The Robo-Signing Scandal Led to the Halting of Foreclosure Operations
Photo by Taberandrew
The investigations being carried out by the fifty attorneys general and other federal departments has been dubbed by some as nothing but an attempt to whitewash the fraud pertaining to foreclosure abuses.
Financial misdemeanors have led to the economy of the country nearly collapsing but the Congress has given bailout rewards to the entities responsible for this crime. The last decade has been stamped with the present culture of no-accountability.
It seemed that the foreclosure fraud drama is a replay of an older drama. All the ingredients were present. The culprit was the banking world – the most powerful voice in Washington. They were found out – thanks to the admittances of their own personnel.
There was en masse signing of foreclosure documents without any checking. For some time the robo-signing scandal led to the halting of foreclosure operations but it soon became apparent that this exposure was only the tip of the iceberg.
Financial institutions also were planning fraud in the mortgage securitization that made a mess of the title chain of properties numbering millions and broke apart the biggest world market – the residential market of the United States.
None in Washington wanted to come forward clean with all the information. The regulators huddled together and began issuing consent orders that had no force behind them. None was keen to actually do the digging because of rampant fear of other skeletons coming out of the closet.
The same can also be said about the leaders running the state government. The ‘investigation’ of the attorneys general quickly turned into talks about a settlement with some major banks that would trade a hush-up for a relatively small amount of money – relative in comparison to the massive crimes they committed. The banks would be let off from any further questions about the scam that occurred.
This was the position last winter. Attorneys valiantly fighting for the foreclosure victims since 2004 had been invigorated in their efforts with the recent exposure of robo-scandals. Some of the judges are beginning to accept the idea about entities forging documents, but their numbers were few.
The registers of land deeds tried to dive into their office records but they too, in the beginning, were a handful. The investors found they too had the right to bring lawsuits against the banks for wrongful representation, but they were not bold enough. Sans any strong action from the level of the state, the private actions still lack bite.
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