The call to investigate bank foreclosure practices gains steam
Posted on Fri, Oct 08, 2010
As reported earlier this week in the Washington Post, talk of a federal foreclosure investigation is taking hold in Washington. This comes as the courts are overwhelmed with foreclosure actions filed by banks through ‘mill’ lawfirms, where steps to ensure protections of homeowners’ rights may well have been skipped entirely, or documents filed with courts which may be fraudulent or defective.
Increasingly homeowners seeking to defend a foreclosure action are benefited through representation by an attorney who is proficient in this changing legal environment.
House Speaker Pelosi calls for federal foreclosure investigation; AFL-CIO seeks national moratorium
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Zoe Lofgren and other California Democrats are calling for a federal investigation into irregularities in processing foreclosures of thousands of homes at some of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Comptroller John Dugan, the lawmakers said recent reports that Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial may have improperly approved thousands of foreclosures “amplify our concerns that systemic problems exist.”
Banks “have repeatedly misled and obstructed homeowners from receiving the help Congress and the Administration have sought to provide. The excuses we have heard from financial institutions are simply not credible three years into the crisis,” they wrote.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) this week called for the Government Accountability Office to investigate “the role of all government entities, including federal regulators, involved in overseeing mortgage servicing companies and affiliated banks, and identify any regulatory problems that may have permitted this misconduct to occur without detection until now.”
By Ariana Eunjung Cha