Mortgage Fraud and the Need for Financial Reform

by francine Hardaway on March 31, 2010

Bank owners and CEOs  who walked away rich from their government bailouts should be jailed for fraud. This is not news, but nothing has been done about it, and the evidence continues to pile up that the big banks were guilty of more than just greed and stupidity.As I’ve been fighting my battle with Aurora Loan Services (and no, I’ve been promised a modification but I don’t have the paperwork yet), I’ve been reading everything I can on the mortgage mess, which is still going on. Many thousands of  5-year adjustable mortgages will re-set this year, and 25% of homeowners are still underwater in their mortgages even as these re-sets continue to occur. Most communities still have falling home prices and “shadow inventory,” which means more foreclosed homes to hit the market.

A group of homeowners who responded to my blog have begun a class action suit against Aurora. I haven’t joined it, because I’m assured by people high up in the institution that my paperwork is on the way. But I am in their email thread, and all the stories sound the same. The people qualified, they bought the home, and then something happened in their lives or the world around them, and they were trapped.

The FBI began to warn in 2004 that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, which came from the lenders, rather than the borrowers. In the board rooms of big banks, loans were packaged in a way that created complex layers of securities that would leave the senior officers rich even if the institution itself (the bank) failed.  This kind of accounting fraud was a sure thing:

1)Grow like crazy
2)Make deliberately bad loans for which you
3)Have extraordinary leverage
4)Don’t put on loss reserves so the loans show up as pure profit

Loss reserves fell to all time lows even as banks made their bad loans.

At the time the regulators should have shut down the banks. There’s a law, called The Prompt Corrective Action Law, that makes this necessary. This law was systematically ignored by regulators. Money and greed ruled everything, including the government.

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

sarum April 2, 2010 at 2:13 am

Been seeing handwritten signs stuck in gravel at intersections stating that 79% of mortgages in our area done in the last 5 years are fraudulent and this company can help. Whatever – why should I believe anybody anymore? I know that our last mortgage was fraudulent so we flipped the house before the market crashed. Now we rent.

hardaway April 2, 2010 at 8:15 am

No one can help. It's endemic in the system.

Jocelyne C. May 29, 2010 at 7:05 am

Hi Francine. I have been following your posts about Aurora and I am interested in joining the people who have filed a class action suit against them. How can I join? Aurora has made my life hell for over 18 months and I can't take it anymore. They have put me on different plans and every plan I've showed them that I can pay for my home and they constantly try something to not approve my modification.I am desperate to save my home and they keeping on changing me from one plan to the next. Just like you have a pile of papers ready to send to them every 3 months or so because they can't seem to keep people's files together. They are threatening to forclose on my home July 6th and I need to do someyhing fast. I cannot let them get away with it. Please help!

Jocelyne C. May 29, 2010 at 2:05 pm

Hi Francine. I have been following your posts about Aurora and I am interested in joining the people who have filed a class action suit against them. How can I join? Aurora has made my life hell for over 18 months and I can’t take it anymore. They have put me on different plans and every plan I’ve showed them that I can pay for my home and they constantly try something to not approve my modification.I am desperate to save my home and they keeping on changing me from one plan to the next. Just like you have a pile of papers ready to send to them every 3 months or so because they can’t seem to keep people’s files together. They are threatening to forclose on my home July 6th and I need to do someyhing fast. I cannot let them get away with it. Please help!

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