The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Very Bad But Honest News from Ted Kaufman of TARP.

    By we are stardust on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 3:26pm |

    Retiring Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware)  now heads the TARP Oversight Panel formerly chaired by Elizabeth Warren.  He was a staunch supporter of real financial regulation in the face of enormous odds against his amendments, which were not approved in the end.  I admire him greatly as an advocate for economic justice and honesty.  His retirement will be a loss for the Seanate.

    Today he issued the November Report for the COP; it is chilling, and goes to the heart of what many of us have feared: that an as yet unknown quantity of the Securitized Mortgages  that were divvied up and sold in swap bundles do not have clear and unobstructed titles.  He reports that the robo-signings of questionable or fraudulent mortgages and irregularities may pose a systemic threat to our economic system.

    While he says that the extent of the ‘irregularities’ are unknown, even if a percentage of the mortgages can’t be documented, it will pose far-reaching legal troubles for banks, the economy at large, and even the administration’s mortgage relief program and the homeowners who gained some relief through the program.  The MBS represent $7.3 trillion in worth.

    Property rights and ownership are at the base of our legal system and the Rule of Law, as well as contract law, and he is right to be worried.  We all should be.

    He advises banks and mortgage service companies not to proceed with any foreclosures unless there is unambiguous claim to property titles and the chain of conveyance of the debt.  He also speaks to the Mortgage Electronic Registration System and the dubious results it has produced.

    How many of these 33 million mortgages might be invalidated, and what are the remedies for this?  Hearings are happening right now on the Hill.  No one knows yet.

     

    The PDF of the report is here.

    Comments

    I think they should bundle bad mortgages with lottery payoffs.

    You Win! (but you also have to pay off this toxic mortgage).


    by Donal on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 3:51pm

    LOL!  Only trouble with your thinking is that many mortgages may already be lottery tickets, eh?  Imagine wanting to buy a foreclosed-upon house?  Who would you trust?  There have been some moves to make attorneys sign agreements that paperwork is legal and credible, but dear God, the attorneys will be busy from now until doomsday. 


    by we are stardust on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 5:00pm

    It's most troubling that we have spent hundreds of billions in TARP funds, and yet we have failed to even begin to address the housing and mortgage crisis. Somehow, you just get the feeling that "The Goldman Sachs" is pretty well hedged against the failure of the American economy altogether. Meanwhile, they are quite rapacious in stealing as much as they can from the Treasury whilst there is still anything left. Why should we worry as long as those who count have everything under control?

    {{end of snark}}


    by SleepinJeezus on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 4:58pm

    I read that Bloomberg News had calculated that the actual cost of TARP to taxpayers was in the neighborhood of thirteen trillion dollars.  This mess has the potential of exploding that number to kingdom-come.  (I can't quit shaking my head at the enormity of it all.) 

    Think what effects this will have on counties across the nation: as there are no wet-ink registrations for so many mortgages now, how in hell will they a) establish property valuation norms for figuring year by year assessments for taxation, and b)be able to tax property any way but in multiples of past valuations for those for whom they DO have wet-ink notes and recorded titles? 

    It makes me wonder if this doesn't give extra credibility to those reports that there are, in fact, commerce-driven amendments protecting MERS and the banks.  Good God all-Friday, Jeezus. 

    IOW, if we think the fraud was bad, LOOK OUT FOR THE FIXES!


    by we are stardust on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 5:14pm

    False Statements

    R.K. Arnold

    Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems

    Action Date:

     

    Location:

     

    As the many problems (frauds) are exposed regarding documents used by mortgage-backed

    trusts in foreclosures, some revelations stand out. Literally millions of foreclosures by mortgage

    backed trusts hinge on a Mortgage Assignment signed by an officer of Mortgage Electronic

    Registration Systems ("MERS") showing that the mortgage in question was transferred to the

    trust by MERS. The "MERS officer" who signs the Mortgage Assignment is actually most often an

    employee of a mortgage servicing company that is paid by the trust.

    MERS itself has only 50 employees and they are not involved in signing mortgage assignments

    to trusts. These servicing company employees sign as officers of MERS "as nominee for" a

    particular mortgage company or bank. They are not employees of the mortgage companies or

    employees of the original named lender, but their titles on the Mortgage Assignment belie this

    and typically read:

    "Linda Green, Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as nominee for

    American Brokers Conduit."

    MERS president R.K. Arnold testified in Senate testimony earlier this week that there are

    20,000 MERS "certifying officers."

    To become a MERS certifying officer, a mortgage servicing company employee need only

    complete an online form and pay $25.00. Because of the concealment of the actual employer on

    the Mortgage Assignments, it is easy enough for Courts, and homeowners, to believe that they

    are examining a document prepared by the lender that sold the mortgage to the trust, when, in

    fact, the signer was a servicing company clerk paid by the trust itself.

    The representative of the GRANTOR is, in truth, a paid employee of the GRANTEE. In hundreds

    of thousands of cases, the authority is, therefore, misrepresented.

    It is now also coming to light that in tens of thousands of cases, the individuals signing these

    forms did not even sign their own names.

    The documents were made to look official because other mortgage servicing company

    employees signed as witnesses and then all four "signatures" were notarized by yet another

    mortgage servicing company employee. The titles were false, the signatures were forged, the

    "witnessing" was a lie, as was the notarization.

    Despite all of these false statements, the BIGGEST LIE on these documents is that the trust

    Fraud Digest - Online Fraud Magazine Page 1 of 3

    http://frauddigest.com/fraud.php?ident=4689 11/19/2010

    acquired the mortgage on the date stated plainly on the Mortgage Assignment. In truth, no such

    transfers ever took place as represented by these MERS certifying officers (or their stand

    forgers).

    The date chosen almost always corresponds not to an actual transfer, but to the date roughly

    corresponding to the time the loan went into default. The Mortgage Assignment was prepared

    only to provide "proof" that the trust owned the mortgage.

    Until courts require Trusts to come forward with actual proof that they acquired the mortgages

    in question, specifying whom they paid and how much they paid for each such trust-owned

    mortgage, the actual owner of these mortgages will never be known.

    In response to the exposure of the widespread fraud in the securitization process, the American

    Bankers Association issued a statement essentially saying that Mortgage Assignments were

    unnecessary. Investors and regulators were told, however, that the trusts owned the mortgages

    and notes in each pool of mortgages and that valid Assignments of Mortgages had been

    obtained.

    Where the proof of ownership put forth by the trusts is a sworn statement by a MERS "certifying

    officer" who had no knowledge whatsoever of the transactions involved and did not even review

    documents related to the transactions, such proof of ownership should be deemed worthless by

    the Courts.

    Other litigants are not allowed to manufacture their own evidence and offer it as proof at trial

    there should be no exception for mortgage-backed trusts.

    In particular, where the "MERS Certifying Officer" is actually an employee of the law firm hired

    to handle the foreclosure, such documents should be stricken and sanctioned. "MERS Certifying

    Officers" should be the next group required to testify before Congress.

    Here are the statistics for one Florida county, Palm Beach County, regarding the number of

    Mortgage Assignments filed by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems:

    January, 2009: 1,164;

    February, 2009: 1,230;

    March, 2009: 1,113.

    An examination of just one day's (March 31, 2009) filed Mortgage Assignments reveals that

    signers of these Assignments are the very same mortgage servicing company employees who

    signed the "no-actual knowledge" Affidavits that triggered the national scrutiny:

    Jeffrey Stephan from Ally,

    Erica Johnson-Seck from IndyMac,

    Crystal Moore from Nationwide Title Clearing,

    Liquenda Allotey from Lender Processing Services,

    Denise Bailey from Litton Loan Services,

    Noriko Colston,

    Krystal Hall, and other well-known professional signers from the mortgage servicing industry.

    The most frequent signers from that particular day were two lawyers, associates in the law firm

    representing the trusts, who signed as Assistant Secretary for Mortgage Electronic Registration

    Systems.

    Fraud Digest - Online Fraud Magazine Page 2 of 3

    http://frauddigest.com/fraud.php?ident=4689 11/19/2010

    Fraud Digest - Online Fraud Magazine Page 3 of 3

    http://frauddigest.com/fraud.php?ident=4689 11/19/2010

    WASHINGTON, DC

    November 18, 2010


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 4:22am