NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is filing a lawsuit against the top predatory banks for deceptive and fraudulent practices. From the press release:

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest banks charging that the creation and use of a private national mortgage electronic registry system known as MERS has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, harming homeowners and undermining the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process. The lawsuit asserts that employees and agents of Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, acting as "MERS certifying officers," have repeatedly submitted court documents containing false and misleading information that made it appear that the foreclosing party had the authority to bring a case when in fact it may not have. The lawsuit names JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Bank of America, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., as well as Virginia-based MERSCORP, Inc. and its subsidiary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.

The lawsuit further asserts that the MERS System has effectively eliminated homeowners' and the public's ability to track property transfers through the traditional public records system. Instead, this information is now stored only in a private database – which is plagued with inaccuracies and errors – over which MERS and its financial institution members exercise sole control. Additional defendants include BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP, Chase Home Finance LLC, EMC Mortgage Corporation, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc.

“The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages. Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions, seeking to take homes away from people with little regard for basic legal requirements or the rule of law,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Our action demonstrates that there is one set of rules for all – no matter how big or powerful the institution may be – and that those rules will be enforced vigorously. Only through real accountability for the illegal and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure crisis will there be justice for New York’s homeowners.” ...

The lawsuit specifically charges that the defendants have engaged in the following fraudulent and deceptive practices:

MERS has filed over 13,000 foreclosure actions against New York homeowners listing itself as the plaintiff, but in many instances, MERS lacked the legal authority to foreclose and did not own or hold the promissory note, despite saying otherwise in court submissions.

MERS certifying officers, including employees and agents of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, have repeatedly executed and submitted in court legal documents purporting to assign the mortgage and/or note to the foreclosing party. These documents contain numerous defects, including affirmative misrepresentations of fact, which render them false, deceptive, and/or invalid. These assignments were often automatically generated and "robosigned" by individuals who did not review the underlying property ownership records, confirm the documents’ accuracy, or even read the documents. These false and defective assignments often masked gaps in the chain of title and the foreclosing party's inability to establish its authority to foreclose, and as a result have misled homeowners and the courts.

MERS' indiscriminate use of non-employee "certifying officers" to execute vital legal documents has confused, misled, and deceived homeowners and the courts and made it difficult to ascertain whether a party actually has the right to foreclose. MERS certifying officers have regularly executed and submitted in court mortgage assignments and other legal documents on behalf of MERS without disclosing that they are not MERS employees, but instead are employed by other entities, such as the mortgage servicer filing the case or its counsel. The signature line just indicates that the individual is an "Assistant Secretary," "Vice President," or other officer of MERS. Indeed, these documents often purport to assign the mortgage to the certifying officer's own employer. Moreover, as a result of the defendants' failure to track the designation of certifying officers and the scope of their authority to act, individuals have executed legal documents on behalf of MERS, such as mortgage assignments and loan modifications, when they were either not designated as a MERS certifying officer at the time or were not authorized to execute documents on behalf of MERS with respect to the subject loan.

MERS and its members have deceived and misled borrowers about the importance and ramifications of MERS' role with respect to their loan by providing inadequate disclosures.

The MERS System is riddled with inaccuracies which make it difficult to verify the chain of title for a loan or the current note-holder, and creates confusion among stakeholders who rely on the information. In addition, as a result of these inaccuracies, MERS has filed mortgage satisfactions against the wrong property.

Let me just say hooray for Scheiderman. This has been a LOOONG time coming. It is WAY past time to hold these banks accountable for their criminal activities.

Let me just say hooray for Scheiderman. This is way overdue. These banks have been screwing middle and working class Americans for years now and I am glad somenoe is doing something about it.

I have been pushing for divestment in the four worst banks. I base my choice of worst banks on several criteria: customer service complaints filed with the Comptroller of the Currency, predatory lending practices including racist policies and targeting veterans, right wing politics including support for tax breaks for billionaires while advocating cutting social programs, whinging about "big government" while begging for taxpayer funded bailouts, etc. To some degree I also base it on the rating system of the Responsible Shopper website.

I have been targeting Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo. Of these four, three are also the worst on the Responsible Shopper website: Bank of America, Chase, and Citibank. Fidelity and Vanguard are also among their worst. I haven't targeted them because they aren't really "banks."

I have been pushing as alternatives to the worst banks switching to Credit Unions, TD Bank (a large bank that avoided all the predatory lending practices), USAA (for Veterans and their families), and small local banks.  read more »

I'm going to keep plugging this action, now focused more specifically on the worst four banks in America: Bank of America, Chase, Citicorp and Wells Fargo.

I have personally been switching my money (credit cards, accounts, mortgage) away from the big bad mega-banks that screwed Americans with predatory lending and took taxpayer handouts with better banks and financial institution. And I invite you to join me. It is a way of moving your money at least a step away from the worst of Wall Street.

In particular I pick four banks to target: Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo

I base my recommendations on three things:

1. Customer service complaints. The banks that get the most customer service complaints are as follows: (according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, I think these numbers are from 2009)

Bank of America: 7,230 complaints (25.5% of total)
J.P. Morgan Chase: 4,890 complaints (17.3%)
Citigroup: 3,742 complaints (13.2%)
Wells Fargo: 2,695 complaints (9.5%)
HSBC North America: 1,963 complaints (6.9%)
Wachovia: 1,265 complaints (4.5%)
U.S. Bancorp: 1,027 complaints (3.6%)  read more »

I have personally been switching my money (credit cards, accounts, mortgage) away from the big bad mega-banks that screwed Americans with predatory lending and took taxpayer handouts with better banks and financial institution. And I invite you to join me. It is a way of moving your money at least a step away from the worst of Wall Street.

Green America (which I have been associated with since they were Co-op America) has some resources:

* The basics about socially responsible investing

* How to retire with one million dollars in a just and sustainable world

* How your savings and checking accounts can build healthy communities through community investing

And I have some suggestions below.  read more »

Listening to NPR on Tueday morning they were covering a conference hosted by Crain's on NYC's recovery. Since I was at work, I only heard it intermittently, but was NOT impressed. It sounded like a dozen varieties of trickle down, voo-doo economics. Two basic themes were being put forward repeatedly during the parts I heard, with absolutely no challenge from the NPR folks:

1. Banks are our saviors and so need even more tax money for bailouts;

and

2. Developers are our saviors and so need more tax money for sweetheart deals from the city;

2a. A corollary to the second theme was we need infrastructure money because that benefits developers. That's right. Infrastructure was being discussed as helping DEVELOPERS not the community.  read more »