h/t to 4closurefraud:
The grand jury transcripts from the massive robo-signing scam are in. they shed light on the foreclosure fraud scandal that has thrown into question tens of thousands of Las Vegas foreclosures.
The transcripts include testimonies of investigators homeowners and notaries.
Three notaries have all been charged with notarization of the signature of a person not in their presence. a fourth was found dead the day of her sentencing hearing.
Title officers Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard of Lender Processing Services are accused of running the scam by advising employees to forge signatures on default notices between 2005 and 2008.
Full transcripts below…
Transcript Day 1
Transcript Day 2
And here is more:
The transcripts include last month's testimonies from investigators, homeowners, temp workers and four notaries.
The workers, who were employed at Lender Processing Services (LPS) under Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard, admitted to forging signatures on tens of thousands of notices of default.
Most blamed fear of unemployment for their decision to forge signatures and break the law. One notary said she needed to keep her job while getting through graduate school, another said he had a family to support.
Trafford and Sheppard are accused of running the scam by advising their employees to forge signatures on notices of default between 2005 and 2008. Those documents got the ball rolling on many Las Vegas foreclosures.
Notary Tracy Lawrence struck a plea deal with the state's Attorney General's Office for one count of notary fraud. She admitted to notarizing about 25,000 false documents. Lawrence was found dead in her home the day of her sentencing hearing a few weeks ago. Lawrence said during the Grand Jury hearing that LPS handled notices of default for trustees representing many major lenders, including Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Todd Grosz, a criminal investigator for the Nevada Attorney General’s office, said that out of tens of thousands of documents from LPS that his investigation of the fraud examined, an overwhelming majority seemed suspicious.
“It’s hard to find [a document] that you wouldn’t be suspicious of,” Grosz said, adding that legitimate documents from the company seemed to be the exception instead of the rule.
It wasn’t just the signatures that were fraudulent. According to Grosz, some of the forged documents contained information that had not been verified by those signing them. This sometimes led to the wrongful foreclosure of houses because of the innacuracies.
“We’ve had individuals who said ‘I was never late in my payments, but yet my house has been foreclosed on,’” Grosz said.
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