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Banks Find More Wrongful Foreclosures Among Military Members The nations biggest banks wrongfully foreclosed on more than 700 military members during the housing crisis and seized homes from roughly two dozen other borrowers who were current on their mortgage payments, findings that eclipse earlier estimates of the improper evictions. Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo uncovered the foreclosures while analyzing mortgages as part of a multibillion-dollar settlement deal with federal authorities, according to people with direct knowledge of the findings.

Courts and Lawyers Getting Sucked into Holder Arguments The only problem I have with cases that find for either the borrower or the would-be forecloser is that they continue to put too much emphasis on holder and too little emphasis on owner. The banks continue to use worthless paper assigned in blank. The paper was worthless because no financial transaction occurred. The paper talks about the transaction and raises certain presumptions. But the presumptions are.

California Man Charged With Bankruptcy Fraud Related To Foreclosure-Rescue Scam The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Melinda Haag today announced that a federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted Walter Bruce Harrell, of Montara, California, with eight counts of bankruptcy fraud and two counts of making false statements in bankruptcy proceedings.

Two Years Later, The Florida Bar Takes Action Against Foreclosure Baron David J. Stern Way back in August 2010, I sounded the alarm about a fellow named David J. Stern, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who'd gotten rich off the housing meltdown of the mid-2000s. Stern ran a law firm that handled foreclosure cases as fast as possible for big banks and the quasi-governmental housing corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But as I revealed, Stern's law firm, paid per case, increasingly cut corners and, in some cases, duped judges in Florida's overwhelmed court system.

California Court Holds That Borrowers May Enjoin A Foreclosure If A Lender Fails To Meet Servicing Guidelines In Pfeiffer v. Countrywide Home Loans, --Cal.Rptr.3d ----, 2012 WL 6216039 (Dec. 13, 2012), mortgage borrowers filed a damages claim against a trustee for violating the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and an injunction claim against a lender to halt a foreclosure they claimed was wrongful. The trial court sustained the defendants demurrer to both claims without leave to amend. The California Court of Appeal affirmed as to the first claim, but reversed as to the second....

Occupy Our Homes crashes foreclosure auction, protests investment firms buying up distressed properties Dozens of Occupy Our Homes Atlanta activists played an oversized game of Monopoly in the midst of monthly foreclosure auctions at the Fulton County Courthouse this morning, protesting what's been called a real-life Game of Homes. Multicolored piggy banks named after some of the investment firms currently buying large numbers of homes.

St. Petersburg wants to create foreclosure registry It took city officials four weeks to board up an abandoned home in the Melrose-Mercy neighborhood because, by law, they had to post notices and try to contact the property owner. During that time, thieves stripped out wiring and aluminum windows from the home. "You now have a house that has $20,000 of damage done because it was not secure enough," said City Council Chairman Karl Nurse.

Occupy the SEC, Frustrated With Regulatory Defiance, Sues Fed, SEC, CFTC, FDIC and Treasury In the US, the challenge is somewhat different. While the issue of widespread apathy is the same, one critical difference is that much of the public still fails to understand the degree to which the ruling classes no longer represent their interests. Oh, they may resent the banks, and they may also hate Congress, but most people deeply need to believe they live in a system that is fair and where business and political leaders (some if not all) still deserve respect and admiration. So efforts like this suit, which in a few short pages sets forth regulators have simply refused to do their job, whether out of intellectual laziness or due to their indulgence of bank stymieing tactics, puts another chink in the official defenses of cronyism.