Reuters Investigates
Insight and investigations from our expert reporters
Fake documents suggest bigger problem
Action in March by federal bank regulators wasn’t enough to scare banks away from the way they handled foreclosures. Reuters found that big banks that service mortgage loans continue to use robo-signers, file false documents and mislead courts in their efforts to take houses from homeowners delinquent on their mortgages.
The findings point to the need for a widespread audit of mortgage documentation by federal bank regulators, a step they have so far strongly resisted. The pervasive use of questionable documents in foreclosures suggests that the cause is deeper than just corner-cutting by mortgage loan servicers. It suggests that to a large extent, original lenders never turned over the required ownership documents when pools of new mortgages were securitized and sold to investors. Investors may have spent billions to buy mortgages they never received.
By Scot Paltrow
Link to PDF: http://link.reuters.com/kyb72s
The robosigning story goes on
Shares Lender Processing Services Inc fell as much as 9.8 percent at one point on Monday after Scot Paltrow’s special report said the company, which helps banks manage mortgage foreclosure documentation, faces more serious legal troubles than it previously disclosed. The stock closed 5.77 percent down for the day.
Read the full report, “Legal woes mount for a foreclosure kingpin,” in multimedia PDF format here.
