Massachusetts AG Lawsuit: Five Major U.S. Banks Accused Of Deceptive Foreclosure Practices

[tblue]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is suing five of the nation's biggest banks for deceptive foreclosure and mortgage modification practices, her office announced Thursday. Coakley's suit signals her formal departure from ongoing settlement negotiations between those banks, the Obama administration and a coalition of other state AGs over faulty foreclosure procedures.

/snip

The lawsuit, filed against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Ally Financial and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System in Suffolk Superior Court, targets banks' using fraudulent paperwork in the foreclosure process, foreclosing without actually holding the mortgage, corrupting the local land recording system and failing to uphold promises of loan modifications.

Until now, Coakley had participated in settlement negotiations led by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and the Obama administration. The talks kicked off last fall when it came to light banks were using phony documents and forged signatures -- a process dubbed "robo-signing" -- to foreclose on thousands of borrowers.


New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden became outspoken critics of the talks this summer, insisting Miller sought too narrow a settlement that would release the banks from liability for too much wrongdoing. Miller's focus has been robo-signing and mistreatment of struggling homeowners seeking modifications, but not potential fraud in the way loans were given to borrowers or sold to investors, or in the way banks use MERS to shuffle mortgage documents. The settlement would not encompass the 50 percent of all home mortgages owned by government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to sources close to the talks.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/massachusetts-ag-foreclosure-lawsuit-banks_n_1123393.html

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Good for Massachusetts! Why is the administration pulling for the banks?

[Vincardog]

1. Why is the administration pulling for the banks? Why does any whore pull for their pimp?

[patrice]

4. Past time to ask some questions about ANY political $upporter$$~ who are over a barrel

and unable to get up, with FOREIGN creditors pimping their assets.

[pdefalla]

5. why is the administration pulling for banks?

Geithner, Timothy
Bernanke, Ben
Summers, Larry
Daley, William
Sperling, Gene
etc.
etc.
etc.

[EFerrari]

2. Finally.

[patrice]

3. K&R

[Response]

6. This is great news. I just hope she handles the suit better than her

senatorial campaign. I'm dead serious. These banks have an awful lot of money behind them (none of mine) and an army of lawyers. I hope she is well prepared.

[Playinghardball]

7. Mass. AG hits big banks with foreclosure lawsuit

Source: Reuters/ Raw Story

(Reuters) - The Massachusetts attorney general has filed a lawsuit against five large U.S. banks accusing them of deceptive foreclosure practices, such as robo-signing.

Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Thursday the lawsuit was filed in state court in Boston against Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co Inc, Citigroup Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and Ally Financial.

Coakley's office said the lawsuit was filed after more than a year of negotiations with the banks involving all 50 states.


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/01/mass-ag-hits-big-banks-with-foreclosure-lawsuit/

[Trillo]

8. Depending upon what the definition of "war" is,

presumably it includes the use of some kind of force, one wonders if deception, as the banks used it, is an act of war against the United States.

Is a fraudulent document essentially "the use of force", or is that merely a derivative of force?

[BR_Parkway]

9. Because the people in advisory positions don't know of any other way

They're born and raised within a certain system and they can't see anything beyond that. A lot of people fault Obama for who he appointed to those positions, but I tend to look at it as "what choice did he have?" At least at that point, when everything was collapsing - there was nothing in his background to really prepare him on how to navigate Big Finance and I'm sure when he started looking into things, that he was probably just as shocked at how terribly inter-woven everything was.

That being said, there's been enough time of things not working out for most of the country based on those policies that he should be looking for some other folks to fill a few of those roles, but I'm afraid that move won't happen with an upcoming election plus everyone around him saying that a move like that would spook the markets.