60 Minutes un-covers the Document Mills
Scott Pelley Reporting -- August 7, 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
And the Media Elites wonder, WHY the 99% are upset?
The next housing shock
60 Minutes -- August 7, 2011
Scott Pelley Reporting
Produced by Robert Anderson and Daniel Ruetenik (CBS News)
This is what happens when 'Corporations become People' ...
-- they can cut corners, they can make up fraudulent documents,
and they can "outsource" those dodgy tasks, to specialized "Document Mills" ...
60 Minutes: The next housing shock, Page 2
[...]
One of the strangest signatures belonged to the bank vice president who had signed Szymoniak's newly discovered mortgage documents. The name is Linda Green. But, on thousands of other mortgages, the style of Green's signature changed a lot.
And, even more remarkable, Szymoniak found Green was vice president of 20 banks -- all at the same time.
Where did all those documents come from? We went searching for "the" Linda Green and found her in rural Georgia. She told us she has never been a bank vice president.
In 2003, she was a shipping clerk for auto parts when her grandson told her about a job at a company called Docx. The company, that was once housed in Alpharetta, Ga., was a sweatshop for forged mortgage documents.
"They were sitting in a room signing their name as fast as they possibly could to any kind of nonsense document that was put in front of them," Szymoniak said.
Docx, and companies like it, were recreating missing mortgage assignments for the banks and providing the legally required signatures of bank vice presidents and notaries. Linda Green says she was named a bank vice president by Docx because her name was short and easy to spell. As demand exploded, Docx needed more Linda Greens.
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This is what happens when 'Corporations become People' ...
-- they can Hire the desperate, and train them to do their 'dirty work',
and they can "claim to be unawares" when all those quaint Title Laws get broken, by some other corporate entity -- "providing 'mortgage servicing' for a fee" ...
60 Minutes: The next housing shock, Page 2
[Temp-worker Signer: ] "They told me that I was gonna be signing documents for using someone else's name," Pendley remembered.
"Did you think there was something strange about that in the beginning?" Pelley asked.
"Yeah, it seemed a little strange. But they told us and they repeatedly told us that everything was above board and it was legal," Pendley said.
Pendley told Pelley he had no previous experience in banking, in legal documents, and that there were no requirements for the job.
"You had to be able to hold a pen?" Pelley remarked.
"Hold a pen," he agreed.
Asked if he understood what these documents were, Pendley said, "Not really."
"But you were signing these documents as if you were an officer of the bank?" Pelley pointed out.
"Correct," Pendley said.
"How many banks were you vice president of in a given day?" Pelley asked.
"I would guess somewhere around five to six," Pendley said.
He was paid $10 an hour for this job.
Pendley showed us how he signed mortgage documents as "Linda Green." He told us Docx employees had to sign at least 350 an hour. Pendley estimates that he alone did 4,000 a day.
One Mill-worker. Plenty of Ink. 4,000 fake foreclosure documents a day.
-- Priceless accounting, for someone's asset-sheets. (But probably not yours.)
This is what happens when 'Corporations become People' ...
-- They can Foreclose on the desperate, They can toss them into the street, like so much trash,
and then Hide behind their "corporate logo", and the mantra "It's only Business" ...
and behind that cascade of "Fraudulent Paperwork" ...
conveniently created for them, by so many fly-by-night LLC Document Mills. Isn't "Limited Liability" something?
What a Deal! ... What a Steal.
4000 Actionable-Mortgages per day, all for the mere cost of $10 per hour, to each temp-worker, some rube who will quite likely end up taking the fall, if it all goes to hell.
Cha-Ching! ... Whatever the Free Market will bear, corporate people; Whatever the Free Market will bear ...
60 Minutes: The next housing shock, Page 3
[...]
To them, it seemed like a joke.
"Instead of the name of the bank here that was acquiring the loan, this one says, 'Bogus Assignee for intervening assignments.' That's who acquired the loan," Szymoniak pointed out.
"This was an actual document that was in litigation?" Pelley asked, looking at the document.
"Yes," she said. "And what corporation assigned this loan? A corporation identified as 'A Bad Bene.' Excuse me? When I saw that I was just absolutely amazed."
[...]
Szymoniak says that the banks whose paperwork was handled by the Docx forgery mill include Wells Fargo, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, U.S. Bank and Bank of America. We contacted all of them. Each said it farmed out its mortgage servicing work to other companies and it was those mortgage servicing firms that hired Docx.
Docx was owned by a company called LPS, a $2 billion firm that calls itself the nation's leading provider of mortgage processing services. LPS told us that when it found out about the phony signatures in 2009, it shut Docx down. The FBI and several states are investigating.
There were a million foreclosures last year. And there will be another million this year - those lawsuits are forcing open those bundled, mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street cooked up in the mid 2000s, and exposing a lack of ownership documents all across the country.
And they wonder, WHY the 99% are upset.
Kind of shows, how clueless (and heartless) those Robo-signing Corporate Persons, can really be ...
The Banks 'took care of the paperwork' -- Soooooo ... WHAT'S the Problem, people !?
Living on the Streets, is not so bad. Just look at all those Occupiers, they're sleeping outdoors. It's Piece of Cake!
Grow-up Buck-O's! Break out those sleeping bags, all you nameless victims of some Linda Green 'Bogus Assignee' ...
"... It's only Business." You understand, right?
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Re-instate Glass-Steagall -- and Support real SEC Oversight
http://youtu.be/...
Until then, Keep YOUR money -- out of THEIR Casino.
Til then, it's a losing game ... for us chumps barely scraping by, on Main Street.
PS. The DOJ really needs to start listening to Elizabeth Warren. She can cut to the chase, on these Mortgage scams, in a New York minute.