Posted on 10/28/2010 8:42:30 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Wells Fargo said on Wednesday it will re-file documents on 55,000 foreclosures, drawing immediate fire from one of the state attorneys general most critical of banks in the continuing home foreclosure crisis.
The announcement was the first admission of possible problems in the way the San Francisco-based bank repossesses homes.
Wells Fargo (WFC)- the second largest U.S. home mortgage servicer - has continued to foreclose on delinquent borrowers in recent weeks, even as its rivals instituted moratoriums amid a public furor over whether banks cut corners in the foreclosure process with so-called "robo-signers" of legal documents used to justify taking homes.
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray - who filed a lawsuit against Ally Financial earlier this month over affidavit problems - said he was "pretty unhappy" about the Wells Fargo announcement.
"We had talked to them and they assured us they didn't have any of these problems," said Cordray in an interview with Reuters.
He added that the Wells Fargo admisssion "makes it hard to believe any of the big financial firms in terms of what their process has been."
Attorneys general in all 50 U.S. states are investigating whether lenders rushed through foreclosures and evicted borrowers from their homes without properly checking documents.
Lawsuits have already begun to trickle in and banks may also face fines or be forced to repurchase faulty loans.
Wells Fargo found problems with foreclosure affidavits in 23 U.S. states where the final internal review or the notarization of the documents did not meet company standards. The bank plans to re-file the affidavits by mid-November.
In cases where the foreclosure is imminent, the bank will ask for an extension from the local courts.
"We found human errors, and we are fixing those errors," said Teri Schrettenbrunner, Wells Fargo spokeswoman, who declined to discuss the nature of the errors the bank found.
No Systemic U.S. Problem
Despite problems, the bank had no plans to institute its own moratorium because it believes the filing mistakes did not lead to borrowers being unjustly evicted from their homes.
On average, borrowers are 16 months behind on payments at the time of their foreclosure, according to Wells Fargo data released on Wednesday.
One analyst said Wells Fargo's announcement was a minor surprise, given it's prior statements that a foreclosure moratorium was unnecessary.
"Do I regard this as devastating? No, but the bank should have known this before they spoke about it beforehand," said Nancy Bush, bank analyst with NAB Research.
Bank of America (BAC), the largest U.S. mortgage servicer, instituted a 50-state foreclosure moratorium earlier this month that has since been partially lifted.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and GMAC Mortgage, a division of Ally Financial Inc, both imposed 23-state halts.
Wells Fargo also said the affidavits will have no impact on its mortgage repurchase obligations. The bank has reserved $1.3 billion to repurchase bad mortgages from investors.
The foreclosure crisis in recent weeks has sparked fears of a shoddy paper trail for mortgages held by third-party investors totaling billions of U.S. dollars, which banks could be forced to repurchase.
On Wednesday, the chief of the U.S. Treasury's homeowner preservation office told a Congressional panel she did not see a systemic threat posed by banks rebuying mortgages, and regulators were monitoring the situation closely.
What is noteworthy in this article, Deacon? What prompted you to post it? OK, a company discovered a legal problem with its documents. That happens quite often: documents have to be amended or modified. What’s of interest in this case?
55,000 errors doesn’t ring alarm bells with you.
Errors or counts of perjury.
I mean these are sworn under penalty, right?
I just think the whole thing stinks. We give them Trillions, and what do they do? Foreclose on homes. I get all that about only borrowing what you can pay back, but....When the banks fail they get bailed out with my money. Nobody has done the right thing in this scenario, and the banks get a pass.
Ms. Johnson-Seck must explain to the Court, in her affidavit: her employment history for the past three years; and, why a conflict of interest does not exist in the instant action with her acting as a Vice President of assignor MERS, a Vice President of assignee/assignor INDYMAC, and a Vice President of assignee/plaintiff ONEWEST. Further, Ms. Johnson-Seck must explain: why she was a Vice President of both assignor MERS and assignee DEUTSCHE BANK in a second case before me, Deutsche Bank v Maraj, 18 Misc 3d 1123 (A) (Sup Ct, Kings County 2008); why she was a Vice President of both assignor MERS and assignee INDYMAC in a third case before me, Indymac Bank, FSB, v Bethley, 22 Misc 3d 1119 (A) (Sup Ct, Kings County 2009); and, why she executed an affidavit of merit as a Vice President of DEUTSCHE BANK in a fourth case before me, Deutsche Bank v Harris (Sup Ct, Kings County, Feb. 5, 2008, Index No. 35549/07).
Robosigned? No Paper? Uh, Not So Fast Jackass...
This is about systematic fraud on the court.
As one of the many articles on these fraudulent documents deftly pointed out, perjury is exactly what got President Clinton impeached. Not too long ago people considered perjury a big deal.
That's leftist propaganda that got under you skin. Banks did not ask for bailouts; the bailout for forced upon them. It was Detroit that was begging for money.
You premise is also problematic on moral grounds. Suppose I bail you out in your hard times. Do I own you now? Does that give me the right to do anything I want -- sleep with our spouse, for instance? Of course not. A loan is a loan and nothing else.
Observe next that banks received the money from taxpayers. But prohibition on foreclosures, if any, benefit not taxpayers but a very small proportion of American public, most of which suffer now from their greed (buying the biggest possible house) and/or irresponsibility. To simplify, suppose you bail me out last Friday. On Monday before that I lent money to my cousin, who now refuses to pay me back. By what principle, on what moral or legal grounds, do you think I should bite the bullet and let my cousin off the hook? Just because you bailed me out? What does he have to do with that? And, what does my contract with him has to do with my relationship with you?
"Nobody has done the right thing in this scenario, and the banks get a pass." Well, not true either. Goldman Sacks tried to refuse the money but was forced to take it.
Finally, what do you mean by "banks" when you say they get a pass. This is also a result of leftist propaganda and education. Unlike in 1800s most of the banks are owned by the American public (I know, leftists want you to think they are owned by the "rich"). Goldman Sacks, Citi, Bank of America are each owned by tens of millions of Americans. If you have an IRA, a 401K, a college savings plan --- almost any savings -- you probably own AIG, Goldman Sacks, BofA, GE, etc. That's one of the greatest achievement of socialist propaganda in this country: even conservatives are unaware of the fact that Wall Street is owned by Main Street. But i Foreclose on homes. I get all that about only borrowing what you can pay back, but....When the banks fail they get bailed out with my money.
I still think it is a big deal.
But where is perjury here? What I have is this:
"We had talked to them and they assured us they didn't have any of these problems,"
Well, that may have been their honest belief at the time. It may have been an error. People are all too quick to escalate accusations once the words like "bank" or "Goldman Sacks" are involved nowadays. If anyone is suspect, it is Attorneys General, who inflame the anger to show that they are on the "people's side" and vilify corporations.
The question addressed to Deacon had a context. He typically posts something anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and then keep silence. How is that different from using this forum for anti-capitalist propaganda? I am still open-minded about this, and posed an honest question.
So, loss of Title is no biggie, right???
Messed up chain of ownership, to the point NO ONE KNOWS WHO OWNS THE NOTE????
Yeah, that is just peachy, keno, dude.
Property Rights are so lame. Yeah, dude.
/s
The banks have a massive legal problem on their hands. Many of the previously filed foreclosures contain documentation that is factually incorrect, to be blunt, they have filed documents that contain lies. These include fabricated documents filed to cover up missing assignments of mortgage,that also include fraudulent signitures.
This now affects everyone. To-day I went to my local county courthouse and searched the title to my home. Seven years ago I refinanced my mortgage and found a registered copy of that mortgage. Since that day I was advised on at least four accasions that the mortgage had been sold / assigned to a new investor. This triggered correspondence back to me advising me that my payments would go to a new loan servicer. I complied with all of these requests. The four assignments of mortgage were never registered against my title and now I am confronted with the cold hard fact that I now need to hire a lawyer to clear my title. The missing four assignments put me in a position where I need to confront the party who is taking my payments and ask him to verify his right to receive my monthly payments.
In many previous cases the mortgage companies have fabricated, back dated and fraudulently signed these assignments to clear up this issue. In my case it is apparent that they need to find these four or possibly more assignments and register them. I will be forced to carry out a forensic investigation of all of the assignments to make sure that they are valid. I will have to do this because I am on notice that many thousands / hundreds of thousands / possibly millions of these documents are floating around courthouses of America. Once you commit a fraud on the court it is set in legal concrete and cannot be undone.
Now everyone will be forced to make a trek down to the courthouse to investigate their mortgage registration. This is not a simple question of correcting a gramatical error like mispelling a name , date or address. It is straight out fraud. In my case their is a high probability that the four missing assignments may point to fraud on the investors that bought my loan. By failing to register the assignment they only got an unsecured or equitable interest in the loan. This creates all sorts of legal hazards to various investment funds holding my note. At this point I can renege on my payments, declare bankruptcy and they have no legal recourse against they security they were promised.
Thank you, Deacon. It would help if you were to accompany your articles with a comment of your own at the beginning of the thread.
Not so long ago people were ashamed to be deadbeats - - now they’re proudly looking for an angle.
I am very sorry to hear about what you are going through. YOu also made me think of doing the same (we refinance twice in the last three or four years).
later read
Not a new alarm bell. It's one of the manifestations of the mortgage mess that was created by the Community Reinvestment Act for the purpose of social engineering, which led to the housing bubble. Those same banks that were forced to overlook the application standards discover that standards were overlooked. For me, the alarm went off long ago.
"Wells Fargo found problems with foreclosure affidavits in 23 U.S. states where the final internal review or the notarization of the documents did not meet company standards. The bank plans to re-file the affidavits by mid-November. "
An affidavit is a legal document presented in court. Lying on one is perjury. Wells Fargo is now admitting that they are going to rewrite 55,000 of those documents.
A company spokesperson is not going to flat out admit they shredded/lost documents and broke the chain of title, and now they are forging documents in order to try to bluff their way into gettng the properties back. That would attract a little bit too much of the wrong kind of attention. So of course they are going to spin this as a minor clerical error.
This gets even more complicated. Last year I had a heart attack and my income / self employed collapsed. I went thru a loan modification at the end of the year that reduced my payments. Now I am confronted with the fact that this loan modification may be bogus because I do not know who owns the mortgage at the time the loan was modified.
In many cases, homeowners were simply rolled by fake assignments and thrown out on the kerb. The sub prime mortgage holders defaulted several years ago. Now the banks are dumping on decent families that have been unemployed and cannot get work. They could work out forbearance plans with these folk, but they do not want to do this. Now the middle class is rising up and attempting to mount a defense. This is a very bad time to hold shares in the major banks, they will be decimated. The federal government is complicit in all of this, they have completely destroyed the secondary market for finance of home purchases. This is a major contributor to the “drag” on home prices.
Leftist propaganda? Come on. Goldman Sachs gets a dollar for dollar pay out from AIG, which was propped up with tax payers money. AIG turns out was just a middle man to pass taxpayers cash to Goldman sachs. Yes the banks got a pass.
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