09-23-2010, 03:28 PM
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Keeneland
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 14,153
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Seems like some consumer protections might be appropriate considering this massive foreclosure fraud finding that just hit the news last couple of days:
Quote:
From his cubicle inside a sprawling beige stucco building, Stephan works as the leader of the document execution team for GMAC Mortgage. He has signed off on as many as 10,000 foreclosures in a month, according to court documents. That's barely a minute per case, assuming he works a normal eight-hour day.
His signature indicated that the information in the cases was accurate to the best of his knowledge, and that he had signed in the presence of a notary. The problem was, that didn't always happen, according to depositions that Stephan gave in December and June for court cases involving families trying to keep their homes.
He stated that he would glance at a borrower's name, the debt owed and a few other numbers, but simply assumed most of the information in the files was correct. Stephan, who has more than a dozen people working under him, told attorneys that he had three days of training for the position and that he didn't know how the "summary judgment" affidavits he signed were used in judicial foreclosure cases.
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Stephan's admission has cast into doubt thousands of mortgage foreclosure filings. Ally Financial, the nation's fourth-largest home lender and GMAC's parent company, halted evictions of homeowners this week in the 23 states that mandate a court judgment before a lender can take possession of a property.
A company spokesman this week said that the company services loans from "hundreds of lenders." Among them: government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which have undertaken internal reviews to figure out the scope of any potential problems. Already, lenders in states such as Maine and Florida have begun to withdraw affidavits with Stephan's signature, essentially ending a number of foreclosure cases.
The case also has prompted a broader question of how and why some of the nation's largest lenders came to rely on middle managers such as Stephan, who told attorneys that his compensation wasn't tied to the volume of documents he signed.
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