Unsealed court-settlement documents reveal banks stole $trillions' worth of houses

boing
41

“But mistakes get made, documents get lost, etc., and sometimes it’s necessary to go back and have a document re-executed. That’s one of the reasons why we usually have “further assurances” clauses in the documents.”

Sure, if mistakes were made something could be done. But this was not a mistake. This was deliberate destruction of documents and replacement with an illegal, corrupt database. And it was done on millions of properties. You are confusing good faith mistakes with serial lawbreaking.

And if that’s not enough, you are not even addressing the chain of title issue where the securitized mortgages were sold and resold, with no record of who sold what to whom and when. In other words its not just re-executing a mortgage/note, its recreating an entire title chain. This mess can’t be cleaned up with a few repaired or recreated documents.

42

That’s true of land, but not necessarily of other property.

43

Yeah, I’d buy that. If the same standards applied to everyday citizens who screwed up their paperwork and then forged some replacements.

49

Prosecute Obama indeed.

50

Thats Boing Boing math for you.

54

Usury is capitalism, my friends.

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55

Jefferson was American, had slaves and was wealthy. Not much of a commie. Sounds like you suggest that since Jefferson hated Banks, he was a commie.

Mercantile trade built America from its infancy. The banks came later.

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From a practical and ethical standpoint, I agree.

But I have always believed that we are a nation of laws, governed by the rule of law, not by the whim of the government, and with equal respect for all.

If the homeowner had messed up their paperwork in some important way, such that they did not in fact own their home, would they have come out ahead if pitted against the banks? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

Between this, the NSA spying, and all the other things that we’re finding out about, I’ve realized that the USA is not the country I thought it was - and I’m unsure if it ever was.

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57

Read the article again, you’re not understanding what is being said.
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58

What houses without mortgages have been foreclosed? I have only heard of one such foreclosure and it was basically legit–the problem was not the foreclosure but the failure to stop the foreclosure when the house was short-sold.

What keeps making the news as wrongful foreclosure are cases of trashing out the wrong house. Wrong, but measures aimed at tightening up the foreclosure requirements will do nothing about them because they aren’t errant foreclosures in the first place.

59

Oh come on. This is exactly the sort of game the RIAA plays when assessing damages from piracy.

Messing up the paper work does NOT equal the cost of the house unless you operate under the “finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers” morality. (Now, have some banks done so? No doubt. But even a 4 year old knows that isolated acts of evil are not free license to be evil oneself.)

And corrupt database? Almost all the issues being referred to here are banks attempting to recreate the documentation to liens that had been legitimately taken by home owners. Should they be punished? Yes. But there’s a world of difference between insufficient documentation and theft.

60

You do not really know what’s been going on for the past 10 years with the banks and the housing market apparently. And I guess you don’t understand what chain of title is or how it important it is to our land records systems. The docs the banks are forging are the very documents needed to establish who owns what. And the corrupt database is the piece of garbage they unilaterally decided to replace our centuries-old land title system with. You should really read up on this fiasco, because it could affect you or anyone you know who owns property in the US. Basically what this means is that if some underpaid, underqualified clerk working for any of thousands of corporations mangled the input to this database, your home, even if you own it outright, could be subject to a foreclosure action that can turn your life upside down. Or you could go to sell your parent’s house and find that you can’t actually sell it anymore because the database says some bank somewhere gave them a mortgage and its in default. Now tell me how recreating documents from the information in a corrupted database is “just forgery” again. The damn banks can’t prove who owns what property, and they come into court with forgeries to claim they own a mortgage on a property. How is this different from if you or I drafted some forged mortgage papers and went to court to foreclose on someone’s home? How is that not theft? Even if you actually did provide the mortgage, if you don’t have chain of title documents to back it up, and you can’t rely on the database that you replaced chain of title with to certify the legality of your claims, you or I would be SOL.

If you lose your lottery ticket you don’t get the jackpot. But at least in that case it wasn’t due to you breaking the law and destroying the land records system. This IS going to cost well more than $1 trillion, if it hasn’t already. You really need to learn what’s been going on before opining so strongly.

61

Sorry but you’re wrong. Every few months for the past 5 years I’ve read another story like this. And those are just the ones that get reported on. My two-second search turned up just three cases from 2009 solely regarding Bank of America:

And as if trashing someone’s house, stealing all their furniture, etc. isn’t bad enough. If you or I did that we’d be arrested and imprisoned.

And what you don’t realize is the underlying reason for many of these types of events is that the banks unilaterally decided to replace our ancient land title record system with a shitty database with no audit trail, and the data in that database is obviously corrupt and there is no way to make it right.

62

That’s still a mistaken address case, not a wrongful foreclosure case.

If you don’t address the actual cause of the problem you can’t hope to fix it.

63

More links to wrongful foreclosures, took me another 5 seconds:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/bank-of-america-forecloses-on-house-that-couple-had-paid-cash-for/1072632

“Two other homeowners, one earlier this month in Texas and another last October in Kentucky, also have filed lawsuits alleging that Bank of America attempted to foreclose on their homes even though the bank did not own or service mortgages for the properties”

Honestly, you can do these searches yourself if you care. It really behoves you to research your points before you assert things. This is happening all over the country, trying to deny it is happening is pointless.

And lets not forget the point that locking people out of their homes and destroying all of their person property is a crime as well. We all know what’s going on (except for you apparently). The problem is that no one with any authority is doing anything about any of it. The police refuse to arrest the thieves and DA’s refuse to prosecute them. If just one of these bozos was prosecuted criminally, you can bet the rest would institute more careful procedures in future, but just like with the rest of our corporate and government overlords, there are no repercussions for their criminal acts.

64

You continue to prove my point here–these are wrong address cases, not wrongful foreclosure cases.

65

He didn’t die of a cocaine overdose snorted off a hooker’s bosom, he died of heart stoppage.

Obviously the wrongful foreclosure attempts were triggered by commonplace typographical errors that anybody could have made while forging thousands of fake mortgage documents, so it’s just a case of mistaken address. Nothing to see here!

Edit: I actually agree with you and Ygret both, I just find the small distinction you’re arguing to be funny.

66

You miss the point.

I’m not saying the mistaken addresses aren’t a problem. They most certainly are. What I’m saying is that attempts to make the banks jump through more hoops when foreclosing will do nothing about the problem because that’s not where it’s coming from.

We need to do something to make them more careful about the actual address they go to.

67

Now, the points you have brought up are both serious and real. And that’s why the banks need to be punished and corrective action taken. That is a story.

However, the potential for trouble (and outright theft) IS NOT THE SAME AS the banks have seized all the houses that have been mortgaged in the last 20 years, which is pretty much what the headline (and much of the article) implies.

It’s like finding a carcinogen in our food supply, and then claiming 100,000,000 Americans will die because of it!

Again, my issue is that the headline (and the tone of the article) allows someone who might be concerned to glance, see the claim - that the banks have stolen all the houses in North America, laugh - say “no, they haven’t, how stupid does the author think we are?” AND IGNORE A REAL PROBLEM.

I know it’s delightful to have a over-all narrative with Bond-like super-villains. It’s a pity that reality is full of careless, greedy people, people pushing limits, people trying to do good (“Finally! Low income people get the housing they deserve!”), two-bit criminals, people jumping at the chance to own a home, and a few smart people taking maximal advantage of the system (and often enough, each other). No narrative, just a bunch of people responding to incentives. Human beings are biologically programmed for boom/busts, and technology has allowed us to write this imperative in bigger, brighter letters than ever before.

We’ve been doing it for the last 2,000 years, and if we survive that long, probably the next 2,000 years as well. And yes, players and non-players will suffer the consequences of each craze.

68

Well, I have found that making more rules never makes people have stronger morals or a better work ethic. And regular stupid people like me just make more mistakes in the presence of more rules. So I have to agree with you there.