YEARS before the housing bust — before all those home loans turned sour and millions of Americans faced foreclosure — a wealthy businessman in Florida set out to blow the whistle on the mortgage game.
His name is Nye Lavalle, and he first came to attention not in finance but in sports and advertising. He turned heads in marketing circles by correctly predicting that Nascar and figure skating would draw huge followings in the 1990s.
But after losing a family home to foreclosure, under what he thought were fishy circumstances, Mr. Lavalle, founder of a consulting firm called the Sports Marketing Group, began a new life as a mortgage sleuth. In 2003, when home prices were flying high, he compiled a dossier of improprieties on one of the giants of the business, Fannie Mae.
In hindsight, what he found looks like a blueprint of today’s foreclosure crisis. Even then, Mr. Lavalle discovered, some loan-servicing companies that worked for Fannie Mae routinely filed false foreclosure documents, not unlike the fraudulent paperwork that has since made “robo-signing” a household term. Even then, he found, the nation’s electronic mortgage registry was playing fast and loose with the law — something that courts have belatedly recognized, too.
Comments
Now, I know that my approach is different than the average, but if I was Mr. Lavalle, armed with all the factual data, at the very least I would have sent out packets with info to all major media. One thing I have learned the hard way is NEVER trust any of the other players (whether they proclaim to be the good guys or vice versa) to 'let the sunshine in'.
This is a terrific piece, I am saving and sending out.
(Wonder where his political affiliations are today?)
Appreciate your posting this.
by Aunt Sam on Mon, 02/06/2012 - 11:19am