Posted on 07/17/2015 8:49:19 AM PDT by proxy_user
**snip**
Although she didn’t know it immediately, Ms. Sung had stumbled on a fraudulent scheme involving false borrower income verifications and documentation. The bank began investigating and Mr. Yu was fired the following Monday.
The discovery put an end to the scheme at Abacus. But it was only the beginning of a five-and-a-half-year odyssey through the New York State criminal justice system for the Sung family and the community lender the family had built from nothing.
Bank officials uncovered the fraud, fired the mastermind, investigated and reported it to regulators and provided New York State prosecutors with over 900,000 pages of documents. Yet by May 2012 Abacus was under indictment by a grand jury in New York State Supreme Court.
Much has been written about the failure of state and federal prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against mighty institutions and high-ranking figures after the 2008 financial crisis. This is a different story, of a powerful prosecutor relentlessly pursuing a speck of a bank that for 31 years has prudently served an immigrant community in New York City.
**snip**
Even more perplexing, however, was that Fannie Mae, the entity that bought the 31 purportedly fraudulent Abacus loans, did not lose any money on them. Rather, trial transcripts show, by early May 2015 Fannie Mae and the investors who bought securities containing the loans had earned $2.5 million in interest. Nineteen of the 31 loans have been paid off and the rest are current, court documents show.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This facts of the case confirm my view that both state and Federal prosecutors are completely clueless about financial crimes, which is why the financial criminals are so successful. There have been many stupid SEC enforcement actions, but this case surely tops them all.
Everybody know you go after the little guy, and not the big, politically-connected, uber-crooks.
I am personally dealing with the SEC now and have been since 2011. My career has been basically derailed by an enforcement action that named me personally. My conduct did not directly or indirectly cost any investor a dime of their money. This article does not surprise me in the least. Meanwhile, the big boys wheel and deal, buy our elected “representatives” and steal billions with impunity...
Prosecutors are not clueless. They are corrupt.
I don’t see anything in the article to show that. You would think that if there was any chance of corruption, the author would go after it. That would be a Pulitzer-prize level scoop for the NY Times.
It's not that they are clueless, it's that the larger institutions generally have powerful protectors who will make your life hell if you bother them.
Something like how cops prefer doing their SWAT raids on people who are not connected, rather than on high-level Crips or Bloods who can track down where the cops, prosecutors, and judges live
This is true, but still prosecutors generally avoid cases that are obvious losers. They want to have a good record winning in court.
It looks like they thought they could just say ‘evil bankers’ and the jury would convict anyone for anything. That is an indication of stupidity in my book.
Extortion: After 16 banks caved in to White House demands to refund billions in losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one outlier remains unrepentant. Nomura Holdings refuses to succumb to the political shakedown.
The Japanese bank's U.S. unit won't give in to extortionist regulators protecting Fannie/Freddie who claim it hoodwinked the toxic twins into buying pools of subprime mortgages, like it claimed Bank of America, JPMorgan and other U.S. banks did in the run-up to the mortgage crisis.
The government demands $1 billion in damages. Nomura says it won't give a dime toward the $18 billion ransom the feds already have shaken out of other banks who settled with the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Instead, it will make government prove it in court.
In opening arguments this week, the defendants argued Fannie and Freddie bought the mortgages knowing they were subprime and did so to meet "affordable housing" quotas of their political masters at HUD.
Unfortunately for Nomura, the game is rigged. The federal judge hearing the case — Clinton appointee Denise Cote — is a ringer for the administration. In recent filings, Cote has shown extreme prejudice in her decisions — virtually all rendered against Nomura.
Even though she concedes that, in buying subprime securities from Nomura, "Freddie Mac considered the extent to which underlying mortgage loans satisfied these housing goals," Cote claims such evidence is "immaterial" to the case. She argues the regulatory mandates, purchasing quotas and other political pressures heaped on Fannie and Freddie were merely "idiosyncratic" and therefore irrelevant.
Please. The HUD goals are highly relevant to this case. Internal documents from both HUD and Fannie and Freddie show the goals were driving them deeper into the subprime securities market and both complained about a growing risk of losses. So clearly, they understood the risks. (Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
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Obama and Congressional Democrats----with a huge assist from Eric Holder----have given NeighborWorks America (formerly ACORN) and La Raza a huge funding source of tax dollars to achieve Obama's dream of a permanent Democrat majority.
Obama/Holder/Dems are forcing taxpayers via DOJ litigation WRT bank settlements----into paying off these nefarious organizations.
DOJ went after CitiCorp and ordered them to pay $50 million to La Raza and NeighborWorks America as part of the settlement.
Another clause in the agreement makes it possible for La Raza and NeighborWorks America to rake in even larger amounts of money.
Of the remaining money the banks needed to pay in settlements, the banks were able to contribute additional money to La Raza and NeighborWorks America. For every dollar they contribute, it reduces their debt to the government by 2 dollars. That’s some mighty powerful incentive to give generously.
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling have questioned why this money was sent to the ACORN clone and the blood-thirsty LaRaza----rather than to the alleged victims of the bank’s crime. The administration of course declined to answer.
Here's part of the Congressmen's letter to Holder: “It seems that the alleged victims are not the primary beneficiaries of these multi-billion dollar settlements. Instead, the terms in the Justice Department’s two latest settlements look less like consumer relief and more like a scheme to funnel money to politically favored special interest groups.”
“This makes donations to activist groups far more attractive to banks than providing direct relief to injured consumers. As a result, the settlements appear to serve as a vehicle for funding activist groups rather than as a means of securing relief for consumers actually harmed.”
So now, with Social Security cards, manpower and tons of money to go along with the two years before the next presidential election, the largest and most successful voter fraud campaign may alter the course of the elections not to mention the future of the United States.
Let's hope that your comment was biting sarcasm. If you meant to be serious, you are naive. Cyrus Vance is the son of a big Democrat politician, Secretary of the Army in the LBJ administration. Had this little bank had paid the proper protection money to the Democrat Party, this little misunderstanding would have never happened. Vance needed to demonstrated that he was going to crack down on fraud in the mortgage business. You don't think that he would go after a bank paid up in full with the local Democrat cronies, would you?
Interesting story indeed.
And a good cautionary tale.
Midas Mulligan had the proper response to such actions.
Thank you for that elucidating post as well.
THE KINGPINS OF CHICAGO CRIMINAL POLITICS IN OUR WH wasted no time.....they had a stranglehold on the Census, AND the US Treasury, from day one.
The minute Obama/Valerie/Rahm/Axelrod/Geithner, and that Practiced bunch of Chicago criminals, landed in the WH they did two things that were apparently crucial to their evil plans
(a) they took control of the US Census;
(b) Obama placed his COS Rahm Emanuel in control of the US Dept of the Treasury (cabinet-level agency oversees IRS).
THE SMOKING GUN---WSJ REPORT--On Jan 20, 2009 Timothy Geithner was appointed Obama's Secy of the Treasury. But within three weeks, the Obama White House tightened its grip on Treasury. Obama put his COS, Rahm Emanuel, in charge of Treasury---Rahm Emanuel's dual role was an unusual move.
When he got to Treasury, WH COS Rahm Emanuel was so involved in the inner workings of the Treasury that the phrase "Rahm wants it" had become an unofficial mantra among subservient govt staffers, prostrate in obeisance, scurrying to accede to Rahm's wishes, according to Treasury government officials. Reported by WSJ / 05/31/09
More here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
The connection between the IRS targeting and the WH's malevolent parasites at Treasury becomes clearer.
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THIS MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD shortly after quitting his powerful WH job as Obama's COS, Rahm held a presser declaring he "just remembered" he really, Really wanted to be Mayor of Chicago. Then Rahm announced he had magically "raised" $30 million for his campaign in "just a matter of weeks." (waiting for hysterical laughter to die down).
Ya gotta wonder how much Wall Street Rahm wired offshore when Obama put him in charge of the entire US Treasury.
The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is popularly put at $700 billion—---the actual size of TARP--the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside untraceable money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets.
To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see MJ chart at web site. A guide to the pieces of the puzzle includes massive untraceable Treasury Department bailout programs.
Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].
Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].
TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.
Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."
GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.
LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking financial charts.
SOURCE http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size-bailout
Low-hanging fruit.
Not so much low-hanging, but can’t fight back and doesn’t make large campaign donations.
I decline to attribute to corruption and conspiracy, activities that can be explained by stupidity and incompetence. The later is much more common.
I agree, the latter is usually a much more logical explanation, but when politics is at play a jaundice eye is a real asset.
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