Guilty Pleas in Foreclosure Fraud Cases
The founder and former president of DocX, once one of the nation’s largest foreclosure-processing companies, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to fraud in one of the few criminal cases to have arisen out of the housing crisis.
The executive, Lorraine O. Brown, 56, entered a guilty plea in federal court in Florida and a plea agreement in state court in Missouri related to DocX’s preparation of improper documents used to evict troubled borrowers from their homes. Ms. Brown’s guilty pleas will lead to a prison term of at least two years, the Missouri attorney general said.
Foreclosure abuses, like the routine filing of apparent forgeries with the nation’s courts, gained widespread notoriety in 2010. Ms. Brown admitted to directing DocX employees, beginning in 2005, to sign other peoples’ names on crucial mortgage documents. Many of the documents, like assignments of mortgages and affidavits claiming that a borrower’s i.o.u. had been lost, were used by banks and their representatives to foreclose on homeowners. DocX also filed falsely notarized documents with county clerks across the country. These practices are now known as robo-signing. In her plea, Ms. Brown admitted to participating in the falsification of more than a million documents.
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This is Morgenson. The NYT. She wouldn’t dare offend certain constituents. Plus she doesn’t have history right, intentionally:
“No governmental entity ever required any lender, or any purchaser of loans (and that includes Fannie and Freddie), to make liar’s loans.If Fannie and Freddie purchased large amounts of liar’s loans, then their controlling managers did so because liar’s loans’ higher short-term nominal yield maximized their near-term compensation – not because “the government” made them do so.” – Ritholtz
I see this as a very interesting aspect of the nightmare of foreclosures. Obviously, many homeowners who were in lawsuits of one kind or another have forged and fraudulent documents in their chain of title as well as fraud on the court. How do these facts affect foreclosures or loan mods or short sales? IMHO, some of these cases can be thrown out, and homeowners get restitution for loss of their house and damages.
Wonder how much the banks have paid her to take a two year vacation. I was hoping that the settlement was a diversion for the banks, where they thought they they were home free and would hang themselves with their new found freedom.
Banksters, politicians and even some Rothchilds have supposedly been ousted or arrested worldwide. Where is that coverage? Are they on vacation too?
“improper ducments used to evict troubled borrowers” get this garbage out of here; this article is so biased and in support of the banks by making it look like what thre banks did is merely “improper” and not illegal and felonious; and “troubled borrowers” are you serious? Was it not the banks begging for constant bailouts? Was is not the banks failing because they committed fraud and thus burned themselves???
In a statement, Mark Rosenblum, a lawyer for Ms. Brown in Jacksonville, Fla., said: “By negotiating a settlement to her situation and entering her guilty plea, Lori has started the process of getting on with the rest of her life.”
I’m so happy that she could get on with the rest of her life. What about the millions she illegally misplaced?