October 2010

NEW YORK (TheStreet) – As banks, borrowers and the government struggle to shift the housing crisis into recovery-mode, “robosigners” have become a sideshow for the issue at hand: Foreclosures.

As more people realize that the fake title transfer aspect of foreclosure fraud is just the tip of the iceberg which runs, via MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) conduits all the way to the core of the securitization system, and [...]

Listening to the fiery rhetoric about the mortgage mess emanating from politicians this week, you’d think that big bad banks were trying to foreclose on hundreds of thousands of homeowners who were current on their payments but had become victims [...]

Americans have taken a sharp slap in the face from the housing crisis, financial crisis and jobs crisis. Now, some wonder if the residue of those harsh realities is an ethical crisis.

Here’s a story this blog and its readers were once again ahead of the curve on. MassHousing, our state housing authority, started offering zero-down mortgages under the Affordable Advantage banner back in July. It was part of a broader initiative [...]

Imagine coming home from visiting your sick grandmother, only to find your home was broken into and your locks were changed. What may look like a robbery was really your mortgage company hiring contractors to take over your home before [...]

When Randy Persten’s mortgage was foreclosed in 2008, he looked at the paperwork and found a mystery. A company he’d never heard of — called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS — was bringing the foreclosure action against him.

If you work in the mortgage industry or for a title insurer, you might not want to make any plans for the next six months. Foreclosuregate is about to explode. It is being alleged that many prominent mortgage lenders have [...]

RICHMOND — In a desperate attempt to save their homes, some threatened with foreclosure are reaching out for help only to become victims of scams. Loan modification scams are being reported throughout the country and the Better Business Bureau is [...]

Ginger Peer shut her eyes tight and turned her head in a fruitless effort to block out the animal-like odor that permeated every first-floor corner of the townhouse at 116 N. Pine St. in York. “I think I need to [...]

It’s one of the few booming businesses in this bruised economy – companies hired by banks to change the locks and take over homes that have been foreclosed. But in a growing number of cases, these real estate repo men [...]

Screech had his first foreclosure scare in 2006 — when he allegedly fell behind $250,000 on his mortgage payments. It all happened again a few months ago in April — except according to Wells Fargo Bank, Screech’s debt had ballooned [...]

Embattled homeowners who would be able to make their monthly mortgage payments if given a little relief by their lenders may have new cause to hope. The reason: Abysmal processing of mortgage documents in foreclosure proceedings is forcing banks to [...]

SACRAMENTO, CA – Thousands of people lined up Friday morning for The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America’s (NACA) “Save the Dream” tour, a free event to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

Gerald L. Wolfe, 41, a lawyer who was formerly a registered real estate broker, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Image by ProgressOhio via Flickr This week we saw the first major legal challenge to the mortgage servicers and lenders at the center of the kerfuffle over “robo-signers”—the mortgage servicer employees who allegedly signed thousands of documents authorizing foreclosures across [...]

Now, in a foreclosure industry bloated by the lingering effects of the housing crisis, a former employee of one of the firms under investigation describes in detail a secret system designed for speed at any cost.

As courts across the country face a wave of foreclosures, a name little known to the public has cropped up on thousands of court filings as a stand-in for prominent banks, lenders and mortgage servicers. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), [...]

How do we break this to Ponch? Federal regulators on Thursday brought securities fraud charges against more than a dozen penny-stock promoters — including Larry Wilcox, who played California Highway Patrol officer Jonathan “Jon” Baker on the hit TV show [...]