Posts tagged as:

Predatory Lending

Lenny Dykstra sues Chase for bad mortgages

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lenny Dykstra filed a $100 million lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co alleging he was fraudulently induced into borrowing more money than he could afford, leading to the former star baseball center fielder’s bankruptcy.

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Ahsan, Moshin & Mubeen Moinuddin: FBI Accuses Brothers of Mortgage Fraud

by Moe Bedard

(CHICAGO FBI) Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, announced today the filing of criminal charges against four west suburban men in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme.

The charges were contained in an [...]

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Homeowners Face Stacked Deck

by Moe Bedard

Homeowners facing foreclosure who have been the victims of fraud have little hope of obtaining justice or financial restitution. That was the message of Lionel Ouellette, executive director of the New York City-based advocacy group Changer. He was speaking to a grim-faced group of about thirty Hispanic and African-American homeowners at a community center in [...]

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Australian Mortgage Fraudster Murdered

by Moe Bedard

The activities of murdered Sydney businessman Michael McGurk has again come under the spotlight – this time in connection with New South Wales’s biggest fraud investigation.
Up to 260 people are wanted for questioning over the alleged $150 million scam which involves mortgage fraud.

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Colorado AG Sues Couple For Mortgage Fraud

by Moe Bedard

Attorney General files lawsuit against former Roaring Fork Valley couple suspected of widespread identity theft, commercial-lending fraud
12/14/2009
DENVER — Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced today that attorneys from his office’s Consumer Protection Section have filed a lawsuit against two former Coloradans, Donald Sterling Whitlock (DOB: 5/6/1970) and Erin Reese Whitlock (DOB: 7/11/1969), who are suspected [...]

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Mortgage Fraud Victims Fight Foreclosure in Court

by Moe Bedard

Raise your hand if you’ve heard something like this before: A couple looking to save money in tough times refinanced their home — only to discover they’d been taken in by fraud. Now they are fighting foreclosure and the loss of their home.

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Miami-Dade Police Prosecute Mortgage Fraudsters

by Moe Bedard

We found folks that were frustrated hearing, ‘We don’t take those kinds of cases,’” said Glenn Theobald, the chief of the task force and chief counsel of the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Today, Miami is one of the few places in the nation where people who want

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Mortgage Fraud Causes More Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

The risk of mortgage fraud in the third quarter of this year on U.S. home loans shot up 11 percent from the previous quarter, according to Interthinx, a firm that provides fraud prevention services to lenders. But unlike the inflated home values and incomes that marked the mortgage fraud common during the housing boom, things [...]

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Loan Shark Sentenced to Jail for Preying on Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

“This was theft,” she said. “It was stealing, and it really was very unforgivable behavior, and Ms. Tobon has shown no remorse.”
Price was caught between ordering her straight to jail — after which there is a risk she could be deported to Mexico and victims would never be repaid — or releasing her and hoping [...]

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Foreclosures crisis caused by investors. And lenders. And politicians. And buyers.

by Moe Bedard

But a St. Petersburg Times analysis of thousands of foreclosures in Hillsborough County, which has one of the highest default rates in Florida, shows individual homeowners are getting too much of the blame.
The truth is that real estate speculators and revenue-hungry local governments bear just as much of the responsibility — and maybe more — [...]

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Mortgage Crisis to be Investigated by the US Government

by Moe Bedard

Chairman Towns’ Statement on Committee Investigation into Mortgage Crisis
Washington, DC – Chairman Edolphus “Ed” Towns (D-NY) today made the following statement on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s investigation into the role of mortgage lenders in the financial services crisis and the economic recession.
“The actions of mortgage lenders contributing to the foreclosure and financial [...]

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New Homebuyer Program Already Seeing Signs of Mortgage Fraud

by Moe Bedard

While government officials said many suspect claims could turn out to be simple errors, the report found examples of claimants who already owned homes or had not yet bought one. Some 582 taxpayers were under 18 years old — as young as 4. Of the 1.4 million people who have claimed nearly $10 billion in [...]

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Loan Karma: Feds bust 41 people for mortgage fraud scheme

by Moe Bedard

31 people were arrested yesterday for mortgage fraud in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina. Federal prosecutors announced charges against 41 lenders, lawyers and others in the real estate industry.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that he found it “especially alarming” that lawyers, loan officers and mortgage brokers treated [...]

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Turning the tables on the bankers

by Moe Bedard

Particularly mind boggling are mortgage servicers who plunge ahead with foreclosure filings, and then, when called on it my activist groups, say they have no power to stop the proceedings since they don’t own the real estate!
Now it appears the legal system may slam the brakes on this runaway corporate train wreck.
A pending decision in [...]

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Predatory-lending lawsuits on the rise

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — During the housing boom, mortgage lenders were doling out the dough, giving loans to people who could never have qualified before.
Now, homeowners and government officials are increasingly taking these institutions to court, alleging unfair and predatory practices. While many of these suits are still winding their way through the legal system, [...]

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Banks abuse borrowers

by Moe Bedard

The Government Accountability Office – GAO – in July found that the Treasury was short staffed and had hired only half of the employees necessary to monitor the loan modification program.
Taxpayer dollars bailed out the banks from bankruptcy, now they’re back on track to pay out big bonuses while at the same time they are [...]

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SENIOR LOAN OFFICER SENTENCED IN MORTGAGE FRAUD SCHEME

by Moe Bedard

Greenbelt, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced Winston Thomas, age 43, of New Carrollton, Maryland today to 37 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for failure to file federal tax returns and for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a scheme in which he and his [...]

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Brothers, facing foreclosure, sue broker, attorney

by Moe Bedard

Now, the Fusaro sons might lose the homes Umberto worked so hard to buy.
The sons, Carmine, 46, and Biagio, 37, are suing their mortgage broker and the attorney who helped him for what they say were predatory lending practices, practices that led the Fusaros to refinance or take out loans every year from 2001 to [...]

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SEC Charges Countrywide CEO, Angelo With Fraud

by Moe Bedard

Ladies and gentleman, the infamous CEO from Countrywide Home Loans, Angelo Mozilo and three of his partners in financial crime have finally been sued for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
I think Mr. Mozilo recieved email training from the cast of a dumb and dumber because it looks like Angelo’s poor handling of [...]

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An Unbalanced Equation

by Moe Bedard

By Moe Bedard
Major banks except Citi have formally cut off all negotiations with the Senate in an effort to limit even further the scope of the cramdown bill. Senators from both sides of the isle have given up hope on further developments as well. Bloomberg’s report on the cramdown bill today seems like the last [...]

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