RememberPINO vs BONY? Well here is another involving a fraudulent assignment!
You can fast forward and begin shortly after 16:00 and listen to Wells Fargo’s attorney.
She brings up the MERS Min Number but as I pointed out these numbers are not always unique.
Listen to the judge say, “MERS is NOT friend of the borrower, I’ve seen 100’s of these and trust me MERS is NOT the friend of the borrower.”
What about the conflict that Wells is an owner of MERS who is named on the document of the borrower? Was this affiliation ever disclosed to the borrower when they signed the documents?
DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA FOURTH DISTRICT July Term 2012
JOHNY B. WILLIAMS and MONITHE L. WILLIAMS, Appellants,
v.
BANK OF AMERICA, N.A., Appellee.
No. 4D10-4837 [December 12, 2012]
PER CURIAM.
We reverse the summary final judgment entered in favor of appellee.
The bank did not file evidence of the assignment of the mortgage and a lost or misplaced note affidavit until the day of the summary judgment hearing. Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.510(c) provides that a summary judgment movant shall serve the motion at least 20 days before the time fixed for the hearing, and shall also serve at that time copies of an y summary judgment evidence o n which the movant relies that has not already been filed with the court. (Emphasis added); see also Mack v. Commercial Indus. Park, Inc., 541 So. 2d 800, 800 (Fla. 4th DCA 1989). The obvious purpose of that rule is to give the party opposing summary judgment time to analyze the evidence and “controvert the factual basis of the motion.” Marlar v. Quincy State Bank, 463 So. 2d 1 2 3 3 , 1233 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985) (citation omitted). The untimely filings hindered appellants’ efforts to defend the lawsuit.
Reversed and Remanded.
GROSS, CONNER, JJ., and COX, JACK S., Associate Judge, concur. * * * Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Eli Breger, Judge; L.T. Case No. 08-37613 CACE 13.
Carl A. Cascio of Carl A. Cascio, P.A., Delray Beach, for appellants.
Thomas H. Loffredo and Jeffrey T. Kuntz of GrayRobinson, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.
Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing
The Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA’s) mission is to be a targeted provider of mortgage credit for low- and moderate-income Americans and first-time home buyers, leading to homeownership success and neighborhood stability. But is the FHA achieving this mission?
This paper reports on a comprehensive study that shows the FHA is engaging in practices resulting in a high proportion of low- and moderate-income families losing their homes. Based an analysis of the FHA’s FY 2009 and 2010 books of business, the FHA’s lending practices are inconsistent with its mission and represent a disservice to American working-class families and communities.
The findings of this study indicate:
An estimated 40 percent of the FHA’s business consists of loans with either one or two subprime attributes—a FICO score below 660 or a debt ratio greater than or equal to 50 percent (based on loans insured during FY 2012). The FHA’s underwriting policies encourage low- and moderate-income families with low credit scores or high debt burdens to make risky financing decisions—combining a low credit score and/or a high debt ratio with a 30-year loan term and a low down payment. A substantial portion of these loans have an expected failure rate exceeding 10 percent.
Across the country, 9,000 zip codes with a median family income below the metro area median have projected foreclosure rates equal to or greater than 10 percent.These zips have an average projected foreclosure rate of 15 percent and account for 44 percent of all FHA loans in the low- and moderate-income zips.
The study found the direct and indirect costs associated with a foreclosure rate greater than 10 percent, particularly in working-class communities, are unacceptably high. Risk layering,combined with high FHA loan volumes, has a substantial impact on these communities. The resulting reduced or declining home values impact FHA and non-FHA low- and moderate-income families diligently making their payments. These families may be denied the opportunity to build equity, provide security for their family, and have the down payment for their next home as their family grows. Foreclosures also result in increased blight and crime and the larger community suffers from a reduced tax base and higher costs for providing municipal services.
The study identified specific reforms to focus the FHA on responsible lending and return it to its traditional mission:
Step 1: Do not knowingly insure a loan with a projected claim termination rate greater than 10 percent, assuming no house price appreciation or depreciation.
Step 2: Target an average 5 percent projected claim termination rate, assuming no house price appreciation or depreciation.
Step 3: Stop guaranteeing lower-risk loans and high-dollar-balance borrowers, as this allows for cross-subsidization of those loans with excessive risk. This will also let the FHA step back from markets that can be served by the private sector and allow it to concentrate on home buyers who truly need help.
Step 4: Price for risk, since not doing so deprives the borrower of the price information needed to understand the true risk of the loan. Until this is done, the FHA should disclose to the borrower his or her expected claim rate, assuming no house price appreciation or depreciation.
Step 5: Implement underwriting that results in the extension of responsible mortgage credit, by balancing down payment, loan term, FICO score, and debt-to-income ratio to achieve meaningful equity.
If you’ve ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you’ve ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or “drug paraphernalia” in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.
Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who’s ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a “record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.
Mozilo was responding to questions from an MBIA attorney who asked if he regretted how Calabasas, California-based Countrywide was run after “all the foreclosures and ruined lives and lawsuits.” Mozilo called the lawyer’s question “nonsensical and insulting.”
Mortgage Mess
“I have no regrets about how Countrywide was run,” Mozilo said. “We were a world-class company in every respect.”
Mozilo sought to defend his company’s role in the mortgage mess even before the U.S. housing market showed signs of recovery from the bursting of the housing bubble. Had he known that unemployment would surge and housing prices would collapse during the financial crisis, Mozilo said he would’ve attempted to sell his company years earlier than he did.
Last week, Thomas Cox, the Maine lawyer who performed the deposition that basically exposed robo-signing, won the $100,000 Purpose Prize for his work on behalf of homeowners at risk of foreclosure. I spoke with Cox this week to get a ground-level picture of what is happening in the courts in the post-settlement landscape. Have banks cleaned up their foreclosure practices? Are homeowners still getting the shaft?
Sadly, Cox told me that very little has changed with regards to foreclosures. “I’m probably biased because I see the hardest cases,” Cox said in a phone interview. “But I see it as different, though not necessarily better.”
Roller coaster ride is going to continue with the manipulation of real estate rising prices but this time it might fire back in their faces.
Those that are buying today will wake up tomorrow and say, “hey, why is my home is underwater”.
CNBC-
The good news is that overall foreclosure activity continues to fall and a decline in new foreclosures are leading the drop.
The bad news is that the huge backlog of homes already in the foreclosures process, but long delayed, are finally going back to the banks in big numbers.
Bank repossessions jumped 11% in November month-to-month and rose 5% from November of 2011, according to RealtyTrac. That marks the first annual jump in just over two years.
“Foreclosures are continuing to hobble the U.S. housing market as lenders finally seize properties that started the process a year or two ago — and much longer in some cases,” notes RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist.
A new and extensive analysis of 2.4 million loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration in recent years shows a pattern of risky lending that could generate $20 billion in losses and harm thousands of the nation’s most vulnerable borrowers. By ignoring risks in loans it insured in 2009 and 2010, the study concludes, the F.H.A. is imperiling both borrowers and taxpayers who stand behind the agency.
The analysis emerged less than a month after the F.H.A.’s auditor submitted a troubling report on the financial soundness of its insurance fund. In mid-November, the auditor estimated that the fund, which backs $1.1 trillion in mortgages, has a value of negative $13.5 billion. In other words, if it were to stop insuring loans today, the F.H.A. fund could not cover the losses anticipated on loans it has already insured.
They failed it a very long time ago and will continue to fail.
American Banker-
Think corporate governance at the largest banks is weak? You’re right, but you probably have no idea just how right you are.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently graded the 19 largest national banks on five factors designed to gauge how well they are being run.
The results are startling.
Not a single bank met the OCC’s requirements for internal auditing, risk management or succession planning. Only two of the 19 banks met the regulator’s requirements for defining the company’s appetite for risk-taking and communicating it across the company. Only two banks were judged to have boards of directors willing to stand up to their CEOs.
Florida, Nevada, Illinois post highest state foreclosure rates
The Florida foreclosure rate ranked highest among the states for the third month in a row. One in every 304 Florida housing units had a foreclosure filing in November — more than twice the national average. A total of 29,612 Florida properties had a foreclosure filing in November, up 3 percent from the previous month and up 20 percent from November 2011.
The following are the top 10 states with the highest foreclosure rates in November:
Florida: 1 in every 304 homes received a foreclosure filing in November
In June, WND reported evidence Eric Holder’s Justice Department has not investigated money-laundering charges in deference to bank clients of his Washington-based law firm, where Holder was a partner prior to joining the Obama administration. H/T WND
HuffPO-
Why is HSBC still in operation? On the same day (December 10, 2012) that the Barack Obama administration leaked the story of the HSBC settlement, a story ran in the New York Times that was full of self-praise by the Obama and David Cameron (U.K.) governments for their “cooperative approach” to cracking down on systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs). SDIs are treated as “too big to fail” because they pose a global systemic risk when they fail. The HSBC settlement puts the lie to the Obama/Cameron crack-down on the SDIs for it revealed a disgrace — Obama and Cameron treat the SDIs as too big to prosecute. Indeed, HSBC demonstrates that the SDIs’ senior officers are treated by Obama and Cameron as too elite to prosecute. The propaganda meme of the NYT story — that the SDIs would never again be given special favors due to reforms being adopted by Obama and Cameron — lasted four hours before it was destroyed by the disgraceful reality of the Obama and Cameron governments’ refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies.
Court of Appeals of Ohio, Sixth District, Lucas County.
Decided: December 7, 2012.
Matthew J. Richardson and Holly N. Wolf, for appellee.
Steven M. Burke, for appellants.
DECISION AND JUDGMENT
PIETRYKOWSKI, J.
{¶ 1} Appellants, Robert J. VanCott and Julie G. VanCott, appeal the December 5, 2011 judgment of the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas in a foreclosure action brought against them by Nationstar Mortgage, LLC (“Nationstar”), appellee. In the judgment, the trial court granted Nationstar’s motion for summary judgment and overruled appellants’ motion to dismiss.
{¶ 2} The dispute relates to a promissory note and mortgage executed by appellants on December 4, 2006, in favor Gold Star Mortgage Corp. to secure a loan to purchase real property located at 7715 Pope Run Lane in Sylvania, Ohio. Although not a party to the contract, Nationstar filed a foreclosure complaint against appellants on August 23, 2010, alleging that payments due under the terms of the note and mortgage had not been made. Nationstar alleged in the complaint that it was “entitled to enforce the Note pursuant to Section 1303.31 of the Ohio Revised Code, and the Mortgage was given to secure the Note.”
{¶ 3} Nationstar did not attach a copy of either the note or mortgage to its complaint and alleged that the note had been misplaced and could not be located. In their answer, appellants alleged as a defense that Nationstar did not own the note and mortgage.
{¶ 4} On June 24, 2011, Nationstar filed a motion for summary judgment claiming that appellants defaulted on their obligations under the note and mortgage. Appellants opposed the motion asserting that Nationstar lacked standing to bring the foreclosure action. On October 7, 2011, appellants also filed a motion to dismiss the action based upon the claimed lack of standing.
{¶ 5} Appellants appeal the trial court’s judgment granting Nationstar’s motion for summary judgment and overruling appellants’ motion to dismiss.
{¶ 6} Appellants assert two assignments of error on appeal:
1. The trial court erred in applying the doctrine of equitable assignment, because Nationstar did not hold the note prior to filing its complaint.
2. The trial court erred in granting Nationstar’s Motion for Summary Judgment because Nationstar was not the real party in interest at the time of judgment, due to a defect in the chain of title.
{¶ 7} The trial court based its decision to grant summary judgment and to overrule the motion to dismiss on two alternative grounds. First, the court held that Nationstar established that it was the owner of the note at the time it filed the complaint and that Nationstar was equitably assigned rights to the mortgage upon its acquisition of the note. Alternatively, citing a line of authority including Federal Home Loan Mtge. Corp. v. Schwartzwald, 194 Ohio App.3d 644, 2011-Ohio-2681, 957 N.E.2d 790 (2d Dist.), the court held that for purposes of standing, ownership of the note and mortgage at the time of judgment was sufficient, even if Nationstar lacked an interest in the note and mortgage at the time of filing of the complaint.
{¶ 8} Under their assignments of error, appellants challenge both grounds of the trial court’s judgment. Under Assignment of Error No. 1, appellants argue that the trial court erred when it held it was sufficient for purposes of standing if Nationstar became owner of the note and mortgage after the filing of the complaint and before judgment.
{¶ 9} The Ohio Supreme Court resolved this issue in its recent decision on appeal in the Schwartzwald case. Federal Home Loan Mtge. Corp. v. Schwartzwald, Slip Opinion No. 2012-Ohio-5017. The decision was issued after the parties submitted their briefs in this appeal. The court held in the case that a party bringing an action in foreclosure must establish an interest in the note or mortgage at the time it filed suit for it to have standing to invoke the jurisdiction of the common pleas court in the case. Id. at ¶ 28. The court held that lack of standing at the commencement of a foreclosure action cannot be cured by subsequently obtaining an interest in the subject of the litigation. Id. at ¶ 39. Under the decision, “lack of standing at the commencement of a foreclosure action requires dismissal of the complaint * * * without prejudice.” Id. at ¶ 40.
{¶ 10} We conclude that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to Nationstar on the grounds that ownership of the note and mortgage at the time of judgment was sufficient to establish standing to bring the foreclosure action. Accordingly, we find appellants’ Assignment of Error No. 1 well-taken.
{¶ 11} Under Assignment of Error No. 2, appellants argue that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment based upon the finding that the evidence established that Nationstar owned the note at the time it filed the foreclosure complaint and was equitably assigned rights to the mortgage upon acquiring its interest in the note.
Summary Judgment
{¶ 12} The standard of review on motions for summary judgment is de novo; that is, an appellate court applies the same standard in determining whether summary judgment should be granted as the trial court. Grafton v. Ohio Edison Co., 77 Ohio St.3d 102, 105, 671 N.E.2d 241 (1996). Under Civ.R. 56, to prevail on a motion for summary judgment the moving party must demonstrate:
(1) that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact; (2) that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law; and (3) that reasonable minds can come to but one conclusion, and that conclusion is adverse to the party against whom the motion for summary judgment is made, who is entitled to have the evidence construed most strongly in his favor. Harless v. Willis Day Warehousing Co., 54 Ohio St.2d 64, 66, 375 N.E.2d 46 (1978).
{¶ 13} Summary judgment procedure is limited to circumstances where there is no dispute of material fact for trial:
Summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, written admissions, affidavits, transcripts of evidence, and written stipulations of fact, if any, timely filed in the action, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Civ.R. 56(C).
{¶ 14} At the time Nationstar filed its motion for summary judgment, it filed the affidavit of Josh Burchfield in support. Exhibits A and B to the affidavit are copies of the note and mortgage. Burchfield states in the affidavit that Nationstar “is entitled to collect the amount due on the Note and enforce the Mortgage.”
{¶ 15} Appellants argue that the Burchfield affidavit is devoid of facts supporting any claim that Nationstar owned or was the holder of the note, pursuant R.C. 1303.31(A), at the time the complaint was filed. The documents submitted with the affidavit, the note and mortgage, show no evidence of an assignment to Nationstar. A review of the documents themselves shows that the note and mortgage were originally executed in favor of Gold Star Mortgage and endorsed over by the president of Gold Star to Flagstar Bank, FSB in 2006.
{¶ 16} On September 26, 2011, Nationstar supplemented its motion with the filing of the affidavit of Camille Stampp. Stampp states in the affidavit that Nationstar “acquired the Note and all rights to enforce the Note from Flagstar Bank by purchasing the Note from Flagstar Bank, who acquired the Note and all rights to enforce it from Gold Star Mortgage Corp.” Stampp also states that Nationstar “was entitled to enforce the original Note when it filed the Complaint on August 23, 2010.”
{¶ 17} The Stampp affidavit does not state the date of purchase of the note or that the purchase occurred prior to the filing of the complaint. Stampp asserts that Nationstar was entitled to enforce the note at the time it filed the complaint but does not state facts to support the conclusion.
{¶ 18} Also, the documents submitted in support of the motion for summary judgment do not show an assignment of Flagstar’s interest in the note to anyone. The record includes a record of assignment filed with the Lucas County Recorder evidencing an assignment of the mortgage from Gold Star to Nationstar that was executed on September 3, 2010. The assignment was recorded on September 13, 2010. The complaint was filed on August 23, 2010.
{¶ 19} In our view the conclusory statement in affidavits that Nationstar was entitled to enforce the note at the time the complaint was filed, without more, failed to meet Nationstar’s burden on motion for summary judgment to establish the absence of a genuine issue of material fact on whether it owned or was otherwise entitled to enforce the note at the time of filing of the complaint. See Aurora Loan Services, LLC. v. Louis, 6th Dist. No. L-10-1289, 2012-Ohio-384, ¶ 33; DLJ Mtge. Capital, Inc. v. Parsons, 7th Dist. No. 07-MA-17, 2008-Ohio-1177, ¶ 17; R.C. 1303.31. On these facts it cannot be stated that it is undisputed that Nationstar owned the note or was otherwise entitled to enforce the instrument at the time it filed the foreclosure complaint. We find merit to appellants’ contention that the trial court erred by granting Nationstar’s motion for summary judgment.
{¶ 20} Appellants also argue that the trial court erred in overruling appellants’ motion to dismiss because Nationstar was not a party in interest and therefore lacked standing to file suit. The trial court treated the motion as a Civ.R. 12(B)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and applied the analysis set forth by the Ohio Supreme Court in Mitchell v. Lawson Milk Co., 40 Ohio St.3d 190, 532 N.E.2d 753 (1988) in considering the motion. The standard provides: In construing a complaint upon a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, we must presume that all factual allegations of the complaint are true and make all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. 2A Moore, Federal Practice (1985) 12-63, Paragraph 12.07[2.5]; accord State, ex rel. Alford v. Willoughby Civil Serv. Comm. (1979), 58 Ohio St.2d 221, 223, 12 O.O.3d 229, 230, 390 N.E.2d 782, 785. Then, before we may dismiss the complaint, it must appear beyond doubt that plaintiff can prove no set of facts warranting a recovery. O’Brien v. University Community Tenants Union (1975), 42 Ohio St.2d 242, 71 O.O.2d 223, 327 N.E.2d 753, syllabus. Mitchell at 192.
{¶ 21} We find no error in the trial court’s overruling the motion to dismiss. Treating the allegations of the complaint as true, Nationstar may be able to prove facts establishing an interest in the note or mortgage existing at the time of filing of the foreclosure complaint.
{¶ 22} We find appellants’ Assignment of Error No. 2 well-taken with respect to the trial court’s judgment awarding summary judgment in favor of Nationstar and not well-taken with respect to the court’s overruling appellants’ motion to dismiss the foreclosure complaint.
{¶ 23} Because of the existence of a genuine issue of material fact on whether Nationstar had standing to bring the foreclosure action at the time it filed its complaint, we reverse the judgment of the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas to the extent it granted summary judgment in favor of Nationstar Mortgage, LLC, and remand this case to that court for further proceedings. Pursuant to App.R. 24, appellee is ordered to pay the costs of this appeal.
Judgment reversed.
A certified copy of this entry shall constitute the mandate pursuant to App.R. 27. See also 6th Dist.Loc.App.R. 4.
Peter M. Handwork, J., Mark L. Pietrykowski, J. and Arlene Singer, P.J., CONCUR.
The New York attorney general has no authority to claim $150 million in fees that Ernst & Young earned from Lehman Brothers Holdings in the years leading up to Lehman’s collapse in 2008, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
The state had sought the fees as part of a lawsuit against Ernst & Young over its auditing of Lehman Brothers. The lawsuit accuses the firm of assisting Lehman in accounting fraud.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Oing said the fees could not be recovered by the state because they were not paid by consumers or the state. “The allegations in this complaint fail to set forth sufficiently as to exactly what the public’s injury is,” Oing said.
James Freedland, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, declined to comment on the ruling.
An executive referred to by Lehman execs as the firm’s “balance sheet” czar — who later went on to become the firm’s COO — likely had knowledge of the firm’s highly creative accounting maneuvers, notes The New York Times. Here’s the NYT:
“I am very aware … it is another drug we [are] on,” Herbert McDade wrote in an April 2008 e-mail cited by the examiner’s report. At other times, he is described as calling for a limit to the number of Repo 105 transactions.
At the center of the controversy is a technique called “Repo 105,” under which Lehman was able to move $50 billion off of its balance sheet in the second quarter of 2008 alone, MarketWatch reports. Here’s more from Market Watch:
[Repo 105 is] essentially a type of secured loan and is booked that way in the accounts — leading to an increase in both assets and liabilities.
Lehman’s trick was to use a clause in the accounting rules to classify the deal as a sale, even though it was still obliged to repurchase the assets at a later date. That meant the assets disappeared from the balance sheet, and it could use the cash it received to temporarily pay down other liabilities…. [Repo 105] was crucial for maintaining the group’s credit rating as rating agencies and investors began to focus more on leverage and demanded lower risk.
In a series of e-mail messages cited by the examiner, one Lehman executive writes of Repo 105: “It’s basically window-dressing.” Another responds: “I see … so it’s legally do-able but doesn’t look good when we actually do it? Does the rest of the street do it? Also is that why we have so much BS [balance sheet] to Rates Europe?” The first executive replies: “Yes, No and yes. ”
You can be forgiven if you watched the Department of Justice’s announcement yesterday of a $1.92 billion settlement with HSBC with a sense of disappointment–and déjà vu. The event checked all the boxes in a theatrical routine that has become all too familiar.
Descriptions of breathtaking misconduct involving the facilitation of massive drug trafficking and transactions with rogue terror-sponsoring nations? Check.
Broad boasts about the “historic” nature of the settlement that will certainly end the type of criminal misconduct alleged? Check.
Mea culpas from the offending institution with promises that it has really learned its lesson this time and will never ever engage in dastardly conduct again? Yep, that too.
Merry Christmas, America, the U.S. government is about to close the books on its AIG bailout with a big profit. Please just ignore the immeasurable costs.
The Department of the Treasury said on Tuesday that it planned to sell its remaining 16 percent stake in American International Group for $7.6 billion, which by the department’s count means taxpayers will turn a $22.7 billion profit on the $182 billion bailout.
The Treasury often tries to put the best spin possible on its bailout costs. And as night follows day, bailout watchdogs often disagree with the Treasury. Sure enough, Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general of the government’s bailout program for AIG, banks and automakers, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, warned that the department’s AIG final profit tally relies on fancy accounting.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Barofsky called the government’s profit estimate “misleading” because nearly a third of the AIG stock that the Treasury is selling came from the Federal Reserve, not from the Treasury’s bailout program. What’s more, Barofsky says, the taxpayer stands to lose money from a waiver it gave to AIG on billions in future tax payments.
Bank of America Corp., the second- biggest U.S. lender, is set to begin an effort today to defeat bond insurer MBIA Inc. (MBI)’s bid to force the bank to pay billions of dollars over home loans.
Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit and MBIA, which have been locked in litigation since 2008, are scheduled to square off in New York State Supreme Court. The companies will seek judgments on claims in MBIA’s lawsuit over loans packaged into securities during the real estate boom.
The case is among mortgage lawsuits Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America is contending with four years after acquiring Countrywide, the home lender whose lax lending standards helped fuel the housing bubble. Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan has spent more than $40 billion to clean up defective mortgages and improper foreclosures.
On November 20th 2012 I told you about a guilty plea taken by Lorraine Brown, the founder of DOCX (later known at LPS), in federal court in Florida. The press release for that plea did not come out until after 5 PM on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving most of the reporters who usually occupy the front pages of our newspapers and network news were presumably traveling or preparing for their holiday. The story was barely reported.
Lorraine Brown also pled guilty earlier that same day in state court in Missouri. She is rumored to be in plea negotiations in other states.
Even though this is no longer breaking news, it still belongs on the front page of every paper in the country and should be the lead story on every newscast. I’ll tell you why: […]
Abstract: This article analyses how courts may reach results that undercut arguments that REMICs were the owners of the mortgage notes and mortgages for tax purposes. And even if the majority of states rule in favor of REMICs, the few that do not can destroy the REMIC classification of many mortgage-back securities that were structured to be — and promoted to investors as — REMICs. This is because rating agencies require that REMICs be geographically diversified in order to spread the risk of defaults caused by local economic conditions, REMICs hold notes and mortgages from multiple jurisdictions. Most, if not all, REMICs own mortgages notes and mortgages from states governed by laws that the courts determine do not support REMIC eligibility for the mortgages from those jurisdictions. This diversification requirement makes it very likely that REMICs will have more than a de minimis amount of mortgages notes that do not come within the definition of qualified mortgage under the REMIC regulations. Professionals who helped structure these securitizations may face liability if the IRS were to find that a purported REMIC was just purported and not a REMIC.
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) won a federal judge’s permission to proceed with some claims against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over $1.75 billion in corporate client losses stemming from a mortgage-fraud scheme at failed lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein, in a 73-page opinion issued yesterday in Washington, said that the bank’s fraud claim against the FDIC is among those that will proceed to discovery. The judge also allowed some FDIC counterclaims against Bank of America to move forward.
First, the prediction: 2016 will be the year of the woman in U.S. presidential politics. By electing a female president in 2016, the United States can leave the monopoly on male-dominated politics to Russia and China. Next, imagine that woman is Elizabeth Warren. Like Germany’s Angela Merkel, Warren has the ability to perform political wonders in a country that still has its paternalistic side.
Accidents happen. If Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had not so ardently opposed Elizabeth Warren’s nomination as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she would not have become a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.
In a historic fine, HSBC will pay out a record $1.92 billion to U.S. authorities to settle money laundering accusations — activities which have allegedly occurred with drug cartels in Mexico and terror-linked groups in Saudi Arabia. U.S. authorities declared HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank by market capitalization, in breach of a series of U.S. laws, including the Trading with the Enemy Act.
“We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes,” HSBC Group CEO Stuart Gulliver, said in a statement.
On Monday, Standard Chartered, the UK’s second largest bank by market value, agreed to pay $327 million to settle U.S. Treasury Department charges of violating sanctions on transactions with Iran, Burma, Libya and Sudan between 2001 and 2007. In August Standard Chartered paid $340 million to the state of New York’s Department of Financial Services to settle civil charges alleging it had concealed $250 billion in illegal transactions with Iran.
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