Foreclosure Nation

Bank of America has agreed to pay investors $8.5 billion to compensate them for Countrywide’s dealings years before the subprime lender was acquired by BofA. The company said in a statement Wednesday that the settlement resolves “nearly all” of its repurchase exposure stemming from legacy first-lie...

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Just how much will it cost the big banks to atone for the mortgage mess? Bank of America announced Wednesday that it would take a whopping $20 billion hit to put the fallout from the subprime bust behind it and satisfy claims from angry investors. But for its peers, the settlements may just be sta...

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Litigation related to mortgage servicing surged during the first quarter, after last fall’s robo-signing issues raised questions about servicers’ procedures and garnered widespread attention from mainstream media. Mortgage servicing litigation increased 88 percent over the first three months of thi...

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The American Bankers Association has sent a letter to key lawmakers in the Senate, urging them to reject foreclosure legislation proposed by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Their bill, tagged the Regulation of Mortgage Servicing Act, has been introduced as an amendment t...

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In another blow to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS), a New York appellate court ruled against the embattled mortgage ownership and servicing rights company in a case last week, casting doubt on its business model and increasing speculation about the role that possible re-foreclo...

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Three years into the foreclosure epidemic, desperate condominium and homeowner associations are now beginning to employ aggressive law firms and collection agencies in a new tactic aimed at recovering delinquent fees. The debt collectors working for these associations are asking the courts to use m...

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Ruling in favor of Avelo Mortgage, the Second Appellate District of the California Court of Appeals declared Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) a proper beneficiary on the deed of trust in Ferguson v. Avelo Mortgage. In his June 1 ruling, Judge David S. Milton stated that MERS, ...

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Lawsuit brings cash beyond state foreclosure limits South Florida condominium and homeowners communities that have foreclosed on delinquent owners have been stymied by a state law limiting what boards can get from a bank for past-due assessments to 12 months or 1 percent of the original mortgage. ...

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Who would have thought financially strapped condo owners and banks would be on the same side? Leave it to the Florida Legislature to find a way. Lawmakers amended the Condominium Act last year to allow condo and homeowner associations to direct tenants — under threat of eviction — to redirect rent...

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The sun was getting high and Alex Diaz de Villegas was perspiring as he rode a golf cart across a Homestead community's 60 lushly landscaped acres. He inspected recently planted palms and visited three newly built gatehouses where guards screen nonresidents by asking for identification. "You would...

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The alleged failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide stable housing to veterans suffering from severe cases of post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental disorders leaves many of them facing homelessness, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court ...

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The Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Superior Court to rescind investments it made in private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by 115 securitization trusts totaling $5.8 billion. The suit alleges that the securities dealers, underwriters, i...

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The office of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi announced it filed a lawsuit on Friday against three South Florida companies that allegedly were charging upfront fees for loan modification services to homeowners facing foreclosure, which is illegal under state law. Home Owner Protection Economics,...

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The nation’s top mortgage servicers met Wednesday in Washington with the attorneys general from five states as well as Obama administration officials, beginning negotiations in earnest over new rules for homeowners who are in default. The one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that an agreement...

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Palm Beach Circuit Chief Judge Peter Blanc has advised foreclosure attorney David J. Stern that he gave improper notice to withdraw from his firm’s cases and will consider dismissals as a last-ditch solution if no one picks up cases for mortgage lenders. In a March 4 letter to Blanc, Stern begged...

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After reports that the timeline to iron out final details of the robo-signing settlement is “ambitious,” representatives from several major servicers, attorneys general, and some federal regulators are said to have a meeting planned for Wednesday, marking their first face-to-face discussion of terms...

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A group of Bank of America Corp. shareholders filed suit Monday against the bank over its foreclosure paperwork practices. The suit was filed in the N.Y. Supreme Court in Manhattan. The Charlotte-based bank (NYSE:BAC) “did not properly record many of its mortgages when originated or acquired, which...

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Bank of America is about to give the students at Baldwin Preparatory School in North Palm Beach an economics lesson that could send them packing. The banking giant (NYSE: BAC) filed a foreclosure lawsuit March 11 against the for-profit Baldwin Preparatory School, along with managing members Gena S....

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Embattled foreclosure attorney David J. Stern has filed about $15 million in claims against eight lenders he formerly represented. Stern recently filed eight lawsuits in Miami-Dade and Broward counties against the very lenders that once hired him to handled tens of thousands of foreclosures. The l...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said last week that Bank of America, along with several other major servicers, must give shareholders a vote on whether or not the company must open up its foreclosure practices for an independent audit. The SEC ruled that BofA must include the option o...

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Perhaps in preparation for the meeting between bank representatives and lawmakers scheduled for Wednesday, servicers have reportedly drafted their own proposal in response to the robo-signing settlement they were given earlier this month. Ron D’Vari, CEO of asset management and capital markets adv...

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> According to a story in the Financial Times, "The five biggest US mortgage servicers > were told this week at a private meeting with regulators to consider paying delinquent > borrowers up to $21,000 each as part of a broader settlement of the foreclosure > crisis...The industry-wide "cash for...

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Today Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a first-of-its-kind settlement against attorney Marshall C. Watson and his law firm, one of the largest foreclosure firms in Florida, for alleged improprieties in the prosecution of foreclosure cases throughout Florida. This settlement, which calls ...

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NEW YORK - JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could be forced to repurchase thousands of home equity loans, after a judge ruled in favor of a bond insurer that argued it could build its case based on a sampling of loans. The ruling against EMC Mortgage Corp, once a un...

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After reports that the largest mortgage servicers, some attorneys general, and even some government agencies are not comfortable with the terms in the servicer proposal, there has been renewed effort to try to come to a solution that works for all parties. The proposal was given to servicers with t...

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Opposition to the proposed servicer settlement developed a stronger stance this week as four attorneys general released a letter to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading the states’ investigation. Attorneys general Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, Pam Bondi of Florid...

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State attorneys general say they are willing to work with mortgage servicers to reach a settlement deal that would resolve the joint investigation of industry practices that led to last fall’s robo-signing scandal and widespread foreclosure moratoriums. But no slap on the wrist will do. The group ...

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A plan to resolve a nationwide probe of foreclosure and mortgage-servicing practices is being opposed by four more Republican state attorneys general, who say the terms of a deal may foster a “moral hazard.” In a letter to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat who has taken the lead in the i...

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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) filed a lawsuit last week against three former Washington Mutual (WaMu) executives and two of their wives, alleging that they ran the bank into the ground in order to increase their own compensation. The lawsuit names former WaMu CEO Kerry Killinger,...

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To the Editor: In “Another Inside Job” (column, March 14), Paul Krugman endorsed the proposed settlement between the state attorneys general and five of the largest mortgage servicing firms in the nation, and condemned those policy makers who have questioned or criticized the proposal. Let’s be ...

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Another lawsuit centered around mortgage securities backed by faulty loans may be brewing. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has threatened to sue four banks and investment firms unless they refund more than $50 billion for mortgage-related bonds that went bad, according to the Wall...

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NEW YORK - The trustee overseeing the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Holdings'(LEHMQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) broker dealer has sued Citibank to recover more than $1.3 billion in cash and other assets, according to court papers filed on Friday. The assets include a $1 billion depos...

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NEW YORK - A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) director accused of leaking confidential boardroom information has sued U.S. regulators, saying they are trying to unfairly deprive him of a jury trial. Rajat Gupta is fighting civil charges that he tipped Gall...

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The British economist John Maynard Keynes famously observed, 75 years ago, that statesmen who think that they are pursuing policies of their own devise are really showing themselves to be "the slaves of some defunct economist." In America today statesmen are more likely to be the slaves of some defu...

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State attorneys general are pushing lenders to reduce loan balances and said they hope to reach a final settlement with banks over their mortgage-servicing and foreclosure practices within two months. The states along with federal agencies submitted a 27-page settlement proposal last week to the c...

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WASHINGTON - A comprehensive settlement between U.S. authorities and banks over alleged abuses of mortgage servicing needs to be reached quickly to help the housing market heal, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday. Geithner said such a settlement would allow the government to focus ...

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NEW YORK -- The Obama administration is seeking to force the nation's five largest mortgage firms to reduce monthly payments for as many as three million distressed homeowners in as little as six months as part of an agreement to settle accusations of improper foreclosures and violations of consumer...

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WILMINGTON, Del., - A U.S. government regulator sued three former top executives at Washington Mutual Bank for their role in the biggest bank failure in the nation's history, accusing them of recklessly making billions of dollars in shoddy home loans. The three "gambled billions of dollars of WaMu'...

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Some lawmakers, judges and regulators are trying to rein in the U.S. debt-collection industry's use of arrest warrants to recoup money owed by borrowers who are behind on credit-card payments, auto loans and other bills. More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to...

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A Senate proposal to fill a shortfall in the budgets of the state courts and clerks would fill most of the gap but still leave the judicial system $32.9 million short of what it needs to finish the fiscal year. A draft budget released by the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committe...

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I. A Doral company must make monthly payments to its lender regardless of the expected outcome of its commercial foreclosure cases, the 3rd District Court of Appeal decided Wednesday. The ruling on the cases brought by the Bank of Miami against Farah Real Estate and Investment marks the first appel...

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The State Bar of California has removed the law license of Michael T. Pines, a lawyer who garnered substantial media coverage for advising clients to break into their foreclosed homes. The state bar advised Pines, of Pines & Associates in Encinitas, Calif., on March 11 that the it was placing hi...

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This article has been corrected to show that requests for attorney and accounting fees have yet to be submitted by the plaintiffs to the court. Due to a reporting error, the original version erroneously stated that the fees were included in a final judgment totaling $3.4 million. In one of the lon...

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A plan to force the nation’s biggest mortgage firms into helping millions of homeowners avoid foreclosure was supposed to take two months to hammer out. The timeline, it turns out, was overly optimistic. The effort, endorsed by the Obama administration and an assortment of state regulators, is fac...

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According to a community advocacy group in California, home value losses from foreclosed homes in California have cost a minimum of $632 billion, and could end up costing as much as $1 trillion. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) released a report on Thursday detailing th...

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Lurking in a proposed mortgage fraud settlement with the state attorneys general is a clause that could be worth billions for the big banks. Yes, I mean the settlement that might extract the supposedly large sum of $20 billion from the banks to settle foreclosure fraud. The one denounced as a “shak...

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The settlement terms prompted by robo-signing investigations and presented to servicers by government agencies and attorneys general last week feature 27 pages of rules and regulations for the handling of loans on owner occupied primary residences. Though the details of the settlement have been rel...

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Everyone has heard of the woman who spilled coffee on herself and won $3 million from McDonald's. Perhaps you recall an editorial similar to this one, which ran in the San Diego Union Tribune: "A winning lottery ticket... absurd... a stunning illustration of what's wrong with America's civil justice...

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As predicted by many reports following the recent settlement proposal from the state attorneys general and several federal agencies, servicers are not reacting with enthusiasm to the terms offered. One of the biggest conflicts in coming to an agreement is the proposed punishments servicers will ha...

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WASHINGTON — A broad agreement could be struck within two months to overhaul how millions of foreclosures are handled by the nation’s biggest banks and to expand the use of home loan modifications, according to Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa. All 50 state attorneys general, along with fe...

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The Florida Supreme Court is in for an upheaval if the Republican-dominated Legislature has anything to say about it. A blockbuster announced Monday by House Speaker Dean Cannon would break the court in two — one for civil cases and the other for criminal cases. The measure, which would require a ...

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State attorneys general expect major changes in their mortgage servicing settlement, reports Brady Dennis: "State attorneys general, who soon will enter settlement talks with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers after revelations of flawed foreclosure paperwork and other shoddy practices, will ac...

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By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Brady Dennis Washington Post Staff Writers The nation's overburdened foreclosure system is riddled with faked documents, forged signatures and lenders who take shortcuts reviewing borrower's files, according to court documents and interviews with attorneys, housing adv...

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By Brady Dennis Washington Post Staff Writer Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is heading a 50-state investigation into flawed and fraudulent foreclosure practices by big banks and lenders, is scheduled to testify about the issue Tuesday afternoon before the Senate Banking Committee. He also ...

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By Brady Dennis, State attorneys general, who soon will enter settlement talks with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers after revelations of flawed foreclosure paperwork and other shoddy practices, will accept nothing less than wholesale changes to the way those companies treat troubled homeowne...

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The latest on the Attorney General servicer settlement news can be found here:PostAGServicer[http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=zy6u9cdab&et=1104871779075&s=6013&e=001XoJ2389h64umIjsfiB-i9lGEjohAzRzFXKhOL1gjsF6P7dN6_Xlxj1ZAgQe6yKM6uR4wyC1dmgPjhrY9BvXbdvSZlsWy8CkVUkA3WACK6Mi41zbEXbAK8IoWPK2ikrjQUx6UDsa18x...

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States' mortgage settlement proposal with banks WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The leading U.S. securities industry trade organization expressed strong reservations about a settlement proposal that state attorneys general have presented to five banks over allegations of widespread wrongdoing in servicing...

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Federal regulators and state attorneys general say their investigations of servicing practices and foreclosure processes have uncovered “critical deficiencies and shortcomings” that have resulted in violations of foreclosure laws. They’ve made it clear that mortgage servicers will be required to mak...

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More legal woes have developed for Bank of America, as some of its mortgage investors brought a lawsuit against the lender in an attempt to force the bank to buy back bad loans. According to Bloomberg, the original balance of securitized loans involved in the case was $2.8 billion, and the plainti...

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NEW YORK - Michael Lewis, best-selling author of "The Big Short" about the mortgage meltdown, has been sued for defamation by an asset manager featured in the book. Other targets in the lawsuit are Lewis' publisher and prominent hedge fund manager Steven Eisman of FrontPoint Partners LLC. Wing Cha...

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HSBC Holdings PLC has suspended all foreclosure actions in the United States, according to the company’s annual regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). HSBC says it decided to temporarily halt foreclosure proceedings after examinations by federal regulators uncovered w...

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Two more rulings have defended the right of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) to foreclose on behalf of lenders. A case in New Hampshire and another in California affirmed the right of the company to act as a nominee on behalf of its members and foreclose on properties. In his decis...

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An internal review by SunTrust Banks, Inc. has uncovered problems with the paperwork in thousands of foreclosure cases, according to the Atlanta-based company’s annual regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We recently conducted an assessment of our foreclosure process in ...

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Even as state attorneys general and regulators in Washington approach the end of their investigation into abuses by the nation’s biggest mortgage companies, deep disputes are emerging over how much to punish the banks as well as exactly who should benefit from a settlement. The newly created Consu...

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UNDERWRITING BULLETIN 2011-06 To: ALL FLORIDA OFFICES AND AGENTS OF Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Agency Underwriting Department Date: March 3, 2011 Re: Mortgage Electroni...

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ONE crucial reason the nation’s mortgage industry ran itself — and the entire nation — off the rails was its obsession with speed. Mortgages had to be approved chop-chop, loans pooled instantly. When it came to foreclosure, well, the quicker the better. So it is disturbing that the same need for s...

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One of the most startling exit-poll results to emerge from the 2010 midterm elections was the finding that the 35 percent of voters who (correctly) blamed the economic collapse on Wall Street actually voted Republican by a margin of 56-42 percent. As Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin wrote in a sifting...

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Raymond E. Bowman, the former president of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage, pleaded guilty on Monday in connection with a $1.9 billion fraud that included trying to deceive the federal bank bailout program. Mr. Bowman, 45, of Atlanta, admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank...

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The new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website proclaims that no financial company "should be able to build, or feel pressure to build, a business model around unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices." How ironic, then, that the bureau itself is trying to extend its reach by extort...

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More backlash from the 27-page proposed servicer settlement developed on Wednesday when five representatives from the House Financial Services Committee voiced their disapproval and concern in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The letter, signed by committee chairman Spencer Bachus, ...

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Never underestimate the power of an employee who feels wronged. One of the striking ideals of the American experiment in democracy is that we should all be equal under the law, whether we are a middle-aged African-American woman struggling to make ends meet or a multi-billion dollar internationa...

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Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is pushing back against a government proposal that would force his company to assume responsibility for billions of dollars in mortgage debt, according to The New York Times. The proposal would encourage financially-troubled homeowners to default, Bank of Ameri...

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Obama Proposal Seeks Multibillion-Dollar Settlement of Loan-Servicing Cases The Obama administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that could force America's largest banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars. Terms of th...

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Bankers began whining as soon as word of a proposed mortgage fraud settlement case hit the street, even though it was a pretty sweet deal for them. From the Wall Street Journal: "Banks Bristle at Mortgage-Loan Plan." Even the lightest, most symbolic of penalties is apparently too much for their ...

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To: All Florida Offices and Agents of Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Agency Underwriting Department This Bulletin supplements Underwriting Bulletin 2010-23. The Bank of America (“B...

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Three of the nation's largest banks said Friday that they expect to be sanctioned by the U.S. government for their foreclosure practices, securities filings show. The disclosures come on the heels of reports federal regulators are nearing a multi-billion dollar deal to settle allegations that the b...

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The Obama administration is seeking to broker a deal that would have the nation's largest mortgage lenders agree to pay as much as $30 billion in fines to settle state and federal claims that they abused borrowers and illegally foreclosed on homes, according to state and federal officials engaged in...

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A New York judge has ruled that Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) does not have the right to transfer mortgages on behalf of its members, meaning it does not have the right to file foreclosures on behalf of lenders. The company has recently been under fire for the practice, but...

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NEW YORK - Lehman Brothers and Barclays deceived JPMorgan Chase & Co with bad assets that the failed investment bank's own employees dubbed "goat poo," according to new court papers that escalate a legal battle between the financial firms. JPMorgan filed new court claims in the case, contending tha...

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WHAT does it take to hold your powerful bosses accountable if they try to bully you out the door? Documents, e-mails, a former deputy district attorney as your lawyer — and a never-say-die approach. Such was the lesson learned by Michael G. Winston, a former executive at the Countrywide Financia...

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It's not clear how this story will turn out, but right now Patrick Rodgers is living a pay-back fantasy probably shared by millions of struggling U.S. homeowners. Frustrated by a dispute with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and by his inability to get answers to questions, the West Philadelphia homeowne...

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HOUSTON — Jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford has filed a lawsuit accusing prosecutors and federal agents of depriving him of his constitutional rights by using abusive law-enforcement tactics. He is asking for $7.2 billion in damages. The lawsuit filed Wednesday comes after Stanford was decl...

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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has sent letters to several former executives of Washington Mutual warning that it was considering taking legal action tied to their role in the collapse of the savings bank, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. F.D.I.C. officials have discu...

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The Obama administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that could force America's largest banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars. Terms of the administration's proposal include a commitment from mortgage servicers to reduc...

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United States Bankruptcy Judge Robert Grossman has ruled that MERS's business practices are unlawful. He explicitly acknowledged that this ruling sets a precedent that has far-reaching implications for half of the mortgages in this country. MERS is dead. The banks are in big trouble. And all foreclo...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged three former executives at IndyMac Bancorp with securities fraud for misleading investors about the lender’s failing financial condition. The executives, former CEO Michael Perry, and former CFOs A. Scott Keys and S. Blair Abernathy, alleged...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged three former executives at IndyMac Bancorp with securities fraud for misleading investors about the lender’s failing financial condition. The executives, former CEO Michael Perry, and former CFOs A. Scott Keys and S. Blair Abernathy, alleged...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged three former executives at IndyMac Bancorp with securities fraud for misleading investors about the lender’s failing financial condition. The executives, former CEO Michael Perry, and former CFOs A. Scott Keys and S. Blair Abernathy, alleged...

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Last week a New York judge ruled that the relationship between Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) and its members is not one in which the company can act on behalf of the lenders in filing documents and proceeding with foreclosures. But the next day a judge in Kansas ruled the connecti...

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A California appeals court ruling could have far reaching effects for servicers who believe oral promises do not carry weight. Last month, the three judges hearing the case of Aceves v. U.S. Bank found that the bank had promised to negotiate a loan modification for a customer while intending to pr...

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The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of a lender Wednesday in a foreclosure case examining the question of fraudulent court filings but asked the Florida Supreme Court to review the issue. Bank of New York Mellon rightly escaped a claim that it committed a fraud on the court by voluntari...

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California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced Friday that the $6.5 million settlement from two former Countrywide Financial Corp. executives will be used to establish a fund to help foreclosed homeowners. The settlement comes from a litigation that began more than two years ago against Angelo...

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Three Ohio judges are forcing lawyers to double-check foreclosure documents. Judges in Franklin County, Ohio, are making lawyers verify documents for residential foreclosures, and asking lawyers to sign certifications that verify that clients said the documents were accurate. The Columbus Dispatch ...

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Two of my biggest concerns about the mortgage mess involve the conduct of lawyers at every stage, from creating the toxic securities to foreclosing on homes, and that so far the major players haven't been held accountable for their actions in creating the crisis. Both concerns are neatly encapsula...

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On Jan. 27, a California appeals court ruled that U.S. Bank conned Claudia Aceves out of her home. Specifically, the court found that U.S. Bank (USB) told Aceves that if she gave up bankruptcy court protection on her home, it would negotiate a loan modification with her. But, the court found, the ba...

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Rumor has it that the 50-state attorneys general investigation into the Fraudclosure scandal is wrapping up. It's time for a backbone check. Will the state attorneys general just ask the big banks and service providers to turn over a chunk of change from seemingly bottomless pockets? (This strategy ...

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ALBUQUERQUE — Saving your home from foreclosure is increasingly a do-it-yourself project. Lawyers are scarce and free legal assistance is overwhelmed in New Mexico, so a community center here is offering an hourlong class in how to download the correct forms, decipher the lingo and mount a defen...

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Although Teresa O'Neal and Marco Delgado are among the millions who have lost their homes to foreclosure, they're fighting back by claiming a giant lender used "false and insufficient" documents to seize their properties. The two Tampa-area residents are seeking class action status for a suit aga...

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The attorney general leading the investigation into "robo-signing" mortgage companies may be backtracking on promises to help Americans wrongly foreclosed on stay in their homes. Iowa Attorney General Tim Miller is no longer promising to press criminal charges against bank officials who fraudulen...

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A recent report by Institutional Risk Analytics (IRA) says Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are two of the most sued financial service firms in the United States. IRA says that mortgage exposure is what is causing these two banks and others in similar situations to be embroiled in so many federal l...

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Finding buyers for condos at the Ibis Villas at Doral has been almost impossible for developer Pablo Valdes. So, when investor Michael Lawrence agreed to pay cash for five units in the mostly unsold project, Valdes began counting the days to closing. Now, almost a month after the deal was to be...

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A condominium association in Weston is seeking monetary sanctions against the Law Offices of David J. Stern, which it claims filed "fraudulent" court documents that led to two simultaneous foreclosures being filed on the same unit. The foreclosures brought on behalf of two lenders claiming to own t...

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From a PR standpoint, the Mass ruling is further encouraging parties on both side to ‘dig’ in. It's being leveraged by everyone else to essentially further their own agendas. This is a situation where, in truth, very few folks are driven purely by the desire for an accurate and just foreclosure s...

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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in an attempt to set aside a March ruling by the department that declared loan officers are entitled to overtime pay. In 2006 DOL issued an interpretation to MBA stating that typical loan ...

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There has been no shortage of reports of state attorneys general seeking accountability from servicers that they allege mishandled foreclosures. In December, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a fraud suit against Bank of America (BofA). Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto als...

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NEWARK, N.J. - Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted t...

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At the direction of the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the New Jersey Superior Court yesterday directed six of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and servicers to show cause why uncontested foreclosure actions they have filed should not be suspended. The Order to Show Cause, w...

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Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and four other mortgage lenders and service providers face a possible suspension of foreclosures in New Jersey by Jan. 19, under a judge’s order. The action, announced today by New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, also covers Citigroup ...

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NOTICE TO THE BAR RE: Emergent Amendments to Rules 1:5-6, 4:64-1 and 4:64-2 In light of irregularities in the residential foreclosure practice as reported in sworn deposition testimony in New Jersey and other states, the Court has adopted, on an emergent basis, amendments to Rules 1:5-6, 4:64-1 ...

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It is ORDERED that the attached amendments to Rules 1:5-6, 4:64-1 and 4:64-2 are adopted effective immediately. And, It is FURTHER ORDERED that in all uncontested residential foreclosure cases pending entry of judgment as of December 20, 2010, (1) within 60 (sixty) days, plaintiff’s counsel shal...

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IN THE MATTER OF RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE PLEADING AND DOCUMENT IRREGULARITIES Administrative Order 01-2010 ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER DIRECTING SUBMISSION OF INFORMATION FROM RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE PLAINTIFFS CONCERNING THEIR DOCUMENT EXECUTION PRACTICES TO A SPECIAL MASTER ...

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In a major ruling in the Massachusetts Supreme Court today, US Bank and Wells Fargo lost the “Ibanez case,” meaning that they don’t have standing to foreclose due to improper mortgage assignment. The ruling is likely to send shock waves through the entire judicial system, and seriously raise the sta...

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Bloomberg has a bombshell today, that a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court may invalidate certain types of mortgage transfers, a central process in mortgage securitizations. A ruling for the plaintiffs would render some past foreclosures invalid, raising the possibility that the borrowers...

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The Massachusetts Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling voiding two foreclosures because the banks failed to show the proper paperwork to prove they owned the loans-a decision that challenges the way mortgages were bundled and sold around the world. Shares of Wells Fargo and U.S. Ba...

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Currently winding its way through the Massachusetts Supreme Court — a little court case that could end up having big consequences for mortgage securitisations. It’s called the ‘Ibanez case’ and here’s the story. In late 2005, Antonio Ibanez gets a $103,500 adjustable-rate mortgage loan on a Spring...

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Bloomberg has a bombshell today, that a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court may invalidate certain types of mortgage transfers, a central process in mortgage securitizations. A ruling for the plaintiffs would render some past foreclosures invalid, raising the possibility that the borrowers...

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U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, trustee FN1 v. Antonio IBANEZ (and a consolidated case FN2 ). For ABFC 2005-OPT 1 Trust, ABFC Asset Backed Certificates, Series 2005-OPT 1.FN3). No. SJC-10694. October 7, 2010. January 7, 2011. Real Property, Mortgage, Ownership, Record title. Mortgage, Real...

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Florida Statutes 55.10 Judgments, orders, and decrees; lien of all, generally; extension of liens; transfer of liens to other security. — (1) A judgment, order, or decree becomes a lien on real property in any county when a certified copy of it is recorded in the official records or judgment lien...

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There has been no shortage of reports of state attorneys general seeking accountability from servicers that they allege mishandled foreclosures. In December, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a fraud suit against Bank of America (BofA). Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto a...

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A California homeowner sued Bank of America in small claims court and won $7,595 from the bank after it burned him on a mortgage modification. "It was a good victory for me and I think for homeowners around the country," Dave Graham told HuffPost. Graham, who lives in Big Bear City, Calif., appl...

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have reached another agreement with a lender to cover repurchase claims from alleged faulty underwriting standards in origination. Bank of America (BofA) announced Monday that it paid a nearly $3 billion settlement to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the last day of 2010 ...

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Last week Ally Financial announced that its mortgage unit, Residential Capital (ResCap), and some of its subsidiaries reached an agreement with Fannie Mae to resolve potential repurchase exposure for breaches in selling representations and warranties. The $462 million settlement releases ResC...

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WASHINGTON, DC-Bank of America has settled demands from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that it buy back mortgage loans that the GSEs said were sold and repackaged based on faulty data. The $2.8-billion settlement will relieve some pressure of Bank of America's balance sheet, as well as its stock price...

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NEW YORK — Bank of America Corp. reached a $2.8 billion settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over claims that one of its businesses sold bad mortgages. The payment is far lower than analysts expected and removes some uncertainty that has hovered over the bank. The settlement is the bigg...

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NEW YORK — Bank of America Corp. reached a $2.8 billion settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over claims that one of its businesses sold bad mortgages. The payment is far lower than analysts expected and removes some uncertainty that has hovered over the bank. The settlement is the biggest ...

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The five largest mortgage loan servicers, including Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), may be the first to settle with 50 state attorneys general who are investigating foreclosure practices, Bloomberg reported, citing Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. The attorney-genera...

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A Miami-Dade judge has moved out of the mainstream by imposing sanctions on a bank for attempting to delay finalizing a foreclosure — a tactic seen by the defense as a way to avoid taking title and becoming responsible for the payment of association fees. Shortly before the Christmas holiday, Miami...

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Some struggling homeowners are currently getting a temporary reprieve [1] from foreclosure sales and evictions during the holiday season, but that doesn't mean [2] all foreclosure cases have stopped moving through the courts -- and it doesn't mean we're done covering the developments in the forecl...

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WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc reached agreement to extend a key deadline in its $10 billion settlement that is at the end of its plan to end its bankruptcy, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The company said in a filing with Delaware's bankruptcy court it extended the...

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NEW YORK (By Jonathan Stempel) - Allstate Corp has sued Bank of America Corp, its Countrywide lending unit and 17 other defendants for allegedly misrepresenting the risks on more than $700 million of mortgage securities it bought from Countrywide. Allstate, the largest publicly traded U.S. home and...

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An arm of the United States Marshals Service undervalued what could amount to untold millions of dollars in assets forfeited by white-collar criminals — including some from the family of Bernard L. Madoff — and sold them for far less than they were worth, according to a lawsuit filed in federal...

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As the housing market came crashing down in 2008, the giant mortgage company Fannie Mae took an unprecedented step to help tackle the rising tide of foreclosures. It named an exclusive group of law firms that would help rapidly carry out the unsavory task of filing legal paperwork to remove homeowne...

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The first step in foreclosure process is that the homeowner is supposed to informed that the foreclosure is beginning. But as millions of Americans face foreclosure, even the process of alerting the homeowner with the serving of a summons has been filled with errors. The Times-Union wrote abou...

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TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clot...

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I. Lenders and their law firms are violating new procedures implemented by the Florida Supreme Court intended to address a controversy over botched foreclosure cases, according to attorneys for homeowners. After a national foreclosure scandal that resulted in a moratorium, new procedures implemen...

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Sending a sharp warning to employers nationwide, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the Kaplan Higher Education Corporation on Tuesday, accusing it of discriminating against black job applicants through the way it uses credit histories in its hiring process. The lawsuit, an unusual...

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TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter cl...

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| NEW YORK — New York's attorney general is suing accounting giant Ernst & Young, accusing it of helping defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers hide billions of dollars in debt from investors even as it teetered on the brink of financial collapse. The civil lawsuit, filed by Attorney General ...

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NEW YORK (AP, By LARRY NEUMEISTER) - Federal authorities say Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay more than $550 million to resolve a federal tax shelter fraud investigation. Authorities announced Tuesday that the bank also admitted criminal wrongdoing in connection with its participation in financial t...

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PHOENIX — Attorneys general in Arizona and Nevada filed civil lawsuits Friday against Bank of America Corp., alleging that the lender is misleading and deceiving homeowners who have tried to modify mortgages in two of the nation's most foreclosure-damaged states. Bank of America violated Arizona's ...

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U.S. regulators have opened a new line of inquiry in their mortgage foreclosure probe and are asking big Wall Street banks about the beginning stages of mortgage securitization, two sources familiar with the probe said. The Securities and Exchange Commission launched the new phase of its investigat...

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Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard announced Friday that his office has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina-based Bank of America (BofA) and its affiliated companies for alleged fraudulent acts committed after a March 2009 lawsuit. In March 2009, a judgment was entered into in order to resol...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly investigating lenders’ procedures for packaging home mortgages into securities bonds for sale to investors. Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the probe, says the SEC sent subpoenas last week to Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorga...

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ALL the revelations this year about dubious practices in the mortgage servicing arena — think robo-signers and forged signatures — have rightly raised borrowers’ fears that companies handling their loans may not be operating on the up and up. But borrowers aren’t the only ones concerned about...

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As the one-time largest plaintiff foreclosure law firm in Florida, the Law Offices of David J. Stern at its peak handled 20 percent of all foreclosures in the state, processing more than 70,000 foreclosure cases on behalf of major lenders like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America and JPMorgan Ch...

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In a bid to turn down the temperature in what promises to be an extended legal battle, Bank of America has opened a dialogue with investors who want the bank to buy back tens of billions in soured mortgages. But bank officials insisted on Wednesday the talks did not represent a shift in strategy ...

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Nationwide Title Clearing, a Palm Harbor company at the center of the nation's robo-signing controversy, is going on the offensive against its critics. On Wednesday, the company sued a St. Petersburg foreclosure defense lawyer, Matthew Weidner, for alleged libel and slander. And it recently obta...

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FORECLOSURE MESS How The Mighty Have Fallen It was a hard fall for one of South Florida’s wealthiest law firm heads, who started the year with 1,200 employees and sold his back-office processing company to a publicly traded company for more than $100 million. But David Stern of the Plantation-bas...

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LandAmerica Adopts New Underwriting Position: Assignments of Mortgages Suppose you’ve just sold your investment or income producing property and have a signed contract of sale. Is it too late to do a 1031 Exchange? Certainly not. As long as the relinquished property transaction has not closed, you...

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WASHINGTON — Bank of America has agreed to pay $137 million to resolve allegations that it paid for information that helped rig the bidding process and win business from cities and towns in 20 states. Federal and state officials announced the settlements Tuesday with the nation's largest bank. B...

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JACKSONVILLE, Florida (Reuters) - Lender Processing Services is riding the waves of foreclosures sweeping the United States, but in late October its CEO, Jeff Carbiener, found himself needing to reassure investors in the $2.8 billion company. Although profits were rolling in, LPS's stock had take...

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A state appeals court reversed another foreclosure Wednesday, ruling that leaving notice of a lawsuit at a homeowner's front door is not sufficient notification. It's the latest in a string of foreclosure reversals based on flaws in documents or the legal process, as appellate courts closely scr...

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A Palm Beach Circuit Judge has overruled fellow Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser and vacated orders accusing foreclosure defense firm Ice legal of filing "fraudulent" motions. Judge John Hoy reversed Sasser's orders directing the Royal Palm Beach firm to withdraw motions in three foreclosure cases becaus...

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A state appeals court reversed another foreclosure Wednesday, ruling that leaving notice of a lawsuit at a homeowner's front door is not sufficient notification. It's the latest in a string of foreclosure reversals based on flaws in documents or the legal process, as appellate courts closely scrut...

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Foreclosure defense attorney Peter Ticktin has told the Florida Bar that he has not done anything wrong by signing agreements that give him the right to take on mortgages on his client’s houses if he wins their foreclosure cases. The Bar launched an investigation of Ticktin after the New York Times...

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Bank of America Corp., battling demands for almost $13 billion of refunds from mortgage investors, reported that the fastest-growing group of claims involves loans to people with the best credit scores. Claims for refunds on prime mortgages surged 150 percent to $3.6 billion in the first nine mont...

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As the government hunts for conflicts of interest at Wall Street banks that peddled investments which contributed to the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, those banks are reportedly near settlement. The SEC is looking at banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanl...

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The system of pooling and selling mortgages around the world has caused widespread confusion about who owns the loans and raises questions about whether banks in some cases have the legal standing to foreclose, a state judge and consumer attorneys testified before Congress on Thursday. New York ...

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About a week ago, John O'Brien, Register of Deeds in Essex County Massachusetts, sent a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley asking that she look into whether MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) failed to pay legally required recording fees in Massachusetts when ...

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State and federal judges in New Jersey are putting mortgage foreclosures under greater scrutiny, not letting them go forward without timely possession of the note in a pair of recent decisions. On Nov. 16, a bankruptcy judge in Camden disallowed a proof of claim on a mortgage because the part...

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As part of their Contract with America, Republicans in Congress tried to shut the door on shareholder class actions against publicly traded companies in 1995. Many lawmakers at the time felt shareholders needed to learn to take losses when fickle markets dipped and not blame hard-working executive...

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Donald Trump and the developers of Fort Lauderdale's Trump International Hotel have failed in their latest attempt to dodge a lawsuit by buyers seeking to recover more than $6 million in pre-construction deposits. Broward Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein on Friday denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit ...

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WASHINGTON (By Martin Crutsinger, AP) - An Obama administration official says a preliminary investigation into the foreclosure process has found inexcusable breakdowns in the basic controls mortgage lenders should have been using. Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr said Tuesday that a for...

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A Wall Street real estate firm and Greenberg Traurig are on the defensive in a lawsuit sparked by a $41.5 million land deal gone wrong. A 587-page lawsuit filed Monday by a Hollywood real estate company against the nation's eighth-largest law firm and its client, GFI Acquisitions, signals the table...

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A Wall Street real estate firm and Greenberg Traurig are on the defensive in a lawsuit sparked by a $41.5 million land deal gone wrong. A 587-page lawsuit filed Monday by a Hollywood real estate company against the nation's eighth-largest law firm and its client, GFI Acquisitions, signals the table...

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I am torn between my sympathy for those who are about to lose their homes through foreclosure and the injury I see to the rule of rule and the economy itself in the way foreclosure proceedings are being challenged and processed. People are angry with the banks and for good reason, but it is importan...

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NEW YORK: U.S. officials are preparing insider trading charges against a host of financial players, including investment bankers and hedge fund managers, The Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The charges could surpass any previous investigations on Wall Street, a...

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NEW YORK — Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to pay $100 million to Citigroup Inc. to settle a dispute related to its acquisition of Wachovia Corp. in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. Wachovia was teetering on the brink of collapse from bad real estate loans when it initially agre...

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The term ‘robo-signer’ has come to mean those individuals who signed their names to tens of thousands of flawed documents at a million miles an hour with complete disregard for the truth and accuracy of contents of those documents. This word may well wind up being the official Miriam Webster Dictio...

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NEW YORK: U.S. officials are preparing insider trading charges against a host of financial players, including investment bankers and hedge fund managers, The Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The charges could surpass any previous investigations on Wall Street, and...

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| NEW YORK — Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to pay $100 million to Citigroup Inc. to settle a dispute related to its acquisition of Wachovia Corp. in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. Wachovia was teetering on the brink of collapse from bad real estate loans when it initially agree...

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Peter Ticktin, the South Florida attorney who has received national attention as a foreclosure defense expert, has something in common with his clients: He is fighting the bank to keep his house. Deutsche Bank National began foreclosure proceedings on Ticktin's Boca Raton home in 2007 after the l...

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State attorneys general and the country's biggest lenders are negotiating to create a nationwide fund to compensate borrowers who can prove they lost their home in an improper foreclosure, state and industry officials said. The fund would present a solution for both sides, helping banks avoid leng...

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The industry’s foreclosure paperwork problems were the focus on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) called a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the so-called robo-signing issue, which he called just the tip of the iceberg. Executives from several major banks – i...

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NEW YORK (By Jonathan Stempel) - A mortgage business run by a Florida lawyer whose foreclosure practices are under investigation may be forced to close if it fails to resolve a default with its lender, a regulatory filing shows. DJSP Enterprises Inc, run by the lawyer David Stern, on Monday said it...

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SAN FRANCISCO (By Dan Levine) - Lenders snarled in the legal thicket over shoddy U.S. foreclosure procedures have so far avoided national class action lawsuits from homeowners, largely because borrowers cannot demonstrate economic harm, according to plaintiff lawyers. Several large plaintiff fir...

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BankAtlantic Bancorp misled investors about its banking subsidiary’s financial health as South Florida’s commercial real estate market headed downhill in the recession, a Miami federal jury found today in a shareholder class action. The verdict could be a harbinger for financial institutions around...

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Another 155 employees received pink slips Thursday from the Law Offices of David J. Stern and DJSP Enterprises, which processes home foreclosure cases for the Plantation-based law firm. The layoffs came as Fannie Mae, which withdrew it business from the Stern firm after becoming one of its biggest ...

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A state appeals court on Wednesday reversed a trial court order forcing a developer to fork over a portion of deposits by 15 condo purchasers who sued when their luxury lofts on Sunny Isles Beach weren’t completed on time. The 3rd District Court of Appeal found Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Adrien...

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Fort Lauderdale-based BankAtlantic Bancorp intentionally misled investors about problems with loans to commercial developers, a Miami federal jury found Thursday in a rare securities fraud class action trial. The bank holding company made a series of eight false statements in financial filings with...

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A jury has ruled that BankAtlantic Bancorp and its officials violated federal securities laws. After more than a week of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict Thursday, finding that the price of the bank’s stock was inflated during parts of 2007 because of misstatements by the company. ...

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Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady issued a memorandum Wednesday directing chief judges of the state's trial courts to make sure foreclosure proceedings are open to the public. Canady's memo also emphasized that the Trial Court Budget Commission's goal of resolving 62 percent of f...

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NEW YORK (by Jonathan Stempel) - Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) has urged a federal judge to throw out a racketeering lawsuit over its alleged use of "robo-signers" in foreclosures. The largest U.S. bank said the Indiana plaintiffs, who lost their home to foreclosure in 2009, failed to show they were...

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Pressing for a Lake Worth homeowner's right to expose alleged fraud by a bank, a foreclosure defense attorney argued before a state appeals court that Bank of New York Mellon cannot stop a trial judge from reopening a case that had been dismissed. Oral arguments heard Wednesday looked at the caus...

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Companies led by foreclosure defense attorney David J. Stern face a shutdown if a subsidiary is unable to repay a credit line worth about $12 million, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. Bank of America gave DAL Group, a unit of Plantation-based DJSP Enterprises, a Nov...

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The expected litigation frenzy against mortgage lenders that used "robo-signing" tactics — mass signing and approval of foreclosure documents without verification — has launched, with class actions in Florida and Maine and a lawsuit by Ohio’s attorney general filed this month, all against GMAC Mortg...

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The Law Offices of David J. Stern, which has helped banks seize thousands of homes from homeowners who missed mortgage payments, is now having trouble paying its own bills. One of its subsidiaries is seeking bank forbearance for defaulting loans, and the shrinking company has fallen behind on rent...

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Companies led by foreclosure defense attorney David J. Stern face a shutdown if a subsidiary is unable to repay a credit line worth about $12 million, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. Bank of America gave DAL Group, a unit of Plantation-based DJSP Enterprises, a Nov. ...

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Loans to real estate developers ticked like a "time bomb" ready to sink BankAtlantic Bancorp’s stock, but investors were purposefully kept in the dark, a shareholder attorney argued Wednesday as a securities fraud class action trial neared its conclusion in Miami. Company attorney Eugene Stearns ex...

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The following is an article from the November 25, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. This issue is available Friday on newsstands, as well online in Rolling Stone’s digital archive. The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had cr...

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Answer: An Insatiable Appetite for Fees. We comment regularly about the misdeeds of plaintiff's class action lawyers and the dysfunctional class action system in which they operate. But we want to make it clear that by no means do we whitewash the misdeeds of corporate America. Indeed, could any...

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Bank of America says Old Republic International Corp. is “wrongfully withholding payment” on hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage insurance claims on home equity loans that have defaulted. BofA has filed a lawsuit against the mortgage insurer with a federal court in Charlotte, North Carol...

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Bank of America announced on Monday that it would resume home foreclosures in nearly two dozen states, despite the running controversy over how banks handled tens of thousands of cases of homeowners facing eviction. Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank and the servicer of roughly one in fi...

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After GMAC, Ally, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America publicly admit they have a credibility gap (to put it nicely), they only agreed to stop foreclosures in the minority of states where foreclosures require judicial approval. As long as they can hide their problems, they don’t exist? More like th...

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Servicing Notice: Termination of Relationship with the Stern Law Firm Fannie Mae has issued the following Notice (the entire text of the Notice is included in this e-mail): This Notice affects existing and future mediation, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and litigation referrals of mortgage loans in t...

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Last October, attorney Josh Bleil was being threatened with fines by a Miami-Dade circuit judge for presenting general defense motions on behalf of a client going through foreclosure. Judge Ronald Friedman struck all defense motions, handed the house back to the lender and told Bleil, "Tell your cl...

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When the Shapiro & Fishman foreclosure law firm moved to quash a subpoena from the Florida attorney general’s office, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jack Cox agreed, calling the subpoena overbroad, invasive and beyond its scope of authority. But when another foreclosure firm, the Law Offices of David J. ...

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EAST PATCHOGUE, N.Y. - A year ago, Long Island Judge Jeffrey Spinner concluded that a mortgage company's paperwork in a foreclosure case was so flawed and its behavior in negotiations with the borrower so "repugnant" that he erased the family's $292,500 debt and gave the house back for free. The j...

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The rough couple of months for Delray Beach developer Anthony Pugliese III got worse on Nov. 4, when Great Florida Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit over his planned Coconut Creek apartment project. The Miami Lakes-based bank (Pink Sheets: GFLB) named Pugliese and his St. Lucie Industrial Properties ...

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While they may be conducting their own investigations, federal prosecutors and national bank regulators for the most part aren’t the ones leading the investigation [1] into the foreclosure mess. At least that's the perception—one that's reinforced when Elizabeth Warren, Obama's head of consumer fina...

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Last October, attorney Josh Bleil was being threatened with fines by a Miami-Dade circuit judge for presenting general defense motions on behalf of a client going through foreclosure. Judge Ronald Friedman struck all defense motions, handed the house back to the lender and told Bleil, "Tell your cl...

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For some Florida residents, the price of getting out of foreclosure will include taking on a second mortgage — payable this time to their lawyers. The new mortgage, which takes effect only if the foreclosure is dismissed and the homeowner’s debt to the bank is reduced, is controversial among defen...

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The troubled Plantation foreclosure firm the Law Offices of David J. Stern and affiliate DJSP Enterprises laid off about 200 employees Thursday on the heels of word it lost major clients Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Stern attorney Jeffrey Tew of Tew Cardenas in Miami said he didn’t know how many a...

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I Ally Financial’s GMAC Mortgage subsidiary was the first major servicer to admit to problems in its foreclosure procedures that led to errors in legal affidavits. The findings led the company to freeze foreclosures and REO sales in certain states and cast a shadow of doubt over the integrity of ...

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A new poll released by the Washington Post shows that just over half of Americans, and two-thirds of Democrats, believe that the government should impose a temporary moratorium on foreclosures. On the eve of an important election, the White House is definitely caught in a bad spot. Someone needs to...

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U.S. taxpayers already own pieces of such problem-plagued companies as General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC, American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA) and Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC). Now the increasingly problematic "Mortgagegate" saga could land American taxpayers in the trou...

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For weeks, Wells Fargo has insisted that it’s not a part of the robo-signing debacle that’s given the industry another black eye, adamantly professing that its foreclosure affidavits are legitimate. That tune has changed with an announcement from the company late Wednesday that it will submit new af...

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After Valarie Stovall fell behind on the mortgage on her home near Hagerstown, her lender agreed in April to slash her monthly payment by $300, and she immediately started paying the reduced amount. That's why, Stovall said, she thought nothing of the yellow flier she ripped off her screen door as...

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Have you noticed that the lead dogs investigating the mortgage foreclosure mess are not any federal prosecutors or national bank regulators, but rather the state attorneys general? I sure have. I can’t think of a more encouraging development. Yeah, yeah, a handful of federal investigations have al...

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Though some of the players will change, the coordinated effort by attorneys general across the country to investigate — and ultimately reshape — foreclosure procedures is not expected to lose momentum because of Tuesday’s election. Tom Miller, Iowa’s attorney general, who is leading the effort, ...

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An attorney for BankAtlantic Bancorp shareholders bombarded the company’s chairman and chief executive officer with questions Wednesday, contending Alan Levan did not publicly express his true concerns about the quality of bank loans hurt by the real estate collapse. During cross-examination by sh...

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Buyers of REO homes owned by HUD may have their closing dates pushed back after this Friday, but the federal agency says any delays will be brief. Rumors have circulated from various corners of the industry that HUD is planning a moratorium on REO sales expected to close after the end of this week,...

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is putting mortgage lenders on alert regarding disclosures about potential losses from foreclosure paperwork defects and loans they may be forced to buy back from investors. In a letter sent to the CFOs of publicly traded banking companies, the federal ...

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The expanding investigation into Florida's foreclosure crisis has turned up a new problem that may involve a number of cases: Individuals hired by law firms to notify struggling homeowners when their foreclosure cases are to be heard in court may have filed faulty or false documents. Foreclosure ...

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The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have made it clear that they are more concerned about keeping the foreclosure mill going full speed than they are about determining whether the banks broke the law. Somehow throwing people out of their homes quickly is supposed to help the economy. Or ...

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When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen. “They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasn’t going — I wasn’t having it,” he said. “It was bad when I had to use the plastic Paper...

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Title insurers are voicing their confidence in mortgage servicers’ ability to correct foreclosure paperwork problems. They’ve decided not to require banks to consent to agreements vouching for the validity of foreclosure documentation, after talks between the two industry groups reportedly fell thr...

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SUMMARY NAR is meeting with several of the largest national mortgage lenders in an effort to communicate REALTOR® concerns and discuss how we can work together to make significant improvements to both the origination and short sale processes. These meetings mark a new phase of the relationship b...

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Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show. Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit ...

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Bloomberg News Consumer lawyers have been traveling to a remote 160-acre farm in the mountains of western North Carolina since 2006 to network, drink Scotch and prepare for legal combat in foreclosure and bankruptcy cases. They arrive in groups of a dozen or so for a four-day boot camp where they...

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By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ NYTimes.com Even as Bank of America begins to restart foreclosure proceedings in 23 states on Monday, the bank confirmed that it had discovered errors, including incorrect data and misspelled names, in the paperwork it has reviewed. For weeks, Bank of America has insisted i...

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By GRETCHEN MORGENSON NYTimes.com LAWYERS representing delinquent homeowners have been shouting for years about documentation problems in residential mortgages. Now that their complaints have gained traction with investors, attorneys general and some state court officials, the question of conseque...

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Paola Iuspa-Abbott Daily Business Review Fannie Mae has asked a Plantation-based law firm under investigation by state officials to put on hold all cases involving the government-sponsored mortgage buyer. Fannie Mae late Monday also told the Law Offices of David Stern, which the Florida attorney...

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Commentary by Andrew Berman Daily Business Review Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jack Cox ignited consternation Oct. 4 when he quashed a subpoena Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum issued against a law firm, effectively blocking an investigation into its foreclosure practices. In doing so, he call...

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To: All Florida Offices and Agents of: Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Underwriting Department Date: October 27, 2010 Re: CLARIFICATION OF PORTIONS OF UNDERWRITING BULLETIN 2010-23 (INSURING ...

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By Elizabeth Razzi Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 22, 2010; 10:31 PM The title insurance industry is maneuvering to protect itself from losses if courts rule that banks have played fast and loose with the foreclosure process. But people who buy foreclosed properties from banks may...

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October 22, 2010 By JOE NOCERA NYTimes.com Earlier this week, Bank of America, the nation’s largest consumer bank, reported its third-quarter earnings. It was a very good quarter; putting aside an accounting charge — a very large, $10.4 billion accounting charge, admittedly — the bank reported...

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By Allan Sloan Fortune Wednesday, October 27, 2010; 12:27 AM The biggest danger to the U.S. capitalist system doesn't come from communists or community activists or left-wing academics. It comes from some of the nation's biggest financial institutions. These companies, which helped create the f...

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Charles Toutant Daily Business Review October 27, 2010 Bank of America has been hit with a class action on behalf of homeowners seeking damages for alleged disregard of foreclosure process rules. The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, accuses Bank of America and two s...

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Bloomberg News October 25, 2010 Home lenders are making it tougher to get loans as investors step up demands for refunds on defective mortgages, damaging the housing market, executives said today at an industry conference. Already beset by billions of dollars in forced buybacks, originators ha...

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By: Carrie Bay 10/26/2010 DSNews.com The proportion of foreclosure and other distressed property sales continued to climb in September, according to a report released this week by Campbell Surveys. The company says the new data suggests that any significant delay in foreclosures resulting from t...

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By Brady Dennis Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 22, 2010; 11:45 PM DES MOINES - Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, the man heading up a 50-state investigation into practices that generated mountains of flawed and possibly fraudulent foreclosure filings, understands the wave of anger...

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By Elizabeth Razzi Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 22, 2010; 10:31 PM The title insurance industry is maneuvering to protect itself from losses if courts rule that banks have played fast and loose with the foreclosure process. But people who buy foreclosed properties from banks may...

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By JOE NOCERA Earlier this week, Bank of America, the nation’s largest consumer bank, reported its third-quarter earnings. It was a very good quarter; putting aside an accounting charge — a very large, $10.4 billion accounting charge, admittedly — the bank reported $3.1 billion in profits. It was t...

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Huffington Post JEANNINE AVERSA | WASHINGTON — Federal banking regulators are examining whether mortgage companies cut corners on their own procedures when they moved to foreclose on people's homes, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday. Preliminary results of the in-depth review in...

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2010-23 To: All Florida Offices and Agents of: Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Underwriting Department Date: October 26, 2010 Re: INSURING FORECLOSED PROPERTIES In the current environment o...

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2010-22 To: All Florida Offices and Agents of: Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Underwriting Department Date: October 26, 2010 Re: FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF JACKSONVILLE (Jacksonville, FL) – FDI...

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All Florida Offices and Agents of: Chicago Title Insurance Company Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Company Fidelity National Title Insurance Company From: FNTG Florida Underwriting Department Date: October 22, 2010 Re: INSURING FORECLOSED PROPERTIES Company guidelines require a complete and...

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35 Fla. L. Weekly D2254a Mortgages -- Foreclosure -- Error to grant summary judgment of foreclosure where mortgagors had asserted affirmative defenses which were not denied by mortgagee, dealt with during hearing on motion for summary judgment, or addressed in final judgment JUDITH ALEJANDRE and ...

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Lenders, creditors battle over home-builder Tousa's loans A group of big lenders will face off against creditors of home-builder Tousa today in a legal tug of war over more than $500 million. The case involves a loan issued to Tousa in the months leading up to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in J...

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A federal judicial panel recently consolidated class-action lawsuits from across the country alleging that Bank of America treated homeowners with bad faith when they applied for mortgage modifications under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program. "What this demonstrates i...

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U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said Wednesday that the Obama administration will attempt to protect homeowners and police the kind of paperwork fraud that led the nation's largest banks to temporarily halt foreclosures this month, but added that the administration had yet...

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A new state law signed in Albany this week will allow homeowners who win foreclosure proceedings to have the lender pay their lawyers’ fees. Supporters say the law balances what they see as the long unfair practice of lenders writing provisions in mortgage contracts that allow them to collect lawy...

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JIM LEHRER: A federal task force met today in Washington to sort through the housing foreclosure mess, much of it caused by reports of major paperwork problems. More than 2.5 million American homes are currently in foreclosure. The secretary for housing and urban development, Shaun Donovan, briefe...

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WASHINGTON — Administration officials renewed efforts on Wednesday to ease concerns about the integrity of the foreclosure process, saying that no evidence had emerged so far of any problems that threatened the health of the financial system. Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban developme...

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About a month after Washington Mutual Bank made a multimillion-dollar mortgage loan on a mountain home near Santa Barbara, Calif., a crucial piece of paperwork disappeared. But bank officials were unperturbed. After conducting a “due and diligent search,” an assistant vice president simply drew up...

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The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has joined a group of investors demanding that Bank of America buy back billions of dollars worth of mortgage securities that are plagued with shoddy documentation and lending standards, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the most powerful in...

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The country's largest title insurer said Wednesday that banks and other lenders must vouch for the accuracy of their mortgage documents before the firm will write insurance for a foreclosure Fidelity National Financial announced the policy change - the strongest move yet by a title insurer to protec...

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The paperwork mess muddying home foreclosures erupted last month. But the legal strategy behind it traces to a lawyer's gambit in 2006 that has helped keep one couple in their home six years beyond their last mortgage payment. Lillian and Robert Jackson stopped paying on their home in Jacksonville,...

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Nearly a year before the national furor over foreclosures began, Lisa Epstein, a nurse, ran into three other amateur sleuths who separately were investigating shoddy practices at mortgage companies. While meeting for the first time in November at an old one-story law office...

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Federal investigators are exploring whether banks and other financial firms broke U.S. law when using fraudulent court documents to foreclose on people's homes, according to sources familiar with the effort. The criminal investigation, still in its early days, is focused on whether companies misle...

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1The attorney representing shareholders suing BankAtlantic Bancorp told jurors Tuesday he would prove executives lied to investors about a deteriorating loan portfolio. As the shareholder class action suit opened in U.S. District Court in Miami, plaintiffs' attorney Mark Arisohn pointed to internal...

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Anthony Pugliese III, who has proposed building the 41,300-acre Destiny in Central Florida, said hes shocked that a bank filed to foreclose on a storage facility he built in Coconut Creek. Branch Banking & Trust Co. filed a lawsuit Oct. 4 against Coconut Creek Johnson Road. Pugliese is not named in...

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Attorney David Stern stepped down as chairman of DJSP Enterprises. The company also accepted the voluntary resignations of three top executives who had been hired earlier this year to plot a growth strategy for the company. Paola Iuspa-Abbott View the full article here: http://www.dailybusi...

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Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jack Cox ignited consternation Oct. 4 when he quashed a subpoena Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum issued against a law firm, effectively blocking an investigation into its foreclosure practices. In doing so, he called this effort to usurp the Florida Supreme Court's ex...

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Local banking attorneys say federal regulators will face plenty of challenges if they pursue plans to seek civil penalties against the directors and officers of failed banks. Wayne Tompkins View the full article here: http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/PubArticleDBR.jsp?id=1202473595680 ...

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A Broward County judge's ruling on Friday gives Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum the right to continue his investigation into a Plantation foreclosure law firm. Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor denied a request from the law offices of David J. Stern to quash the state's subpoena for documents ...

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In the end, Angelo Mozilo settled for pennies on the dollar. The former Countrywide Financial Corp. chief agreed Friday to a settlement that requires him to pay 16 cents out of his own pocket for every dollar federal authorities claimed he had taken out of the company in ill-gotten personal gains....

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It is hard to see how the Mozilo settlement -- coming on the heels of another weak SEC settlement with financier Steve Rattner -- will deter future wrongdoing. . . . Indeed, it could have the contrary effect. If you can make a great fortune behaving badly, get busted, and still end up with most of t...

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Top Citigroup executives sought to assure investors and the public Monday that the firm's foreclosure process and its handling of key documents in securitizing home mortgages is "sound," despite growing concerns over how lenders may have skirted the law when bundling home mortgages, selling them and...

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Pacific Investment Management Co., BlackRock Inc. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are seeking to force Bank of America Corp. to repurchase soured mortgages packaged into $47 billion of bonds by its Countrywide Financial Corp. unit, people familiar with the matter said. Oct. 19 (Bloombe...

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A federal judicial panel recently consolidated class-action lawsuits from across the country alleging that Bank of America treated homeowners with bad faith when they applied for mortgage modifications under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program. "What this demonstrates i...

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Bank of America may be trying to bring down the curtain on the foreclosure furor, but there were numerous indications Tuesday that the problems would not move off-stage so quickly. A day after the bank said it would once again pursue defaulting borrowers in the 23 states where foreclosures were ...

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Two years after the Fed bought billions of dollars in mortgage securities as part of the financial bailout, its New York arm is questioning the paperwork — and pressing banks to buy some of the investments back. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and several giant investment companies, includi...

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The government is offering a $680 million settlement to American Indians who say they were denied Agriculture Department farm loans. The two sides met on Tuesday to present the settlement to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court. The agreement also includes $80 million in debt forgivenes...

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BY: JOY LEOPOLD Bank of America and Fidelity National Financial have come to an agreement regarding the foreclosure paperwork issues that have plagued several of the largest lenders in the past weeks. Under the agreement, Jacksonville, Florida-based Fidelity agreed to continue to provide title...

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BY: CARRIE BAY Allegations that some of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers cut corners in processing foreclosures and filed unsubstantiated paperwork could turn criminal. The Washington Post, citing people “familiar with the matter,” reports that President Obama’s Financial Fraud Enfo...

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BY: CARRIE BAY GMAC Mortgage was the first company to halt foreclosures in 23 states where a judge’s approval is required because of concerns that the legal paperwork was not validated and processed correctly. After two months of reviewing individual case files, the company says it will restar...

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BY: CARRIE BAY The House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity will hold a hearing on the industry’s foreclosure paperwork errors when Congress reconvenes next month. The hearing, scheduled for Thursday, November 18th, will investigate the problems that have recently surfaced in...

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The New York state court system has instituted a new filing requirement in residential foreclosure cases that officials say will “protect the integrity of the foreclosure process and prevent wrongful foreclosures.” Lenders’ counsel are now required to file an affirmation with the court certifying...

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BY: JOY LEOPOLD Enter your email to receive Daily Email Updates: Wells Fargo & Co. released its third quarter profits on Wednesday, with earnings per share of 60 cents, an increase of seven percent from the 55 cents earned in Q3 2009 and an increase of nine percent from the 56 cents reported ...

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Bloomberg News Daily Business Review OShoddy mortgage lending has led bankers into a two-front war, pitting them against U.S. homeowners challenging the right to foreclose and mortgage-bond investors demanding refunds that could approach $200 billion. While federal regulators and state attorneys ...

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What’s a State to Do? Highlight: State-by-State Data This new report includes the latest foreclosure figures, state-by-state, including projected foreclosures through 2012, the rate at which foreclosures are increasing (or, in very rare cases, declining), and the amount of home equity wealth that ...

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THERE WOULD NEVER be a good time to find out that vast numbers of home foreclosures have been tainted by flawed or phony documentation. Now is an especially bad moment: In September, lenders foreclosed on 102,000 houses, a record for a single month. More are in the pipeline. Of course, it's election...

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Foreclosure attorney David Stern, who is being investigated for fabricating legal documents, purposefully hid files from inspectors with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a former employee said in recently released deposition. Stern had a tight-knit relationship with the two mortgage giants, and referr...

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How long will President Barack Obama and Congress be able to avoid wading into the foreclosure mess? “I think the [federal government] is going to need to act pretty soon,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, who predicts Democrats will introduce bills to ...

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Asking the banks to figure this out on their own won't strike voters as terribly credible because the base of the problem here was that the banks -- and their procedures -- have not proven credible. Letting the courts decide on a case-by-case basis doesn't make for great policy. By and large, the Wh...

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"If judges approve the new filings, the bank expects that the sales of foreclosed properties will start up once again in the states where a court order is needed to foreclose on a home. The bank said it will continue to freeze foreclosure sales and review files in the District of Columbia and the ot...

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ust 10 days after announcing a nationwide halt to foreclosure sales, Bank of America, the nation's largest bank, said Monday that it would begin resubmitting paperwork on Oct. 25 to restart foreclosures on borrowers who missed their payments in 23 states. If judges approve the new filings, the bank ...

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I read that Angelo R.Mozilo of Countrywide Financial fame is paying a $67.5 million fine of which Countrywide is paying $20 million. It reminds me of the old story that lawyers are wont to tell. A petty thief is charged with stealing a watch. He vehemently denies it. He is convicted and sentenced to...

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At a large Florida "foreclosure mill," a manager signed up to 1,000 documents a day without reading them and employees were given gifts to speed up foreclosure paperwork, according to depositions released today by the Florida Attorney General's Office. The news, also reported by Tampa Online, come...

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Bank of America announced on Monday that it would resume home foreclosures in nearly two dozen states, despite the running controversy over how banks handled tens of thousands of cases of homeowners facing eviction. Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank and the servicer of roughly one in five A...

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The calculus is clear for most Democratic incumbents, especially those in tight races like Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid: Nothing could be worse on the eve of elections than images of people being booted out of their homes by big banks that have relied on sloppy, if not fraudulent, paperwork....

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Stewart Title Guaranty Co. is taking a guarded stance when it comes to repossessed properties that may be the subject of foreclosure paperwork reviews. The Associated Press, citing an internal memo obtained by the news agency, reports that the Houston-based title insurer has issued new guidelin...

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The regulatory body, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, made it clear that the foreclosure process should “proceed without delay” if no problems were found, even though some Democratic lawmakers have called for a nationwide moratorium. “The country’s housing finance system remains fragile, and I ...

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At JPMorgan Chase & Company, they were derided as “Burger King kids” — walk-in hires who were so inexperienced they barely knew what a mortgage was.At Citigroup and GMAC, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on home foreclosures was outsourced to frazzled workers who sometimes tossed the paperwork i...

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The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees the nation’s two largest mortgage financiers, has issued a directive outlining specific steps servicers should take to identify and correct potential deficiencies in foreclosure paperwork. Recent widespread reports of so-called robo-signe...

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The number of lawmakers calling for investigations or a freeze on foreclosures is growing, in the wake of an increasing amount of evidence pointing to faulty proceedings. Nearly all of these public officials, however, are Democrats; most Republicans have either stayed silent or opposed a moratorium....

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To the Editor: Re “After Foreclosure, a Focus on Title Insurance,” by Ron Lieber (Your Money column, Oct. 9): Americans need assurance that the economy will rebound, yet this column simply incited fear by suggesting that homeowners who purchase foreclosed properties could lose their homes. Whe...

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Attorneys general in all 50 states have pledged a coordinated investigation into chaotic foreclosure practices by some of the nation’s largest banks. The Department of Justice is also looking into what happened, while some lawmakers are now calling for a nationwide moratorium on all foreclosures unt...

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Across the country, programs that provide legal representation in civil cases to low-income Americans are so cash-strapped that they are turning away numbers of people. Hard-pressed Americans fighting foreclosure or seeking protection from domestic violence or access to medical care or unemployment ...

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What were banking regulators doing while some of the biggest U.S. lenders routinely filed false foreclosure documents in local courthouses around the country? In the case of IndyMac Federal Bank, it turns out the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was running the joint. This may help explain why the ...

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1. Stays on foreclosure proceedings involving four major lenders create such a state of legal flux that one real estate lawyer refers to it as “foreclosure Armageddon.” The lenders, including Bank of America and GMAC, recently suspended foreclosures while they conduct internal investigations int...

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Attorney General Bill McCollum has supoenaed foreclosure-related records from Lender Processing Services and four law firms, according to a report by Bloomberg News. Bloomberg News Service Lender Processing Services Inc., which provides foreclosure services, was subpoenaed by the Florida attorne...

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Commentary by Andrew Berman Daily Business Review When he quashed a subpoena Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum issued against a law firm, effectively blocking an investigation into its foreclosure practices. In doing so, he called this effort to usurp the Florida Supreme Court's exclusive fun...

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Adolfo Pesquera and Julie Kay Daily Business Review Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor cleared the way Thursday for a state attorney general's office subpoena to obtain foreclosure records from the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Plantation, which has filed foreclosures with the courts by the ...

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On October 12, 2010, NAR wrote to Treasury Secretary Geithner, HUD Secretary Donovan, and Acting Director DeMarco of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to convey REALTOR® concerns about the confusion and uncertainty that questions about the validity of foreclosures are causing in local commun...

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Amid a rising uproar over slipshod bank foreclosure practices, members of the Obama administration on Sunday expressed anger about the revelations, but urged caution as multiple investigations into the crisis unfold. In a piece posted on the Huffington Post Web site, Shaun Donovan, the secretary o...

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WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo & Co. does not plan to halt foreclosures despite an employee's testimony that she signed up to 500 foreclosure documents daily without reading them. The employee of the San Francisco-based bank said in a deposition taken last March that she signed between 300 and 500 forecl...

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GMAC Mortgage says although reviews of foreclosure affidavits involving homes in 23 judicial states are ongoing, the company “has found no evidence to date of any inappropriate foreclosures.” GMAC suspended foreclosure actions and REO sales in states where courts oversee homeowner evictions and pro...

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The attorney representing shareholders suing BankAtlantic Bancorp told jurors Tuesday he would prove executives lied to investors about a deteriorating loan portfolio. As the shareholder class action suit opened in U.S. District Court in Miami, plaintiffs' attorney Mark Arisohn pointed to internal ...

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A lawyer with the Florida Attorney General's Office urged a Broward County judge Tuesday to allow the state to continue its investigation of a giant South Florida foreclosure law firm, saying regulators were uncovering "substantial, egregious activity." Jeffrey Tew, representing the law offices o...

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California officials are considering joining a multistate investigation of whether lenders have violated foreclosure laws when seizing houses from delinquent borrowers. The investigation, which is expected to be publicly announced Wednesday, is spearheaded by Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller. Under his l...

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LOS ANGELES — Two big mortgage lenders are reviewing foreclosures as public officials heighten pressure on the industry over allegations that they made errors in documents used to evict homeowners. GMAC Mortgage, a unit of Ally Financial Inc., said Tuesday that it has enlisted legal and accounting ...

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The foreclosure fraud scandal is a big deal (or a big "effin'" deal, as Joe Biden might say). But its real significance is an even bigger deal. Foreclosure fraud is one domino, and if it falls others will follow. The result could be an end to the "invisible bailout" -- the one you never hear about, ...

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The current foreclosure crisis is unprecedented in American history, Barry Ritholtz said on Monday. The Fusion IQ CEO told CNBC's Larry Kudlow and Diana Olick that the flaws in the foreclosure system are not simply "a matter of paperwork." At stake are U.S. property rights, which are "being dramatic...

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A coalition of groups led by the SEIU is launching a campaign to help homeowners capitalize on a growing foreclosure fraud scandal that has forced banks to halt foreclosures across the country. The campaign suggests a question for borrowers to ask when fighting foreclosure in court: "Where's the n...

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WASHINGTON — A government watchdog is investigating government-owned GMAC Mortgage after a company employee admitted to approving thousands of foreclosures without reading the paperwork. The special inspector general for the $700 billion financial bailout is looking into the improper foreclosures, ...

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October 12, 2010 The Honorable Timothy F. Geithner Secretary U.S. Department of the Treasury 1500 New York Ave., NW Washington, DC 20220 The Honorable Shaun Donovan Secretary U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Washington, DC 20410 Mr. Edward J. DeMarco Acting Director Feder...

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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is poised to sue over 50 executives from failed banks, Bloomberg News reports. The potential lawsuits would help the FDIC recover more than $1 billion it lost during the credit crisis, which has forced the FDIC to take over 294 lenders since 2008. So far th...

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Halting foreclosures across the nation would be "catastrophic" for the economy, a financial industry trade group said Monday. Tim Ryan, CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, released a statement in which he warned that stopping foreclosures nationwide would cause far mor...

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I. By ROBBIE WHELAN And RUTH SIMON A coalition of as many as 40 state attorneys general is expected Wednesday to announce an investigation into the mortgage-servicing industry, an effort some of them hope will pressure financial institutions to rewrite large numbers of troubled loans. The move co...

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Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has joined top regulators from 39 other states in scrutinizng the banks, mortgage companies and loan servicers involved in the widening foreclosure crisis. But McCollum stopped short of calling for some or all lenders to temporarily halt to foreclosures, sho...

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A former paralegal with Florida's largest foreclosure law practice has told state investigators that the firm routinely signed court paperwork without reading it, misdated records, forged signatures and passed around notary stamps in the rush to foreclose on homes. "This is just the beginning real...

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White House Aide Doubts Need to Halt Foreclosures By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) — A top White House adviser questioned the need on Sunday for a blanket halt to home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about growing evidence that ba...

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Is GMAC Mortgage, the company under siege by numerous state attorneys general and members of Congress for its use of dubious foreclosure legal filings, trying to silence the lawyer who exposed the bank's practices? So says Thomas Cox, the Maine attorney whose case is at the center of GMAC's ongoing ...

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Two seemingly unrelated stories from the past week illustrate a fundamental problem with today's financial system. While this problem may seem "philosophical" or abstract, it's very real, and we won't put our economy back on a sound footing until we get a handle on it. The problem is this: Banking i...

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NEW YORK (By MICHELLE CONLIN, AP) -- Karl Case, the co-creator of a widely watched housing market index, was upbeat three weeks ago. Mulling the economy while at a meeting at a resort near the Berkshires, Case thought the makings of a recovery were finally falling into place. "I'm a 60-40 optimis...

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Government had been warned for months about troubles in mortgage servicer industry By Zachary A. Goldfarb Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 10, 2010; 12:45 AM Consumer advocates and lawyers warned federal officials in recent years that the U.S. foreclosure system was designed...

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DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is calling on three large mortgage companies to halt foreclosure proceedings in the state while he investigates problems with documents filed with the courts. At a news conference Thursday, Miller said his office has contacted Ally Financial's G...

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More than 4,000 Florida homeowners will be eligible for loan modifications and mortgage-balance forgiveness totaling nearly $388 million under an agreement Wells Fargo Bank reached with eight states, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said Wednesday. The pact settles allegations of deceptive ...

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WASHINGTON — Ohio's attorney general is suing Ally Financial Inc. and its GMAC Mortgage division, alleging the company violated state fraud laws in handling foreclosure cases. The action could be the first in a wave of lawsuits by state regulators over what appear to be widespread problems in doc...

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Two new posts today articulate where the battle lines are beginning to take shape in the Mortgage Foreclosure Fraud mess. Because few mortgages are held on bank balance sheets, having been sold into Mortgage Trusts which support Mortgage Backed securities (MBS), there are parties who may find themse...

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Foreclosure Halt May Shift Bondholder Pain - Foreclosure halt may shift pain By ROBBIE WHELAN And RUTH SIMON WSJ The recent suspension of foreclosures by three of the largest mortgage-servicing companies in the U.S. is expected to result in more pain for some investors, and less pain for others, ...

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Foreclosure Halt May Shift Bondholder Pain - Foreclosure halt may shift pain By ROBBIE WHELAN And RUTH SIMON WSJ The recent suspension of foreclosures by three of the largest mortgage-servicing companies in the U.S. is expected to result in more pain for some investors, and less pain for others, ...

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The paperwork scandal that has prompted several banks to halt evictions and review their foreclosure procedures is reminiscent of the predatory lending scheme that inflated the housing bubble. "It's the same process, falsifying documents to make them look acceptable to someone," said Tom Domonosk...

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the other California Democrats are calling for an investigation into the foreclosure fraud scandal that has forced the nation's biggest banks to halt foreclosures in 23 states. "It just shows the irresponsibility of the banks, so eager were they to securitize those ...

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Foreclosure Furor Rises; Many Call for a Freeze By DAVID STREITFELD and GRETCHEN MORGENSON The uproar over bad conduct by mortgage lenders intensified Tuesday, as lawmakers in Washington requested a federal investigation and the attorney general in Texas joined a chorus of state law enforcement fi...

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Three major mortgage lenders have halted foreclosures in states where the process is handled through the court system after suspicions surfaced that employees did notfollow legal procedures in preparing the required documentation. GMAC Mortgage was the first to do so, followed by JPMorgan Chase and ...

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and fellow members of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation are petitioning federal regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a formal investigation into servicers’ foreclosure practices. Prompted by the recent reports of systemic mishandling of...

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Even more questions about the legality of foreclosure proceedings have prompted Minneapolis-based Old Republic National Title Insurance to decide it will no longer insure titles to homes foreclosed by JPMorgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage. Chase and GMAC both halted foreclosure sales in 23 states a...

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Last week, GMAC Mortgage’s parent company, Ally Financial, called for a halt on residential foreclosures and a suspension of REO sales in 23 judicial states that may have been impacted by what the company said was a glitch in its internal procedures. It soon came to light that the “glitch” t...

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Monday, October 4, 2010, 6:17pm EDT | Modified: Tuesday, October 5, 2010, 8:51am McCollum foreclosure probe dealt setbackSouth Florida Business Journal - by Paul Brinkmann Attorney General Bill McCollum suffered a setback in his investigation of foreclosure law firms Monday when a Palm Beach C...

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Flawed Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis By GRETCHEN MORGENSON NYT As some of the nation’s largest lenders have conceded that their foreclosure procedures might have been improperly handled, lawsuits have revealed myriad missteps in crucial documents. The flawed practices that GMAC ...

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Freddie Mac Statement on Foreclosure Processing Issues For Immediate Release October 01, 2010 Contact: corprel@freddiemac.com or (703) 903-3933 McLean, VA – The following statement was issued today by Bruce Witherell, Chief Operating Officer for Freddie Mac (OTC:FMCC). "Freddie Mac i...

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Execution of Legal Documents On October 1, 2010, Fannie Mae issued the following Lender Letter: • Lender Letter LL-2010-11: Servicer Review of Procedures Relating to the Execution of Affidavits, Verifications, and Other Legal Documents. In LL-2010-11, Fannie Mae directs all of its servicers t...

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By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY Old Republic National Title Insurance, among the nation's largest title insurance companies, will no longer write new policies for homes foreclosed upon by J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit –– a sign that concerns about faulty foreclosure paper...

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Bank of America to Freeze Foreclosure Cases By DAVID STREITFELD NYT Bank of America, the country’s largest mortgage lender by assets, said on Friday that it was reviewing documents in all foreclosure cases now in court to evaluate if there were errors. Related Times Topic: Bank of Ameri...

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David Streitfield NYT The foreclosure machinery that has forced millions of Americans out of their homes is beginning to seize up as some lenders and their lawyers are accused of cutting corners in their pursuit of rapid home repossessions. Evictions are expected to slow sharply, housing analysts...

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Even as August saw more Americans lose their homes to foreclosure than in any other month on record, there are growing concerns over the legality of many of those proceedings. JPMorgan Chase has suspended legal proceedings on 50,000 foreclosures, due to concerns about the validity of the foreclo...

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U.S. State Officials Investigate After Ally's GMAC Unit Suspends Evictions By Joel Rosenblatt Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third- biggest U.S. mortgage servicer, must prove its home foreclosures are legal, and if it can’t, must stop the practice, California Attorney General Jerry Brown sa...

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The nation’s largest bank has halted foreclosures in certain states after evidence was disclosed that it too had ill-famed “robo-signers” rubber-stamping approvals of foreclosure cases without verifying their validity. Bank of America has placed foreclosure actions in 23 judicial states on hold ...

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The nation’s largest bank has halted foreclosures in certain states after evidence was disclosed that it too had ill-famed “robo-signers” rubber-stamping approvals of foreclosure cases without verifying their validity. Bank of America has placed foreclosure actions in 23 judicial states on hold ...

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I’ve had 78, count them, 78 telephone calls today about the mess with GMAC foreclosures. And that’s nothing compared to the size of the mess itself. This case is not entirely unlike the one being investigated by the Florida A.G. already. Firm staff signed documents reflecting themselves as of...

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Who doesn’t favor judges making sure bank’s foreclosures lawyers follow the rules? Especially where folks losing their homes who often can’t afford their own lawyers are concerned. The problem is, doing so is often detrimental to these homeowners in the long run. Having to withdraw and then re...

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Homeowners in Washington State are suing Bank of America, alleging the nation’s largest lender is “intentionally” and “systematically” thwarting and ignoring borrowers’ requests to make reasonable mortgage modifications that would prevent homes from being foreclosed. The case, filed in a Seattle ...

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Some 16 months after Countrywide Financial reached an agreement with the Florida attorney general’s office to settle one of the biggest predatory lending lawsuits in the nation’s history, restitution is coming for distressedhomeowners. More than 2,700 Countrywide borrowers in the Sunshine State are ...

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As a commercial real estate and foreclosure attorney, author, and occasional commentator on the subject, I must say that Amir Efrati’s observations of apparent tolerance for a vigilante judiciary in the face of our Nation’s massive foreclosure losses (“Foreclosure Challenges Raise Questions About ...

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Several months into we're getting a glimpse of how lawsuits against subprime lenders may play out. Bank of America is stepping up for Countrywide. Perhaps the worst hit loans were Countrywide's risky negative amortization products. 42 states have signed on to the settlement estimated to impact 39...

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