“Once the judgment is entered by the courts, LPS will undertake a review of documents executed during the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2010 to determine what documents, if any, need to be re-executed or corrected. If LPS is authorized to make the corrections, it will do so and will make periodic reports of the status of its review and/or modification of documents.”
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Robo-Signing Allegations Settled for $121 Million
Lender Processing Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries, LPS Default Solutions and DocX, have reached a multi-state settlement to resolve claims of unlawful foreclosure practices, including robo-signing. The $121 million settlement, reached by 45 states and the District of Columbia, will require LPS and its subsidiaries to reform their business practices and, if necessary, to correct documents it improperly executed that harmed homeowners.
“Lender Processing Services, Inc., LPS Default Solutions and DocX cut corners in order to maximize their profits,” said New York Attorney General Schneiderman. “My office will pursue any company that generates false or robo-signed documents that are used to foreclose on New York homeowners.”
The proposed consent judgment resolves allegations that the Jacksonville-based company “robo-signed” documents and engaged in other improper conduct related to mortgage loan default servicing. LPS Default Solutions and DocX primarily provide technological support to banks and mortgage loan servicers.
Among other things, the settlement prohibits signature by unauthorized persons or those without first-hand knowledge of the facts attested to in filed documents, enhances oversight of the default services provided, and requires review of all third-party fees to ensure that the fees have been earned and are reasonable and accurate. The settlement also:
· Prohibits LPS (including DOCX) from engaging in the practice of “surrogate signing” of documents;
· Ensures that LPS has proper authority to sign documents on behalf of a servicer, if in fact it is signing documents;
· Requires LPS to accurately identify the authority that the signer has to execute the document and where that signer is employed;
· Prohibits LPS from notarizing documents outside the presence of a notary and ensures that notarizations will comply with applicable laws;
· Prohibits LPS from improperly interfering with the attorney-client relationship between attorneys and services;
· Prohibits LPS from incentivizing or promoting attorney speed or volume to the detriment of accuracy;
· Requires LPS to ensure that foreclosure and bankruptcy counsel or trustees can communicate directly with the servicer;
· Requires LPS to have enhanced oversight and review of processes over third parties it manages, including those entities that perform property preservation services;
· Prohibits LPS from imposing unreasonable mark-ups or other fees on third party providers’ default or foreclosure-related services;
· Requires LPS to establish and maintain a toll-free phone number for consumers concerning document execution and property preservation services (including winterization, inspection, preservation, and maintenance); and
· Requires LPS to modify mortgage documents that require remediation when LPS has legal authority to do so and when reasonably necessary to assist a consumer or when required by state or local laws.
In the settlement, LPS stipulated to important facts uncovered in the investigation, including the practice by DocX of so-called “surrogate signing,” the signing of documents by an unauthorized person in the name of another and notarizing those documents as if they had been signed by the proper person.
List of the states can be found here…
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Let’s do the math. By 2006 (two thousand SIX), Lender Processing Services was–according to its newsletter, the Summit–producing ONE THOUSAND phony documents PER DAY.
Okay, let’s say it continued to reach production milestones, milestones that were similar to the run up numbers it produced in 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001. Let’s say–because math has never been my strong suit–that it produced 250,000 documents each year from 2006 through 2010–five years. That’s 1.25 million documents. Let’s say that in the five years from 2001 through 2005 it produced, oh, 750,000 documents, making the total completely phony, b.s. documents produced by Lender Services around TWO MILLION. Everybody with me so far?
If half of those documents were foreclosure-related, and half of the half resulted in someone’s house being improperly foreclosed on, then you’re looking HALF A MILLION HOMES that were foreclosed on using LPS’s totally phony documentation. This fine means that LPS’s fraud cost it $262 PER HOME that was foreclosed on due to its fraud. Gee. $262 for each home….
Documents should not be allowed to be changed again but an amendment attached and filed. This should only be allowed in cases where history has not past the point of this action being relevant to other actions, that have taken place, after the fraudulent document was created. If actions have transpired, based on the fraudulent document, then this settlement is just assisting the perpetrator, with deceptive practices and making a bigger mess of the paper trail. Write the government a check and all the lives you have messed up in the courts, we will just forget about it. We will let you alter history instead of amend history and make the problem worse. Who is going to end up with the majority of the settlement money? People that have not been harmed yet or people that have never been harmed like first time home buyers or for legal assistance for people in the future that again have not no relevance to past wrong actions? Not the people that were harmed that deserve 100% of the money. The people that have not been harmed yet are a new group for the next settlement. Giving any of the money to any party other than the victims of the settlement is wrong, stupid, selfish and bad leadership. It makes me sick to see the Attorney General settlements in Florida wanting to use the AG settlement money with the banks to help first time home buyers that have never been harmed by a bank. This money is being split up and fought over by irrelevant government parties to try and think up irrelevant parties to give the money to while giving SOME of the real victims receive a pathetic pittance. The victims are watching this with disgust. Give the money to the victims and stop squandering it. (Past victims only, not future victims, they have their own case, it starts all over with lack of regulation and supervision) Who is going to jail at LPS after all these findings? How much did they make since 2001 with the list of problems above compared to the settlement amount? In other words, how many millions or billions was this profitable for LPS? LPS is a large part of this problem that got so bad.
This is crap.
LPS (or whatever it was called) has been doing this for years, and certainly as far back as 2001, which anyone who has read their newsletter, The Summit (available on scribd.com), knows.
Doesn’t sound like much of a “settlement” to me, just $121 Million, compared to the millions of homes that now have a clouded title. And how much of the $121 Million is compensation for all those screwed-over homeowners? Probably none of it. This is hooey.