FBI investigating possible mortgage fraud in Ingham County

[Bozita]

Source: Michigan Messenger

FBI investigating possible mortgage fraud in Ingham County
Fake signatures prompt investigations
By Todd A. Heywood
04.26.11 | 8:19 am


Curtis Hertel Jr., Register of Deeds for Ingham County, says that a discovery he made involving alleged fraudulent mortgage documents is now being investigated by both the Ingham County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI.

“Yes, this is, in my opinion, fraud,” Hertel said. “This is a situation where people were forging someone else’s name to a legal document to take another person’s property. That is fraud.”

As Register of Deeds, Hertel is responsible for overseeing all the documentation of property sales in the county, including mortgage assignments. Mortgage assignments are documents that transfer ownership of a mortgage from one lending company to another.

Hertel says he was tipped off to the alleged fraud when he saw a report on CBS’ 60 Minutes. That story helped unwind the Byzantine labyrinth of paper work and investments under which the mortgages were sold as investments. But now that the banks are facing down homeowners who can’t afford the payments of their mortgage agreements, they are finding that in the rush to bundle the mortgages, there were corners cut. The original paperwork is missing.

Read more: http://michiganmessenger.com/48496/fbi-investigating-possible-mortgage-fraud-in-ingham-county

[sakabatou]

1. They should do this nation wide

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[DirkGently]

3. Busting the robo-signed Assignments is a step in the right direction. The whole bubble was fraud .

[naaman fletcher]

4. Yes but,

while this is excellent, I can't help but think that they are going after the 15 dollar per hour robo-signers to distract that they are not going after the multi-millionaire bankers who were the masterminds.

[DirkGently]

5. Exactly where I was going. Teeny tiny fish, working for bigger fish, at the behest of WHALES.

The $10 / hr robo-signers worked for mortgage servicing companies. Working for big banks. Which set requirements for foreclosure timelines made impossible by the banks' own inability to timely provide the necessary documents.

So they cheated. As did the law firms. Did the banks check on this? Did they somehow not KNOW that when it takes them an average of, say, five or six months (or forever) to come up with the chain of assignments, but they gave the servicers and law firms 90 days to get a Summary Judgment, that something improper was going on?

This is how organic evil occurs. Big, stupid, immensely wealthy organizations require the wrong thing to be done to please them. Then act surprised when the wrong thing is in fact done.

They are the mafia dons conveniently vacactioning in Lauderdale when someone in Brooklyn is packed in a barrel of acid and dumped in the harbour.

[shraby]

6. That's how they bust drug rings..go after the little guys and

squeeze them to get the names of who issued the orders, and get them to turn over the evidence of the orders.

[DirkGently]

7. Be nice if that happened here. I think it will stop at the servicing companies & law firms, though.

I'd be very surprised if anyone goes through BOA's or Chase's files to try to prove they knew these practices were occurring.

"Tsk, tsk, we had no IDEA, these awful servicers and lawyers were dealing with our demand that non-existent documents appear in foreclosure actions by CHEATING. We're firing them all immediately!"