NYT: Wells Fargo Pattern of Filing False Documents with Federal Court

It’s nice to see Gretchen Morgenson back on the beat of financial fraud. We need more exposure to what everyone who has battling foreclosures already knows — that virtually all of the documents relied upon by would-be foreclosers are false, fraudulent, fabricated and forged. These revelations appear to be the only way judges will stop allowing presumptions of false facts to dominate their rulings.

It is safe to assume that if the documents, business records or even correspondence is from Wells Fargo there is a high likelihood that it contains false information. This is most likely true for the other mega banks too.

see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/business/wells-fargo-loan-mortgage.html?partner=msft_msn&_r=0

In this article the New York Times exposes a practice that baffles al most everyone — unilateral changes in alleged mortgage documentation. While this article centers on Wells Fargo Bank changing the terms of an alleged loan contract without notice to anyone, virtually all lawyers who defend foreclosures have noticed that in many cases the signature page of a note or mortgage has been fabricated and forged and attached to a different version of the note or mortgage that was signed.

Personally I have seen this several hundred times. But some of the changes are more insidious than others. While the changes in many cases appeared to benefit borrowers, they actually increased the term by decades assuring that the Bank would be paid far more than what was really owed even if WFB was the creditor or authorized servicer. As always this is done through increasing the complexity of the language and double-speak.

Some quotes from the New York times article published yesterday:

Even as Wells Fargo was reeling from a major scandal in its consumer bank last year, officials in the company’s mortgage business were putting through unauthorized changes to home loans held by customers in bankruptcy, a new class action and other lawsuits contend.

The changes, which surprised the customers, typically lowered their monthly loan payments, which would seem to benefit borrowers, particularly those in bankruptcy. But deep in the details was this fact: Wells Fargo’s changes would extend the terms of borrowers’ loans by decades, meaning they would have monthly payments for far longer and would ultimately owe the bank much more.

Bankruptcy judges in North Carolina and Pennsylvania have admonished the bank over the practice, according to the class-action lawsuit filed last week. One judge called the practice “beyond the pale of due process.”

The lawsuits contend that Wells Fargo puts through changes on borrowers’ loans using a routine form that typically records new real estate taxes or homeowners’ insurance costs that are folded into monthly mortgage payments. Upon receiving these forms, bankruptcy court workers usually put the changes into effect without questioning them.

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