IndyMac-OneWest-Deutsch bank: 30 seconds per document

OneWest Bank employee: ‘Not more than 30 seconds’ to sign each foreclosure document

The recent announcements by J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial that they were freezing some foreclosures because of paperwork irregularities raises a key question: How many more mortgage companies employed “robo-signers?”

In a sworn deposition in July, Erica Johnson-Seck, an Austin, Tex.,-based vice president for bankruptcy and foreclosure for OneWest Bank, said she and her team of seven others sign 6,000 documents a week or about 24,000 a month without reading all of them.

Johnson-Seck estimated that she spends 30 seconds to sign every document.
She explained that while she does not check everything, she does check some information, “which is why I said 30 seconds instead of two seconds.”

In the past, the company had a quality control process that required signatories to check 100 percent of the debts and any figures for loans and bankruptcy, Johnson-Seck said. But the error rate was low, so now they only check about 10 percent of the documents.

She said OneWest Bank’s “outsourcing vendor,” Lender Processing Services, “checks the documents completely.”

A subsidiary of Lender Processing Services is the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in the middle district of Florida. LPS has acknowledged problems with its foreclosure paperwork, saying there was an error in how the company handled notarization.

Johnson-Seck also said in the deposition that she had signing authority for Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York and U.S. Bank, among others.

A spokesman for the company did not immediately have a comment.

Tags: DeutschBank, INDYMAC, OneWest
Posted in bubble, Corruption, Eviction, securities fraud |