This came in via Zero Hedge but I can not find the source article???
Hearing rumors it was pulled off the WSJ site…
From the WSJ via Zero Hedge:
The chief executive of the privately-held Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, is planning to leave the company and an announcement could come within days, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company has been under fire by Congress and state officials for its role in the mortgage-document crisis. The firm’s board of directors has met in recent days to address the fate of the company and its chief executive, R.K. Arnold, the people said.
Arnold and other MERS executives didn’t respond to requests for comment. A MERS spokeswoman Friday declined comment. Arnold, a former U.S. Army Ranger, has served as the CEO and president of Merscorp Inc., the parent company of MERS, since 1998 and has been with the company since its inception 15 years ago, according to a corporate biography.
MERS was built by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC), and several large U.S. banks in 1996 as an electronic registry of land records. That created a parallel database to facilitate the packaging of loans into securities that could be sold and re-sold without being recorded in local county courthouses, reducing costs for banks. The company’s name is listed as the agent for mortgage lenders on more than 65 million home loans.
But the company’s practices have begun to receive heavy scrutiny from state prosecutors and federal regulators, particularly in light of foreclosure-document problems that surfaced last fall. State and federal lawmakers have begun to consider bills that would make it harder for banks to use or foreclose on properties through MERS.
MERS’s legal standing also has been challenged by legal experts because it doesn’t own the underlying debt. Previously, the mortgage and the promissory note weren’t split between different parties.
Critics of the company have raised concerns over whether notes were properly assigned or tracked within the electronic system. Judges have also begun to question the company’s practices of “deputizing” hundreds of bank executives to handle foreclosures by naming them “vice presidents” of MERS.
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@ LI Ladies… when you say they are benefitting, are they bidding @ foreclosure sales? Acquiring property? Getting kick-back’s from Foreclosure Mills?
Find it very interesting that with the finical straits that NY State is in, that county clerks all over are not jumping on this bandwagon of recovering fee’s.
Suffolk County employees, including clerks, judges, are all on this mortgage fraud free for all.Found out by accident, while doing a search in the clerks office for my own properties.Found a virulant active hornets nest of criminals.Masquerading as officials & law enforecement.
SHOCK is an understatement.
Does this kinda mean MERS finally has no employees at all, since Arnold is kinda the only ’employee’ in the company. or is the company vanishing in the wake of all the problems its existence has made as quickly as it came about. in any case, the WSJ does tend to play down stories which could seriously impact the market or pending cases. unlike Bloomberg.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704115404576096462866136394.html
found it here…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704115404576096462866136394.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Looks like the RATS are starting to abandon the sinking ship
FIRST STANDING-RELATED VICTORY IN VIRGINIA: Aurora’s claim to title thrown out for lack of standing!
http://bryllaw.blogspot.com/2011/01/first-standing-related-victory-in.html
Congratulations! Sounds like a fair-minded judge, as you said, but the prejudice against the homeowners has got to stop. Maybe he will feel differently now & start questioning more pretender-lender claims.
The classic case of the rat deserting the sinking ship…what does he know that we don’t…perhaps this bodes well for us?
On Long Island, N.Y. Due to an isiders perch, I can atest with 100% confidence, that it is the County of Suffolk employees who are the benefactors of ongoing mortgage fraud.The judges, lawyers, clerks even the County Clerk herself.
LOOK IT IS ALL PUBLIC RECORD.
I agree with you Nancy Jean. I’m in Suffolk County, too. Not only have some Judges, Clerks, etc are the benefactors, they are “aiding and abetting the frauds. Maybe they don’t know enough about what they are required to do (according to the law), maybe, they didn’t think that what they were doing or NOT doing, would ever be questioned. Well they are WRONG!!! and their ‘chickens WILL come home to roost’.
I’m thinking that what they mean by a “parallel database” is the individual state databases. They started out with information that would have been “similar” but then when they started bundling up and selling off the debt it was no longer “parallel”…..but they were in control.
That last sentence about deputizing bank “executives” is definitely Wall Street spin, isn’t it?
A parallel database suggests that there’s another just like it somewhere. I’ve looked and haven’t found it; maybe somebody could suggest where this “parallel” database — the one parallel to MERS — is. Things seem to go into MERS, pop out later at times that sometimes make sense but often seem arbitrary to the point that they’re random, and don’t leave much of a trace unless you throw a fit. Even if you do throw a fit there’s still almost no trace.
So .. out with it! We want the MERS parallel database. The public one, used to fund counties with recording taxes, transfer fees, to watch where mortgages are traded, the transparent one that every state’s laws (except MN) say happens to be the only one that matters.
…not going away on a vacation to a federal country club, is he…?