SocraticGadfly: The #robosigning dam on mortgage fraud may be breaking

November 16, 2011

The #robosigning dam on mortgage fraud may be breaking

The Nevada AG's office has indicted two people for more than 600 charges of robosigning:
A Clark County District Court judge issued warrants for California residents Gary Randall Trafford, 49, and Geraldine Ann Sheppard, 62, after a grand jury handed up the 439-page indictment. Their hometowns were unavailable, and they could not be immediately located for comment.
The indictment says that between 2005 and 2008, Trafford and Sheppard directed employees to forge their names on foreclosure documents, then notarize the signatures they just forged. The defendants then had the employees file the fraudulent notices of default with the county recorder's office to begin foreclosures on homes.
Trafford and Sheppard face more than 200 felony charges of offering a false instrument and false certification of an instrument, and more than 100 misdemeanor notarization charges, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said.
This is BIG. The feds (that's YOU, Dear Leader) and the big banks have been, well, co-conspirators in trying to ram a mortgage reset agreement down states' throats, and it looks like one state, at least, may be getting tired.

Michigan's started down the criminal proceedings road, too, but nothing like this. And, California AG Kamela Harris has now subpoenaed Fannie and Freddie officials. She's already refused to sign off on Team Obama's cramdown-for-states "negotiations" with the banksters.

Now, technically, this isn't robosigning, as in using autopens, etc., or doing computerized filing instead of paper documents, but, this is a warning shot about that, at least.

Given how both mainstream parties colluded in this fraud, let's see if, like Occupy Wall Street, this becomes a hot potato/hand grenade, and how much of one.

Part of that will depend on whom the GOP nominates. If it's Romney, Obama will have the tough choice of either sucking up to Wall Street even harder than he is now, or tacking/pandering further "left" while trying to sound both more truthful and more convincing about this than before.

Most other GOP candidates? Given that Cain is too nuts to be trusted by Wall Street, and Perry, Bachmann and Paul have all pledged to junk the Fed and to let too big to fail banks ... fail. Gingrich might get a fair cut of Wall Street money, but, I'm not sure tea partiers trust him as much as Bachmann, or even Paul, despite his apostasy on foreign policy. Huntsman, Santorum and Johnson aren't going to get the nomination.

And, since no GOP primary before April 1 can be winner-take-all, there's plenty of reason for every wingnut candidate to hang in there. Especially since "Super Tuesday," which was in February in 2008, will be in March this year. I'll come back to this point as the Iowa caucuses get near, then we get past that and approach the New Hampshire primary.

No comments: