SEC charges former Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac executives with fraud

From:  Washington Post 

By David S. Hilzenrath and Zachary A. Goldfarb December 16, 2011 Follow @Goldfarb

The SEC charged six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with securities fraud Friday, saying they misled the public about the companies’ exposure to subprime loans during the mortgage meltdown.

The executives charged in the civil suits include Daniel H. Mudd, former chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Richard F. Syron, who was chairman and chief executive at Freddie Mac.

The executives are among the most prominent individuals the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of wrongdoing related to the financial crisis, and the legal action comes at a time when the SEC and the Justice Department are facing criticism for not doing more to hold executives accountable.  MORE

Yuba jury awards homeowner $16 million in mortgage case

By Dale Kasler       dkasler @sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Jul. 18, 2014 - 2:43 pm

It started out as a simple loan modification for a troubled homeowner. It turned into a $16.2 million jury verdict against a nationwide loan-servicing company.

A Yuba Superior Court jury this week awarded $16.2 million in damages to a homeowner who nearly lost his home to foreclosure after the loan servicer botched his mortgage modification, the homeowner’s lawyers said Friday.

Phillip Linza, a homeowner in Plumas Lake, was awarded the damages after a three-year battle against PHH Mortgage Services, a loan servicer based in Mount Laurel, N.J.

Linza’s attorneys, Andre Chernay and Jon Oldenburg of the United Law Center in Roseville, said the award included $514,000 in compensatory damages and $15.7 million in punitive damages.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/18/6566661/yuba-jury-awards-16-million-in.html#storylink=cpy

Secret Inside BofA Office of CEO Stymied Needy Homeowners

From:  Bloomberg 

REQUEST FROM A READER - We are trying to get the world's attention about the fraud.  This article details some of it.  We would like to share it with Bank of America's customers.  Are you on facebook?  If you would like to help please copy/paste onto Bank of America's facebook page on Monday, May 12.  You cannot 'post' but you can 'comment'.  Pick any of their posts and add attached link as a comment.  Masses of people posting will get their attention and more people will understand what is happening to this country.

We are announcing this via email so the posts on Monday, 12th will be a surprise.

Please share with friends.

Many thanks,

Susan...and the million plus victims

by Hugh Son 

Photographer: Phelan M. Ebenhack/Bloomberg

Isabel Santamaria, top right, her husband Abdiel Echeverria, top left, daughter Rebecca, 13, lower left, son... Read More

Isabel Santamaria thought she finally caught a break in her effort to save her Florida home from foreclosure after nine frustrating months: She reached Bank of America Corp.’s Office of the CEO and President. 

What the mother of two autistic children didn’t know is that her case would find its way to contractors, including Urban Lending Solutions in Broomfield, Colorado, far from the bank’s headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bank of America hired the firm founded by Chuck Sanders, a former Pittsburgh Steelers running back, to clear a backlog of complaints about a federal program designed to prevent foreclosures. 

“It felt like a big deal, reaching the CEO’s office,” Santamaria, 43, said of having her June 2010 call escalated to what she was told was the bank’s top level. “It only happened because I complained to my congressman, the attorney general, television stations. They only put you there if you make a big stink, but once you’re there, they still don’t help you.”  MORE

Two Cent Foreclosure

From:  7News - WSVN

Reported by Carmel Cafiero, Investigative Reporter - email

Produced by Danny Cohen, Special Projects Producer - email

WSVN-TV - 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco

It's no secret that there have been a lot of abuses in the huge number of foreclosures filed in recent years, but can you imagine a foreclosure over two cents? Hard to believe, but Carmel Cafiero is on just such a case.

WSVN -- This Lighthouse Point condo has been home to Gloria Jacques for eight years, but for the last two of those years, the 80-year-old has been in fear of losing her home to foreclosure despite never having missed a mortgage payment.

Her attorney says Bank of America filed for foreclosure over two payments that were each one penny short, payments that the bank deducted from her account.

Tom Murphy: "Well, Bank of America shortchanged the payment that they were making to themselves for her mortgage."

Carmel Cafiero: "So it was a bill pay type thing?"

MORE

How a Bad-ass California Mayor is Taking on Big Banks

From:  Alternet 

by Ellen Brown 

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin is using eminent domain to help homeowners and challenge Too Big to Fail.

March 3, 2014  |  In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorgan Chase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging; yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater (meaning the balance owed exceeds the current value of the home), sapping homeowners’ budgets, the housing market and the economy. Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands. 

Gayle McLaughlin, the bold mayor of Richmond, California, has gone where no woman dared go before, threatening to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain from Wall Street banks and renegotiate them on behalf of beleaguered homeowners. A member of the Green Party, which takes no corporate campaign money, she proved her mettle standing up to Chevron, which dominates the Richmond landscape. But the banks have signaled that if Richmond or another city tries the eminent domain gambit, they will rush to court seeking an injunction. Their grounds: an unconstitutional taking of private property and breach of contract.

How to refute those charges? There is a way; but to understand it, you first need to grasp the massive fraud perpetrated on homeowners. It is how you were duped into paying more than your house was worth; why you should not just turn in your keys or short-sell your underwater property away; why you should urge Congress not to legalize the MERS scheme; and why you should insist that your local government help you acquire title to your home at a fair price if the banks won’t. That is exactly what Richmond and other city councils are attempting to do through the tool of eminent domain. MORE

Bradburn v. Bank of America N.A., ReconTrust, et al. Court Order Declaring Bank of America's Foreclosure Sale to be Void and Setting it Aside

From: US Supra Business Advisor

2/11/2014  by Barry Fagan

 

 

Superior Court judge George Bowden ruled that Bank of America's actions had been "unfair and deceptive" and voided the foreclosure.

Judge George N. Bowden of the Superior Court in Washington State ruled against Bank of America (BoA) in a foreclosure battle that ended with the nonjudicial foreclosure sale under the Deed of Trust Act (DTA). Bowden acknowledged that this case was like most; “convoluted in the minefield” that is the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) system. Bradburn, the homeowner, was told by BoA “that he should stop making his mortgage payments so that he could qualify for refinancing.”

BoA ensured that this homeowner was in default of the mortgage by promising to refinance; then initiated litigation against the homeowner to retrieve the property for failure by Bradburn to remain current on his payments.

Bowden pointed out that the DTA “seems to contemplate a borrower and a lender with an independent trustee having the power to foreclose on the deed of trust in the event of default by the borrower. The lender would normally hold the underlying note and be the beneficiary of it. Here matters have been complicated by the sale of the underlying note from HomeStar Lending to Countrywide, which was later acquired by [BoA].”

This is another major victory against the unethical and illegal foreclosures industry that has left millions of Americans homeless. It's also a strike against the widespread practice of having companies that have an incentive to foreclose act as the "trustee" on the home—in this case it was ReconTrust, which itself is a subsidiary of Bank of America. They're supposed to be neutral under state law.

MERS GETS ITS ASS KICKED IN CALIFORNIA COURT! NOT A BENEFICIARY!

From:  Justice League 

MERS GETS ITS ASS KICKED IN CALIFORNIA COURT! NOT A BENEFICIARY! 

 First Page, others at link. 

Download Case (PDF)