Some Robo-Signers Got Perks for Meeting Quotas

David Stern’s firm handled an estimated 20 % of all foreclosures in Florida and does foreclosure work for most of the nation’s top mortgage servicers. Is it a lucrative business (especially if one doesn’t have to do a lot of fact-checking or following up on pesky details)? Bloomberg News reports that CEO David Stern, himself, owns a $15 million mansion on an island off Fort Lauderdale, a $6 million home in Hillsboro Beach, Florida, and $6 million beachfront condominium. His transportation fleet includes four Porsches, three Ferraris, a Rolls-Royce, a Bugatti, a Cadillac and a yacht.

A former assistant of Stern’s law firm testified that employee perks included things like paying someone’s personal mortgage, utility bills, cell phone bills or car payments. One office manager even received a new BMW sport utility vehicle annually. Others earned expensive jewelry. This same deposition outlined how the manager would give certain paralegals the rights to sign her name because the robo-signing process was so exhausting.

What’s so revealing about this deposition is the fact that this office manager got a new vehicle every year, as in this robo-signing strategy has been going on multiple years. Up until now, most news reports have acted like this robo-signing nightmare was a relatively recent development.

Do you really think these lenders are going to go back that far to ensure everything was done legally and ethically? Bank of America has come forward saying they have found just a handful of errors in the thousands of foreclosed files they have reviewed. What’s next? Are we going to ask drug dealers to tally up the amount of drugs they have on hand when they get busted? Or allow speeders to declare how many miles over the speed limit they were going when the police stop them? And we should just take their word for it because like the Wall Street banks, they wouldn’t lie or minimize the problem, right?

To Your Short Sale Success!

Amy Ransdell ~ Your Atlanta Foreclosure Expert