Justice Department Investigating Foreclosures On Military Families By Morgan Stanley Subsidiary

New York Times:

The Justice Department is investigating allegations that a mortgage subsidiary of Morgan Stanley foreclosed on almost two dozen military families from 2006 to 2008 in violation of a longstanding law aimed at preventing such action.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Marilyn Mock]

04:01 PM on 03/23/2011

There are more than that but news media for the last few years have refused to publish them.

[April22]

05:12 PM on 03/14/2011

And when will the Feds get around to the rest of the county, in the year 2030?

[BonnieDoon]

02:50 PM on 03/14/2011

Outstanding article from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:

“Administration acts on Mortgage Fraud Against Military, Yet Denies It Exists Anywhere Else”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/administration-acts-on-mortgage-fraud-against-military-denies-it-exists-anywhere-else.html

“most telling contradiction of the banking regulators’ “nothing to see here” stance is the Administration’s aggressive pursuit of servicing abuses against active duty soldiers. When a Congressional hearing focused on how JP Morgan illegally foreclosed on soldiers, the bank went into overdrive to do damage control.”

“The big bank went out of their way to fix the problem yesterday, knowing that abusing service members could get you in big trouble in this country, and lead to further scrutiny of their abusive practices.”


The perpetrators - Banks, Mortgage Companies, Title Insurers, Lawyers - need to be investigated, arrested, indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to real jail time for the crimes they have committed. It’s time for AG Holder and the DOJ to step-up to the plate and do their jobs for every American on Main Street.

[Oginikwe]

12:45 AM on 03/14/2011

It was first posted on HP 1/18/11 that JP Morgan Chase foreclosed on military families. Then, it was reported on 2/4/11, that Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan chief wanted "some respect." Hmm. On March 11, according to another HP article, "top Republicans in Congress are...decrying the possibility of expensive penalties against banks and questioning the need to help distressed homeowners." And, again, this.

I hope Anonymous hangs 'em all out to dry for everyone to see.

[innerpuppie]

12:42 AM on 03/14/2011

What's next? Tying widows and orphans to railroad tracks?

[Wendy Davis]

08:57 PM on 03/14/2011

I would expect Debtor's Prisons if this keeps up.

[Kim Goddard]

11:17 PM on 03/13/2011

It was called the "sailors and soldiers relief act of 1940".

[4 EYES]

08:42 PM on 03/13/2011

How COLD is THIS?!?....8-)

[muysuave41]

08:18 PM on 03/13/2011

Bad NYT reporting on this one. No where does it state why the servicer was foreclosing on the service member. In addition, the illegal foreclosure problem is a lot larger. Where is the Justice Depart on that front?

[GeeuaReux2]

08:15 PM on 03/13/2011

Good for the DOJ, this is shameful behavior from a country that is so Christian. This practice is a stain on US.
Get to the bottom of this.

[fortressfountain]

07:42 PM on 03/13/2011

There were no illegal foreclosures because anything and everything the bank does is legal-according to the politicans.
That includes usury, fees and other excesses that no one can afford uneless they make the money the ceo or politicans make.
Ripping people off is legal according to the politcans.
So why the problem with any other crime?
Guess it just matters if it is committed by a corporation or by the little people.

[RedRat]

04:38 PM on 03/13/2011

Whoa. Wait a minute here. Didn't the Fed and Fed investigators just release a statement that there were NO illegal foreclosures? How could this be. Perhaps the previous investigators, part of this Obama Administration, just spinning tales supplied to it from the Banks? NO, NO, that can't be it.

[Kim Goddard]

11:19 PM on 03/13/2011

He He He!! They lied.. like rugs

[BonnieDoon]

04:27 PM on 03/13/2011

This is window dressing.

These cases are low-hanging fruit for the DOJ because the law, “Servicemembers Civil Relief Act”, is so specific that they’ve been compelled to enforce the Act. It’s important that those serving be treated legally and fairly. Chase illegally foreclosed on military families too. I’m sure if an in-depth investigation of all Mortgage Servicing companies were done, there would be others. But, the bottom-line is the numbers are not huge.

These “military foreclosures” are a microcosm of the bigger Fraudclosure crisis. They spotlight and illustrate the sloppy, illegal, fast and loose methods the servicers are using to foreclose on millions of families across the entire U.S. But, because each state has laws to foreclose, it’s not as easy as enforcing the “Servicemembers Civil Relief Act”.

No more “whitewashing” the crimes committed by Banks, Financial Services and Mortgage Industries that designed the mortgage products sold to homebuyers and then, sliced, diced, securitized and sold the toxic loans to investors and, then, hedged against their failure.

This mortgage fraud mess is nowhere near being cleaned up. No attempt is being made at the federal level to address MERS, even though Freddie and Fannie are involved there.


The 20 Billion and, even, 30 Billion dollar numbers being floated as a settlement really are chump change given the scope of Fraudclosure.

[RedRat]

04:39 PM on 03/13/2011

Well the only trouble here is this is much like closing the barn doors after the horses are out. Where was the DOJ a few years ago. Oh, that's right! there were no illegal foreclosures going on. That is the latest spin from this Administration. Supplied courtesy of the banking industry.

[GeneralJustice]

02:39 PM on 03/13/2011

Eric Holder will probably end up fining them. This man has no desire to prosecte white collar crime. The biggest gangsters wear 1,500 suits.

[OldTulsan]

03:27 PM on 03/13/2011

Holder is following a bad tradition...

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=asU.b_fCjHTE
Wachovia's Drug Habit - Bloomberg.com

"...The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to report all cash transactions above $10,000 to regulators and to tell the government about other suspected money-laundering activity. Big banks employ hundreds of investigators and spend millions of dollars on software programs to scour accounts.

No big U.S. bank -- Wells Fargo included -- has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again..."

[JShankel]

01:37 PM on 03/13/2011

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?  No one should join more military than they can afford. 

Look at me, I've never been in the military and I pay all my bills because I have a REAL job: I develop video games, movies and TV shows.

I mean HEL-LO?  It's called the free market!  Ever heard of it?

[OldTulsan]

02:14 PM on 03/13/2011

What country are you in ?

What the U.S. is experiencing global labor arbitrage:

http://www.whartonsp.com/articles/article.aspx?p=417513
Arbitrage, Hedging, and the Law of One Price

"Arbitrage is the process of buying assets in one market and selling them in another to profit from unjustifiable price differences. This violates the expectation that the same product should sell for the same price.

Arbitrage offers guaranteed profit with no risk, and therefore undermines the stability and functionality of markets. This chapter explains how these expectations and forces interact, and why arbitrage is such a dangerous thing...."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02242009.html
Paul Craig Roberts: How the Economy was Lost

"The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under.

[snip]

“Free market economists” covered up the damage done to the US economy by preaching a New Economy based on services and innovation. But it wasn’t long before corporations discovered that the high speed Internet let them offshore a wide range of professional service jobs. In America, the hardest hit have been software engineers and information technology (IT) workers.

The American corporations quickly learned that by declaring “shortages” of skilled Americans, they could get from Congress H-1b work visas for lower paid foreigners with whom to replace their American work force. Many US corporations are known for forcing their US employees to train their foreign replacements in exchange for severance pay..."

[RedRat]

04:44 PM on 03/13/2011

But arbitrage is at the fundamental base of capitalism. What exactly is an unjustified price in one market and not in another market. Free markets price goods and services at whatever the prospective buyer is willing to pay at that moment. Right now, the gas companies are charging $5/gal, there are buyers out there willing to pay that. When the price is set too high, you drop your price.

While I agree that the IT industry seems to be using the H1b visas to their advantage, we elected the Congress that created that loophole. we get the government we voted for.

[JShankel]

02:31 AM on 03/14/2011

"What country are you in ?"

The People's Republic of Sarcastica

[rosal]

01:29 AM on 03/14/2011

1495 Fans? You got to be kidding

[JShankel]

02:30 AM on 03/14/2011

Yeah, surprising how many people are capable of recognizing irony.

[McKeaton]

12:34 PM on 03/13/2011

blackrock, blackstone, sac, daniel loeb, steven cohen, alan schwartz....how they controll the money flow in the world's markets...