It looks pretty cut and dry to me.
Thanks for the clarification points, George.
I wonder is it possible for you to send this blog to the government?
They apparently can't find a problem.
But then again, I'm pretty sure they're not really looking.
I've repeatedly documented that mortgages were pledged multiple times to different buyers. See this, this and this.Chris Whalen told me:
In response, some people (including one of the country's top bankruptcy lawyers) have told me they don't buy it.
So I wrote to some of the leading experts on mortgage fraud - L. Randall Wray (economics professor), Christopher Whalen (banking expert with Institutional Risk Analytics), and William K. Black (professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis) - to seek their insight.
Prior to FAS [i.e. Financial Accounting Standards] 166/167, a defaulted loan might sit in a FNM/FRE pool for up to a year before the default was removed from the trust. The issuer would then place a new loan into the pool or “substitute” for the old loan. No purchase event was booked. The investor would never know. In fact, the issuer would keep paying interest on the original principal amount in those days. Now under FAS 166/167, the issuer must immediately repurchase the defaulted loan and take the loss less estimated recovery. That is why the pace picked up this year when it comes to repurchase demands.
You should refer your dubious and very naive friends to the case of National Bank of Keystone, WV. One of the worst failures per $ of assets in FDIC history. The management hid a Ponzi scheme in the loan servicing area for five years. Paid interest to investors with their own principal. Two auditors missed the fraud and later were sued by the FDIC acting as receiver for the dead bank. And this was a small operation. The big five are an even worse mess. Remember, when the seller of a loan and the servicer are the same, anything can happen. And it usually does.
Professor Black told me:
Double pledges (as they're typically called, though one could pledge multiple times) are a well known fraud device. It is correct that one of the key purposes of adopting Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) was to reduce the risk and frequency of this form of fraud. So, double pledges in the modern era require both (A) fraud (on the part of the borrower or purchaser) and incompetence, indifference, or corruption on the part of the original secured lender or their agents if the borrower is the fraudster or the purchasers if they are the fraudsters.
The two potential sources of fraud: A fraudulent borrower could pledge the same home as security for multiple mortgage loans. Title checks, by the lender/title insurer are so easy to conduct and so vital to protect the lender that this form of fraud is vanishingly rare. Alternatively, and far more likely, the lender could sell the mortgage to multiple buyers. Those buyers could have far lower incentives to check on prior pledges and less ability to check for prior pledges. The entity selling a loan to multiple parties (A) has a compelling incentive to hide the prior pledge(s), (B) is financially sophisticated, and
therefore more capable of deception than a homeowner, and (C) can pick who to make the multiple sales to -- allowing them to select the most vulnerable targets for fraud.
