"No 2 Housing Crime": Mortgage Fraud

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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Senate's Warren Seeks Regulator Records on Foreclosure Deal - Bloomberg

By Jesse Hamilton

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings want bank regulators to produce documents to show what led them to reach settlements this month with 13 mortgage servicers for faulty foreclosures.

“It is critical that the OCC and the Federal Reserve disclose additional information about the scope of the harms found to establish confidence in the sufficiency and integrity of the settlement,” the lawmakers, both Democrats, wrote in a letter dated today to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Warren and Cummings asked the regulators to turn over documents outlining how borrowers were harmed by foreclosure missteps of 2009 and 2010, as well as demographic details on the borrowers, who will get compensation from more than $9 billion in settlements with servicers including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) They are also asking for information on the performance and pay of independent consultants hired by the firms under a 2011 accord replaced by this month’s settlement.

Warren was elected in November to the Massachusetts seat once held by the late Edward M. Kennedy after setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a former special adviser to President Barack Obama.

Cummings has served in the House since 1996 and is the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Maryland lawmaker, who criticized the agreement before it was announced, said it could allow “banks to skirt what they owe and sweep past abuses under the rug.”

Warren and Cummings asked that the documents be delivered by Feb. 22. Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, and Bryan Hubbard, an OCC spokesman, both declined to comment on the correspondence.

Waters Letter
Representative Maxine Waters of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, sent a similar letter to the OCC and Fed that said “many questions remain” about the regulators’ settlement ending the case-by- case review of foreclosure missteps. She requested that documents about the review process be made public and that an independent monitor be appointed for the new settlement.

The bulk of the settlement with 13 of the largest mortgage servicers will go toward mortgage assistance for current borrowers, and the remainder will provide direct cash to borrowers foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010, with as much as $125,000 paid to those hurt the worst.

Among firms ordered in 2011 to have their foreclosures reviewed, three haven’t yet settled with regulators: Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY), IndyMac Bancorp’s successor OneWest Bank FSB and EverBank Financial Corp. (EVER)

Posted by Carlos Marroquin

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Occupy Fights Foreclosures Denounces Federal Reserve/Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Settlement Deal with Banks

OCCUPY FIGHTS FORECLOSURES DENOUNCES FEDERAL RESERVE / OCC

SETTLEMENT DEAL WITH BANKS

Letting the banks "win" via federal level settlement soundly underestimates

the power and resolve of the American people

LOS ANGELES, JAN 9, 2013— Occupy Fights Foreclosures (OFF), subcommittee of Occupy LA, denounces the settlement deal announced by the OCC and Federal Reserve with 14 banks whose fraudulent foreclosures "had ridden roughshod over borrowers and the rule of law" according to Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times. The clear misapplication of justice that allowed the banks this seeming win soundly underestimates the power and resolve of the American people to see true justice is served. Occupy Fights Foreclosures joins the voices of millions of homeowners in saying this corruption and injustice cannot and will not stand.

Insiders have called the so called independent foreclosure review a "sham of a project." Banks insisted that no TV, radio, or print media be used to explain the program and its availability to former homeowners, now displaced from the homes where direct mail about the program was sent. Banks deliberately kept homeowners in the dark about their rights to the foreclosure review mandated by the courts. Only 11% of eligible homeowners had come forward as of the Dec. 31 deadline and homeowners have seen paltry compensation for losing their house via illegal means.

The independent contractors doing these foreclosure reviews were working under the banks, not the other way around. Findings were "quality controlled" by the banks who had violated the laws. A claims reviewer known as Luxtexente described in detail on Naked Capitalism that reviewers routinely found a dozen or more violations of foreclosure laws in a single file, not to mention "incompetence, immorality and poor judgment." Banks also routinely simply erased violations as the list of harm on borrowers grew. According to insider Luxtexente, "Issues of law were removed." Missed foreclosure timelines, missing documents, misapplied funds, multiple modifications … the list of violations was vast, but banks told reviewers to "ignore them."

This criminal behavior by the banks violates the very essence of trust the American people should have in our banking institutions. That the OCC and Federal Reserve would devalue and dishonor the American people by such a settlement makes a mockery of our monetary institutions. The harm caused to millions of American families is tantamount to a bank-made tsunami. Without just compensation for the rampant law-breaking of these financial institutions, there is a clear breach of faith in the American system. The OCC and the Federal Reserve's actions to sweep under the rug via a settlement the vast crimes without direct compensation to the victims underestimate the power and resolve of the American people. The unjust must be made just.

"Any victim of any crime doesn't have peace until they know the perpetrators of that crime have been brought to justice," says Carlos Marroquin, OFF activist. "There's no closure until you know the criminal has been brought to justice, you can see that with any kind of crime. We will not have closure until we see real justice for the homeowners who have had their homes stolen by criminal institutions."

Monday, December 31, 2012

Attorneys General National Mortgage Settlement, Independent Foreclosure Review a Failure to Victims

By Carlos Marroquin
December 31, 2012

Remember the 50 State Attorney General Mortgage Fraud Settlement? Well, as we all know it did nothing for the victims. Here in California, the hardest hit State received a record $18 Billion settlement. We are still asking, "Where is the money for the victims?". Homeowners who lost their homes are receiving letters with a $840.00 offer. NOT KIDDING! This is an insult to the victims who lost their homes.

SETTLEMENT PART II, NOTHING CHANGES
In April 2011, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency moved forward with the so called "Independent Foreclosure Review", a process of reviewing thousands of foreclosure cases for errors and to compensate victims for the fraud committed by their banks. Sounds good so far, right? The program has been a bucket of questions about the process fairness, transparency and integrity.

We are now learning that banks may be pulling out of the Review. The OCC, Federal Reserve and banks are talking about a possible $10 Billion settlement.

TWO FAILURES
We know that the National A.G. $26 Billion settlement and now the Independent Foreclosure Review are a big failure and cover up for the banks. Tens of investigations have been conducted by different groups, both Government and public and they all come with the same results, major fraud by the banks. Just one example, in San Francisco California, the County Assessor examined files of properties subject to foreclosures sales from 2008 to 2011. In the report, it appeared that 84% of the files had violations of the law and fully two thirds had at least four violations or irregularities.

If the OCC and the Federal Reserve decides to settle with the banks, it will go down as another cover up and slap in the wrist for those who committed the "Crime of the Century". The IFR is another fraudulent scam to try to make the American people think that the overseers of the banks are doing something about the fraud. IT IS NOTHING BUT A JOKE! Once again, the banks are controlling the Gov. and their Agencies.

“We think if the reviews were done right, the payouts would have been significantly higher than they appear to be under this settlement,” said Alys Cohen, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The regulators will have abdicated their responsibility if the banks end up getting off the hook easily and cheaply.”

Homeowners (the victims) will continue to wait and hope that someone out there has the ....... to stand up to the banksters and stop the financial terrorism against our families. "Like victims of violent crimes, we will not have closure until the criminals are brought to justice".

Related links:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/occ-foreclosure-file-reviewer-independent-reviews-were-controlled-by-banks-which-suppressed-any-findings-of-harm-to-foreclosed-homeowner.html

http://www.propublica.org/article/as-foreclosure-crisis-drags-on-so-does-flawed-govt-response

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2011/10/robosigning2.html

Flawed From the Start, Independent Foreclosure Review, Another Failure for Victimized Homeowners

By Ben Hallman,
Huffington Post

The surprising decision by regulators to scrap a massive and expensive foreclosure review program in favor of a $10 billion settlement with 14 banks -- reported by The New York Times Sunday night -- came after a year of mounting concerns about the independence and effectiveness of the controversial program.

The program, known as the Independent Foreclosure Review, was supposed to give homeowners who believe that their bank made a mistake in handling their foreclosure an opportunity for a neutral third party to review the claim. It's not clear what factors led banking regulators to abandon the program in favor of a settlement, but the final straw may have been a pending report by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, which was investigating the review program.

Rep. Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat, told The Huffington Post that the report, which has not been released, was "critical" and that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which administers the review, was aware of its findings. Miller said that that one problem the GAO was likely to highlight was an "unacceptably high" error rate of 11 percent in a sampling of bank loan files.

The sample files were chosen at random by the banks from their broader pool of foreclosed homeowners, who had not necessarily applied for relief. The data suggests that of the 4 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure since the housing crash, more than 400,000 had some bank-caused problem in their loan file. It also suggests that many thousands of those who could have applied for relief didn't -- because they weren't aware of the review, or weren't aware that their bank had made a mistake. Some of these mistakes pushed homeowners into foreclosure who otherwise could have afforded to keep their homes.

Miller said the news that a settlement to replace the review was in the works caught him by surprise, and stressed that he had no way of knowing whether the impending GAO report had triggered the decision.

It's not clear what will happen to the 250,000 homeowners who have already applied to the Independent Foreclosure Review for relief. The Times, citing people familiar with the negotiations, said that a deal between the banks and banking regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, could be reached by the end of the week. It wasn't clear how that money would be distributed or how many current and former homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosure -- or who were hit with an unnecessary fee -- might qualify.

Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for the OCC, which administers the program, declined to comment on the Times' story. Hubbard told HuffPost, "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is committed to ensuring the Independent Foreclosure Review proceeds efficiently and to ensuring harmed borrowers are compensated as quickly as possible."

Since the housing market crashed in 2007, thousands of foreclosed homeowners have complained that their mortgage company made a mistake in the management of their home loan, such as foreclosing on someone making payments on a loan modification plan. The Independent Foreclosure Review emerged from a legal agreement in April 2011 between 14 mortgage companies and bank regulators over these abusive "servicing" practices. It was supposed to give homeowners an opportunity to have an unbiased third party review their foreclosure and determine whether they might qualify for a cash payout of up to $125,000.

The initial response was tepid, at best. Homeowners and advocates complained that the application forms were confusing and that information about what type of compensation they might get was missing. Some told HuffPost that they were so disillusioned by the federal government's anemic response to widely reported bank errors that they weren't going to bother to apply.

In one instance, Daniel Casper, an Illinois wedding videographer, applied to the program in January after years of combat with Bank of America over his home loan. As The Huffington Post reported in October, he was initially rejected, because, according to the bank, his mortgage was not in the foreclosure process during the eligible review period. Promontory Financial Group, which Bank of America hired to review his loan, apparently did not double check Bank of America's analysis against the extensive documentation that Chase submitted. That documentation clearly showed that his loan was eligible for review.

In recent months ProPublica, an investigative nonprofit, has issued a series of damning articles about the Independent Foreclosure Review. The most recent found that supposedly independent third-party reviewers looking over Bank of America loan files were given the "correct" answers in advance by the bank. These reviewers could override the answers, but they weren't starting from a blank slate.

Banks, if they did not find a "compensable error," did not have to pay anything, giving them a strong incentive to find no flaws with their own work.

"It was flawed from the start," Miller said of the review program. "There was an inherent conflict of interest by just about everyone involved."