This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Robosigned | $25 Billion Mortgage Servicing (Foreclosure Fraud) Agreement Filed in Federal Court
$25 Billion Mortgage Servicing Agreement Filed in Federal Court
SETTLEMENT DOCUMENTS
- Complaint (pdf)
- Ally/GMAC Settlement (pdf)
- Bank of America Settlement (pdf)
- Citi Settlement (pdf)
- JPMorgan Chase Settlement (pdf)
- Wells Fargo Settlement (pdf)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
SETTLEMENT PARTIES
- Ally/GMAC: 800-766-4622
- Bank of America: 877-488-7814
- Citi: 866-272-4749
- JPMorgan Chase: 866-372-6901
- Wells Fargo: 800-288-3212
- State Attorneys General
- Conference of State Bank Supervisors
- United States Department of Justice
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and 49 state attorneys general announced today the filing of their landmark $25 billion agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses.
The federal government and state attorneys general filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia proposed consent judgments with Bank of America Corporation, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company, Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc., to resolve violations of state and federal law.
The unprecedented joint agreement is the largest federal-state civil settlement ever obtained and is the result of extensive investigations by federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, HUD and the HUD Office of the Inspector General (HUD-OIG), and state attorneys general and state banking regulators across the country.
The consent judgments provide the details of the servicers’ financial obligations under the agreement, which include payments to foreclosed borrowers and more than $20 billion in consumer relief; new standards the servicers will be required to implement regarding mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure practices; and the oversight and enforcement authorities of the independent settlement monitor, Joseph A. Smith Jr.
The consent judgments require the servicers to collectively dedicate $20 billion toward various forms of financial relief to homeowners, including: reducing the principal on loans for borrowers who are delinquent or at imminent risk of default and owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth; refinancing loans for borrowers who are current on their mortgages but who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth; forbearance of principal for unemployed borrowers; anti-blight provisions; short sales; transitional assistance; and benefits for service members.
The consent judgments’ consumer relief requirements include varying amounts of partial credit the servicers will receive for every dollar spent on the required relief activities. Because servicers will receive only partial credit for many of the relief activities, the agreement will result in benefits to borrowers in excess of $20 billion. The servicers are required to complete 75 percent of their consumer relief obligations within two years and 100 percent within three years.
In addition to the $20 billion in financial relief for borrowers, the consent judgments require the servicers to pay $5 billion in cash to the federal and state governments. Approximately $1.5 billion of this payment will be used to establish a Borrower Payment Fund to provide cash payments to borrowers whose homes were sold or taken in foreclosure between Jan. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2011, and who meet other criteria.
The court documents filed today also provide detailed new servicing standards that the mortgage servicers will be required to implement. These standards will prevent foreclosure abuses of the past, such as robo-signing, improper documentation and lost paperwork, and create new consumer protections. The new standards provide for strict oversight of foreclosure processing, including third-party vendors, and new requirements to undertake pre-filing reviews of certain documents filed in bankruptcy court. The new servicing standards make foreclosure a last resort by requiring servicers to evaluate homeowners for other loss mitigation options first. Servicers will be restricted from foreclosing while the homeowner is being considered for a loan modification. The new standards also include procedures and timelines for reviewing loan modification applications and give homeowners the right to appeal denials. Servicers will also be required to create a single point of contact for borrowers seeking information about their loans and maintain adequate staff to handle calls.
The consent judgments provide enhanced protections for service members that go beyond those required by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). In addition, the servicers have agreed to conduct a full review, overseen by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, to determine whether any service members were foreclosed or improperly charged interest in excess of 6 percent on their mortgage in violation of SCRA.
The oversight and enforcement authorities of the settlement’s independent monitor are detailed in the court documents filed today. The monitor will oversee implementation of the servicing standards and consumer relief activities required by the agreement and publish regular public reports that identify any quarter in which a servicer fell short of the standards imposed in the settlement. The consent judgments require servicers to remediate any harm to borrowers that are identified in quarterly reviews overseen by the monitor and, in some instances, conduct full look-backs to identify any additional borrowers who may have been harmed. If a servicer violates the requirements of the consent judgment it will be subject to penalties of up to $1 million per violation or up to $5 million for certain repeat violations.
The consent judgments filed today resolve certain violations of civil law based on mortgage loan servicing activities. The agreement does not prevent state and federal authorities from pursuing criminal enforcement actions related to this or other conduct by the servicers. The agreement does not prevent the government from punishing wrongful securitization conduct that will be the focus of the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. In the servicing agreement, the United States also retains its full authority to recover losses and penalties caused to the federal government when a bank failed to satisfy underwriting standards on a government-insured or government-guaranteed loan; the United States also resolved certain Federal Housing Administration (FHA) origination claims with Bank of America as part of this filing and with Citibank in a separate matter. The agreement does not prevent any action by individual borrowers who wish to bring their own lawsuits. State attorneys general also preserved, among other things, all claims against the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), and all claims brought by borrowers.
Investigations were conducted by the U.S. Trustee Program of the Department of Justice, HUD-OIG, HUD’s FHA, state attorneys general offices and state banking regulators from throughout the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, the Justice Department’s Civil Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Federal Housing Finance Agency-Office of the Inspector General. The Department of the Treasury, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture made critical contributions.
For more information about the mortgage servicing settlement, go to www.NationalMortgageSettlement.com. To find your state attorney general’s website, go to www.NAAG.org and click on “The Attorneys General.”
The joint federal-state agreement is part of enforcement efforts by President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. President Obama established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes. For more information about the task force visit: www.stopfraud.gov.
SOURCE: http://www.justice.gov
www.4closureFraud.org
»
- advertisements -
what a load of bollocks
this "Agreement" was cobbled together by 2 parties, leaving the 3rd party (homeowners) out of all negotiations and any consent to this (non)agreement
..3rd party consent required to the terms of their mortgages being renegotiated, the Laws (goalposts) having been moved and the multiple crimnal frauds committed being swept hastily under a carpet for a payment (bribe) to the State Attorney Generals
namely the AG's are now party and complicit in all the crimes committed
Law is Anarchy
But not one single fraudulent foreclosure will be overturned, and not one single criminal banker will be prosecuted.
A huge get-out-of-jail-free card for 3 cents on the dollar, what a deal.
If you have any amount of equity in your home, be on the alert.
At least it is before a federal judge. This gives us some hope that the constitution and rights of individual people under said document will trump bullshit.
LEGALESE TRANSLATION : " Now that we have raped, pillaged, and plundered the entire country, jacked the retirement funds and tax dollars of the American people for generations to come, and fucked everyone up the ass with our mistakes and greed to the bloody maximum degree possible, here are your two tips for service rendered, Mister Gooberment, and American Sheeple. Number one - relative to the theft - here's a penny. Number two - don't chase parked cars - your nose will get flattened. Free advice - not. Gimme back the penny - it's one of the older copper ones, worth almost 2.7 cents. You all can't be trusted with all that power - I'll take care of it for you. Now, fuck off and die. I'm off to fleece some Chinese - they need credit cards, and investment advice - fuckers think gold is money, and I have some lovely ponzi paper to pimp off to 'em. "
Judgment is entered as submitted by the parties;
WHEREAS, Defendant, by entering into this Consent Judgment, does not admit the
allegations of the Complaint other than those facts deemed necessary to the jurisdiction of this
Court;
WHEREAS, the intention of the United States and the States in effecting this settlement
is to re mediate harms allegedly resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the Defendant;
AND WHEREAS, Defendant has agreed to waive service of the complaint and summons
and hereby acknowledges the same;
NOW THEREFORE, without trial or adjudication of issue of fact or law, without this
Consent Judgment constituting evidence against Defendant, and upon consent of Defendant, the
Court finds that there is good and sufficient cause to enter this Consent Judgment, and that it is
therefore ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED:
The emphasis is mine
I want to call a bank and say "Hey the month end statement on my checking account is not marked to fantasy. I totally disagree with your valuation methods and want relief immediately with an injection of funds of not less than 100 Million USD by 5:00pm this Day of Monday March 12th, 2012.
I admit nothing and am guilty of nothing.
ack..so this addresses fraudulent practices by banks (who loaned money on the assumption of federal bail-outs on inflated house prices) real estate agents (who knowingly goosed prices higher in cahoots with the banks) valuers, etc etc...ok, let's just hit robo-signing and banks trying to screw country title registrars out of their registration fees. What about the values of the mortgage portfolios carried in investros books that are now shot to hell becuase nobody still knows who owns what house in the event of a default on the mortgage? There are what 5 trillion of Fraudie and Funny mortgages (oops, there I go again Freddie and Fannie - see Bruce Krasting's posts for how those guys quit and still get mega million pay-outs even and new guys getting paid ten times more than the president of the country with his mega trillion budget) PLUS a few trillion of private mortgages. House prices have dropped an average of 15% from mid up swing (mid 2003 to mid 2007) to mid down swing (mid 2008 to mid 2012) meaning someone has walked off with around 6 trillion times 15% of fraudulent value = as near as spit to a trillion dollars at the expense of investors in these securitised pools? I mean, fix $25 billion and let a trillion walk away scot free because prosecutors won't chase estate agents, bank lenders etc.
In my book, if you lend money to someone you know can't pay it back, that is a gift. If you do it with your own money, then more fool you, if you do it with my money, I will likely view you as needing ahaircut from the neck up. Fed prosectuors are still faciltiating andforgiving the perpetrators of fraud....ugh
All I read is media gaga. h/t Queen. Who will enforce what the servicers should do?
Steal a few cartons of cigarettes from a convenience store, get caught. Plead guilty and return a few packs of those cigarettes and promise not to do that again? Imagine the uproar when that hits the morning news?
But it works for the bankster each and every time.
You forget the LAW no longer APPLIES IN AMERICA,(to the Bankstas) the entire fiasco is a joke.
Every one of these AGs should be sued on the basis of equal protection under the constitution.
Plaintiffs would be lined up for blocks if any private attorney agreed to such a thing.
Where are the depositions, requests for documents please?
I'm not sure there is an equal protection claim... Definitely a donkey award... but not sure past that.
Also, I think AGs are generally exempt from state FOIA requests... so, there's probably an uphill battle there too.
Rule 24. Intervention
I'm beginning to think we have almost as many "Foreclosure Defense Mills" as we do "Foreclosure Mills".
Aside from chest-thumping, the foreclosure defense community will do nothing. No offense intended; but I think many of these attorneys hand in their balls in exchange for their Bar card.
Individuals' claims are different and separate and apart from the government's interests in bringing a lawsuit... individual suits do not qualify under the standard for intervention as a matter of right... and no judge would ever allow a permissive intervention... so...
In the end, the AGs haven't foreclosed on any individual's ability to bring suit for clouding title and/or illegally foreclosing. What they have done is let the can be kicked longer due to the investigation remaining secret and thus forcing private attorneys to conduct more due diligence/discovery, which is often cost prohibitive given the amount in controversy. Well played.
As we've previously talked about... the whole thing boils down to securities... the note itself has been paid out numerous times already (or is situated to be so). Deadbeats are going to lose their homes to their respective states, who are going to whipe the slate clean of both homeowner and any bank clouds... we're just kind of in limbo at the moment... but it's coming... property by painstaking property.
Just seems to me that the job of an AG, as the chief law officer of the state, is to ensure that the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced.
That doesn't appear to be what's going on here. Looks like state sanctioned financial apartheid to me.
This is the difference between what is the law and what should be the law.
It is also why there are safeguards built into the sysytem (e.g. private causes of action and voting).
....hmmmm...they now pay you, to pay them....
...or to NOT pay them?.... What about PMI? Didn't these bozos have Private Mortgage Insurance, required unless you put 20% or more down. Isn't that what PMI is supposed to be for? default? This is more BS than can be held in a Fed Reserve BS box.
The states couldn't fucking negotiate any more money than that out of the federal government? Really? pathetic...
set up rocket dockets in each state that require foreclosing party X to first file a declaratory action regarding a determination of the rightful holder of a particlar mortgage... if they can't do it and/or fuck it up somehow, then the mortgage is invalidated... if they can, then they get to move forward on rocket docket 2 and foreclose in short order upon a defaulting debtor... if they do not want to pursue a foreclosure action, then they can get barred by the statute of limitation. in any scenario where the real holder cannot be determined, then the purported holder also has to pay a penalty equal to the filing fees and costs of a quiet title action, so that any prospective downstream homeowner may file it to clear any potential clouds, once and for all (can pay into the registry of the court and you use the information gained from rocket docket 1 for the payout). Any issues with service get fixed by creating legislation regarding notice to creditors... states should summon creditors, both in standard and constructive forms. There will be no due process violations...
Case over. I'll take a fraction of what any dumbass committee costs to come to the same conclusion.
This is what we need to actually create. A new Magna Carta that sets forth the actual property law they have ignored. Quiet Title needs to be automatic however, thus triggering actions to do the same for neighbors. MERS caused property line issues that can not be solved otherwise.
The law even has a built-in shadow inventory cleaner... tax sales.
It's amazing what develops over hundreds of years of common law... despite us thinking that our versions of history are the first time things happen...
This guy's work should be of paramount interest to those who are in foreclosure, near foreclosure, having trouble paying their mortgage, or those who have even already lost their homnes and want to get them back. Look into Accepting the Deed and the Plea of the Crown work.
This is going to sweep the nation. An end to foreclosure, pretty much for good.
http://robcourtofrecord.wordpress.com
Draw up a warm beverage, settle yourself into a comfy chair, and start studying.
I am Chumbawamba.
will this be the october surprise?