Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General, Proceeding With Unlawful Foreclosure Lawsuits

-- Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley says she has lost confidence that a fair settlement over foreclosure abuses can be reached where banks are held accountable for wrongful foreclosures.

On Wednesday, Coakley said her office is proceeding with lawsuits relating to unlawful foreclosures.

Coakley is the latest official to undermine a resolution that has been in the works between major banks and attorneys general in all 50 states. Last week, California Attorney General Kamala Harris pulled out of the settlement talks. Other states including New York also have expressed reservations about the proposed settlement, which would compensate borrowers who faced improper foreclosures.

The agreement is targeted at settling claims of poor mortgage and foreclosure practices, including document fraud known as "robo-signing, or approving documents in foreclosures without reviewing them.

Comments

[dbrett480]

06:09 PM on 10/16/2011

I think it's great the the state AGs are doing this, but in reality it is the federal government who needs to start enforcing federal laws related to the banking industry.

[SPITR]

04:13 PM on 10/10/2011

It is time that the banks are held accountable!!

[jsgaetano]

08:40 PM on 10/06/2011

Time to start throwing the Banksters in prison. And boy, will the Teabaggers start whining!

[authorized-user]

01:24 PM on 10/06/2011

Perhaps we will see robo signing on all of the subpoenas.

[Mr Hankey]

10:42 AM on 10/06/2011

All AG's who truly care about the law should have banded together over a year ago. They also should have advised this administration on a foreclosure moratorium.

No little settlements are acceptable for fraud!

[BonnieDoon]

03:36 PM on 10/06/2011

Banksters would breathe a collective sigh of relief to settle as they're negotiating for with the AGs for less than pennies on the dollar and no prosecutions.

To them, it's just the cost of doing business.

Mr. Hankey - your comment is spot on.

[me again]

08:35 AM on 10/06/2011

Banks who operate beyond the law, should be held accountable.

[Kyle Ransom]

08:10 AM on 10/06/2011

As I said before any Attorney General even considering this settlement should be thrown out of office. Serious crimes where committed and people need to be charged for those crimes.
Any other option is a slap in the face to all homeowners who had their homes stolen from them as a result of these criminal acts.

[Peter Boehringer]

07:47 AM on 10/06/2011

Make every bank clear every single mortgage with valid signatures and paperwork. Make them prove they actually own the mortgage. And if they can't, the homeowner stays put.

[Acharn]

05:15 AM on 10/06/2011

I suppose your editor severely limited your space, but she really should have given you enough room to more clearly describe the document fraud we see here. Robosigning included forged notarization of affidavits, by using notaries who did not actually witness the documents being signed. In some cases the notaries appointment had expired or they had actually died before the date of the notarizition. Then there were missing documents "reconstructed" (i.e., forged) by Lenders Processing Services. In Florida thousands of homes were confiscated by ignorant of corrupt judges when the bank did not actually have the required evidence to show that they had a claim on the property in question. It was common for the judges to tell the banks to come back when they had the proper documentation, and lo and behold the missing papers suddenly were found. The banks and mortgage servicers have thoroughly undermined real estate titles in every state in the Union. They also committed fraud by selling bonds they claimed were mortgage-backed securities. Because they wanted to save a little money the underlying mortgage documents were not properly transferred to the trusts according to the requirements of the contracts the banks wrote themselves, so the bonds actually do not have any backing except the name of the issuing bank.

[iam99]

04:34 AM on 10/06/2011

No negotiated settlement is fair as it does not get reparations to the victims of the banks' frauds.
Negotiated settlements are to be shunned; they avoid the Rule of Law!

I support the efforts of AG Coakley and all of the others that pursue the law.

[sixtoes]

03:23 AM on 10/06/2011

These settlements they want are nothing more than a bribery attempt, in exchange for escaping prosecution. How much of the settlement money would have gone to people who'd lost their homes? A lot less than would have ended up in the politicians' pockets.

[Bill O Rights]

01:00 AM on 10/06/2011

Does make you feel good for a minute, doesn't it?

[builderman55]

12:58 AM on 10/06/2011

We need all 50 states to opt out of the handslap federal government settlement. the people who ran the economy off the rails need to be held accountable. The devastation they have wrought is incalculable.

[Mark Morrow]

08:53 PM on 10/05/2011

Thankfully, there are a few AGs who will stand up to the Banksters and require full legal compliance with the law.

If the Banksters want to foreclose on a property, they are responsibl­e for proving that they have the right to sue and to prove each and every element necessary to obtain a Judgment. If they were sloppy and lost the paperwork that proves they acquired the mortgage, they don't get their foreclosure­. Totally their fault. Too bad that is the way it works for Plaintiffs every day. Fail to prove your case and you lose.

The Banks that engaged in perpetrating a fraud on the courts through robo-signing and forgery committed a crime and must lose their rights in the property forever. When the sanction for fraud is severe as in losing the security interest in the property, they won't do it anymore.

[sixtoes]

03:41 AM on 10/06/2011

Full compliance with the law should include those banks who re-negotiated mortgages under HAMP, then foreclosed as soon as the owners stopped paying on the mortgage from their previous loan. Wells Fargo and BofA are probably the biggest fraudsters in this new revenue stream, only agreeing to allow qualifying individuals to use HAMP, just to get them to sign a new note, presumably because the bank had lost the original in one of their dubious 'bundle and swap' deals. Bait, switch, entrap and steal.

[Peter Boehringer]

07:44 AM on 10/06/2011

x2 When we got our most recent mortgage last year, the banks insisted on every i being dotted and every t being crossed. Despite our making an enormous down payment they asked for more, because they wanted to sell the mortgage. We, on the other hand, had no real way of knowing what was going on behind the scenes at the bank. There is no transparency in the process from the customer perspective.

[moby49]

06:15 PM on 10/05/2011

Great idea. Make them eat their own products. Like a warranty recall.