Wall Street's Planned/Created Fraud In Home Mortgages

[Tommy The Cat]

In a three-part Huffington Post article, Randall Wray details the workings of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), a vehicle created by bankers to avoid paperwork and disguise the movement and ownership of trillions of dollars in mortgages and notes.

 

MERS has destroyed the public land records by breaking the chain of title to millions of homes.

Wray's effort is slightly diluted by his occasional political commentary. Nonetheless, his series is by far the most illuminating discussion of MERS; its origin, its structure, and its impact that I have found.

 

WARNING: What follows is as sickening as it is illuminating

 

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part I: MERS's Smoking Gun

 

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part II: The Mother of All Frauds

 

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part III: MERS'S Role in Facilitating the Mother of All Frauds

[Tommy The Cat]

Here are a few snippets from the articles:

 

"In order to cover the trail of deceit MERS and the banks are stealing homes as fast as they can in the hope that no one will notice the fraud. Meanwhile, they are destroying real estate values and adding to the headwinds that are pushing our economy into the first great depression of the 21st century. "

 

"That homeowners would default on the unaffordable mortgages was a foregone conclusion. Indeed, it was the desired result of the business model. The preferred marketed loans tell it all: Subprimes! NINJAs! Liar's loans! Washington helpfully changed bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for a homeowner to get out of mortgage debt in preparation for the wave of defaults that everyone knew would result. Wall Street would get the homes, and homeowners would still have to pay on the debts. Then the foreclosed property would be resold, with more fees for everyone in the finance food chain, and the whole process through to default would begin again -- a nice virtuous cycle."

 

"Destruction or forgery of the paperwork was absolutely necessary to cover the trail of fraud from origination of the mortgage to securitization and finally to the inevitable foreclosure. Again, destruction of documents was not a mistake. It was the business model."

 

"MERS also made it easy to run the foreclosure frauds -- banksters could doctor the electronic entries whenever they wanted, and could claim that all paperwork including the notes had been lost. The servicers then hired Burger King robo-signers to manufacture new documents, and handed out notary stamps so they could certify the validity of whatever false information might enable swift passage through "rocket docket" courts."

 

"The banks did not expect homeowners to fight back -- by squatting their own homes, by hiring lawyers, and by coalescing into support groups. They really, truly believed they would get away with the whole scam -- the biggest scandal in human history."

 

"I do not see how we can describe the entire housing finance system as anything other than a massive fraud designed to cheat borrowers out of their income and wealth, and then out of their home."

 

And that, dear readers, is the short version of how we got into this mess.

[TheBanker]

I'm going to avoid turning this political and posting how and why you're wrong, and will simply just note that this will likely be locked, because it can and will become political, especially being started from a link to the oh-so-biased Huffington Post.

Edited January 1, 2011 by J-M

[cedski]

This thread will be closely watched refrain from making political comments.