In fact, the settlement has functioned more as loss mitigation for BofA and investors in mortgage-backed securities than as recompense for victims of predatory lending, says Alan White, an associate professor of law at Valparaiso University and an expert on the subprime crisis. “You are not actually asking [Bank of America] to give up money,” says White, who frequently testifies before Congress on mortgage issues. “You are asking them to do something that will make them more money or mitigate their losses. It is a weird way to have somebody pay for past misconduct.”
Read the whole thing.
— Good things happen when reporters start snooping around the courthouses. The Wall Street Journal’s Dawn Wotapka sat in on a rocket docket foreclosure case in Florida and helped right a wrong:
Ms. Cervantes says she and her longtime partner Julio Bermudez fell behind on their mortgage payments two years ago. In August of last year, they applied for and were granted a loan modification from J.P. Morgan Chase, which services the mortgage. Since then, Ms. Cervantes says they never missed the $659.30 payment.
Then, last Saturday, the couple received a letter saying Chase foreclosed and the condo was sold online.
Just a few minutes after 9 a.m., on Tuesday Ms. Cervantes and Mr. Bermudez stood before the judge. In broken English, they tried to explain the situation. “There’s nothing I can do about the sale,” Judge Deehl says matter-of-factly. “You’re going to have to deal with the bank.”
They tried calling Chase many times, they said, but couldn’t get anywhere. After inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, Chase looked into the matter and discovered they made a mistake. In an email, a Chase spokesman said, “We are working to reverse the sale, and are reaching out to the customer to apologize. We have also been reviewing the application for a permanent modification.”
Excellent.
All the perps, from corporate bums to clueless regulators to Dodd-Frank-Schumer enablers, should be in orange jump suits.
#1 Posted by Mike Robbins, CJR on Tue 26 Oct 2010 at 05:05 PM
Lenders are not required to know laws –ATTORNEYS are! Often, attorneys are the ones who are making severe errors, and committing the very frauds that provide basis, defenses, and reasons to attempt negotiating mortgage contracts. Attorneys / foreclosure mills are often why foreclosures take so long to conclude.
People who scorn ‘deadbeats’, don’t know everybody’s story. Incredibly, they assume everybody in default is unwilling to PAY rent. While spewing anger about living 'rent free', scoffers absurdly acquiesce to ‘White Collar foreclosure fraud’ –which includes confiscation of distressed properties via falsified court bankruptcy and state court pleadings, criminal extortion, appalling privacy invasion; and scorners seem delighted about law credentials being utilized for dishonest, criminal, enrichment against people who are already in distressed circumstances –some of them innocently. AMAZING.
Lawyers should be held accountable for foreclosure improprieties and concealing malpractice against their lender-clients, as well as for committing Unfair Debt Collection Practices, extortion, and fraud against borrowers. Some attorney conduct is appallingly egregious –and some irreparably harmful!
Discovery of their misconduct can begin by comparing blighted neighborhoods and foreclosure conveyances to non-existent lender companies; bankruptcy "Lift Stay" motions that "lack standing," "proof of claims" different from 'lift stays' “movers”; and illegal property deeds. And, lawyer are wrong for injurious frauds, failing to “effect service” or failing at any substantive Civil Procedure requirement –not homeowners for refusing to cooperate with erroneous, fraudulent confiscation.
http://lawgraceorg.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/26/5355803-fraudulent-foreclosures-victims-and-accountability
#2 Posted by Barbara Ann Jackson, CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 11:05 PM