States accuse Bank of America of widespread fraud on homeowners

Banks Break Into Homes, Not Always Legally
Banks have made the occasional huge mistake in the massive home Foreclosure crisis of the last decade, including illegally ordering home break-ins once in a while. When Homeowners are behind on their Mortgage payments, or attempting to modify their home loan, or even on occasion fully paid up but lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, they are in danger of having their home broken into and their possessions removed by the banks. A New York Times report details the occasional terrible mistakes banks h...

Banks Accused Of Breaking Into Homes
Arriving at her home in Truckee, Calif., Mimi Ash found it had been cleared of her possessions New York Times: TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the word...

Banks Accused of Illegally Breaking Into Homes
TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. Arriving at her home in Truckee, Calif., Mimi Ash found it had been cleared of her possessions. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words &ldquo...;

Bank Of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs
Bank of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs The Attorneys General of Nevada and Arizona last week slapped Bank of America with lawsuits alleging widespread Fraud occurrs in the bank’s mortgage modification programs. BofA, the nation’s biggest bank, has consistently lagged behind the other big mortgage servicers in successfully modifying mortgages for troubled borrowers. Andrew Jakabovics and I also caught the bank violating the contract it...

Federal Reserve Blocks New Foreclosure Regulations
WASHINGTON -- Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department. The Fed, along with the more bank-friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is resisting moves to craft rules cracking down on banks that charge illegal fees and carry out improper Foreclosures. The FDIC supports such rules, according to an FDIC official involved in the dispute. The new regulations ...

Banks to Homeowners: Were In Ur Houses, Changin Ur Lockz
Photo: iStockPhoto Bank of America might be on edge about what would happen if BrianMoynihanSucks.com gets into the wrong hands, but they're not afraid to look like the bad guy. According to a federal Lawsuit, Bank of America not only wrongfully foreclosed on Mimi Ash's ski home, but they also broke in, changed the locks, and threw out all her possessions, including a wooden box inscribed with the words Together Forever that held the ashes of her late husband, Robert. Alan Jaffa, chief executi...

What Will It Take?
By John Ballard When I saw a Tweet linking this story my first response, of course, was RT. But then it hit me: This is obscene. Stories such as this are proliferating like rats in a landfill. This is not one of those local stories that clutter the news -- Drug Busts, apartment fires, C-store robberies, police chases, Traffic Jams... This is a national plague that has been unfolding over what will soon become three years. Have we have become so deaf and blind to the wholesale ugliness of it al...

When banks burglarize
When Bank of America bought Countrywide, did it know that as a consequence it would start being associated in the public mind with meltwater reeking of rotten halibut? In Texas, Bank of America had the locks changed and the electricity shut off last year at Alan Schroit’s second home in Galveston, according to court papers. Mr. Schroit, who had paid off the house, had stored 75 pounds of salmon and halibut in his refrigerator and freezer, caught during a recent Alaskan fishing Vacation. “La...

Arizona sues BofA for alleged mortgage fraud
by Catherine Reagor - Dec. 17, 2010 11:37 PM Arizona's Attorney General filed a Lawsuit Friday against Bank of America, accusing the state's largest Mortgage lender of deceiving borrowers who were trying to obtain Loan Modifications to keep their homes. Bank of America violated the state's consumer-fraud laws by not responding to many Homeowners' requests for help, rejecting loan-modification applications without supplying sufficient reason and beginning Foreclosure proceedings on homeowners at ...

Bank Break Ins Leading to Litigation
Even though banks piously insist that every one of their Foreclosure actions is fully justified, evidence in the court system continues to prove that claim to be false. We pointed out this sorry development in October, that of banks entering and changing the locks on homes they had not foreclosed upon. Per a report from the Sarasota Herald Tribune: The process of banks hiring people to break into homes, even when occupied, is just the latest oddity of the messy Foreclosure crisis in Florida. S...

More Illegal Foreclosure Bank Break-Ins
I wonder if you could go to a Bank CEO’s home, break into his house, and throw out all of his personal possessions — family heirlooms, photos, awards — then claim a paperwork error. That is the excuse they have been using: “In an era when millions of homes have received Foreclosure notices nationwide, Lawsuits detailing bank break-ins like the one at Ms. Ash’s house keep surfacing. And in the wake of the Scandal involving shoddy, sometimes illegal paperwork that has b...

Misc: Ernst & Young accused of fraud, Banks accused of illegal break-ins
by CalculatedRisk on 12/21/2010 10:14:00 PM Two stories: Lehman's Accounting was fishy. The other is a real fish story ... • From the NY Times DealBook: Cuomo Sues Ernst & Young Over Lehman The New York Attorney General on Tuesday sued Ernst & Young, accusing the Accounting Firm of helping Lehman Brothers, its client, “engage in a massive Accounting Fraud” by misleading investors about the Investment Bank’s financial health.• From Andrew Martin at the NY ...

Banks Now Recapturing Sentimental Value in Foreclosures
As the Foreclosure crisis grinds on, home-repossession horror stories continue to multiply and in some cases sharpen to a fine point. For example, it's may prove pretty tough for Bank of America to shake off a little anecdote from today's New York Times. It starts with Mimi Ash, a woman who says BofA wrongly foreclosed on her. The usual tropes of Foreclosure horror come into play: a return home, changed locks, missing possessions. But then there's a unique little twist: When she finally got in...

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 51
As the Foreclosure mills get ready to start up in January, it's important to note that 27 states don't have judges decide Foreclosure proceedings, and in those states, trustees hired by the banks conduct proceedings for evictions. All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. Attorneys general in non- judicial states, including Arizona, Texas and Washington, are conducting independent pr...

Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods
WASHINGTON -- Despite mounting evidence of big banks committing serious Fraud in the Foreclosure process, the U.S. Senate eliminated $35 million in Legal Aid to Homeowners trying to keep their homes. The fund was wiped out in order to meet Government Spending caps advocated by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), but will likely end up costing Taxpayers much more in the long run, as wrongful foreclosures burn through the Balance Sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The ...

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court - National Business - MiamiHerald.com
Newark, N.J. -- Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," in which emp...

"I Wish the Law Had Worked": A Dispatch from the Land of Unintended Consequences
Once upon a time, people seeking Loan Modifications got screwed by lawyers who promised to save their homes, took a few thousand dollars, and disappeared from the face of the Earth. Then the light of Regulation shone upon California and a Task Force was convened, Legislation was devised, and everyone smiled when it passed by an overwhelming 36-4 in September 2009. Now, this: Lawyers throughout California say they have no choice but to reject clients [seeking help with Mortgage modifications] be...

New Jersey warns foreclosure fiends
New Jersey has fired a shot across the Banking Industry's bow. The state's Supreme Court ordered the biggest lenders to prove they are acting lawfully in processing Foreclosures. While that only seems like common sense, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told the Wall Street Journal he believes this is the first case in which the state courts have placed that particular ball where it belongs, in the Bankers' court. Time for a Mortgage rule makeover? "It's important that the judiciary ens...

Preeti Vissa: An Ebenezer Scrooge Christmas?
This time of year conjures up traditional images of family gatherings, cozy fireplaces, shared meals and happy exchanges of presents -- images of home, security and friendship. But millions of Americans who have had their homes foreclosed or who are in imminent danger of Foreclosure have no such sense of security, and in many cases no real home. Far too little is being done to help them. It seems like Ebenezer Scrooge is running Christmas this year. But it doesn't have to be this way. I've wri...

States Sue Bank of America: Bank Employees Dish, and Other Highlights
ProPublica, Dec. 20, 2010, 1:31 p.m. On Friday, Arizona and Nevada both filed suit against Bank of America, saying it deceived Homeowners trying to avoid Foreclosures. The suits allege that Bank of America knowingly misled Homeowners in the Loan Modification process, regularly promising quick help when the process instead dragged out over months if not years, foreclosing on Homeowners during the modification process despite promises that Homeowners would be safe and making “false” pr...

State attorney general sends warning on crib bumpers
The Illinois Attorney General's office is warning parents not to use crib bumper pads in nurseries because they pose suffocation and strangulation hazards for babies. The agency is also pressing the trade group that represents product manufacturers to take "immediate and substantial action" to address hazards of the products and to release a study on bumper pad safety that the group commissioned. Both moves from Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office came in response to a Tribune investigation...

Washington, American Samoa are worst U.S. markets for insurers
American Samoa and Washington, D.C. were the worst U.S. markets for insurers in 2009, as Foreclosures and a Tsunami in the South Pacific triggered customer payouts. Insurers in Washington spent 49 percent more on claims and other expenses than the $1.6 billion they collected in premiums last year, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said today in a report. In American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific, carriers paid out more than 13 times the $85,000 of premiums they ...

Crony journalism at the NewsHour
JIM LEHRER: In the worst-case scenario, the panel says courts could block Foreclosures. Banks would be left holding bad Mortgage loans that cost them billions of dollars. That in turn would deepen disruption in the Housing Market. But, in the best case, the Oversight Panel acknowledges, concerns about Mortgage documents may prove to be overblown, a view embraced by the financial industry. This afternoon, executives from two major lenders, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, appeared before t...

Guest Post: Assange Confirms that Bank of America Is the Target of Bank Leak
→ Washington’s Blog There has been widespread speculation that Wikileaks would target Bank of America. This has now been confirmed. Specifically, Agence Press France is reporting: Assange also confirmed that Wikileaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year. ...

Assange Confirms that Bank of America Is the Target of Bank Leak
There has been widespread speculation that Wikileaks would target Bank of America. This has now been confirmed. Specifically, Agence Press France is reporting: Assange also confirmed that Wikileaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year. Will the B of A documents be a bombshell, or sound and fury signifying nothing? ...