You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The insideous foreclosure problem in this country. A million homes last year. An expected million homes this year.
It’s the equivalent of a financial nuclear bomb that threatens to ruin this nation’s economy.
With the collapse of the home mortgage bubble came a lot of collateral damage. Families on the street. For Sale signs in yards for months. Property values at an all time low. It’s a fiscal blood letting of epic proportions.
60 Minutes illustrated this problem bluntly like a karate chop to the bridge of the nose. They focused on the stink that is rising from the the voluminous paper work involved in taking back a home.
The stench is so foul, so pungent, it permeates the fianancial universe like the tail end of a skunk crawling out of a septic tank.
The story was nauseating and illustrative of how Gordon Gecko got it wrong; greed is not good.
60 Minutes began the piece showing how tens of thousands of people are trying to save their homes by renegotiating favorable interest rates and loan terms.
Their cameras came to L.A. where people were lined up outside the Staples Center.
People were in tents and seated on lawn chairs and wearing blankets. They stood in lines that went around the block. Some of these sad faces say they have been in line for two days.
You’d think the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen was coming to town. These are not concert goers. These are homeowners waiting for a chance to talk to the rock stars of Bank of America and Citi Bank and Wells Fargo.
These are the financial institutions that reportedly hold the bank notes of the people in line. To these people, two days to talk to a bank rep might be enough to save a family from being thrown onto the street.
60 Minutes asked one woman about her thoughts. “It’s emotional. It’s my american dream,” the woman said, tears in her eyes.
60 Minutes reports that half the 37,000 people who will come through the Staples Center will get their mortgage adjusted. Half will not.
That’s one cold reality.
Here’s the other.
According to 60 Minutes, the banks are throwing families onto the street and thousands and thousands of these foreclosures are based on fraud and lies and greed.
To Foreclose on someone the bank must have its paperwork in order.
Apparently the bank, in its effort to run over lives like a steam roller going down hill, hired a firm to process loan documents. Thousands and thousands of documents. Documents with the names of families and where they lived and how much they owe.
The problem is, it’s all a lie.
60 minutes talked to one woman who was in foreclosure. The woman happens to be a fraud investigator who works with the FBI.
Woops!
Unlike the millions of people not trained to know what to look for, the banks foreclosed on a woman who looks for these issues every day of her life.
The woman requested her own foreclosure documents and what she found made her angry and me sick.
According to the woman, the bank claimed it lost her documents. Then after months of looking, miraculously the banks found her documents.
Fishy? You think? You bet.
“Where was it?,” she asks. “Were they behind the filing cabinet, hey we found it!”
She laughs. But nobody at the banks is laughing any more as the bright light of reality begins to shine into the once dark bastions of corporate greed centers.
The woman points out how she finds the reoccurring signature of one bank VP. The name; LINDA GREEN.
The alleged bank VP’s name is not only on her foreclosure documents, it is also on thousands of other mortgages. What’s interesting is the signature of Linda Green changes over and over and over. Same name, Linda Green, but Linda Green’s signature never looks the same. And as the investigation continues, it reveals that Linda Green is the VP of not just one bank, but she is VP for as many as 5 banks.
“How can that be?” 60 Minutes questions.
As only 60 Minutes can do, they track Linda Green to a tiny farm in Georgia.
It turns out Linda Green is no bank VP. Linda Green is an average Jane of a woman who was working as an auto parts shipping clerk and then she got a job with a company called. DOCX.
60 Minutes calls DOCX a sweat shop for forged mortgage documents.
Linda Green tells the reporter that she sat in a room and signed bank documents by the thousands.
What Linda Green was doing was “recreating missing mortgage assignments for banks” and she was signing these documents for a number of banks claiming she was a VP for each bank.
Is she a VP? NO. Is she authorized to sign these documents? NO. Was this fraud? YOU BETCHA!
Then they interview a man who worked for the same boiler room bunch of scum bags. He laughs and says he signed the name Linda Green over and over and over.
“Didn’t you think it was strange you were signing someone elses name?”
“Sure it seemed strange but they said it was legal.”
What a douche bag. When is it time to act and think independently people? Isn’t it always the right time to do the right thing?
The man hardly looks like a Linda Green and he admits he has no experience in banking except for balancing his own checking acct.
“It looks like your only requirement was to be able to hold a pen,” the reporter says flippantly.
The man says he was paid a very pedestrian $10 dollars an hour to sign 350 fraudulent loan documents an hour, perhaps 4,000 fraudulent loan documents a day.
Each one of these documents that he rubber stamped with fraud was a family, a life, sometimes thrown against the wall and shattered like a piece of fine China.
It turns out some of the VP’s were H.S. kids.
It turns out some of the documents were blank and filled in with names like: bogus assignee.
For real, documents were filled in with the name Bogus Assignee.
Bank’s featured were the biggest in the land including HSBC, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citi Bank.
The banks would only tell 60 Minutes they farmed the paperwork out to mortgage servicing firms.
OK banks. I guess you are not culpable then. Millions of homes foreclosed on, evidence of wide spread fraud and you are not responsible?
That’s like saying the dog ate my homework. It’s insideous. Thank Goodness that States Attorney Generals in all 50 states are suing you banking bastards and throwing a monkey wrench into the fiscal equivalent of a hostage crisis.
I realize many of these people over extend themselves and need to have their homes repossessed. I’m also saying that the banks need to slow down and look at each life they are about to ruin. Make sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed.
And for God’s sakes make sure the name Linda Green isn’t on any of these documents.
And that is crazy.™