A former paralegal at a personal injury firm forged the signatures of 76 state Supreme Court justices to create more than 100 bogus judicial orders in structured settlement matters, prosecutors allege.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office said Thomas Rubino, while a paralegal at Paris & Chaikin, forged 117 orders that purported to be judicial orders authorizing the transfer of structured settlement rights.

See Indictment, Statement of Facts, and Voluntary Disclosure Form.

Rubino, 42, pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Wednesday on 117 counts of second-degree forgery and 117 counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument.

Both are D felonies, which carry statutory maximums of 2 1/3 to 7 years.

Read more: http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202737413993/Paralegal-Indicted-for-Forging-Signatures-of-76-Judges#ixzz3m41hiDAq

Originally posted on Findsen Law:Harvard Amicus Brief on MERS Some of the best quotes, Mortgage servicing companies, banks, courts and government agencies haveall expressed astonishment at the extent to which MERS database is inaccurate. (p. 24) “Simply put, ‘MERS is the Wikipedia of land registration systems.’ Culhane v. Aurora Loan Services, 826 F. Supp.…

https://findsenlaw.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/mers-lacks-legal-authority-and-public-accountability-2/

After raising the benchmark interest rate for its standard modification program twice in the last three months,Fannie Mae is set to drop the benchmark rate back down to the lowest level it’s ever been.

Beginning Sept. 15, Fannie Mae will lower its required interest rate for standard modifications from 4.25% to 4%.

The standard modification rate has only been that low three other times since the modification interest rate was first established in Jan. 2012.

Read on.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut are charging three former Nomura Securities Internationalresidential mortgage-backed securities traders with fraud, accusing the trio of “repeatedly lying” to customers about the pricing information of mortgage bonds and defrauding customers of millions of dollars.

The SEC alleges that while employed as RMBS traders at Nomura, Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins, and Tyler Peters misrepresented the bids and offers being provided to Nomura for RMBSs, as well as the prices at which Nomura bought and sold the securitizations and the spreads the firm earned intermediating RMBS trades.

According to the SEC, Shapiro, Gramins and Peters also trained, coached, and directed junior traders at the firm to engage in the same misconduct.

The SEC stated that the actions of Shapiro, Gramins and Peters helped to “illicitly generate” millions of dollars in additional revenue for Nomura.

In a…

A federal judge in Florida has dismissed two class action lawsuits against non-bank mortgage servicerOcwen Financial, according to court filings.

U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, dismissed lawsuits filed by Ocwen Financial shareholders andAltisource Portfolio Solutions shareholders accusing the Atlanta-based servicer of fraud.

“We are pleased that the Court has dismissed these two separate actions against the Company,” Ocwen spokesman Jon Lovallo said in an email to DS News. “We agree with the Court’s rulings, and will continue to vigorously defend ourselves as necessary.”

Read on.

Hat Tip to Patrick Giunta, Esq.

Stumbled across this 5 year old article that supports the view that servicers are the real parties in interest who are protecting only their own interests at the expense of investor and borrower alike. The facts are undeniable. If the loans were modified or worked out, the investors would have done much better than the self inflicted crash imposed by banks posing as servicers on loans for trusts that exist only on paper and not in real life.

The fact remains that if the servicers were eliminated and a new venue was created to intermediate between borrowers and investors, the investors, the borrowers and the taxpayers would all be better off. Only the banks would ,lose out on prospective illegal gains that they have been faking for a decade. The government should have provided this venue. The crash would not have occurred and the…

Interesting in Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Rich Dad’s Prophecy, he predicted  in 2002 that the biggest stock market crash in U.S. history would happen sometime around 2016.

A small bit of bad economic news from China sparked a big global reaction as U.S. stocks followed the rest of the world’s markets down sharply Tuesday, a sign of investors’ deepening concerns about the strength of the Chinese economy.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 3%, falling 469.68 points, to 16,058.35, while the broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 58.33, also about 3%, to 1,913.85.

The latest sell-off comes after stocks rebounded last week with the biggest two-day rally in seven years and continues the wild volatility that has marked trading sessions for more than two weeks. Despite the two-day gain, Dow has lost nearly 2,500 points over nine other days.

Read on.