Criminality Still Rampant in US Banks

It is hard to believe, but US banks continue to create forged documents in order to foreclose on properties. This was exposed well over a year ago, and it is still going on. Worse, the Obama administration is presuring New York to join 49 other states in doing a deal to collect a few billion dollars as a "fine" and then declare that what was done was done and no criminal prosecutions will be launched. That is insane given the news that these crimes continue even as the negotiations with Obama's Justice Department and the Attorney Generals of all 50 states are in progress.

Here is a post by Barry Ritholtz in his The Big Picture blog:

As hard as it may seem to believe, the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents for use in foreclosures.

That’s according to an article in American Banker, titled Robo-Signing Redux: Servicers Still Fabricating Foreclosure Documents.

Key points:

• The practice continues a year after the companies were caught in the robo-signing scandal, even as the industry has been negotiating a settlement with state attorneys general re: loan-servicing abuses.

• Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

• Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist.

• North Carolina consumer bankruptcy lawyer O. Max Gardner III says servicers and trustees often submit promissory notes in court without proper endorsements, which show the chain of title from one lender to another. Then, after the fact, there will be “a magically appearing note with a stamped endorsement,” Gardner said.

• When plaintiff’s lawyers then try to depose the person whose name is stamped on the endorsement, “we’re being told the person is no longer employed by the servicer or by the party for whom they signed,” Gardner says.

• Linda Tirelli, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, calls such mortgage documents “Ta-Da!” assignments because they seem to appear out of nowhere.

This is why a full investigation must be absolutely mandatory prior to any settlements with the lenders or servicers.

It is absolutely disgusting that Obama has refused to go after the banks that caused the $11 trillion collapse in the US economy. Not one single prosecution. And here, in the dust of the financial meltdown, the same banks are now out creating more crimes as they try to collect on mortgages for which they have lost the paperwork. They are simply creating forgeries to seize properties for which they do not have the proper legal paperwork. In polite society that is call "theft" and Obama is not only turning a blind eye, he is putting pressure on NY to going 49 other states to take a payoff to close the books on these crimes and let the banks off the hook. That would be bad enough by itself, but to put this pressure on the "close the books" while the banks continue to commit the same crimes again and again and again is simply unconscionable. I have lost all respect for Obama. He is pushing to hide crimes while the crimes continue!