Why ask why? According to the Americanbanker some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners.
The practice continues nearly a year after the companies were caught cutting corners in the robo-signing scandal and about six months after the industry began negotiating a settlement with state attorneys general investigating loan-servicing abuses.
Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose. Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist. Many banks are missing the original papers from when they securitized the mortgages, in some cases as long ago as 2005 and 2006, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. They and some industry members say the related mortgage assignments, showing transfers from one lender to another, should have been completed and filed with document custodians at the time of transfer.
"It's one thing to not have the documents you're supposed to have even though you told investors and the SEC you had them," says Lynn E. Szymoniak, a plaintiff's lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. "But they're making up new documents." The banks argue that creating such documents is a routine business practice that simply "memorializes" actions that should have occurred years before. Some courts have endorsed that view, but others, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, have found that this amounts to a lack of sufficient evidence and renders foreclosures invalid.
Find out more at http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_170/robo-signing-foreclosure-mortgage-assignments-1041741-1.html
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