Home Loan Refinancing: The Latest News
Nineteen mortgage companies are under investigation by the FBI.
This number is up from 17 in March.
There’s a ton of financial fraud the FBI is digging into, particularly in relation to the subprime mess.
Countrywide, the biggest subprime lender, is under FBI investigation.
Big surprise.
I’m sure Congress is salivating at the prospect of putting subprime lenders on the witness stand and berating them for the credit crisis.
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI’s probe of potential fraud in the U.S. home mortgage industry now encompasses 19 companies, up from 17 a month ago, agency director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday.
He said there was no end in sight to the growth of individual and corporate fraud cases, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reassigning agents from other areas such as financial fraud and health care to cope.
“We’ve had a tremendous surge in cases related to the subprime mortgage debacle. We currently have almost 1,300 cases that have grown exponentially over the last several years and we expect them to grow even further,” he said.
“We have also 19 cases involving institutions themselves where mortgage fraud may have contributed to misstatements and the like,” Mueller said in testimony before a Senate appropriations subcommittee.
Bureau officials declined to name any additional companies targeted in the probe. “We’ve always said it was a fluid number,” FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak said. “It could change at any time.” He said the bureau has publicly acknowledged only one company as involved — Doral Financial Corp (DRL.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
A former Doral treasurer was indicted for investment fraud last month. He denied the allegations and the company declined to comment.
The largest U.S. mortgage lender, Countrywide (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), also is under FBI investigation, authorities have said, although the FBI has declined to comment and Countrywide said it was unaware of any investigation.
When the FBI disclosed its industry investigation, major investment banks Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Bear Stearns Cos (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) each said the government had asked them for information, but there was no confirmation of any FBI role. Beazer Homes (BZH.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said last year it had received a federal grand jury subpoena related to its mortgage business.
Read this article when you have a minute:
See what others are facing because of unregulated mortgage lenders.
Why are you sending your payment to your mortgage broker instead of to the lender? Get that corrected, you are responsible for that payment, they aren't. Get an address.
You are paying a high amount of interest, and had a small down payment. Yes, most of your payment goes for interest on the first onset of a loan. It will change every month (but very little), since you pay interest on the unpaid balance. At any time, you can add money [...]
[...] The Information Tract wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt by Richard Greenwood Credit card fraud in the US is a rising problem. Up to 10% of Americans have been the victim of card fraud according to finance website bankrate.com. It’s easy to assume from the stories you see in the media that most of this fraud is the result of highly organised gangs using sophisticated techniques but the reality is the risks may be closer to home. Most card fraud cases are one off and may be conducted by someone you know such as family or [...]
There is a whole other aspect to this…..It is called the Lanham Act….It has to do with lender license backed schemes like those of subprime lender Ownit Mortgage Solutions and its slimeball owner WILLIAM DALLAS ……..Here is how it works. They trademark their products under their own name. WILLIAM DALLAS and license it through their company, in this OWNIT MORTGAGE SOLUTIONS. This is done through the USTPO as a conditional or collateral assignment. When you default the security interest reverts back to the lender…Bingo they got you without anything to do with MERS. However, it is them that are had [...]
Morgan Stanley is suggesting that yes. FHA already has this process, the Streamline Refi. The taxpayers are already on the hook guaranteeing these loans MS' analyst suggests, and I personally agree, that allowing those current mortgagors to refi to market rates without the FICO, LTV ratio being an issue, would boost consumer spending- a stimulus with NO OUTLAY.
Predatory lenders are finance companies that take advantages of inconsistencies between the states lending laws to perpetuate unsecured loans. A good exampe that I am aware of is a person who bought $2800 home entertainment system, abd financed it through the dealer. The account was bought by a predatory lender, who employed all sorts of tactics including issuing a credit card with a $2300 credit limit and transferring the account balance to the card, overloading the account and allowing for a punitive interest rate of 33% (valid in the state the card was issued from) on a revolving charge plan. [...]
The North American Securities Administrators Association management estimates that unwary investors lose billions a year to investment fraud. Self-employment scams and high-tech schemes are among investments most recently heavily promoted by online. This tip sheet is designed to provide investors with self-defense tactics to fight off the promotion of investment scams by “boiler rooms,” the high-pressure phone sales operations from which sales people call to promote abusive and fraudulent deals. Shaw Capital tips and Warning on Boiler Rooms and How to Spot a “Boiler Room” Scam and fraud: High-pressure sales tactics. Salesmen and the management may make repeated calls and [...]
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has worked in child welfare, private and public systems, since 1983, first as a direct line social worker, then a supervisor, then a program manager and agency director. I worked in LA County in the late 1990's as a community provider and was routinely horrified by the toxic culture which fed the failure of social workers and their supervisors to appreciate the danger they routinely foisted upon children because of their (incompetent) actions and failure to act. We have all heard our county supervisors repeatedly speak with great pride about Trish Poelhn's [...]
The Americans get a taste of their own medicine! The subprime mortgage crisis was the trigger. Now they are shooting themselves senselessly by short selling their own Dow Jones. Who suffers? Not just the Americans but the whole world including Malaysians. They say “if Dow Jones sneezes the world catches a cold. Now that the Dow Jones is shitty, the whole world suffers diarrhea”
You can correct the name setting, but it raises the question of how it mysteriously changed. The most likely reason is that a spammer has gotten your password and is sending spam from your account. Usually the password is obtained with phishing spam.
Why change the name? It depends on the scam they are running. If they were spamming your address book the spammer would want to leave your name because it would be familiar to recipients. Since it got changed to Mueller, the spammer is sending to others something that pretends to be from the FBI.
When you change [...]