Fraud Settlement

$8.5 Billion Foreclosure Fraud Settlement: Yet Another Loss for Homeowners Touted as a Victory

It’s bad enough to see long suffering homeowners take it once again in the chin, thanks to the way the bank regulators prostrate themselves before their supposed charges. It adds insult to injury to see this type of ritualized sellout yet again presented as a boon for consumers.

The latest case study is the $8.5 billion foreclosure fraud settlement announced today. This agreement came out of a consent decrees among 14 servicers, the OCC, and the Fed entered into in April 2011. This was never a good faith effort to change bank behavior; the OCC was using this ruse to try to undermine the (then) 50 state AG-Federal regulator negotiations (which looked like they might be serious because Elizabeth Warren was informally advising the government side).

There were two major elements of the consent decrees, also known as cease & desist orders. One was a list of servicing standards, which were a partial recitation of what they were supposed to be doing already under current law. The second was a Potemkin review of foreclosures. The cover story was that this process was to identify wrongful foreclosures and compensate harmed borrowers. The real purpose was to whitewash servicer behavior.

Rest here…

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4closureFraud.org