rigorousintuition.ca

The example of Fairbanks, a standalone servicer who subprime portfolio got in trouble in 2002, is that servicers who are losing money start abusing customers and investors to restore profits. Fairbanks charged customers for force placed insurance and as part of its consent decree, paid large fines and fired its CEO (who was also fined).

jingofever wrote:Yves Smith says:

The example of Fairbanks, a standalone servicer who subprime portfolio got in trouble in 2002, is that servicers who are losing money start abusing customers and investors to restore profits. Fairbanks charged customers for force placed insurance and as part of its consent decree, paid large fines and fired its CEO (who was also fined).

So these companies could be looking at some stiff fines (but not so large as to make the fraud a loss for them). It doesn't matter what the banks do. They're either fined, or if they really screw things up, bailed out. Jail is not an option.

Edit: The government may only fine the banks, but might the pension funds sue them (if I understand the summary JackRiddler posted about investors being scammed)?

seemslikeadream wrote:Cenk Uygur did a piece on this tonight on his show, even played the Anonymous video!


Unions have 1 bilion dollars in that M & I bank

2012 Countdown wrote:
So Unions are withdrawing 1B from M&I? Wow.

Anonymous Attacks And The Inability To Eat An iPad
Mar. 14 2011 - 6:08 pm | 580 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comments
Posted by Addison Wiggin


Relatively cheap but inedible

On one front after another, the Federal Reserve is coming under siege. On Saturday, to begin, the hacker group calling itself “Anonymous” issued a video manifesto calling for “a relentless campaign of nonviolent, peaceful civil disobedience.”

“We aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlements [sic] and World Bank,” Anonymous says.

The group has been around for years, but made its biggest impact last fall, when WikiLeaks began releasing its stash of State Department cables. As Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard all cut off their business ties with WikiLeaks, Anonymous launched “distributed denial of service” attacks – basically slamming their websites with so much traffic until they were forced to shut down.

“As a first sign of good faith,” says the manifesto, “we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.”

Monday morning, Anonymous released some emails given to them by a former employee at Bank of America. The emails are separate from the BoA documents that WikiLeaks is sitting on.

The emails haven’t been independently verified, but they appear to show that, among other things, loan numbers were routinely falsified with the intent of putting mortgage holders in default. You think the “robo-signing” scandal was a big deal? Wait until this one gets legs.

Anonymous is nothing if not ambitious. And they have a rising tide of public anger on their side.

Then, on the same day the tsunami devoured 100 miles of Japanese coastline, New York Fed chief William Dudley – a 21-year vet of Goldman Sachs – stepped out of his bubble to explain Fed policy to real people in Queens.

It might not have been the first time Dudley attempted to gain the trust of the hoi polloi, but we’re pretty sure it’ll be the last. The details here were reported widely. We divined the scene from a Reuters report.

First Dudley swore up and down that inflation was no problem. “When was the last time, sir,” came a reply from the audience, “that you went grocery shopping?” Dudley boldly proceeded to explain the concept of “core CPI” – the cost-of-living measure designed for people who don’t eat or consume energy. We know firsthand how well that goes over.

Then in a brilliant stroke, he pointed to Apple’s shiny new iPad 2 to illustrate his point. “Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful,” he gamely explained. “You have to look at the prices of all things.”

“I can’t eat an iPad,” someone yelled from the crowd. How big a leap is it from “I can’t eat an iPad” to “douse myself with gasoline and light my body on fire in the street,” we wondered while reading the report. Depends entirely on who’s listening, we suspect.

WakeUpAndLive wrote:

hava1 wrote:can anyone sum it up in two sentences ? I read the emails and didnt understand, except that they were going to tamper with records.

These are "document tracking numbers," a number assigned to all incoming/outgoing documents (letters, insurance documents, etc).

A woman with Balboa Insurance replies:

I have spoken with my developer and she stated that we cannot remove the DTNís from Rembrandt, but she can remove the loan numbers, so the documents will not show as matched to those loans.

I will need upper management approval from Jason, Peggy and Kirsten, since this is an usual request, before we move forward.

Rembrandt is the insurance tracking system.

Peggy with upper management replies, "Where will these letters show up then?" The woman from Balboa responds, "The letters will not show in Rembrandt if you search by loan number. If you search by DTN, you will find the document, but it will not be matched to any loan."

The numbers' removal are then "approved."

The operations manager expresses his concern:

I'm just a little concerned about the impact this has on the department and company. Why are we removing all record of this error? We have told Denise Cahen, and there is always going to be the paper trail when one of these sent documents come back, this to me, seems to be a huge red flag for the auditors: example: a scanned document that was mailed to us asking why the letter was received when the letter, albeit erroneous ñ this being the letters that went out in error ñ the auditor sees the erroneous letter but no SOR [System of Record] trail or scanned doc on the corrected letter is in the SOR and scanned in). What am I missing? This just doesnít seem right to me.

In this specific scenario, I believe what happened is false/fraudulent letters of foreclosure were sent out to various properties, some of which should not be foreclosed. The company Balboa Insurance, to save their and BoA asses, quickly removed the association between the letter and loan #. If in the Rembrandt system (http://www.wolterskluwerfs.com/Content/ ... nding.aspx) you were to search the loan of one of these properties there would be no foreclosure notice associated with it. You could still search for the foreclosure notice, but no loans would be associated with it. This was approved by managers.


I believe the pictures are the actual foreclosure notices that got sent out, but I'm not 100% sure. *edit* Just re-read the article: so those numbers are the "document tracking numbers". So just like I thought, these are the numbers associated with the foreclosure letters, but they removed the DTN from the loan paperwork, so you cannot find the document that was sent by searching for the loan.

pepsified thinker wrote:I've heard/read accounts of people trying to deal with banks--refinance or clear up a notice of a foreclosure that shouldn't be happening, etc.--and they get stuck in endless circles of calling and sending documents and being told everything is okay, but the banks still foreclose.

If this disconnecting of documents (is that a fair way to describe the dissociation of DTNs(?) and loan numbers?) is a general practice that would explain how the homeowners could talk to someone, get assurance that they'd now done the right thing with whatever forms they were submitting, etc., but then the bank would later deny such forms had been submitted and the foreclosure process would continue.

Or is that too simplistic?

2011-03-16
The Latest on Emails Between Ex-Bank of America Employee & Anonymous
Submitted by kgosztola on Wed, 03/16/2011 - 22:02

An “open letter” from the ex-Bank of America employee was recently posted on the website Anonymous has been using to share the leaked emails.
...

“I’ve already read their plan of action against me. Anonymous leaked it for the world to see months ago,” he adds. “While “Anonymous” BofA executives huddle together and cower behind their corporate logo, hoping their corporate name can withstand a greater shitstorm than mine, we’ve both been reading the exact same battle plan. Don’t be fooled by press releases. The HB Gary plan cost a lot of the money from their piggy bank, and they’re not ones to let their own money go to waste.”

...

I’m not afraid of you. I’m not some distant, unapproachable eccentric like Julian Assange. Sensationalize all you want, but your employees all know me, and they’re slowly starting to figure out why it is you did what you did to me. I live in your backyard. Drag my name through the mud all you want. I can take it. I’ve got more friends in more high places than you think. While the media races to be the first to report any story they can about me to make their money, I’m neither making nor losing money on this. You took my statement of “I’ve got nothing to lose” as meaning I’m desperate and lonely. Get the facts straight. I’ve got a large family that’s been supporting me this entire time. I’ve got friends in places you can’t even imagine. My community knows me, and the bonds I’ve formed are backed by love, not money. When will you ever learn? I know you don’t put your personal name on your statements because you fear the legal action that will be taken against you. You do not want to be made the scapegoat for your own actions.

....

The ex-employee tells Americans in his “open letter” to “hang in there.” This signals that in the coming days more will be learned about Bank of America.

Additionally, Anonymous has posted an email on the website that shows someone claiming to be a “Special Agent with TARP” asking for help investigating “HAMP violations.” The agent asks to learn more about information the Anonymous member might have on Bank of America.

...

Re: Anonymous to bring down Bernanke and banks
I wonder how this particular effort is going.