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What’s Your Price?
There’s a saying that everyone can be bought, you just have to know their price. In the article below two of the people who forged tens of thousands of signatures that led to thousands of homes being foreclosed say it was the price of graduate school and a family to support. We don’t know what the price of the third person was because she was found dead before that was revealed.We need someone to blame but we’re looking at the low-hanging fruit. In NO way am I condoning what they did. I’m just saying that they are but the first layer of defense and distraction engineered by Wall Street and the pretender lenders. We see the notaries and others who have forged and robo-signed documents so we blame them for their role in this disaster, for their ability to be bought. In the meantime, Wall Street and the pretender lender banks are safely tucked away behind their trillions. For now, let’s call them high hanging fruit.Throughout history we have examples of people being bought for the price of safety, family, education, medical care, and of course fame and fortune. From Nazi collaborators, to the sheriff who comes to your door with an eviction notice, to everyone in between, all saying they just needed to put bread on the table. Is that what it’s about? Is that who we really are? Or do we as a species have an inkling of anything greater for ourselves? Because our history is also speckled with those who have stood up for justice and made a difference in their corner of the world.Maybe it’s our conclusion to the problem.These forgers defined the problem as “I need money for graduate school” and “I need money to support my family”, with the conclusion, “so it doesn’t matter what I do to anyone else, it’s survival of whoever gets the money”. Don’t we teach our children that there are consequences to their actions? How are we different? Maybe a better conclusion would be just that. To look at the consequences to others of what we do in life.Yes, we live in a society obsessed with materialism and superficiality but it doesn’t have to be that way.So maybe we need to take a hard look in the mirror and use this as an opportunity to figure out who we are and what our own price is. What could you be bought for? And what are you doing and demonstrating about that to others in your corner of the world? Perhaps think about that before you throw the first stone. And let’s not take our eyes off the target, that high hanging fruit.
Massive foreclosure fraud’s scope revealed by transcripts
The workers, who were employed at Lender Processing Services (LPS) under Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard, admitted to forging signatures on tens of thousands of notices of default.
Most blamed fear of unemployment for their decision to forge signatures and break the law. One notary said she needed to keep her job while getting through graduate school, another said he had a family to support.
Trafford and Sheppard are accused of running the scam by advising their employees to forge signatures on notices of default between 2005 and 2008. Those documents got the ball rolling on many Las Vegas foreclosures.
Notary Tracy Lawrence struck a plea deal with the state’s Attorney General’s Office for one count of notary fraud. She admitted to notarizing about 25,000 false documents. Lawrence was found dead in her home the day of her sentencing hearing a few weeks ago. Lawrence said during the Grand Jury hearing that LPS handled notices of default for trustees representing many major lenders, including Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
A criminal investigator for the Nevada Attorney General’s office said that out of tens of thousands of documents from LPS that his investigation of the fraud examined, an overwhelming majority seemed suspicious.
“It’s hard to find [a document] that you wouldn’t be suspicious of,” the investigator said, adding that legitimate documents from the company seemed to be the exception instead of the rule.
It wasn’t just the signatures that were fraudulent. According to the investigator, some of the forged documents contained information that had not been verified by those signing them. This sometimes led to the wrongful foreclosure of houses because of the innacuracies.
“We’ve had individuals who said ‘I was never late in my payments, but yet my house has been foreclosed on,’” he said.
Former Las Vegas homeowner Romy Ashjian, one of the witnesses who testified at the hearing, said that she was locked out of her own home without ever having been told that a notice of default had been recorded. Ashjian said she was behind on payments, but was working with a lender, Bank of America, to try to set up a short sale. When she returned home one day, however, she found that her home had been sold without her knowledge through a trustee sale.
Ashjian said many of her belongings were still inside the home, including furniture, medical records, collectibles, and her and her daughter’s personal information including social security numbers. Many of these items were stolen before Ashjian was able to gain access to her property two weeks later.
Sheppard and Trafford are negotiating their voluntary surrender to the Nevada Attorney General.
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