In the past few months there has been a rash of news stories exposing abusive debt collection tactics employed against struggling Americans. These tactics include fraud, abuse, harassment, and violations of consumer protection laws. There is no end to the scams employed by these scoundrels; phantom debt collectors, debt collectors convicted of…
In Florida, about half of all homeowners with mortgages owe more than the value of their home. This is called “having negative equity, ” being “upside down,” or “underwater.” Most of those families owe a LOT more, up to 50% or more than their homes are actually worth! If a…
Florida has earned the dubious honor of being number one in the nation for foreclosures filed against families. Florida has more than twice national average of foreclosure activity. And if that wasn’t bad enough, those figures came from a housing data firm, RealtyTrac, which reported Palm Beach County’s October 2012…
A federal prosecutor from the Department of Justice has filed a one BILLION dollar civil lawsuit against Countywide/BoA for a massive scheme to defraud investors, notably Freddie and Fannie, into purchasing loans that were practically guaranteed to quickly go bad. This lawsuit is based on the courage of a former…
The nation’s top banks are tired of paying the price for crashing the economy, defrauding billions from retirement savings, and dispossessing tens of millions of people from their homes in fraudulent foreclosures across the nation. The banks are ready to move on already. Their officers and representatives are whining about the continued…
In the fall of 2010, after years of tireless work by foreclosure defense attorneys and citizen activists, the media finally shed light on what is widely known as robosigning. Robosigning is a dismissive term for the widespread manufacture of evidence, including real estate document fraud and forgery by banks, in…
The 2008 bailout of the American financial industry was based on a law enacted by Congress, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (TARP). Under rushed and pressured emergency conditions, Congress passed the legislation with very little understanding of why the economy was crashing. There was a sense that the housing boom…
It’s election season. Every single Florida lawmaker is up for reelection this year because this is a redistricting year. The Florida House, Florida Senate, and US Congressional district lines were redrawn after the release of the population and demographic data from the 2010 census. Redistricting happens every ten years after…
David Dayen has a fantastic post up on Firedoglake.com debunking all the much celebrated recent good news in the media on housing issues. Headlines proclaim home sales are up, prices are up, bidding wars, realtors going door to door begging people to sell, inventory down, home-builder industry exuding “confidence”. On…
Got mortgage servicing abuses? Got foreclosure fraud? Got bank break-ins? Got gut wrenching run-around? Got a modification yanked out from under you? Got misapplied payments? Got bogus, unexplained fees on your mortgage statement? The new consumer regulatory agency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is up against tremendous vitriol from Wall…