Mortgage Fraud Investigations
For those of you that may have missed it, Eileen Foster, a former executive vice president in charge of fraud investigations at Countrywide Financial, told Steve Kroft from 60 Minutes that mortgage fraud was a common occurrence at Countrywide under the leadership of Angelo Mozilo.
Zach Carter, Huffington Post
Deutsche Bank has dropped the son of high-profileforeclosure fraud investigator Lynn Szymoniak from the foreclosure case against her, according to new court documents.
The bank had added Szymoniak’s son, Mark Cullen, to the foreclosure suit this May, a move that many experts saw as an act of retaliation against Szymoniak, who has publicized banks’ widespread use of forged signatures in the foreclosure process to improperly give borrowers the boot. On June 8, lawyers filed a “Notice of Dropping Party” with the Florida court dismissing its previous claims against Cullen.
The bank’s decision to back down marks a minor victory for Szymoniak in her own fight to preserve her home. When Deutsche Bank hiked the interest rate on Lynn Szymoniak’s mortgage in 2008, she challenged them in court, alleging the move was a violation of the original contract.
Szymoniak has challenged her bank outside the court as well” She has taken them to task in the halls of Congress, with state and federal law enforcement agencies and over the airwaves. A white-collar crime expert who specializes in documentation fraud, Szymoniak has detailed scores of commonplace foreclosure documentation improprieties as the foreclosure epidemic has deepened and shared her findings with state and federal officials.
Szymoniak also appeared on CBS New’s 60 Minutes” in April to detail the rampant forgery of signatures at the heart of the foreclosure system implemented by most major national banks.
These forged signatures help banks cover up their own mistakes, some which have pushed borrowers into foreclosure through no fault of their own. In Lynn’s case, she says she decided to stop paying her mortgage after the bank improperly raised her interest rate. But her investigations then uncovered that her bank’s had relied on forged signatures to prove that they owned her loan in the first place.
A Flordia court agreed with Szymoniak, and shortly after her “60 Minutes” appearance, a judge threw out the bank’s case. The bank was given a few weeks to refile the case if it could get its ownership records in order.
Zach Carter, Huffington Post
Deutsche Bank appears to have retaliated against a high-profile foreclosure fraud expert, whose years-long battle against her own foreclosure helped reveal a wave of apparent malfeasance, by suing her son.
The expert, Lynn Szymoniak, an attorney who specializes in white-collar crime, is widely considered on Capitol Hill to be one of the nation’s top experts on foreclosure law. When Deutsche Bank attempted to jack up the interest rate on the mortgage for her Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., home in May 2008, she contested the move, setting off an investigation which unveiled mountains of forged signatures and fraudulent bank paperwork associated with the foreclosure process.
Szymoniak alerted other attorneys, neighborhood advocates, lawmakers and the media about the apparent rampant fraud. She appeared on “60 Minutes” in April to discuss the broader foreclosure scandal .
Her own home has been in foreclosure since June 2008. A month earlier, she had been notified that the interest rate on her adjustable-rate mortgage was being raised, increasing her monthly payments by about $1,000. But the terms of her mortgage only allowed interest-rate hikes at certain dates.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Szymoniak noted that Deutsche Bank was not acting within the allowed timeframe.
“They missed my adjustment date, and then when they figured it out, they just slapped that higher payment on anyway,” she said. “I paid one payment at the higher rate and then I said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ And I stopped paying and then they sued me in June ’08.”
Both Deutsche Bank and their legal counsel, Akerman Sentertfitt LLP, declined to comment for this report.
MFI-Miami, LLC, a mortgage fraud investigation company, announced today that on Thursday, April 7, 2011, it will be filing a complaint for Attorney Misconduct with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission against three attorneys from the Troy, Michigan law firm of Orlans Associates. Details of the complaint as follows: Marshall R. Isaacs for knowingly filing fraudulent documents into public record, Linda Orlans for allowing one of her Notaries to make false statements that they witnessed Marshall R. Isaacs sign an affidavit when he did not sign it, and Timothy Myers for perjury in the case of Lucas v. Orlans Associates and BAC Home Loan Servicing, LP (Case #10-113498-NO).
An MFI-Miami investigation concluded that BAC Home Loan Servicing did not own the Lucas loan when they initiated the foreclosure and at the time of the Sheriff’s sale as the three attorneys claim on public record and in public filings. Orlans representing BAC Home Loan Servicing LP claim that they maintained the right to transfer ownership to Fannie Mae with a Sheriff’s Deed. However, according to an Affidavit that was made public in February of 2011 by BAC Home Loan Servicing, LP, the Lucas mortgage was in fact assigned to Fannie Mae in 2005.
“The evidence suggests Orlans and Associates is using robo-signing to expedite the foreclosures for BAC Home Loan Servicing, LP,” said Steve Dibert, President of MFI-Miami.
MFI-Miami intends to request an investigation by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission into how Oakland County Circuit Judge Martha Anderson handled this case. According to Steve Dibert, “She refused to hear key pieces of evidence of attorney misconduct committed by attorneys involved in the case.”
MFI-Miami is also be sending a copy of its investigation with a copy of the complaint to the offices of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, Fannie Mae CEO Mike Williams and Acting Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, John Bowman. Copies will be sent to Barbara DeSoer, President of Bank of America Home Loans and Elizabeth Warren, Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
