Mnuchin Lied About His Bank’s History of Robo-Signing Foreclosure Documents

TREASURY SECRETARY NOMINEE Steven Mnuchin lied in his written responses to the Senate Finance Committee, claiming that “OneWest Bank did not ‘robo-sign’ documents,” when ample evidence proves that they did.

Mnuchin ran OneWest Bank from 2009 to 2015 in a manner so ruthless to mortgage holders that he has been dubbed the “Foreclosure King” by his critics.

The robo-signing scandal involved mortgage companies having their employees falsely sign hundreds of affidavits per week attesting that they had reviewed and verified all the business records associated with a foreclosure — when in fact they never read through the material and just blindly signed off. Those records, in many cases, were prepared improperly, but the foreclosures went ahead anyway because of the fraudulent affidavits.

“Did OneWest ‘robo-sign’ documents relating to foreclosures and evictions?” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., asked Mnuchin as a “question for the record”.

Mnuchin replied that “OneWest Bank did not ‘robo-sign’ documents, and as the only bank to successfully complete the Independent Foreclosure Review required by federal banking regulators to investigate allegations of ‘robo-signing,’ I am proud of our institution’s extremely low error rate.”

But even that review – which was not really so “independent,” since the banks hand-picked and paid for their own reviewers – found that nearly 6 percent of the OneWest foreclosures examined were not conducted properly.

Read on.

Michigan sets parole for ‘Linda Green’ robo-signer

And none of the bank execs responsible for the financial crisis are in prison..

The only person jailed in connection with a foreclosure forgery scandal that swept through Michigan and the rest of the country after the collapse of the housing bubble spends her days confined to the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Township.

But not for long.

Sentenced in May 2013 to serve up to 20 years on racketeering charges, Lorraine Brown, now 55, will be paroled sometime this week, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections, after serving her 40-month minimum sentence. Brown will then be transferred to federal custody to serve the remainder of a 58-month federal sentence after pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

Brown’s scheme netted $60 million between 2003 and 2006 for the parent company DocX, her Georgia-based document processing firm that forged more than 1 million foreclosure documents used by banks and attorneys to illegally turn homeowners homeless.

Read on.

Debt Collection Foul Play: CFPB Sanctions Practice Reminiscent of Robo-Signing

Credit card and student loan debt-collector Frederick J. Hanna & Associates settled charges last month with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over allegations that it used illegal debt collection practices on a variety of consumer loans. Hanna agreed to pay $3.1 million stemming from a CFPB investigation that led to a lawsuit filed last July in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.

The CFPB charged that Hanna used its capacity as a law firm to disguise its activity as a bulk debt collector, where legal papers were rubber-stamped by the firm without verification of their contents, reminiscent of the practice known as robo-signing that surfaced in home mortgages during the financial crisis. The CFPB suit charges that Hanna filed hundreds of thousands of lawsuits without bothering to make sure that the people they were taking to court actually owed any money. The CFPB charges that one Hanna attorney signed off on 138,000 lawsuits in two years.

“The Hanna firm relied on deception and faulty evidence to coerce consumers into paying debts that often could not be verified or may not be owed,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Debt collectors that use the court system for purposes of intimidation should reconsider how their practices are harming consumers.” The CFPB suit demanded that the court “order disgorgement of ill-gotten revenues” and impose civil money penalties. It also asked that Hanna pay the CFPB’s costs in bringing the case to trial.

But the suit did not stop at Hanna’s doorstep, where the firm has offices in a Marietta, Ga. shopping mall. J.P. Morgan Chase and the two largest debt buyers in the United States, Encore Capital Group and Portfolio Recovery Associates, all Hanna clients, have been tarred with the same brush.

Read on.

Wells Fargo Must Pay $5.4M In Robosigning Foreclosure Row

Wolf vs. Wells Fargo…

H/T Marie McDonnell

Below, I have attached the jury award from the Wolf v. Wells Fargo trial. The jury concluded its deliberations on Tuesday afternoon, November 10th.

It is my belief that this is the first jury verdict of its kind where the jury was asked to determine whether a robo-signed Transfer of Lien (assignment of mortgage) was fraudulent, and on that basis, award damages.

The jury awarded the Wolfs $190,000 in actual and emotional distress damages; $190,000 in attorneys’ fees — which is sufficient to take them through an appeal all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court; and $5 million in punitive damages to be paid equally by Wells Fargo and Carrington.

Plaintiffs David and Mary Ellen Wolf testified on their own behalf, and I testified as their expert.

I explained to the jury the sequence of “true sales” that were necessary to properly securitize the Wolfs’ mortgage loan using my “Securitization Flow Chart” which I have attached below.

Once the jury understood the requirements of the Mortgage Loan Purchase Agreement and the Pooling and Servicing Agreement, they were able to see why the Transfer of Lien executed by Tom Croft was fraudulent on the face of the document.

The Defendants called robo-signer Tom Croft and Clayton Gordon as witnesses, both of whom are employed by Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC.

The jury also found that even though Wells Fargo Bank was in physical possession of the original note, it did not own the mortgage loan because it was never securitized into the Carrington Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2006-NC3 over which Wells Fargo serves as Trustee.

The jury verdict, and especially their finding that the Transfer of Lien was fraudulent, supports my findings in all of the registry of deeds audits I have conducted for:

• John L. O’Brien, Register of Deeds, Essex Southern District, MA
• Nancy J. Becker, Recorder of Deeds, Montgomery County, PA
• Seattle City Council, Seattle, WA
• In re: Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. Litigation, Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal Counties, AZ

The jury verdict in the Wolf v. Wells Fargo trial is epic. Among other things, it demonstrates that when given all the facts, average people can distinguish the difference between “deadbeat borrowers” and a family who fell upon hard times and always tried to do the right thing.

This case should send a message of hope for others; it also provides a road map for cutting through the complexities of modern finance to arrive at a just result.

– See more at: http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2015/11/13/wolf-vs-wells-fargo-wells-fargo-must-pay-5-4m-in-robosigning-foreclosure-row/#sthash.1BA386wO.dpuf

Law360, Los Angeles (November 12, 2015, 8:47 PM ET) — A Texas state jury awarded nearly $5.4 million to a couple accusing Wells Fargo NA and others of “robosigning” documents that led to the wrongful foreclosure of their home, holding that the banking giant knew that documents supporting the foreclosure were fraudulent.

After four days of trial and just four hours of deliberation, the jury on Tuesday found that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Wells Fargo and Carrington Mortgage Services LLC knew that the supporting documents were a fraudulent claim on the property owned…

Source: Law360

90 – JURY VERDICT – Wolf (11.10.2015)

Wolf Transfer of Lien (NCMC to WF), 10.15.2009

MCDONNELL’S – SECURITIZATION FLOW CHART (WOLF) – NEW CENTURY.ins

JPMorgan Chase: Hold the phone on those DOJ robo-signing charges

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is pushing back at the U.S. Department of Justice’s claims that it admitted to misfiling more than 50,000 payment change notices in bankruptcy courts that were “improperly signed, under penalty of perjury, by persons who had not reviewed the accuracy of the notices.”

The DOJ announced earlier Tuesday that it reached a $50 million settlement agreement with Chase, and that Chase admitted that more than 25,000 of the 50,000 payment change notices were signed in the names of former employees or of employees who had nothing to do with reviewing the accuracy of the filings.

But, according to Chase Vice President and Head of External Communications Jason Lobo, Chase made no such admissions, despite agreeing to the settlement.

Lobo said the settlement agreement contained no admission of liability, as is often the case in settlements between the DOJ, other federal agencies and financial institutions.
Read on

Sup. Court of NJ | In the Matter of Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Pleading and Document Irregularities (Robosigning)

SUPERIOR COURT OF JEW JERSEY CHANCERY DIVISION- GENERAL EQUITY PART MERCER COUNTY IN THE MATTER OF RESIDENTIAL  MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE PLEADING AND DOCUMENT IRREGULARITIES

Here the court document. Click here.

Banks Seek Exit from Robo-Signing Enforcement Order

American Banker (subcription required):

At least two mortgage servicers say they are close to being released from an OCC enforcement order that required 14 of the nation’s largest bank servicers to fix flaws in their foreclosure reviews. But the OCC says it has set no timetable for freeing any of the banks from the 2011 order.

IN RE: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC., MERS | 9TH CIRCUIT – FALSE, AND THEREFORE ACTIONABLE, A DOCUMENT THAT IS “FORGED, GROUNDLESS, CONTAINS A MATERIAL MISSTATEMENT OR FALSE CLAIM OR IS OTHERWISE INVALID….PLEADED THEIR ROBOSIGNING CLAIMS WITH SUFFICIENT PARTICULARITY TO SATISFY FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 8(A)

IN RE: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC., MERS | 9TH CIRCUIT – FALSE, AND THEREFORE ACTIONABLE, A DOCUMENT THAT IS “FORGED, GROUNDLESS, CONTAINS A MATERIAL MISSTATEMENT OR FALSE CLAIM OR IS OTHERWISE INVALID….PLEADED THEIR ROBOSIGNING CLAIMS WITH SUFFICIENT PARTICULARITY TO SATISFY FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 8(A)

Fourth, the MDL Court held that appellants had not pleaded their robosigning claims with sufficient particularity to satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a). We disagree. Section 33-420 characterizes as false, and therefore actionable, a document that is “forged, groundless, contains a material misstatement or false claim or is otherwise invalid.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. §§ 33-420(A), (B) (emphasis added). The CAC alleges that the documents at issue are invalid because they are “robosigned (forged).” The CAC specifically identifies numerous allegedly forged documents. For example, the CAC alleges that notice of the trustee’s sale of the property of Thomas and Laurie Bilyea was “notarized in blank prior to being signed on behalf of Michael A. Bosco, and the party that is represented to have signed the document, Michael A. Bosco, did not sign the document, and the party that did sign the document had no personal knowledge of any of the facts set forth in the notice.” Further, the CAC alleges that the document substituting a trustee under the deed of trust for the property of Nicholas DeBaggis “was notarized in blank prior to being signed on behalf of U.S. Bank National Association, and the party that is represented to have signed IN RE: MERS 25 the document, Mark S. Bosco, did not sign the document.” Still further, the CAC also alleges that Jim Montes, who purportedly signed the substitution of trustee for the property of Milan Stejic had, on the same day, “signed and recorded, with differing signatures, numerous Substitutions of Trustee in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office . . . . Many of the signatures appear visibly different than one another.” These and similar allegations in the CAC “plausibly suggest an entitlement to relief,” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 681 (2009), and provide the defendants fair notice as to the nature of appellants’ claims against them, Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1216 (9th Cir. 2011). We therefore reverse the MDL Court’s dismissal of Count I.

 

Foreclosure lawyer appeals reprimand tied to ‘robo-signing’ cases

Foreclosure lawyer appeals reprimand tied to ‘robo-signing’ cases

PORTLAND, Maine — A lawyer disciplined for not blowing the whistle loudly enough on his client’s “robo-signed” foreclosure documents is fighting the public reprimand he received from the Maine legal profession’s oversight board in April.

The Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar had determined that Drummond & Drummond lawyer Paul Peck, who led the firm’s foreclosure division, did not “ take immediate and effective action” to stop foreclosure proceedings in 2010 that were based on faulty affidavits.

James Bowie, the attorney representing Peck in the appeal, said his client is contesting the factual basis for the board’s decision.

“The panel issued the lowest level of discipline that is available if they are going to issue discipline,” Bowie said in a telephone interview. “Despite that, we feel the factual findings don’t support the imposition of any discipline at all.”

Peck is seeking to have the reprimand dismissed in favor of a warning, which two of his colleagues received; the bar overseers are seeking to have the reprimand upheld and have Peck pay its legal fees.

Law Firm of Rubin & Licatesi Defends Client Against Foreclosure in Robo-Signing Case

Law Firm of Rubin & Licatesi Defends Client Against Foreclosure in Robo-Signing Case

Long Island, NY (PRWEB) April 11, 2014

The Long Island law firm of Rubin & Licatesi, PC has successfully defended their client’s property against foreclosure efforts by a lender with evidence of “Robo-Signing” practices by the bank.

In the case of Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. v. Harold Levinson [Index No: 2007-25351], Countrywide began this foreclosure action in 2007. In a recent decision before the Honorable Justice Spinner, Supreme Court, Suffolk County, the court ruled that Countrywide may not have standing to proceed in this lawsuit with its mortgage foreclosure action. The Plaintiff allegedly participated in questionable “robo-signing” procedures and may have acted “fraudulently, dishonestly, in bad faith or in an unconscionable manner,” as stated in that decision.

Countrywide’s application for judgment of foreclosure was subsequently denied.

“Our client was in default for many years and was concerned about the loss of his rights and his home. He hired our firm to defend against the foreclosure of his home in a” Robo-Signing case,” said firm partner Richard Rubin. “We are proud that our client was granted the right to voice and protect his rights and that the Robo-Signing issues will be openly brought to light.