Robo-Signing Redux: Servicers Still Fabricating Foreclosure Documents

Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners.

The practice continues nearly a year after the companies were caught cutting corners in the robo-signing scandal and about six months after the industry began negotiating a settlement with state attorneys general investigating loan-servicing abuses.

Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist.

Many banks are missing the original papers from when they securitized the mortgages, in some cases as long ago as 2005 and 2006, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. They and some industry members say the related mortgage assignments, showing transfers from one lender to another, should have been completed and filed with document custodians at the time of transfer.

"It's one thing to not have the documents you're supposed to have even though you told investors and the SEC you had them," says Lynn E. Szymoniak, a plaintiff's lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. "But they're making up new documents."

The banks argue that creating such documents is a routine business practice that simply "memorializes" actions that should have occurred years before. Some courts have endorsed that view, but others, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, have found that this amounts to a lack of sufficient evidence and renders foreclosures invalid.

According to a document submitted in a Florida court by Bank of America Corp., bank assistant vice president Sandra Juarez signed a mortgage assignment on July 29 of this year that purported to transfer ownership of a mortgage from New Century Mortgage Corp. to a trustee, Deutsche Bank. Two problems with that: New Century, a subprime lender, went bankrupt in 2007; and the Deutsche Bank trust that purported to hold the loan was created for a securitization completed in 2006 — about five years before Juarez signed it over to the trust. (Bank of America, as the servicer of the loan, was seeking to foreclose on behalf of the trust and its bondholders.)

Most of the pooling and servicing agreements governing securitizations require a complete chain of endorsements. This means the promissory note (the piece of paper the borrower signs promising to pay the loan) and all intervening mortgage assignments showing transfers from one lender to another must be delivered to a trust within 60 days of the securitization closing date.

Jumana Bauwens, a spokeswoman for B of A, says such mortgage assignments are simply "procedural steps" to prove to a court that a trust has the right to foreclose on a borrower. In the Juarez case, B of A had power of attorney to sign on New Century's behalf, she says.

But other mortgage industry members argue that the burden of proof is on the banks to show their legal right to enforce a debt, and that servicers are supposed to audit the loan before proceeding with a foreclosure.

"They're supposed to make sure the trust is the correct trust, that the loan was properly assigned to the trust and that the debtor is genuinely in default," says Michael Olenick, the chief executive of Legalprise Inc., a West Palm Beach, Fla., research firm that tracks foreclosure filings and other court records for attorneys.