Conyers Lauds Decision by Federal Agency to Sue Banks for Mortgage Securities Fraud as Good First Step; Cites Need for Regulators to do More for Defrauded Homeowners

(WASHINGTON) – Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) issued the following statement:

“The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which is overseeing the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is poised to sue more than a dozen big banks for allegedly misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities sold to Fannie and Freddie at the height of the housing bubble.  This lawsuit, if successful, should help ameliorate the $30 billion in losses these entities incurred, in part as a result of these deals, which have been borne mostly by American taxpayers.

“This is a good first step and one that must be followed by others.  For example, it’s now nearly one year since the so-called robo-signing mortgage foreclosure scandal first erupted and no one has yet been held accountable.  Communities across our nation have been decimated and thousands of American families may have been unnecessarily pushed into foreclosure based on false and misleading documents because of the flagrant disregard for the law shown by lenders and mortgage servicers.  Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office confirmed that mortgage servicers notarized tens of thousands of affidavits that wrongly facilitated foreclosures, including instances where servicers wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of active-duty members of our Armed Forces.

“ In a rare example of a unified nationwide response, all 50 state attorneys general formed a working group last October to conduct a coordinated investigation into these problems.  My colleagues and I have specifically urged this working group to protect the rights of those harmed by these practices, provide meaningful relief to homeowners, hold lenders and servicers accountable for any unlawful practices that they engaged in, and ensure that, in the future, the practices that brought about this crisis will not reoccur.

“American homeowners – first victimized by predatory lenders, and then again victimized by deceptive mortgage servicers – also deserve justice.  All federal regulators and their state counterparts – charged with the responsibility to pursue the truth and to ensure that all culpable parties are held accountable – should follow FHFA’s commendable lead.”

http://democrats.judiciary.house.gov/press-release/conyers-lauds-decision-federal-agency-sue-banks-mortgage-securities-fraud-good-first

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