The Foreclosure Scandal Exposes The Wonders Of Corporate America

How else would you define the current foreclosure scandal?

CrazY?

Or insanity?

Take this story: Man's House Foreclosed - Yet He Had Paid Cash

• When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home in December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.
  
  Grodensky knew nothing about the foreclosure until July, when he learned that the title to his home had been transferred to a government-backed lender. "I feel like I'm hanging in the wind and I'm scared to death," said Grodensky. "How did some attorney put through a foreclosure illegally?"
  
  Bank of America has acknowledged the error and will correct it at its own expense, said spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens.
  
  Grodensky's story and other tales of foreclosure mistakes started popping up recently across South Florida. This week, GMAC Mortgage, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers and a major mortgage lender, told real estate agents to stop evicting residents and suspend sales of properties that had been taken from homeowners in foreclosure. The company said it might have to "correct" some of its foreclosures, but was not halting those in process.
  
  In Florida courts, which have been swamped with foreclosure cases for several years, mistakes "happen all the time," said foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner in St. Petersburg. "It's just not getting reported."
  
  And the legal efforts required to resolve a foreclosure mistake are complicated. "Unwrapping it is like unwrapping Fort Knox," said Carol Asbury, a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure attorney. "It's very difficult."...

Now consider this AP article: Robo-signers: Mortgage experience not necessary (hmm... 'experience not necessary'... where did we here this before?)

• NEW YORK (AP) -- In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

Waloeh!!!!!!! If like this Makcik Nina also can apply!

• In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.
  
  "The mortgage servicers hired people who would never question authority," said Peter Ticktin, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., lawyer who is defending 3,000 homeowners in foreclosure cases. As part of his work, Ticktin gathered 150 depositions from bank employees who say they signed foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the documents or ever laying eyes on them -- earning them the name "robo-signers."
  
  The deposed employees worked for the mortgage service divisions of banks such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, as well as for mortgage servicers like Litton Loan Servicing, a division of Goldman Sachs.
  
  Ticktin said he would make the testimony available to state and federal agencies that are investigating financial institutions for allegations of possible mortgage fraud. This comes on the eve of an expected announcement Wednesday from 40 state attorneys general that they will launch a collective probe into the mortgage industry.
  
  "This was an industrywide scheme designed to defraud homeowners," Ticktin said.
  
  The depositions paint a surreal picture of foreclosure experts who didn't understand even the most elementary aspects of the mortgage or foreclosure process -- even though they were entrusted as the records custodians of homeowners' loans. In one deposition taken in Houston, a foreclosure supervisor with Litton Loan couldn't define basic terms like promissory note, mortgagee, lien, receiver, jurisdiction, circuit court, plaintiff's assignor or defendant. She testified that she didn't know why a spouse might claim interest in a property, what the required conditions were for a bank to foreclose or who the holder of the mortgage note was. "I don't know the ins and outs of the loan, I just sign documents," she said at one point.....

And on Naked Capitalism: The Wheels Are Coming Off in MBS Land: All 50 State AGs Join Probe; Banks Abandoning MERS Foreclosures

• Even though the headline item is the fact that the attorneys general in all 50 states are joining the mortgage fraud investigation, the real indicator that the banks are stressed is that they have started abandoning MERS, the electronic database that passes itself off as a registry for mortgages. JP Morgan has quit using it as an agent on foreclosures; it clearly can’t withdraw from it fully, given that it has become a central information service....

ALL 50 STATES??

Glee!

Makes you wonder why, doesn't it?

What on earth are these bankers doing????? Why the need for the 'robo-signers'? Why? For a few bucks more???? Yeah... and for what? For the bankers to claim more bonus????

And even Berkshire's pet holding bank, Wells Fargo is caught up in the mess!

• Wells adds to crisis over home seizures
  By Suzanne Kapner in New York
  
  Published: October 14 2010 00:01 Last updated: October 14 2010 00:01
  
  ..... Legal documents obtained by the Financial Times suggest that Wells Fargo, the second-largest US mortgage servicer, also used a “robo signer”.
  
  Unlike its rivals, Wells Fargo has not halted foreclosures. The San Francisco-based bank said on Tuesday it was reviewing some pending cases, but it has maintained that it has checks and balances designed to prevent serious procedural lapses.
  
  In a sworn deposition on March 9 seen by the FT, Xee Moua, identified in court documents as a vice-president of loan documentation for Wells, said she signed as many as 500 foreclosure-related papers a day on behalf of the bank.
  
  Ms Moua, who was deposed as part of a foreclosure lawsuit in Palm Beach County, Florida, said that the only information she verified was whether her name and title appeared correctly, according to the document.
  
  Asked whether she checked the accuracy of the principal and interest that Wells claimed the borrower owed – a crucial step in banks’ legal actions to repossess homes – Ms Moua said: “I do not.”
  
  Ms Moua nevertheless signed affidavits that said she had “personal knowledge of the facts regarding the sums of money which are due and owing to Wells Fargo”. The affidavits were used by the bank in foreclosure proceedings..... ( source: here )

( 500 documents a day???? WOW! )

Is there any credibility left in corporate America?

On ZH: Bank Of America On Foreclosuregate: "Heightened Risk Of More Dismal Scenario"

• ... To wit, on page 21 of the supplement we read that the average delinquency at foreclosure for Florida is 678 days, while for New York, it is, get ready, 792 days! That's right, a house is delinquent on its payments, which usually means not paying anything, for over two years in New York before it is foreclosed upon. Which also means that only now are those who stopped paying their mortgage around the days when Lehman filed being foreclosed upon. And guess what happened to the economy, and the stock market in the 6 months immediately after... In other words, there is such a huge cliff of accrued foreclosures that is supposed to be hitting right about...now, that the double whammy of foreclosure gate and the accrued foreclosures will blow right through the balance sheets of banks like JPM. And with that out of the way, here is why BofA believes that there is a "heightened risk of a more dismal scenario. If negative momentum in the housing market kicks in, and feeds into the banking system and broader economy, it will be hard to fight." ...

WALOEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

792 days before its foreclosed upon?????????????????????

There you go... the wonders of corporate America!!!!

ps: According to RealtyTrac Inc, 'only' 2.5 million homes were foreclosed since Dec 2007. Yeah, many deserved to be foreclosed but .... with the current scandal.... what would happen next?

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