If you are a homeowner who is worried about the title to the house or condo you’ve bought – or if you are someone who has lost their home in foreclosure, then you may be wondering if the government is doing something that may helpful to you. Sure, there are talks about a big settlement by the state attorneys general and the feds are suing the big banks for damages: but what about the individual homeowner?
Federal Government Is Going Through Foreclosure Fraud Documents, Looking For Illegalities
Well, the federal government isn’t just setting there, especially with all of that paperwork that has been discovered in the Foreclosure Fraud investigations. No: federal contract employees have been piling through all those documents, page by page, to find all the instances of fake affidavits, robosigning, and the like. It’s a job that is under the control of Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh.
(For details on what these documents contain – there are lots of different kinds of illegal things in them – as well as an explanation of what ForeclosureGate is and how foreclosure fraud happened, read our series of posts on ForeclosureFraud, here.)
Last week, Mr. Walsh reported that his people will still need over a year to complete their examination of the foreclosure paperwork. What the federal government has done, is hired independent third party companies to comb through all this stuff — stuff that the federal government has obtained not only from the 14 biggest mortgage banks in the country but also from the two companies that did most of their mortgage servicing: Lender Processing Services (LPS) and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS).
How many documents are we talking about here? Walsh estimates there is around 4,500,000 files to be reviewed for possible harm done to the average homeowner.
Federal Government Plans to Notify Homeowners Of Illegal Acts Against Them, If Feds Can Find Them, a Couple of Years Down the Road
After that task is completed, Walsh will report the findings to the Powers That Be: the White House, Congress, the state Attorneys General. However, Walsh’s job will also be to get in touch with the borrowers that may have been harmed, notifying them of what his agency’s investigation has found.
Of course, how Walsh will locate these people is a big question. Another is, who gets left out: with all of this effort, it’s only victims of foreclosure fraud in 2009 and 2010 that are getting this help.
If you or someone you know has reason to believe that they have been harmed by foreclosure fraud, then it may be wise for them not to wait on the government to make things right.
It may be wise for them to contact their own foreclosure defense attorney to discuss their situation – including how to track down their own documentation to determine whether or not they have been the victim of illegal wrongful foreclosure actions by their lenders or mortgage servicers, and what damages they may have available to them under Florida law.
