whistleblower - FORECLOSURE FRAUD

Tag Archive | "whistleblower"

JPMorgan Chase Whistleblower: ‘Essentially Suicide’ To Stand Up To Bank

JPMorgan Chase Whistleblower: ‘Essentially Suicide’ To Stand Up To Bank


I hear what she’s saying about googling her name, because I can tell you there were a ton of “Linda Almonte” searches that lead to SFF.

She’s a hero to many.

HuffPO-

When Linda Almonte alerted her boss at JPMorgan Chase about potential fraud in a major deal she was helping to close, she expected him to applaud her great catch.

Instead, he fired her.

“We went down fast,” said Almonte, 41, about her family. She had been making $100,000 a year as a division vice president at Chase, enough to support her stay-at-home husband, their four kids, ages 12 to 22, and rent a three-bedroom house in San Antonio, Texas.

Her move at Chase amounted to “essentially suicide,” Almonte told The Huffington Post. No bank in town would hire her after word spread that she had stood up to the banking giant, she said. After more than a year of fruitless job hunting, Almonte and her family left town, landing at a hotel near Disney World, paying $300 a week for a two-bedroom with a kitchenette.

[HUFFINGTON POST]

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Eileen Foster, Former Countrywide Executive, Calls For Investigation Into Cover-Ups

Eileen Foster, Former Countrywide Executive, Calls For Investigation Into Cover-Ups


HuffPO-

A whistleblower who exposed systemic fraud by Countrywide mortgage lenders called on the Department of Justice on Wednesday to prosecute her former colleagues, if not with fraud, then with covering it up.

“If there is insufficient legal evidence to convict these executives of what we believe are obvious crimes, then the federal government should refocus,” Eileen Foster, a former Countrywide fraud investigations chief, told an audience at the National Press Club gathered to honor her and five others for their truth-telling.

“Overwhelming evidence of perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice exist in the numerous claims, court filings and trial and investigative transcripts,” Foster said. She herself was fired after reporting that falsified income documentation and faked signatures had been used to steer borrowers into bad mortgages.

[HUFFINGTON POST]

image: iWatchnews.org

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Lynn Szymoniak, Foreclosure Activist, Says $18 Million Doesn’t Make Up For Homeowners’ Harms

Lynn Szymoniak, Foreclosure Activist, Says $18 Million Doesn’t Make Up For Homeowners’ Harms


HuffPO-

The last four years have not been easy for Lynn Szymoniak. Since early 2008, she has waged a seemingly endless series of legal battles against some of the nation’s biggest banks in an effort to save her Palm Beach County, Fla., home from foreclosure. But Szymoniak is about to get some help — a check for $18 million for her role in uncovering evidence of massive bank fraud.

It’s a significant win for the foreclosure fraud activist, but in an interview with HuffPost, she emphasized that the settlement now does not undo the damage done to homeowners who were improperly evicted.

“It’s very satisfying to have recovered this money for the government,” Szymoniak said. “Would it have been more satisfying to have recovered it for homeowners? Possibly.”

[HUFFINGTON POST]

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Linda Almonte | How a Whistleblower Halted JPMorgan Chase’s Card Collections

Linda Almonte | How a Whistleblower Halted JPMorgan Chase’s Card Collections


American Banker-

No sooner did Linda Almonte show up for work on November 30, 2009 than was she escorted out the door by security at JPMorgan Chase’s Credit Card Litigation Support Group in San Antonio. A midlevel Chase executive who oversaw business process execution employees, Almonte says she was fired after just six months on the job for challenging her superiors about the accuracy of the bank’s credit card records.

Colleagues first learned of her dismissal later in the day when operations manager Jason Lazinbat, Almonte’s former boss, gathered bank staff in a conference room and announced she was no longer with the bank. Under no circumstances, Lazinbat warned, were staffers to communicate with Almonte, recalls Carole McGinn, a quality control worker who spent 14 years at Chase. The account was confirmed by second employee, who requested to speak anonymously.

[AMERICAN BANKER]

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Millions awarded to Palm Beach Gardens mortgage whistleblower, Plans to release a list of all the homeowners in PBC who are victims of forged docs

Millions awarded to Palm Beach Gardens mortgage whistleblower, Plans to release a list of all the homeowners in PBC who are victims of forged docs


WPTV-

Szymoniak is still fighting her foreclosure, but plans to use part of the settlement to buy a new home. She also promises to donate a portion to charity.

“My dad was a Marine,” said Szymoniak. “I tried to make a commitment early on, that I would fight as hard for my country as my father did.”

In just a few weeks, Szymoniak plans to release a list of all the homeowners in Palm Beach County who have a mortgage that was processed by the now-defunct company that she suspects of forging her own foreclosure documents.

She says every homeowner deserves to know whether their chain of title is compromised.

Read more: http://www.wptv.com

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Anonymous JPMorgan whistleblower tells CFTC JPM manipulates the silver market & conspires in manipulating gold:

Anonymous JPMorgan whistleblower tells CFTC JPM manipulates the silver market & conspires in manipulating gold:


NOTE: The original from the CFTC site has been deleted in full

H/T to Abigail Field for this

Fresh off the CFTC site as follows:

From: Z A N
Organization(s):
JPMorgan Chase

Comment No: 57019
Date: 3/14/2012

Comment Text:

Dear CFTC Staff,

Hello, I am a current JPMorgan Chase employee. This is an open letter to all commissioners and regulators. I am emailing you today b/c I know of insider information that will be damning at best for JPMorgan Chase. I have decided to play the role of whistleblower b/c I no longer have faith and belief that what we are doing for society is bringing value to people. I am now under the opinion that we are actually putting hard working Americans unaware of what lays ahead at extreme market risk. This risk is unnecessary and will lead to wide-scale market collapse if not handled properly. With the release of Mr. Smith’s open letter to Goldman, I too would like to set the record straight for JPM as well. I have seen the disruptive behavior of superiors and no longer can say that I look up to employees at the ED/MD level here at JPM. Their smug exuberance and arrogance permeates the air just as pungently as rotting vegetables. They all know too well of the backdoor crony connections they share intimately with elected officials and with other institutions. It is apparent in everything they do, from the meager attempts to manipulate LIBOR, therefore controlling how almost all derivatives are priced to the inherit and fraudulent commodities manipulation. They too may have one day stood for something in the past in the client-employee relationship. Does anyone in today’s market really care about the protection of their client? From the ruthless and scandalous treatment of MF Global client asset funds to the excessive bonuses paid by companies with burgeoning liabilities. Yes, we at JPMorgan that are in the know are fearful of a cascading credit event being triggered in Greece as they have hidden derivatives in excess of $1 Trillion USD. We at JPMorgan own enough of these through counterparty risk and outright prop trading that our entire IB EDG space could be annihilated within a few short days. The last ten years has been market by inflexion point after inflexion point with the most notable coming in 2008 after the acquisition of Bear.

I wish to remain anonymous as of now as fear of termination mounts from what I am about to reveal. Robert Gottlieb is not my real name; however he is a trader that is involved in a lawsuit for manipulative trading while working with JPMorgan Chase. He was acquired during our Bear Stearns acquisition and is known to be the notorious person shorting in the silver future market from his trading space, along with Blythe Masters, his IB Global boss. However, with that said, we are manipulating the silver futures market and playing a smaller (but still massively manipulative) role in manipulating the gold futures market. We have a little over a 25% (give or take a percentage) position in the short market for silver futures and by your definition this denotes a larger position than for speculative purposes or for hedging and is beyond the line of manipulation.

On a side note, I do not work directly with accounts that would have been directly impacted by the MF Global fiasco but I have heard through other colleagues that we have involvement in the hiding of client assets from MF Global. This is another fraudulent effort on our part and constitutes theft. I urge you to forward that part of the investigation on to the respective authorities.

There is something else that you may find strange. During month-end December, we were all told by our managers that this was going to be a dismal year in terms of earnings and that we should not expect any bonuses or pay raises. Then come mid-late January it is made known that everyone received a pay raise and/or bonus, which is interesting b/c just a few weeks ago we were told that this was not likely and expected to be paid nothing in addition to base salary. January is right around the time we started increasing our short positions quite significantly again and this most recent crash in gold and silver during Bernanke’s speech on February 29th is of notable importance, as we along with 4 other major institutions, orchestrated the violent $100 drop in Gold and subsequent drops in silver.

As regulators of the free people of this country, I ask you to uphold the most important job in the world right now. That job is judge and overseer of all that is justice in the most sensitive of commodity markets. There are many middle-income people that invest in the physical assets of silver, gold, as well as mining stocks that are being financially impacted in a negative way b/c of our unscrupulous shorts in the precious metals commodity sector. If you read the COT with intent you will find that commercials (even though we have no business being in the commercial sector, which should be reserved for companies that truly produce the metal) are net short by a long shot in not only silver, but gold.

It is rather surprising that what should be well known liabilities on our balance sheet have not erupted into wider scale scrutinization. I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. We are only helping reality come to light therefore allowing a real valuation of our banking industry which will give investors a chance to properly adjust without being totally wiped out. I will be contacting a lawyer shortly about this matter, as I believe no other whistleblower at JPMorgan has come forward yet. Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.

Kind Regards,
-The 1st Whistleblower of Many


[CFTC]

 

 

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Whistleblowers reap millions in U.S. mortgage suits

Whistleblowers reap millions in U.S. mortgage suits


Reuters-

Troubled homeowners are not the only ones set to get a financial lift from the U.S. government’s $25 billion landmark mortgage settlement.

Whistleblowers who were instrumental in revealing epidemic mortgage abuses, some of whom risked their careers to do so, are getting multi-million-dollar payouts, court documents show.

Victor Bibby and Brian Donnelly, two Georgia mortgage brokers, are among the handful of whistleblowers whose stories are coming into focus.

Bibby and Donnelly said they started noticing in 2005 that lenders were charging veterans hidden fees on mortgage refinancing – a violation of the government’s Interest Rate Reduction Refinancing Loans program.

[REUTERS]

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Calling All Whistleblowers: PLEASE, Your Country Needs You

Calling All Whistleblowers: PLEASE, Your Country Needs You


Abigail Field-

Everyday brings more proof the Bailed-Out Bankers (those B.O.Bs) are running our country to their liking. Exhibit A: the Obama Administration, the B.O.Bs and the rest of state and federal law enforcement agree to violate contracts so taxpayers, pension funds, 401ks and other investors can pay for the B.O.B.s misdeeds. So what’s an American to do to reclaim her country?

Well, if you work for the B.O.Bs and are in a position to witness banker wrongdoing, tell law enforcers. You know, like the anti-terrorism ads say: If you see something, say something.

Perhaps you know your B.O.B bosses are ripping people off by lying about the bank’s borrowing costs; perhaps you know your B.O.B. bosses are systematically ripping off our government via the HAMP program, via inflated appraisals for FHFA insured mortgages; or perhaps, like whistleblower Linda Almonte, your B.O.B. bosses demanded that you participate in their fraud.

[REALITY CHECK]

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Palm Beach Gardens homeowner gets $18 million in foreclosure settlement

Palm Beach Gardens homeowner gets $18 million in foreclosure settlement


Palm Beach Post-

Palm Beach Gardens homeowner and foreclosure fighter Lynn Szymoniak is slated to get $18 million from the nationwide settlement with the country’s five largest banks that was filed in federal court Monday.

Szymoniak, who was featured on the CBS news show 60 Minutes last year for the work she did uncovering the robo-signing scandal, said this morning that her gain from the settlement seems “surreal.”

“I always tend to discount everything until it’s signed,” she said. “I knew it was part of the settlement in February, but not how much.”

Szymoniak’s settlement is part of a larger $95 million agreement reached with the banks and Bill Nettles, the U.S. District Attorney of South Carolina. That agreement is written into the $25 billion nationwide settlement between 40 state attorneys general and Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Ally Financial, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

[PALM BEACH POST]

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UNSEALED COMPLAINT | Whistleblower says BofA defrauded HAMP

UNSEALED COMPLAINT | Whistleblower says BofA defrauded HAMP


REUTERS-

Bank of America NA prevented homeowners from receiving mortgage-loan modifications under a federal program in order to avoid millions of dollars in losses while benefitting from financial incentives for participating in the program, according to a complaint unsealed in federal court Wednesday.

The suit is the second whistleblower complaint unsealed so far with apparent ties to the $1 billion False Claims Act settlement announced by Bank of America and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York on February 9.

[REUTERS]

H/T Bill Behrens for the complaint

[ipaper docId=84409561 access_key=key-vfacp2btrdr8hbsd24e height=600 width=600 /]

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OCJ CASE NO. 5595 | Confidential Report to Fannie Mae Regarding Shareholder Complaints of Foreclosure Fraud by Mr. Nye Lavalle

OCJ CASE NO. 5595 | Confidential Report to Fannie Mae Regarding Shareholder Complaints of Foreclosure Fraud by Mr. Nye Lavalle


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Office of Corporate Justice has retained Baker & Hostetler LLP to conduct an independent investigation of concerns expressed by Mr. Nye Lavalle, a Fannie Mae shareholder, about several Fannie Mae business practices in connection with single-family mortgages. 1 Mr. Lavalle accuses Fannie Mae of “aiding, abetting and sanctioning … predatory lending and servicing schemes,” as well as committing accounting and securities fraud, and racketeering violations. He views Fannie Mae as responsible for damage inflicted on single-family borrowers by unscrupulous lenders and servicers because Fannie Mae approves lenders and servicers, maintains servicer profiles and ratings, approves mortgage document terms and servicing requirements, and benefits from the income stream created by wrongdoing. He fears Fannie Mae’s alleged failures could result in both civil and criminal liability that would affect shareholder value.

Through a series of communications to members of the Board of Directors and
others starting in December 2003, Mr. Lavalle called for an independent investigation of his
allegations? The Board of Directors decided to conduct an internal review of these concerns.
On September 12,2005, the Office of Corporate Justice retained Baker & Hostetler LLP.

Mr. Lavalle began investigating the mortgage industry after his parents, Anthony
and Matilde L. Pew, had a dispute with mortgage servicer EMC Mortgage Corporation (“EMC”),
a subsidiary of Bear Stearns Companies (“Bear Stearns,,).3 EMC ultimately foreclosed on the
Pews’ property, even though, according to Mr. Lavalle, his family is wealthy and made repeated
efforts to repay the loan.4 The dispute motivated Mr. Lavalle to investigate and publicize his
allegations that EMC engaged in predatory servicing practices, which has resulted in several
lawsuits between Bear Stearns and Mr. Lavalle. 5 Mr. Lavalle then broadened his focus to
include the single-family mortgage industry as a whole.

Mr. Lavalle considers himself a gadfly of the mortgage industry. He claims to
have been investigating, analyzing and exposing mortgage fraud, predatory lending and
servicing, and securitization schemes since 1993.6 He has a website that details his complaints,
and has posted information on several other sites. 7 He claims to have spent more than 20,000
hours and nearly $500,000 investigating predatory lending and servicing. 8 He reports that he is a
consultant to plaintiff lawyers who sue lenders and servicers and to homeowners.
Mr. Lavalle’s view is that since Fannie Mae is such an important force in the
mortgage industry, it has both the responsibility and means to end abusive lending and servicing
practices. Mr. Lavalle’s view is that Fannie Mae directs the conduct of servicers from afar. In
an e-mail ofFebruary21.2006.Mr. Lavalle expresses his frustration, saying:
I hate to keep using the analogies that you don’t like but it really is
like a Mafia operation. The Godfather [Fannie Mae] says we got a
problem, “take care of it” and the lieutenant [“the servicer”]
orders the hit [foreclosure] and hires the hitman [the USFN or
other lawyer to foreclose].

The hit man and lieutenant don’t want the Godfather implicated so
they create layers of deniability [a typical CIA, white house, legal
and political maneuver] to conceal who the real parties in interest
are and who had knowledge of and ordered the hit.

While Mr. Lavalle is partial to extreme analogies that undermine his credibility, he has become
knowledgeable about the mortgage industry. He has identified significant issues but, in our
view, does not always analyze them correctly. In proposing solutions, he generally undervalues
the benefits to homeowners of efficient mortgage markets operated at low costs and overstates
the needs of borrowers to have information about the status of their loans in the secondary
markets for mortgages. Fannie Mae has already identified and is addressing many of the same
issues. This report details several areas where Fannie Mae faces legal and business issues that
remain to be addressed.

Mr. Lavalle also claims that as a result of this work, he and his family have been
harassed. He expresses considerable anger when he attributes these attacks to Fannie Mae. An
investigation of his personal retaliation claim is in progress; to date Mr. Lavalle has identified no
direct conduct by Fannie Mae that he considers harassing.

We have reviewed more than 1,500 pages of documents provided by Mr. Lavalle
to Fannie Mae or us directly and had 17 conversations with him. We have identified six general
areas of his concerns: (1) foreclosure policies and procedures, (2) transparency, (3) protection of
promissory notes, (4) predatory servicing, (5) fraud detection and reporting, and (6) accounting
and securities issues. Within each area, Mr. Lavalle identifies multiple issues that are detailed in
this report. In investigating these concerns, we have collected documents from Mr. Lavalle,
Fannie Mae and public sources, reviewed extensively eFannie.com, and interviewed at least 30
Fannie Mae employees. The company has fully cooperated in our investigation.
In reviewing Mr. Lavalle’s concerns as a shareholder, we have told Mr. Lavalle
that the proper scope of our investigation is to determine whether he has identified wrongdoing
hy Fannie Mae officials or financial risks of sufficient magnitude to affect materially Fannie
Mae’s financial statements. We cannot resolve every case of an alleged mishandled mortgage.
1. Foreclosure Policies and Procedures

Mr. Lavalle asserts that Fannie Mae’s mortgage servicers and the Mortgage
Electronic Registry System, Inc. (“MERS”) routinely make misrepresentations in foreclosure
proceedings. He has identified two categories of alleged misrepresentations: that MERS or the
servicers are the holders and owners of the defaulted promissory notes, and that promissory notes
are lost, stolen or destroyed.9 He also questions whether foreclosures in the name of MERS or
servicers satisfy state laws on standing to sue. Since Fannie Mae authorizes foreclosures, Mr.
Lavalle argues that Fannie Mae could be liable for these misrepresentations, including for
racketeering violations under federal and state laws, and could risk having foreclosure sales
unwound by the courts. 10

We have found evidence that false statements by foreclosure attorneys are being
routinely made in at least two counties in Florida and appear to be occurring elsewhere.
Apparently due to Mr. Lavalle’s ex parte communications, two Florida judges ordered hearings
to examine MERS’s role in foreclosures. During consolidated hearings that resulted in the
judges dismissing 24 foreclosure actions, three judges (including one who took the time to
observe and comment) criticized MERS for routinely filing “sham” pleadings and “false”
affidavits regarding its interest in promissory notes and supposed lost promissory notes. I I One
judge questioned whether large numbers of foreclosures would have to be reversed due to fraud
on the court.

[…]

[ipaper docId=80498483 access_key=key-ok9j9tnutjxytx2slma height=600 width=600 /]

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Gretchen Morgenson: A Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded

Gretchen Morgenson: A Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded


From my own personal experience and 20 years of research and investigation, nothing — and I mean nothing — that a bank, lender, loan servicer or their lawyer says or puts on paper can be trusted and accepted as true,” Mr. Lavalle said.

NYT-

YEARS before the housing bust — before all those home loans turned sour and millions of Americans faced foreclosure — a wealthy businessman in Florida set out to blow the whistle on the mortgage game.

His name is Nye Lavalle, and he first came to attention not in finance but in sports and advertising. He turned heads in marketing circles by correctly predicting that Nascar and figure skating would draw huge followings in the 1990s.

[FAIR GAME NYT]

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Judge keeps credit crisis-related securities fraud suit against General Electric alive

Judge keeps credit crisis-related securities fraud suit against General Electric alive


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]

[ipaper docId=78429366 access_key=key-k85na7sard7u3ohckjv height=600 width=600 /]

 

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Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle – iWATCH

Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle – iWATCH


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]

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Former Ameriquest Employee fired after he reported illegal activity, sued under the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002

Former Ameriquest Employee fired after he reported illegal activity, sued under the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002


Those of you who’ve had any dealings with Ameriquest may find this interesting…


Via William McCloskey

William McCloskey worked for Ameriquest from November 2004 till March 2005. William was fired after he reported illegal activity behind the walls of his Ameriquest branch, which virtually mirrored all of the widespread reports about the company (to local detectives, the PA Attorney General, the S.E.C. and the F.B.I).

William sued Ameriquest Mortgage Company under the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. The act pertained to publicly traded companies and issuers of securities under Section 15(d) and 12h-3 of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.

[WJM 7]

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Massachusetts Attorney General prolongs the pain for homeowners

Massachusetts Attorney General prolongs the pain for homeowners


WSJ-

It’s been four years since the housing bust began, and some Democrats are fighting to keep it going. That’s the message out of Massachusetts, where Attorney General Martha Coakley is layering on more uncertainty for the mortgage industry with a lawsuit that’s already driven one company to roll back its business in the state.

Ms. Coakley unveiled her case recently against Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, GMAC Mortgage, Wells Fargo and the electronic clearinghouse Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS). She claims they engaged in “unfair and deceptive foreclosure practices” and “false documentation practices,” deceived borrowers about the availability of loan modifications and failed to comply with a state property-registration statute.

[WALL STREET JOURNAL]

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TYT: Feds Won’t Prosecute Banks Despite Evidence Of Crimes

TYT: Feds Won’t Prosecute Banks Despite Evidence Of Crimes


by on Dec 23, 2011

A devastating report by Reuters shows that the federal government is focusing on small scale swindlers while ignoring crimes by big banks despite a wealth of evidence against them. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

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Adam Levitin: More Rot in the OCC Foreclosure Reviews

Adam Levitin: More Rot in the OCC Foreclosure Reviews


Credit Slips-

Michael Olenick, Gretchen Morgenson, and Yves Smith have all written pretty damning things about the foreclosure reviews persuant to the OCC consent orders with major mortgage servicers. (For my own previous thoughts, see here and here.) I’ve just started to peruse some of the engagement letters with the firms conducting the reviews, and the rot is even worse that these other critics portray.

What follows is in no way a comprehensive cataloging of the problems in the OCC foreclosure review process–this is just what I spotted from the briefest of perusals.  Yet it is clear that there are two types of serious problems:  conflicts of interest and flawed substance of the review process. I’ll lay both out below and then give some thoughts as to what could and should be done to remedy this farcical process in order to ensure some accountability to the public and justice for homeowners. The post concludes with some thoughts about the core problem–the OCC–and what can be done to remedy it.   

Conflicts of Interest

[…]

[CREDIT SLIPS]

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Whistleblower Records Shed Light On BNY Mellon Case

Whistleblower Records Shed Light On BNY Mellon Case


We all would agree that all the banks share the same protocols in how they conduct business. All frauds.

HuffPO-

Confidential whistleblower documents that helped spark a massive state and federal investigation into how Bank of New York Mellon Corp charged pension funds for currency exchange, provide a rare window into how a bank insider aided a lawsuit against the bank.

The information provided by whistleblower Grant Wilson, who worked at BNY Mellon, included a detailed analysis of how the bank allegedly provided “fictitious” foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

The analysis included a step-by-step guide to how currencies were traded and internal profits generated by the bank, according to documents seen by Reuters. A memo detailing fellow employees also was provided.

[HUFFINGTONPOST]

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Still Waiting for Cleanup in Foreclosure Mess – ProPublica

Still Waiting for Cleanup in Foreclosure Mess – ProPublica


by Marian Wang ProPublica, Dec. 27, 2011, 10:56 a.m.

This is part of our year-end series, looking at where things stand in each of our major investigations.

If last year [1] was the year in which faulty foreclosures and bank errors became a full-blown scandal, this has been the year of waiting for something to be done about it.

First, there’s the still-to-come multi-state settlement over alleged fraud on the part of the country’s five largest mortgage servicers. That’s the settlement being brokered by a coalition of state attorneys general and once touted [2] as homeowners’ best bet for redressing banks’ flaws in foreclosure and mortgage documentation. Over the past year, one story after another declared such a deal was imminent, but the details — the total price tag [3], the deal’s framework, and the expected date — have continually been changing.

Earlier this month, the Des Moines Register reported Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller — a point man for the attorneys’ general probe — as saying that the final deal should be complete before Christmas [4] and would include a measure to reduce the total debt owed by underwater homeowners. No deal has yet been announced. Miller wouldn’t disclose a dollar figure on the size of the settlement — or whether California, one of the hardest-hit states, would participate.

Over the course of the year, some state attorneys general seemed to lose faith in the coordinated effort, voicing concerns that the eventual settlement would be too easy on the banks.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris signaled her hesitation too [5], as did the attorneys general of New York [6], Delaware, Nevada, Massachusetts [7], Kentucky [8] and Minnesota [9]. These state attorneys general — many of whom have filed their own suits against major servicers [10], foreclosure processing firms [11], and other players [12] — questioned whether the settlement would limit their ability to take more aggressive action against foreclosure abuses in their states and either expressed doubts about whether they’d sign on to the final settlement or pulled out of the talks altogether.

Banks, meanwhile, have pushed for the settlement to include broader releases from legal liability over mortgage-related abuses. According to a recent Wall Street Journal piece, they’ve tried to make their participation in the settlement contingent on being shielded [13] from the possibility of lawsuits brought by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Also still to be determined? An official to monitor the banks and servicers [14] and ensure they comply with whatever agreement is eventually reached.

Meanwhile, federal banking regulators have also begun to act. In April, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Reserve accused eight mortgage servicers and two third-party mortgage processing firms of 201Cunsafe and unsound [15]” foreclosure practices and ordered them to come up with a plan to prevent the same errors going forward. (Read the orders [16] they received.) But the revamp plans drawn up by the banks are kept confidential [17]. And no financial penalties [18] have been issued, though regulators have said that they’re still to come.

Regulators also launched an interagency foreclosure review program [19] [PDF] this year to identify and compensate homeowners who were wronged in the foreclosure process. The plan is to review sample loan files pulled from the files from 14 largest mortgage servicers, as well as files from homeowners who submit a request for a review.

The regulators in charge of the program have so far declined to disclose information on key aspects of the review, such as what kinds of compensation are available to homeowners, how compensation would be calculated, and for what specific offenses. (Homeowners with questions can see our FAQ on the reviews [20] to see whether they’re eligible for review and how to apply.)

The reviews themselves are being conducted by outside consulting firms [21] that will be supervised by the regulators but paid by the banks. As we’ve reported [22], some lawmakers have raised concerns about the experience of the reviewers and whether they will truly be able to operate independently of the banks.

Finally, it bears mentioning that despite the efforts on both the federal and state level to address the systemic failures of banks and mortgage servicers, errors are continuing [23] — and they’re still causing wrongful foreclosures.

The only subset of homeowners who seem to have gotten a break — or redress for botched foreclosures — is military families. Earlier this year, the Justice Department settled lawsuits [24] against subsidiaries of Bank of America and Morgan Stanley over allegations that they wrongfully foreclosed on active duty service members, in violation of a law that specifically offers them greater protection from foreclosure. As part of that settlement, the two companies apologized [25] and paid a combined penalty of $22 million, plus compensation to certain service members who suffered wrongful foreclosures.

 

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Details of Mortgage Servicing Settlement Between Banks and AGs Begin to Emerge – TIME

Details of Mortgage Servicing Settlement Between Banks and AGs Begin to Emerge – TIME


Well, not really because what ever “negotiations” there is, we always know you’re out to help the banks and the not people.

Time-

The never-ending negotiations between the 50 state attorneys general (minus a few big ones) and five major banks over penalties and standards for past, present and future mortgage servicing are finally ending, and some details are beginning to emerge from sources familiar with the deal. The big number is the $25 billion that the banks will commit to three categories of the settlement: $5 billion in cash payments, mostly to the states, $3 billion in refinancing for underwater mortgages, and $17 billion in principal reduction. Here’s the breakdown:

Of the $5 billion, $1.5 billion will go to people who have been foreclosed on and were abused in some way during the process. The claims are nearly instantaneous–”we don’t read anything, it’s check the box,” says one state AG negotiator. But the payments are also small: $1,500 to $2,000. Now, the vast majority of people who lost their homes over the last several years probably would not have been able to make their payments even if the banks had been behaving well. For them a no-questions-asked $2,000 check from the bank for the poor treatment they received in the process may be fair. On the other hand, those who were unfairly evicted may be insulted by the small amount. But no one taking the payment would be giving up any rights to bring cases against the banks for wrongful eviction or other claims they may have. The federal regulator with oversight of the issue, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has sent out 4.5 million forms to potentially wrongfully evicted families; processing those claims will be paid for by the banks.

[TIME]

 

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Foreclosure Relief? Don’t Hold Your Breath – Gretchen Morgenson

Foreclosure Relief? Don’t Hold Your Breath – Gretchen Morgenson


No matter how much corruption is exposed from the government, they simply don’t care.

It’s up to the few AG’s like CA, DE, MA, NY, NV to bring the fraud (CEO’s & not the low level employees) to jails.

Gretchen Morgenson-

THROUGHOUT the foreclosure crisis, Washington has done little to help people hang on to their homes. All those programs that were supposed to help — HAMP, HARP, Hope for Homeowners — have mostly failed.

So many were skeptical when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced yet another program in April. This one was intended to provide reparations to homeowners who’d been hurt financially by foreclosure abuses at banks.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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