via: Matt Stoller

“Requires the applicant to qualify to be a Wells Fargo officer to execute documents and.. pass an online MERS signing authority assessment”

Oh and by the way, where is there any disclosure that Wells Fargo is a shareholder of MERS…?? So it will be creating legal documents for itself, basically.

Scribd

‘Kafkaesque’ nightmares plague homeowners facing foreclosure

iWATCH NEWS-

Like millions of stories from the great recession, this one begins with homeowners struggling to keep up with a mortgage payment they simply couldn’t afford.

By 2009, the adjustable interest rate for Cassandra and Bernard Gray’s Durham, N.C., home loan had spiked to more than 12 percent. “I didn’t know if we were going to be on the street or in a shelter,” Cassandra recalls. “We couldn’t afford groceries. It got pretty bad.”

They were thrilled to sign up for a modification plan with their loan servicer, GMAC Home Mortgage, Cassandra Gray said…

[iWATCH NEWS]

If the AG’s think they can settle the greatest theft in history, let them read this story…it’s not only people who are in default.

HuffPO-

In July 2009, Roy and Sheila Bowers refinanced the mortgage on their suburban ranch home in Topeka, Kansas. The couple wanted to take advantage of the low interest rates that were all the rage at the time.

Roy, a truck driver, and Sheila, a former hotel housekeeping supervisor, knew their new loan from Wells Fargo would enable them to save $198.86 a month – a nice chunk to help with gas and groceries.

But what the Bowers never imagined was that their old loan, the one Wells Fargo told them was paid off, would resurrect itself, trashing their credit report, scotching their son’s student loans and throwing the whole family into foreclosure. All, they say, even though they didn’t miss a single mortgage payment.

The Bowers aren’t alone…

[HUFFINGTONPOST]

Oh my, look what we have here…big mistake because I don’t think this is going very far….his franchises that is.

Bill Warner Private Investigator-

My source in Fort Lauderdale tells me that attorney David J. Stern has rolled over his $Millions in foreclosure home profits and the cash he got up front from the DJSP Entreprises Inc. FKA Chardan 2008 China Acquisition Corp deal into at least 150 Five Guys Burger and Fries Franchise’s, will that be fries with your meal sir?

It appears that David J. Stern is buying ”Five Guys Burger and Fries Franchise’s” in bulk, Stern is trying to acquire 500 Burger Joints NATIONWIDE…

[BILL WARNER]

image: Bill Warner

IMO the reason they are trying to rush into a settlement today, rather than later, is because there is a new Ticking Time Bomb that is about to explode that will most likely cost these banksters in the 100′s of billions. So taking baby steps this settlement won’t harm them as much as the next robo-signing scandal will and they want this out of the way long before the next scheme plays in a court room near you.

AB-

Pity Shaun Donovan. The much beset upon Housing and Urban Development secretary has the thankless task of facilitating that long sought after agreement between the state attorneys general and the banks, the one that would finally put that nasty robo-signing scandal behind us.  Long anticipated, it was supposed to be signed by Christmas (not).

[AMERICAN BANKER]

See this is how things get twisted because just today, Shaun Donovan announced that the Principal Forgiveness isn’t going to happen.

Fox News-

The Obama administration came under fire Monday from U.S. Democratic lawmakers and liberal groups, who argued that a forthcoming settlement over alleged foreclosure abuses won’t do enough to penalize the banking industry.

Administration officials and state attorneys general are have been putting the finishing touches on a settlement with major banks of foreclosure-processing problems that erupted into public view in fall 2010.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Associate U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perrelli were meeting in Chicago on Monday with Democratic attorneys general to review potential settlement terms, according to a spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been leading the talks.

The officials were scheduled to hold a separate conference call with Republican attorneys general later in the day, but no announcement of a settlement was expected this week.

[FOX NEWS]

ONE of the richest and most secretive sources of profit in the mortgage business is coming under scrutiny.

It’s about time.

 Gretchen Morgenson-

Investigators are training their sights on a type of hazard insurance policy known as force-placed insurance, a type of policy that has driven up costs for homeowners and pushed some into foreclosure. People who buy certain mortgage securities may be getting hurt, too.

Benjamin M. Lawsky, the superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, is investigating institutions that underwrite and sell force-placed insurance. Last fall, his office began sending subpoenas to insurance agents and brokers. Requests for information also went out to insurance companies that write such policies.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

NYTimes-

FORCE-PLACED insurance. Most homeowners never hear about it until their mortgage lender sends them a letter saying that they must have flood or some other kind of insurance and that if they don’t act quickly, the lender will buy it for them — at a price, it turns out, that is almost always much higher than the market rate.

I was one of those homeowners, and I wrote a column last year about how difficult it was to get this type of insurance removed. I was reminded of that column when I read a colleague’s article about New York State investigating banks for making homeowners buy this overpriced insurance.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

An 11th-hour settlement is expected to stave off potential class action status in a lawsuit that claims foreclosed borrowers were overcharged for attorneys’ fees that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. did not actually incur.

National Mortgage News-

The plaintiffs, Jose and Lorry Trevino, filed a motion seeking class action status and an amended complaint on Jan. 12. The defendants had until Jan. 17 to respond, but received a two-week extension, “so that the parties can memorialize their settlement,” according to court documents filed Jan. 13.

The parties have agreed to terms, but the settlement is pending final paperwork. The case hasn’t been dismissed and likely won’t until the settlement is finalized.

The suit, originally filed in 2007, names Merscorp and a number of its shareholders, including Citigroup, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GMAC Residential Funding, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo.

[NATIONAL MORTGAGE NEWS]

Scribd

GE’s slogan couldn’t have been much truer than this.

The D & O Diary-

In a January 12, 2012 opinion that quotes from (and relies upon) former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s credit crisis memoirs, Southern District of New York Judge Richard Holwell granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss in the subprime and credit crisis related securities class action lawsuit that investors had filed against General Electric, certain of its directors and officers, and its offering underwriters. A copy of Judge Holwell’s opinion can be found here.

Background

As discussed in greater detail here, the plaintiffs first filed their action in March 2009, alleging that the company had failed to disclose information regarding the company’s health and the health of its financial subsidiary, GE Capital, at the height of the financial crisis. As Judge Holwell summarized it, the plaintiffs allege that “during a time when the financial markets were crumbling and companies across the United States were scrambling to disclose their holdings in subprime loans, GE withheld information regarding its substantial holdings in subprime and non-investment grade loans and touted GE as safe in comparison to its competitors, despite the fact that GE was also feeling the impact of the financial crisis.”

[THE D & O DIARY]

Scribd

Another day, another colossal scandal with these fraudsters…This will make the foreclosure fraud settlement look like an ant next to an elephant.

This may be interested in this as well…Did “Robo-Signing” Cause JPMorgan Chase to Abandon over 1,000 Credit-Card Debt Lawsuits?& This recent NY case CHASE BANK v. GERGIS | NY Civ. Court “ROBO-TESTIMONY, WAMU, CREDIT-CARD DEBT” Dismissed w/ PREJUDICE

Yahoo-

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Private antitrust litigation pitting some five million retailers against Visa , MasterCard , and 13 large banks, including Bank of America , Citigroup Capital One Financial , JPMorgan Chase , U.S. Bancorp , Wells Fargo , PNC Financial , Fifth Third Bancorp , SunTrust Banks , HSBC and Barclays Plc has slipped under the radar of many analysts and investors who follow those companies, but the case may deliver a multi-billion dollar shock to bank bulls in the coming months.

Estimates of the potential cost of a settlement of the antitrust case vary dramatically–from a few billion dollars into the hundreds of billions. At least as worrisome to the financial companies

[...]

[YAHOO]

Keep digging down the rat hole and you’ll eventually get to the bottom of the Pyramid aka Ponzi!

American Banker-

New York’s Department of Financial Services has been probing banks and insurance companies for allegedly obtaining excessive profits on homeowners’ policies that they force borrowers to pay for when their insurance lapses, said people familiar with the matter.

Superintendent Benjamin M. Lawsky in the fall of 2011 dispatched formal letters to insurers and subpoenas to insurance agents and insurance brokerages run by several large banks to gather information on their practices, the people said.

[AMERICAN BANKER]

Michael Hudson, continues his great series into the subprime fraud mess, this time GE’s turn!

iWATCH-

For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn’t stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.

What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans. WMC’s top salespeople earned a million dollars a year or more and lived fast, swigging $1,000 bottles of Cristal and wheeling around in $100,000 Ferraris and Bentleys.

[iWATCH NEWS]

Folks, please tweet, forward, whatever. This is a huge story that deserves to be given major coverage in MSM. Local judges need to be aware that they are being handed forged documents.

FDL-

In 2010, the Law Offices of David J. Stern spun off the robo signing document mill part of his business into a separate, publicly traded company.

Stern pocketed some $60 million from that deal. The investors got the company and all its documents, internal procedures and everything you would need in order to find out what really happened within the Stern document mill.

A little after 8 AM EST today, a filing went up on the SEC’s Edgar database. It’s a Complaint in lawsuit, dated yesterday.

[FIRE DOG LAKE]

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