To speed up the process of evicting Americans from their homes, mortgage companies hired thousands of new employees in recent years who not only had no experience in foreclosures, but also did not know what they were doing. The percentage of borrowers in default has doubled in just two years.

 

Financial institutions such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, as well as mortgage divisions of banks like Goldman Sachs, hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines, wrote the Associated Press, resulting in foreclosures processed by individuals who barely understood the definition of mortgage or couldn’t explain what an affidavit was. A former JPMorgan executive told The New York Times that these employees were nicknamed the “Burger King kids.”

 

Some of these foreclosure “experts” have admitted that they lied when signing legal documents to seize homes from owners.

 

Adding to the misery of homeowners was the shifty work of attorneys working for banks and mortgage companies who resorted to “robo-signing” techniques (signing documents without reviewing their contents) to push as many foreclosures as possible through the courts.

 

The widespread complaints about foreclosure proceedings have prompted state attorneys general from all 50 states to launch a collective probe into the mortgage industry.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Robo-Signers Needed No Mortgage Experience, Florida Lawyer Declares (by Michelle Conlin, Associated Press)

Did Robo-Signing Lawyers Knowingly Commit Fraud in the Foreclosure Fiasco? (by Abigail Field, AOL Daily Finance)

Bankers Ignored Signs of Trouble on Foreclosures (by Eric Dash And Nelson D, Schwartz, New York Times)