Texas Joins Mortgage Foreclosure MultiState Group
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today joined the Mortgage Foreclosure Multistate Group, a coalition of 49 attorneys general, state-level mortgage regulators and bank oversight agencies that will jointly review improper foreclosure processing procedures...thousands of documents were reportedly signed electronically, the states will review whether the signer actually confirmed the facts contained in their affidavits. The workgroup will also review whether foreclosure paperwork was signed outside of the presence of a notary public, contrary to state law. Both judicial and non-judicial foreclosures will be subject to the workgroup’s review.

How Countrywide Covered the Cracks
ON June 27, 2006, Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, was about to close its books on a record-breaking six-month run. The housing market was on fire and Countrywide’s earnings were soaring. Despite all the euphoria inside the company, some executives noticed that Angelo R. Mozilo, the company’s brash and imperious chief executive, seemed subdued... Another Countrywide product that concerned Mr. Mozilo was its so-called 80/20 loan, named for the fact that the combination allowed a borrower to receive money covering 100 percent of a home’s purchase price. Mr. Mozilo had become worried about these loans in the first quarter of 2006, when HSBC Bank, a buyer of Countrywide’s 80-20 loans, began forcing the lender to repurchase some that HSBC contended were defective. “In all my years in the business, I have never seen a more toxic product,” he wrote to Mr. Sambol in an April 17, 2006, e-mail cited by the S.E.C. “With real estate values coming down ... the product will become increasingly worse.”

Angelo Mozilo, other former Countrywide execs settle fraud charges
Angelo R. Mozilo, who as head of home-loan giant Countrywide was at the center of the housing boom and bust, agreed Friday to pay a record fine as part of a $73-million settlement of a government fraud lawsuit over the lender's near-collapse.  "Mozilo's record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite — a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model," said Robert Khuzami, the SEC enforcement chief. All of the $73-million settlement will go to former Countrywide shareholders, including $25 million that Bank of America has agreed to pay as part of a $600-million settlement with investors.

Countrywide's Mozilo to pay $67.5 million settlement
The whopping fine was announced at a court hearing before U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles. "Mozilo's record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. What Mozilo kept to himself, said Khuzami, was "a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model."...The SEC accused only Mozilo of insider trading, alleging that he sold millions of dollars worth of Countrywide stock after he knew the company was doomed.

Countrywide’s Mozilo settles SEC charges
According to court filings, Mozilo agreed to repay $45 million in profits, and $22.5 million in civil penalties, stemming from charges filed against him by the SEC last year. The SEC alleged that Mozilo and former Countrywide executives David Sambol and Eric Sieracki misled shareholders about the quality of loans on the company’s books. In addition, Mozilo was charged with selling company shares based on inside knowledge of the company’s troubles.

Major U.S. Banks Investigated For Foreclosure Fraud
With well over a million homes being repossessed, 2010 is shaping up to be a record year for foreclosures in the U.S. But there are serious questions about the way many have been carried out, and now prosecutors are investigating whether some of the country's largest banks committed fraud.

More Foreclosures Suspended, Congress Requests Investigation Into Alleged Fraudulent Practices
Now Congress is getting in on the act.  Last week Representatives Alan Grayson, Barney Frank, and Corrine Brown wrote a letter to Fannie Mae requesting that the mortgage giant review the firms it uses to process foreclosures, especially several of those that are currently under investigation in Florida for fraud.  Yesterday Senator Al Franken requested Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder conduct an investigation into the “filing of false affidavits in foreclosure proceedings“.

Wall Street Plays Dr. Jekyll to Avoid Court
When duped investors set out to make themselves whole after a fleecing by a broker, the American way is to hustle them off to a private court run by Wall Street. It’s a tradition that was set in stone when the Supreme Court in 1987 said that, if an investor signed an agreement to arbitrate, the sorry loser is out of luck if he ever wants a day in court... In spite of the obvious advantage Wall Street gets by having one of its own on dispute panels, there are political reasons that industry types might actually support Finra’s proposal: forces that are threatening mandatory arbitration altogether. The Dodd-Frank Act has the SEC looking into whether arbitration contracts are in the public interest; the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009 had raised questions on the issue even before Dodd-Frank passed.

The Foreclosure Mess Could Last for Years
The dimensions of the foreclosure crisis keep expanding. Lenders and loan servicers including JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial are facing an explosion in homeowner lawsuits and state attorney general investigations of claims of falsified mortgage documents. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress have called for investigations. And procedural mistakes in the handling of mortgage documents have clouded titles establishing ownership of the homes, a problem that could plague both buyers and sellers for years. "This is going to become a hydra," says Peter J. ...

Texans for Public Justice Report: Perry Reaps $17 Million from his Political Appointees
Governor Rick Perry has received $17 million in campaign contributions from his political appointees and their spouses, according to a new report by Texans for Public Justice.   One out of every $5 raised by Governor Perry since 2001 has come from appointees or their spouses. Read the new report at Texans for Public Justice.

Walking away with less
...deal is called a short sale, and it's sweeping the country. In these deals, a lender allows a troubled borrower to sell a home for less than what's owed on the mortgage. Completed short sales have more than tripled since 2008, and 400,000 of these deals are projected to close this year, according to mortgage research firm CoreLogic. The giant mortgage financier Fannie Mae approved short sales on 36,534 home loans it owned in the first half of the year, nearly triple the number in 2007 and 2008 combined. Freddie Mac, its sister company, approved 22,117 in the first half of 2010, up from a mere 94 in the first half of 2007.

U.S. Mortgage-Fraud Totally Out Of Control
A flurry of news items demonstrates that this epidemic has gotten so out of control that Wall Street banks are literally acting like there are no laws, at all. Shortly after a preliminary report that Ally Financial (the “mortgage unit” of GMAC) had suspended foreclosures in 23 U.S. states due to defective/fraudulent foreclosure procedures, two other news items emerged on this fraud-factory...There have been only 40% as many convictions of this white-collar fraud as during Wall Street's last crime-wave in the 1980's and 1990's – despite the fact that this crime-wave is (much) more than ten times larger. In other words, a white-collar criminal committing mortgage-fraud today is less than 5% as likely to be imprisoned for his crimes compared to 15-20 years earlier.

Conn., Calif. join probe of Ally
Attorneys general in Connecticut and California ordered Ally Financial's GMAC mortgage unit to freeze all foreclosures within their borders, joining a growing list of states investigating whether the firm and other lenders improperly kicked people out of their homes. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Monday accused Ally of using "defective foreclosure documents" in its filings and said he ordered the moratorium "to forestall horrendous, illegal harm against homeowners." California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. on Friday called Ally's document review process a "sham."

Drywall Flaws: Owners Gain Limited Relief
...so far the relief has been negligible. Most insurance companies have yet to pay a dime. Only a handful of home builders have stepped forward to replace the tainted drywall. Help offered by the government — like encouraging lenders to suspend mortgage payments and reducing property taxes on damaged homes — has not addressed the core problem of replacing the drywall. And Chinese manufacturers have argued that United States courts do not have jurisdiction over them.