Blog Archives
False Statements
False Statements
Action Date: June 27, 2011
Location: San Diego, CA
California Bankruptcy Judge Laura Stuart Taylor has joined the ranks of judges who will not tolerate fraudulent documents produced by banks to foreclose. Judge Taylor entered an Order To Show Cause why OneWest Bank, FSB, should not incur “a significant coercive sanction intended to deter any future tender of misleading evidence to any court of this district.” Judge Taylor ordered OneWest to appear before her on July 29, 2011, to show cause as to why it should not be subject to compensatory and/or coercive sanctions, in the case In re Jessie M. Arizmendi, Bk. No. 09-19263-PB13, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of California. The case involves a motion for relief from stay filed by OneWest supported with a declaration of Brian Burnett, who declared under penalty of perjury that OneWest was the real party in interest in connection with the Motion because OneWest was the current beneficiary under the terms of a promissory note and Deed of Trust.
According to the Burnett declaration, OneWest received its interest in the Trust Deed pursuant to an Assignment from MERS. The assignment of the Trust Deed and the Note showed the transfer from MERS as nominee for the original lender directly to OneWest in 2010.
At trial, however, OneWest’s witness, Charles Boyle, testified that the beneficiary of the loan was actually Freddie Mac. Based on this conflict, the Court required post-trial briefings.
According to the Court, “OneWest, in its post-trial brief, provided a standing argument based on a new version of the Note, which attached an allonge dated July 24, 2007 evidencing a transfer from Original Lender to IndyMac Bank, FSB and bore an endorsement in blank from IndyMac Bank, FSB. This was new information not presented in the OneWest Declaration and this note was not identical to the note authenticated by the OneWest Declaration and attached to the OneWest Proof of Claim.
This Court is concerned, thus, that OneWest provided false or misleading evidence to the Court and that OneWest did so willfully, maliciously, in bad faith, and/or for an inappropriate purpose.”
According to research by Fraud Digest, Brian Burnett has used many different job titles when signing mortgage-related documents for OneWest, often using different titles on the same day, including:
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Acoustic Home Loans;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Aegis Wholesale Corporation;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for American Brokers Conduit;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Beach First National Bank;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Credit Suisse Financial Corp.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for CTX Mortgage Company, LLC;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for DHI Mortgage Company, Ltd.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Express Capital Lending;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Finasure Home Loans, LLC;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for First Magnus Financial Corporation;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for First Meridian Mortgage;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Flick Mortgage Investors, Inc.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Home Loan Center, Inc. d/b/a LendingTree Loans;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Impac Funding Corp., d/b/a Impac Lending Group;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for IndyMac Bank, FSB;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for LoanCity;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for MortgageIt, Inc.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for NetBank, a Federal Savings Bank;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for New American Funding, a California Corporation;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Opteum Financial Services, LLC;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for OneWest Bank, FSB;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Quicken Loans, Inc.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Sloan Mortgage Group, Inc.;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for Taylor, Bean & Whitaker;
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for TM Capital, Inc.
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for d/b/a Fedfirst Mortgage Corporation; and
- Assistant Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for UBS AG.
July 29, 2011, may be the day that Brian Burnett and OneWest are held accountable for the thousands of mortgage assignments – with false statements regarding the history and ownership of mortgages – presented to courts to foreclose.
SOURCE: Fraud Digest
HUD Audits Accuse Major Lenders of False Claims Fraud
The Huffington Post reported late yesterday that five of the country’s largest mortgage lenders may have defrauded taxpayers by filing false claims with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Confidential audits conducted on Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) provided information which has now been referred to the Department of Justice for a decision on filing charges.
The author of the article, Shahien Nasiripour, said the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducted five separate investigations in February and March and concluded that the banks filed false claims against the Federal Housing Administration, a violation of the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law.
According to the Huffington Post, “The resulting reports read like veritable indictments of major lenders, the sources said. State officials are now wielding the documents as leverage in their ongoing talks with mortgage companies aimed at forcing the firms to agree to pay fines to resolve allegations of routine violations in their handling of foreclosures.
“The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.”
Apparently Bank of America and one other company refused to cooperate with the investigations but the BoA audit finds that the company failed to correct faulty foreclosure practices even after imposing a moratorium that lifted last October. Back then, the bank said it was resuming foreclosures, having satisfied itself that prior problems had been solved.
The Huffington Post quoted a federal official as saying that most of the targeted banks have not seen the audits but they are generally aware of the findings.
The HUD actions are the latest in a series of investigations, discussions, and proposed settlements between lenders and mortgage servicers arising out of the housing and foreclosure crisis. Earlier this week the New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was said to have requested documents and requested “discussions” with three major banks apparently regarding the institution’s securitization activities prior to the crisis (FULL STORY). A task force composed of the 50 state attorneys general has been negotiating a settlement with major mortgage servicers, most of which are owned by the major banks, over claims of wrong doing related to foreclosures.
Also according to the Huffington Post, this week the mortgage servicers under investigation by the attorneys general offered $5 billion to set up a fund to help distressed borrowers and settle claims of inappropriate foreclosures. “That offer — also floated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in February — was deemed much too low by state and federal officials. Associate U.S. Attorney General Tom Perrelli, who has been leading the talks, last week threatened to show the banks the confidential audits so the firms knew the government side was not “playing around,” one official involved in the negotiations said. He ultimately did not follow through, persuaded that the reports ought to remain confidential, sources said. Through a spokeswoman, Perrelli declined to comment.”
The Huffington Post article is available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/16/foreclosure-fraud-audit-false-claims-act_n_862686.html
Mortgage Fraud Up 44% in First Quarter: Report
The first three months of 2011 saw a 44 percent increase in the volume of mortgage fraud case activity, according to industry data released this week. The cases reported represent fraud on an estimated $1.2 billion in real estate loans, rising from $0.9 billion in the final period of last year.
These are the latest findings of the first quarter Mortgage Fraud Index from MortgageDaily.com. The index is based on mortgage fraud case activity tracked at the mortgage fraud blog FraudBlogger.com.
The index, which climbed to 990 from 126 in the fourth quarter of 2010, was still lower than 1,144, which was recorded for the first quarter of 2010.
“We’re seeing signs that repurchases are responsible for some of the latest increase,” said MortgageDaily.com founder and publisher, Sam Garcia. “Smaller firms that are forced to buy back loans from housing agencies or correspondent lenders are doing their own investigations and uncovering more fraudulent activity.”
Florida had the highest index at 130 followed by California and New York. California had the highest dollar amount with nearly $0.3 billion in mortgages associated with first-quarter case activity.
“The average quarterly index peaked in 2009 at 1,676 while loan delinquency also topped out that year,” Garcia said. “But subprime mortgage production peaked in 2005, suggesting an average lag time of around four years from when the actual fraud occurred to when the criminal case is prosecuted.”
According to Mortgage Daily, the report indicates that prosecution of mortgage fraud occurs around four years after the crime.
Exposing the Law Firms and Banks in the DOCX Scheme
RE: Exposing the Law Firms and Banks in the DOCX Scheme (and then the many others)
Posted by Foreclosure Fraud on April 10, 2011 ·
FOR ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO HELP RESEARCH THE DOCX FORGERY SCHEME:
1. Search the official records of your county and find all the Mortgage Assignments filed by Docx in 2009. Search by bank: Deutsche Bank, Bank of NY Mellon, U.S. Bank, HSBC, Wells Fargo, etc.
These are very recognizable. On each form, in the left hand corner, there is a statement that the Assignment was prepared by Docx in Alpharetta, GA.
For examples, click on the word PLEADINGS on the Home Page of www.frauddigest.com (my online magazine) – then click on the second entry – 10 Versions of Linda Green signatures on mortgage documents.
Print each example you find in your county Official Records. Identify and circle the name of the borrorwer/homeowner on each record.
2. Go Back to the Official Records. Search the name of each homeowner on the Docx Assignments for Lis Pendens.
Print the Lis Pendens that corresponds to the Assignment and staple these together.
Note that there will not be a Lis Pendens for every Assignment – many homeowners will have already handed over the keys or agreed to a short sale to avoid litigation.
3. Sort by Law Firm Preparing the Lis Pendens.
In Florida, for example, the firms using these Assignments will include Law Offices of David Stern, Law Offices of Marshall Watson, Shapiro & Fishman, Florida Default Law Group, Law Offices of Daniel Consuegra, Akerman & Senterfitt, Gladstone Law Group and many others.
These are the firms that continued to use the forged documents, never “noticing” that:
(1) the signatures varied so significantly that forgeries were likely;
(2) the same individuals used so many different job titles that the validity was unlikely;
(3) the dates of the Assignments indicated a fraudulent document because the Assignments came after the Lis Pendens.
4. Compile a report of these findings – LAW FIRMS USING FORGED AND FABRICATED DOCUMENTS TO FORECLOSE.
State plainly which law firms used these documents and attach the documents supporting your conclusions.
5. Send your reports to the following:
(1) your local State Attorney;
(2) the Disciplinary Committee of the Bar Association in your state;
(3) the FBI/attention: Mortgage Fraud Taskforce;
(4) the U.S. Attorney for your district;
(5) the Attorney General for your state;
(6) your country recorder;
(7) your area newspaper/television investigative reporter.
6. You may also sort by the BANK that used these fraudulent documents to take homes, and include that information in your reports.
Please send a .pdf file of your letter (without attachments) to szymoniak@mac.com.
If you are very ambitious, you may also add the face value of all of the Docx Assignments you locate so that you can report the total amount that banks took or tried to take using these forged and fabricated documents in 2009.
WHEN WE ALL COMPLETE THIS PROJECT, WE WILL MOVE ON TO FORGED AND FABRICATED ASSIGNMENTS PREPARED BY LAW FIRMS (such as David Stern in Florida and Baum in NY) AND OTHER SERVICERS.
Thank you for joining this effort.
Best regards,
LYNN E. SZYMONIAK
Since August 2007, which marked the beginning of the “foreclosure crisis”, MainStreet has provided guidance, direction and peace of mind to over 150 families. These families are from every walk of life and each of their mortgage situations is as unique as each individual tied to it. MainStreet Resolutions is Your Path to A Fresh Start!
Call US TODAY to See How We Can Help.
1-888-728-3020
