Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen (pictured) held a press conference this morning to outline his office's investigation into an apparent ring of mortgage fraud affecting local residents.The posters pictured and handouts to the audience featured images of an array of signature variations on documents. The signature 'Linda Green' appears in 15 different forms of handwriting, while a number of other names like 'Christie Baldwin' were also allegedly signed by multiple people.
Together, the value of the loans being called into question locally is nearly $624.8 million. Wells Fargo, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc, and Bank of America are the three biggest players involved.
Thigpen encouraged them and other banks to suspend all foreclosure proceedings affected by their findings and to file immediately on defective documents. Additional information is available to the public online through the Register of Deed's website.
3 comments:
Jeff Thigpen is Grandstanding.
North Carolina enjoys excellent mortgage protection via notaries at origination and county clerk hearings at foreclosure where proof of documentation is required.
Thigpen is welcome to petition the General Assembly to change the law to require mortgage assignations to be recorded. Good luck with that.
Payne has no legal standing to bring suit or advise the commissioners beyond asking our legislative representatives to draft a bill affecting fraudulent mortgage documents.
Thigpen has yet to mention the excellent protections North Carolina enjoys or that the concerns he raises either cause no harm or have no broad legislative solution.
It appears that Thigpen is taking advantage of this situation purely for political gain.
The point in this isn't the NC notary laws. We are leaders in that area. The problem is they are out of state documents with very questionable signatures impacting citizens who live here. I will petition the legislature to change the law to require assignments to be filed. In addition, I think banks ought to pay to submit satisfactions. Now they do not. I also believe if a person signs a legal document they should be who they say they are and have the legal authority to sign off on these documents. In this case, it is highly questionable.
Yeah, I'm going to speak out on this. Whether we have great laws or not, it doesn't matter if you are a consumer on these documents and have problems in the future. Or you are a taxpayer, and the banks go to Congress to get around it. Public recording offices do matter and I'm not into two standards. One for Wells Fargo, BofA, and MERS, and one for other good banks and citizens who care enough about the paperwork to get it right.
Post a Comment