a rush to have a settlement? “How can the consumers be fully protected when the extent of the damages are still unknown?”
Warning: This is a long blog post. But if you follow mortgage servicing, I think you’ll find it worth reading. Despite lots and lots of media coverage of the servicing fraud settlement, nobody seems to understand the real story that’s going on. I think that this post will explain a lot.
Let’s start by recapping what we know. Back in March we started hearing media reports of a proposed penalty for servicers in the $20-$30B range. Then the American Banker published a 27-page term sheet from the AGs for servicing standards. Next, Huffington Post published a 7-page CFPB powerpoint presentation. Then came the draft C&D orders and then in April, the final C&D orders (which eliminated the ridiculous “single point of contact which need not be a single person” and replaced it with “single point of contact as hereinafter defined” and then failed—quite deliberately—to define it anywhere in the document).
Now there’s another round of activity and conflicting reporting. The American Banker reported that there was a new AG term sheet proposed and that principal reductions were off the table. That turns out to be incorrect, as Shahien Nasiripour reported in the Huffington Post. The new AG term sheet that the American Banker referenced deals only with servicing standards. The American Banker assumed that this mean that principal reductions were off the table because they weren’t referenced in the term sheet. In fact they are still very much in play. They’re just in a second, separate term sheet. So now there are two separate term sheets–one covering servicing standard and another covering monetary issues/principal reductions. (Recall that the original AG term sheet did not cover the monetary issues—that was clearly for a separate document.) We are also hearing news reports that the banks are offering to settle for $5B and won’t go above $10B.
JOHN L. O’BRIEN, JR.
Register of Deeds
Phone: 978-542-1704
Fax: 978-542-1706
website: www.salemdeeds.com
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds Shetland Park
45 Congress Street
Suite 4100
Salem, Massachusetts 01970
NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Salem, MA
May 12th, 2011
REGISTERS O’BRIEN & THIGPEN SAY “PUT THE BRAKES ON ANY SETTLEMENT WITH THE BIG BANKS … REGISTERS OF DEEDS NEED TO BE AT THE TABLE”
Southern Essex County (MA) Register of Deeds, John O’Brien and Guilford County (NC) Register of Deeds, Jeff Thigpen, are today publicly asking Iowa’s Attorney General, Tom Miller, who has been coordinating the National Association of Attorneys General (“NAAG”) investigation into the banks’ improper mortgage dealings to stop settlement negotiations until there is a full accounting of the damage that the bank’s practices have inflicted upon the land recordation system and consumers chains of title across the nation and have again asked for the Registers of Deeds to have a seat at the negotiation table.
O’Brien and Thigpen, wrote to Miller in early April, asking that the Registers of Deeds be represented at any settlement talks. They have not heard back from Miller, and they find that very disturbing. “We represent Main Street, in contrast to Wall Street, and that constituency needs to be heard” said O’Brien.
Register O’Brien, who is leading the nationwide effort against the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (“MERS”) and its member banks said, “We need to take a long hard look at the damage that these banks have caused, not only to our economy but also to people’s chains of title. There can be no settlement for pennies on the dollar.” O’Brien points to MERS and their failure to record documents in the local registry of deeds in order to avoid paying billions of dollars in recording fees, thereby corrupting the chains of title of hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the country, as well as the alleged fraud associated with the robo-signing, as reasons for putting on the breaks. “That is why it is so important that the Registers of Deeds be brought into the room. We need to bring our knowledge of the land recordation system and consumer’s problematic chain of title issues to the table.” Common sense mandates that if a bridge collapses and there is a meeting to re-build that bridge, that the structural engineers must be invited to the table. “Why the Registers of Deeds have not been involved in these negotiations is puzzling” according to O’Brien and Thigpen
Thigpen’s office sent Attorney General Miller and Federal Regulators 4,500 potentially fraudulent and/or forged documents recorded in his Registry by Doc X. Doc X is owned by Lender Processing Services, which was acting on behalf of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and MERS, among others. “I am but one county, however I feel confident based upon my research that this is a disaster of epic proportions, for homeowner’s chains of title in the United States. As a result, it needs to be clearly established that citizens can no longer be harmed by the reckless disregard that the major banks and MERS have had for the American consumer and the integrity of public recording offices. People need to be assured that their ownership rights are secure and protected, that people who sign legal documents are who they say they are, and that there is transparency and fair dealing by all. I don’t think we are there yet.” stated Thigpen.
In addition, O’Brien and Thigpen are concerned about the reports that Miller has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from banks, finance, insurance, and real estate contributors since he announced that he was leading the NAAG investigation. O’Brien and Thigpen said, “Without questioning Millers integrity, Miller should consider either returning the contributions or voluntarily stepping aside so that there would not be even the slightest appearance of a conflict of interest.”
These Registers want to know “Why is there such a rush to have a settlement? “How can the consumers be fully protected when the extent of the damages are still unknown?”
For those of you that disagree, please read this post to understand why this makes perfect sense…
HuffPo-
The nation’s five largest mortgage firms may be forced to reduce loan balances for distressed homeowners as part of an agreement with state attorneys general and the Obama administration to settle claims of faulty mortgage practices, a top state official involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.
State attorneys general are descending on Washington again this week for negotiations with federal regulators and the nation’s largest mortgage servicers over the purpose of a multibillion-dollar fund aimed at helping troubled borrowers.
The idea behind the yet-to-be-created fund, the size of which remains in flux but could eclipse $20 billion, is to punish the servicers for their shoddy foreclosure practices, which came to light in the fall, and to put that money toward keeping struggling homeowners in their homes.
This Special Foreclosure Edition describes lessons learned from an interagency review of foreclosure practices at the 14 largest residential mortgage servicers and includes examples of effective mortgage servicing practices derived from these lessons.
First of all, the problems we found were extensive. Our reviews found significant weaknesses in foreclosure governance and document preparation: improper affidavits were submitted and documents were notarized improperly. Servicers devoted insufficient financial, staffing and managerial resources to foreclosure processing. Third party providers of foreclosure-related services, including outside law firms, were not adequately supervised, and, in a limited number of cases, servicers failed to ensure proper endorsement of promissory notes or mortgage documents.
“We’re not happy” with the time it takes to give borrowers an answer, said Christine Larsen, head of operations for retail financial services at J.P. Morgan, who is responsible for implementing the consent orders. The bank is trying to speed response times by setting new customer-communication deadlines.
Regulatory agencies exist to protect the public, not the corporations they regulate. The head of the Office of Comptroller of the Currency doesn’t seem to understand that. But that’s not why John Walsh needs to resign.
The OCC was created to stabilize the economy, make it easier to conduct trade, and protect people’s savings. It didn’t do that. In fact, it ignored the warnings raised by others. But that’s not why John Walsh needs to resign.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is seeking an alternative settlement with banks that respects “the appropriate role of attorneys general,” his office said in a statement today. The settlement could be a model for other states, Pruitt said.
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said he has “significant concerns” about a proposal to reduce loan balances for some homeowners as part of a settlement of a nationwide foreclosure probe, joining at least seven other states that have criticized such a plan.
A deal with the top mortgage servicers in the U.S. that includes writedowns could encourage homeowners who are current on their loans to stop making payments, Olens, a Republican, said today in a telephone interview.
“You’re declaring in advance who the winners and losers are,” Olens said. “I’m a little concerned that this process disengages the normal market forces.”
Judging by last week’s performance, it sure looks as though the country’s top bank regulator is back to its old tricks.
Though, to be honest, calling the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency a “regulator” is almost laughable. The Environmental Protection Agency is a regulator. The O.C.C. is a coddler, a protector, an outright enabler of the institutions it oversees.
It may take at least two months to reach a final agreement, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. An accord remains out of reach because states want principal reductions for borrowers, which is more than banks agreed to in deals reached with U.S. regulators last week, said Allison Schoenthal, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells in New York.
“Principal reductions I don’t think are going to be agreed to by banks, and I don’t think the banks see a need for a penalty when, in their view, they haven’t done anything wrong,” said Schoenthal, who represents lenders and servicers and isn’t involved in the talks.
Take this home for example. It was originally sold for $289,000.
Prior to Final Judgment, property had two (2) assignments of mortgage for two entities same robo-signer for both via MERS.
At auction it was sold for a MAJOR discount at approx. 75% off. to Indymac via LPS Minnesota address in 2010. We know Indymac has been shut down way before this time.
Why couldn’t they work a deal like this when this person whom I personally know tried over and over to get a modification AT THE TIME?
They had a good job then and still have a good job today.
So why do they not want to work with the borrowers and reduce the principal to reflect today’s REAL and TRUE appraisal of the property?
Make sure you follow the transactions to understand what happened and why it makes no sense where this goes.
Now Here comes more funny business:
Still following?
Property was Quit Claimed/Transferred To Freddie Mac for $100.00 (prepared by David Stern) but consideration shows only $10.00.
Property then sold for $3900.00 more 13 days later $78,000
SAME day flipped for $150,000
Previous records are all gone [compare both images]
Dylan Ratigan with special guest New York Times’ Louise Story, discussing the 600+ page report uncovering Goldman Sachs scheme to defraud investors. According to Bloomberg, The U.S. Justice Department and regulators will have to determine whether employees and executives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. violated any laws when they traded securities tied to the housing market and testified to Congress about the transactions, Senator Carl Levin said.
While the attorneys general proposed many similar terms last month, banking regulators didn’t include any requirements for lowering mortgage debt. That may hinder Iowa Attorney General Thomas J. Miller as he leads a group of state officials working with the administration to require lenders to evaluate loan cuts for some borrowers whose homes are worth less than their mortgages.
“I have always been pretty skeptical about the ability of principal reductions to get you much,” said Mark A. Calabria, director of financial-regulation studies at the Cato Institute, a public-policy research group in Washington. “I think we will look back and say this was the death knell.”
Question: Wonder what the regulators thought of when they watched 60 Minutes broadcast of LPS, DOCX and Servicer fraud on national tv with over 12 million viewers?
Just see what the number one popular post has been on this site since the airing of it or do a simple google search like 60 Minutes Docx or 60 Minutes LPS and you’ll see SFF is the first site that comes up. We’re no fools and believe me the entire globe has tuned in, including the regulators.
The nation’s 14 largest mortgage firms must compensate wronged homeowners after federal bank regulators determined the companies broke federal and state laws by improperly foreclosing on an incalculable number of distressed borrowers. The agencies announced such penalties Wednesday, the first in what is likely to be a series of enforcement actions targeting the country’s biggest banks and costing them billions.
Lenders like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial systematically broke rules and took shortcuts when foreclosing on homeowners last year, the regulators said. Their three-month review launched after documents and videos of so-called robo-signers — people who signed thousands of foreclosure documents a day without reading them or knowing what was in them — surfaced, leading the biggest banks to halt home seizures.
Bank examiners found the firms employed practices that “failed to conform to state legal requirements.” In other words, they broke the law.
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