Foreclosure Review Insiders Portray Massive Failure, Doomed From The Start

foreclosure-review-failure-start
The truth comes out, this time from insiders with the contractors who were performing the :independent review" of foreclosures.  Some tidbits from the article:

"We knew what we were looking at," said one employee. "But we were told under threat of losing our jobs to not report what we saw."

"By the time the reviews were halted, the banks had paid the consultants they hired more than $1.5 billion."  Too bad that money was never considered for helping families ......

"A consultant at Deloitte, hired by JPMorgan Chase to review its loan files, said that his team simply didn't understand many of the bank's processes, and weren't permitted to ask. "It was like trying to read a book written in a foreign language," he said of initial attempts to audit the bank's loans."

"All the while, this Deloitte employee said, regulators were pressuring the auditors to hurry up -- pressure that trickled down to floor-level reviewers. "Just hold your nose and click submit," he said one manager told him."

"When news broke that a new settlement to replace the reviews was in the works, the Republican Chairman and Democratic Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to regulators asking for a meeting to clarify exactly what was going on. Those institutions essentially ignored the lawmakers and, even after they made the official announcement, refused to tell the congressmen exactly what had happened in any detail. “The OCC and the Federal Reserve Board have terminated the independent foreclosure review process without providing any explanation of why or how the process was too costly and time-consuming to be continued,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement. “Even more troubling, the agencies seem unable to provide any details regarding the process by which compensation will be provided to borrowers who have suffered harm."

"It became pretty apparent that the whole project was a facade," said one reviewer, whose job it was to look for improper fees tacked onto borrower accounts.

 
The reviewer said she found some kind of bogus fee in every file she looked at, ranging from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. Another who looked for errors that violated state statutes estimated that 30 to 40 percent of loan files contained mistakes. These reviewers said they wanted their work to count for something. Last Monday, around 10 a.m., these same contract employees were told to stop what they were doing and leave the building. "Pencils down," one said he was told.