RANT: Cleaning the “housing” stable

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/a-modern-pecora-commission-could-right-wall-street-wrongs/

A modern Pecora Commission could right Wall Street wrongsEmail this post Print this post
By Barry Ritholtz – February 5th, 2012, 8:00AM

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• MERS: Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems was created by banks without any authority or enabling legislation. 
• Origination fraud: Why did lenders accept “stated income” loans? Why did they abandon traditional standards? 
• RMBS: Wall Street’s securitized mortgage pools (residential mortgage-backed securities) contained a broad variety of flaws, some so egregious that they amounted to fraud. 
• Insurance fraud: Look at a bank tactic in which legitimate home insurance is canceled and new insurance provided at a substantially higher fee through a subsidiary or affiliate of the bank mortgage holder. 
• “Pyramid” servicing fees: An illegal practice in which current payments are applied to past late fees, generating more late fees and additional interest owed and creating a delinquency where none existed. 
• Lost mortgage notes: How is it possible that the most important part of the mortgage contract — the promissory note — was consistently lost or misplaced by banks? 
•Document fraud for sale: There were many examples of alleged document fraud, but the one crying out for investigation involves Lender Processing Services’ DOCX subsidiary. 
•False affidavits, perjury (robo-signing): We do not know who ordered the robo-signing of foreclosure documents, the false notarizations, fraudulent written statements to courts and perjury. 
• Foreclosure mills, process servers: Law firms engaged in rampant fraud that corrupted the foreclosure process. 
• Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act: Federal law protects active-duty service members from foreclosure and eviction.

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It would seem that these are easy to find, easy to investigate, and easy to get a conviction on.

As a notary, I’m insulted by most of these items.

There’s no excuse for prosecutors at all levels for them not doing their jobs!

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