Frauds, Scams and Greed

Truth against the frauds that have been perpetrated on
Americans facing the loss of everything they ever had,

The Law Offices of Carol C. Asbury - Foreclosure Fraud, Fraud on the Court. - www.4closurefraud.org

Foreclosure Hamlet - Supporting, Informing & Connecting People in Foreclosure - www.foreclosurehamlet.org

08/28/2010 - Banks' Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis - Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand. - http://www.propublica.com

08/29/2010 - How Wall Street Rolled Obama - Obama’s Old Deal - The biggest firms knew that much of what their powerful lobbyists had failed to block or water down in the bill could be taken care of later on. They’d still be able to influence the vast set of rules on capital, leverage, and other financial issues that would be written by regulators. And after a two-year fight over financial reform, one other question still lingers: has Wall Street come out the big winner yet again? - www.wsj.com

08/28/2010 - Beware That New Credit-Card Offer - Amid all the junk mail pouring into your house in recent months, you might have noticed a solicitation or two for a "professional card," otherwise known as a small-business or corporate credit card. - www.wsj.com

08/26/2010 - How Wall Street Made The Mortgage Crisis Worse - Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history. Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: - www.npr.com
Read More: ptopublica.org

08/25/2010 - Analyst: Citigroup Is Cooking the Books - An all-out war has broken out between Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned. - www.foxbusiness.com

08/24/2010 - National Review: HAMP's Not-So-Shocking Results - U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has garnered public attention in the past year for taking a stand against insufficient settlements between government prosecutors and Wall Street. It all started with a case against Bank of America for misleading shareholders about the 2008 purchase of Merrill Lynch. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/24/2010 - Bank Settlements: Judges Take A Stand, Shift Focus To Individual Responsibility - U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has garnered public attention in the past year for taking a stand against insufficient settlements between government prosecutors and Wall Street. It all started with a case against Bank of America for misleading shareholders about the 2008 purchase of Merrill Lynch. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Homeowner fights foreclosure in lawsuit claiming documents are fraudulent - After months of wrangling with CitiMortgage, Dennis and Joyce Brown got fed up and hired an attorney to fight CitiMortgage's foreclosure on their Lauderdale Lakes home. The Browns claim they are victims of fabricated documents used to foreclose after CitiMortgage failed to credit them for mortgage payments. - www.sun-sentinel.com

08/14/2010 - Hernando County Sheriff's deputies install GPS on appliances in foreclosed, vacant homes - That's the message from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office as it launches a program that installs GPS devices on appliances and air conditioning units at vacant and foreclosed homes. - www.wtsp.com

08/14/2010 - Bank Mortgage Fraud HOW THEY DO IT...ERICA JOHNSON-SECK THANKS! MERS part 1 of 5 - This is why many foreclosed homes may have a CLOUD in tittle and risks for the homeowners who acquire them. - www.youtube.com
(Related) View More:
Bank Mortgage Fraud pt 2 of 5 ASSIGNMENT TRANSFER FRAUD...ANY CONFLICTS?? - Part 2,
Bank Mortgage Fraud Pt. 3 of 5 They hide behind Pretender Lenders,
Bank Foreclosure Fraud pt 4 Of 5 ..."WHO OWNS THESE NOTES" DISCLOSED! DISCOVERY! ,
Bank Foreclosure FRAUD pt.5 of 5 Save the Best For Last...CONCEALMENT...CONSPIRACY...WIRE FRAUD!! ,
Non-doc loans #1.mp4 from www.foreclosuredestroyer.com ,

08/14/2010 - Wall Street Bonuses Expected To Rise AGAIN - The report comes just weeks after U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg scolded 17 financial firms for making "ill-advised" payments to executives in the last couple of years, stoking public anger that flared when taxpayer funds were used to rescue the financial sector in 2008.. - www.abcnews.com

08/13/2010 - Failings of the foreclosure process laid bare - A document that would give the lender's lawyer the green light to take the home was supposedly signed on Dec. 5, 2007, but the date on the notary seal meant the document could not have been created until May of 2008 - five months later. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/05/2010 - Bank Makes "Mistake" Trashes Out Soldiers Family's Home, Brakes Down Doors, Changes Locks, Removes Belongings - A Tuscola County family thought they had worked out everything with their lender through a program that helps military families facing foreclosure. The family still has the home, or what's left of it. Benjamin Kotzian's wife and kids spent a few months with him in Texas before he was deployed to Afghanistan in June. - www.abclocal.gov

07/29/2010 - New Rule Cracks Down On Debt Settlement Industry - Companies that promise to reduce or eliminate credit card balances and other debt for customers will no longer be allowed to charge an upfront fee. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/26/2010 - Citigroup Will Pay SEC $75 Million To Settle Subprime Charges - Banking titan Citigroup Inc. is paying $75 million to settle civil charges that it misled investors about its potential losses from subprime mortgages as the housing bust hit in 2007. -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/26/2010 - Free credit report sites warned they may be violating new law AGAIN - The law requires all sites or advertisements for such reports to disclose that a federally-mandated free credit report is available through one official site: AnnualCreditReport.com, which also can be reached by calling 877-322-8228, 9 companies were not displaying the disclosure. -
www.orlandosentinel.com

07/25/2010 - Scammers target homeowners with tainted drywall Sickened by defective product, now vulnerable - Among the people profiting in Florida amid confusion and mounting tensions are convicted scammers, thieves and uncertified workers who illegally posed as licensed contractors, according to a Palm Beach Post review of county, state and federal records. -
www.sun-sentinel.com

07/24/2010 - With Banking Reform, Question Everything - Some cards are encouraging customers to charge more by offering enhanced rewards, allowing the issuer to capture "swipe fees" paid by merchants. And one issuer even allegedly threatened to reject consumers with high credit scores because they didn't boost the bottom line. -
www.washingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Big Banks Punish You For Having GOOD Credit - As credit card holders play it safe, issuers increase non-penalty service fees - The most cherished notion of Alan Greenspan was probably that the private financial sector will figure things out and should be left alone as much as possible. It is hard to find anyone today who takes this view seriously. The issue now is to find legitimate and effective means of Congressional oversight, pushing regulators hard to do the right thing: question everything. -
www.nytimes.com

07/16/2010 - Some Parents Are Now Stealing Their Children's Credit (VIDEO) - "Parents are privy to children's information," Linda Foley of the Identity Theft Resource Center told GMA. "And if they're desperate enough, or if they're that type of person, they seem to have no reluctance using their children's social security number." -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Goldman Sachs Settles With SEC Over Mortgage Fraud Claims -- And Stock SOARS - Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Goldman, Sachs & Co. will pay $550 million and reform its business practices to settle SEC charges that Goldman misled investors in a subprime mortgage product just as the U.S. housing market was starting to collapse. -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Banks Already Gearing Up To Profit Off Of New Rules Seek to Keep Profits as New Oversight Rules Loom - Faced with new limits on fees associated with debit cards, for instance, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others are imposing fees on checking accounts. -
www.nytimes.com

07/14/2010 - A Roosevelt Moment for America's Megabanks? - Just over a hundred years ago, the United States led the world in terms of rethinking how big business worked - and when the power of such firms should be constrained. In retrospect, the breakthrough legislation - not just for the US, but also internationally - was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. -
www.project-syndicate.com

07/11/2010 - Bank of America Says $10.7 Billion of Trades Wrongly Classified - Bank of America said the inaccuracies aren't material and "don't stem from any intentional misstatement of the Corporation's financial statements and was not related to any fraud or deliberate error," according to a May 13 letter released yesterday from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. - www.bloomberg.com

07/01/2010 - Plantation police, FBI agent indicted in mortgage fraud case - According to the indictment, the defendants submitted false and fraudulent documents to mortgage lenders in order to obtain the loans, and the title attorneys falsely represented to the mortgage lenders the source of the deposits or down payments needed to close the transactions. There were $16.5 million in loans secured in the scheme, according to the indictment. - www.sun-sentinel.com

06/30/2010 - Countrywide Lawsuit: Racial Discrimination In Subprime Loans Alleged By Illinois Attorney General - The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, claimed the Bank of America Corp., subsidiary steered minority borrowers into risky subprime mortgages more often than white borrowers, even when blacks and Latinos qualified for other types of loans. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/23/2010 - Prisoners cashed in on homebuyer tax credit - More than 1,200 prison inmates, including 241 serving life sentences, defrauded the government of $9.1 million in tax credits reserved for first-time homebuyers, according to a Treasury Department report released Wednesday. - www.cnn.com

06/20/2010 - Gretchen Morgenson: Inflated Appraisals Are Key Evidence In Lawsuits Against Banks - Recent filings by two Federal Home Loan Banks - in San Francisco and Seattle - offer an intriguing way to clear this high hurdle. Lawyers representing the banks, which bought mortgage securities, combed through the loan pools looking for discrepancies between actual loan characteristics and how they were pitched to investors. - www.nytimes.com

06/16/2010 - Big Banks Spend Millions On 'Information War' To Stop Swipe Fee Reform - "It's been an information war, and the big banks and credit card companies have unlimited resources to push their distortions about what the amendment will do," said Taylor West, a spokesperson for the Merchant Payments Coalition. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/16/2010 - After Foreclosure, It Gets Worse - Lenders Now Going After Borrowers To Recoup Money Lost In Short Sales - Over the past year, lenders have become much more aggressive in trying to recoup money lost in foreclosures and other distressed sales, creating more grief for people who thought their real estate headaches were far behind. In many localities -- including Virginia, Maryland and the District -- lenders have the right to pursue. - www.washingtonpost.com

05/20/2010 - Another Monthly Drop In Lending By Biggest Bailed-Out Banks - The nation's biggest banks that still owe taxpayers for the extraordinary support they were given in 2008 cut lending by about $9 billion from February to March, or one percent, according to a new report by the Treasury Department. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/28/2010 - Despite Reform Efforts, 'Big Banks Have Enough Lobbying Power To Continue Taking Big Risks' (VIDEO) - When asked whether banks will begin to be regulated more like utilities, Salmon suggested that, even with the financial reform poised to move through the Senate, the industry will have enough lobbying firepower to retain its core profit sectors. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/27/2010 - Top 10 mortgage fraud states - Incidents of mortgage fraud perpetrated by industry professionals increased 7% in 2009, after jumping 26% the year before, said the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), a division of LexisNexis. The worst-hit states include Florida, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. - www.cnn.com

04/14/2010 - Top 10 mortgage fraud states - Incidents of mortgage fraud perpetrated by industry professionals increased 7% in 2009, after jumping 26% the year before, said the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), a division of LexisNexis. The worst-hit states include Florida, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. - www.cnn.com

04/14/2010 - JPMorgan Executive Mobbed By Borrowers After Inviting Them To Bring Him Their Complaints So, Lowman, fled right the hell out of there! - David Lowman, chief executive for JPMorgan Chase's home mortgage division, may have gotten a little ahead of himself at yesterday's House Financial Services hearing yesterday. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/09/2010 - Florida GOP Leaders Put $1.3 Million In Lavish Spending On Junior Staffer's Amex - She was a 25-year-old junior staffer when the Florida Republican Party gave her an American Express card. Over the next 2.5 years, nearly $1.3 million in charges wound up on Melanie Phister's AmEx - $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, his wife and kids, for starters. Statements show thousands spent on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a month-long stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel, but which the party says was a forfeited deposit. - www.tampabay.com

04/07/2010 - Chase Sued: Allegedly Told Homeowner To Stop Payments, Then Foreclosed - JPMorgan Chase told a California couple to quit making mortgage payments in order to qualify for a loan modification but then foreclosed on their Sacramento home, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/07/2010 - Regions Financial: Bailed-Out Bank's Unit Slapped By SEC For Subprime Fraud - The SEC announced this morning administrative proceedings against Memphis, Tenn.-based firms Morgan Keegan & Company and Morgan Asset Management "and two employees accused of fraudulently overstating the value of securities backed by subprime mortgages." - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/05/2009 - Looting Main Street - How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece - www.rollingstone.com

banks are looting main street

04/05/2009 - Watchdog Group: Stop Big Banks From Offering High-Interest Payday Loans - Once confined to the shady storefronts of payday loan shops, advertisements for short-term loans with triple-digit interest rates have made their way onto the websites of banks like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank. Wells Fargo's Direct Deposit Advance Services give customers advances on their paychecks, typically for a fee of $10 per $100 borrowed or an annual percentage rate of 120 percent or higher. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/02/2009 - JPMorgan Chase To Squeeze Credit Further In Response To New Consumer Protections - In his annual letter to shareholders released late Wednesday, CEO Jamie Dimon said the New York-based bank expects a $500 million to $750 million hit from the credit card reforms that took effect Feb. 22 prohibiting what he referred to as "certain practices that were not considered consumer-friendly." - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2009 - WATCH: Sen. Kaufman On Lehman Brothers Accounting: 'If It Isn't Fraud, It Should Be' - It's a veritable crime sweep. Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) confidently tells Aaron Task of Tech Ticker that "the FBI agents and the prosecutors are going after these guys" -- that is, the possible fraud behind Lehman Brothers "Repo 105" accounting. "There cannot be two laws in the land, especially in an area that cost the American people so incredibly much, by having almost another Great Depression. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/27/2009 - Washington Mutual WaMu Files For Chapter 11 - Washington Mutual Inc. filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, two weeks after resolving a $4 billion dispute with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/26/2009 - At Least 12 Big Banks Involved In HUGE Bid-Rigging Conspiracy, According To New Suit - JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case. - www.bloomberg.com

03/18/2009 - Wachovia To Settle Money Laundering Case For $160 Million - The probe, which began in 2005 when a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics dog in Florida detected cocaine traces in an airplane, ultimately uncovered at least $110 million in drug profits laundered from Mexico through Wachovia. The total settlement includes forfeiture in that amount plus a $50 million fine. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/18/2009 - Indiana Homeowner Kicked Out Of HAMP For Early Payment Wins Reprieve - Stuart had extra cause for concern because she'd been told that she had been kicked out of HAMP. That seems to have happened because she set her automatic payments too early -- instead of on the first day of the month, Stuart set her bank account to make the payment automatically on the 25th of the previous month. She was concerned that GMAC wouldn't accept the money on Jan. 1, New Year's Day. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/18/2009 - Required form criticized by banks as impeding new mortgages - Designed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help borrowers better understand the terms of their loans, the new three-page form has been a required part of the mortgage application process since Jan. 1. In some ways, the form is doing its job, experts say - and in other ways it's adding confusion to a process that already besieges buyers with a mind-boggling array of details. - www.miamiherald.com

03/15/2009 - Big Bailout Banks Slashed New Lending In January - Treasury's monthly survey of bank lending shows overall new loan origination dropped 35 percent from December's level. Treasury says the drop "may be partially explained by large increases" in late 2009. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/12/2009 - Lehman Bankrutpcy: 'Repo 105,' Firm's 'Accounting Gimmick,' Was Like 'A Drug,' Emails Show - As news organizations pore through the 2,200 pages of documents released by Anton Valukas, the examiner in charge of sifting through the most expensive bankruptcy in history, new details have surfaced about possible criminal actions by Lehman executives. - www.huffpostfund.com

03/10/2009 - Foreclosure Schemes And Mortgage Misfortune -- Readers Share Their Tales - We're in the midst of reporting out some of the most promising leads generated by our tipsters, but in the meantime, we've published several stories to our interactive map tracking "Signs of Deception." Among the themes that emerged: - www.huffpostfund.com

03/10/2009 - Way Too Big To Save - Listening to US officials, talking to legal experts, and waiting for an intense Senate debate on financial reform to begin, you can easily form the impression that "too big to fail" adequately describes our most serious future systemic banking problems. It does not. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Consumer Protection Agency Opponents Take Fight To Google AdWords (PHOTO) - As you'll see by the below screen shot, contextual ads for the term "CFPA" have already been snatched up by consumer agency opponents. The agency, first proposed by Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the bailout, would protect consumers against deceptive credit card deals and misleading mortgage agreements while also acting as a bulwark against some of the more exotic financial products. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Chase Refunds $6,200 To Complaining Customer - "They kindly informed me that I would not get my money back because, according to their algorithms, I fit the profile of a credit card cheat," Nitzberg wrote. "Mind you, I am, once again, a 78-year-old retired New York City public school teacher with no criminal record; but according to Chase, I was the most likely suspect." - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Bank of America scrapping some overdraft fees - With the bank's new policy, BofA debit card purchases that would push checking account balances into the red will be declined for new customers beginning in June, and for existing customers starting in early August. - www.cnn.com

03/05/2009 - Banks Vow To Boost Small Business Lending -- But Aren't Revealing Key Details - Forget searching for "small business loans" on the banks' Web sites to get specifics on the progress of these new programs. Same goes for digging into the banks' finances, because you aren't going to find this segment broken out in one spot. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/04/2009 - NYT: Derivatives Market Is STILL Unreformed, A.I.G., Greece, - Which Crisis Will Be Next? - European leaders have called for an inquiry into the Greek crisis. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, has told Congress that the Fed is "looking into" Wall Street's deals with Greece, and the Justice Department is investigating the euro bets. That is better than turning a blind eye, but it is not nearly enough. - www.nytimes.com

02/26/2009 - Bank Of America Sued For Unwanted Credit Monitoring Service - A California man is suing Bank of America over monthly charges for a credit monitoring service he says he never wanted, didn't sign up for, and couldn't get rid of even after complaining to the bank. Now, in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court, he wants his money back. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/22/2009 - Banks Launch Aggressive Campaigns To Keep Overdraft Charges Flowing In - As the government cracks down on the way banks charge fees for overspending on debit cards, the industry is mounting an aggressive campaign aimed at keeping billions of dollars in penalty income flowing into its coffers. - www.nytimes.com

02/22/2009 - An abrupt eviction, narrowly averted - That declaration allowed Wells Fargo Bank to take possession of Berta's home in December without him ever knowing that a foreclosure case had been filed, and he had no chance to raise a defense. "They didn't want to find me," Berta said. "They tried to use their knowledge of the law to steal my house." - www.heraldtribune.com

02/19/2009 - Goldman Sachs Execs Quickly Sold Off Shares During The Crisis - And Made A Killing - Aamong the big sellers in March 2008 was E. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman managing director and former head of the New York Fed, who sold 15,000 shares of Goldman for $2.6 million; Jon Winkelried, Goldman’s co-president at the time, who sold 20,000 shares for nearly $3.5 million (he quit the firm a year later after asking it to buy an additional $19.7 million of his illiquid investments); and Masanori Mochida, the head of Goldman in Japan, who sold 100,000 shares for $17.6 million. - www.opinionator.com

02/10/2009 - Guess Who's In Charge Of Modifying Mortgages? Subprime Lenders! - At least 21 of the top 25 recipients in the Home Affordable Modification Program were major subprime lenders, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Meanwhile, not even 1 in 5 homeowners eligible for the program has gotten help. - www.motherjones.com

02/10/2009 - Small Business Owners Press For Strong CFPA To Defend Them From Wall Street - When asked to speak for themselves, they say a strong CFPA is the only thing that can protect them from the predatory practices of the corporate titans represented by the Chamber. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/04/2009 - Remorseful Citigroup Banker John S. Reed Parts With Former Colleagues, Calls For Fundamental Financial Reform - The remorseful former banker who made Citigroup what it is today came to Capitol Hill on Thursday and systematically debunked the arguments that his former colleagues use to defend the practices that nearly crashed the financial system. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/04/2009 - Chase Denied Loan Mods for Now Forbidden Reason-Homeowners in Limbo - We at ProPublica reported last month that mortgage servicers are often not following the Treasury Department's rules for the program [2] and provided three examples. One involved another homeowner who, like Herron, had been denied a modification because his hardship was not "permanent." - www.propublica.com

02/04/2009 - NY Attorney General Files CIVIL CHARGES Against BofA - According to the lawsuit, former CEO Ken Lewis and former CFO Joe Price hid more than $16 billion worth of losses at Merrill from shareholders in order to ensure their approval of the merger - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/03/2009 - Victim of a Real Estate Scheme? Huffington Post Investigative Fund Wants Your Stories - It's a no-brainer: As people lose their jobs and struggle to pay the mortgage, they are increasingly vulnerable to those looking to make a quick profit off their troubles. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/02/2009 - Rising FHA default rate foreshadows a crush of foreclosures - About 9.1 percent of FHA borrowers had missed at least three payments as of December, up from 6.5 percent a year ago, the agency's figures show. - www.washingtonpost.com

02/02/2009 - Wells Fargo Bows To Facebook Pressure, Waives Haiti Donation Fees - Acting to contain viral anger on a Facebook page called "Wachovia=Fail," a spokesman for Wells Fargo, Wachovia's parent company, announced today -- in a Facebook post -- that the bank is waiving and refunding all transaction fees related to donations for Haiti. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2009 - Bankers Spent Big Bucks On Scott Brown Campaign - In a six-day span just before the US Senate election, Republican Scott Brown collected nearly $450,000 from donors who work at financial companies, a sign the industry is prepared to spend heavily in the upcoming midterm elections to beat back new controls and taxes President Obama wants to impose. - www.boston.com

01/29/2009 - Transaction Fee On Haiti Donation Leads College Student To Create Anti-Wachovia Facebook Page - Several days after 21-year-old Heather Lynn used her Wachovia debit card to donate $10 to Yele Haiti's earthquake fund, she noticed on her online billing statement that the bank had deducted a 3% "international service fee" from the donated amount. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/29/2009 - Man Infuriated By Overdraft Fee Jailed After Threatening To Rob Bank - Francis Coleman, an unemployed machinist from Bethlehem, called his local TV station Wednesday night and told them he wanted a camera crew to film him robbing the bank. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/27/2009 - bing.com - How To Get Overdraft Fees Refunded - Many videos related to bank overdraft fees and how to get them back. - www.bing.com

01/22/2009 - Goldman Sachs Had Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, Police Barricades At Its Headquarters Before Earnings Announcement - As Goldman Sachs prepared to announce its fourth quarter earnings and employee compensation levels yesterday, the bank had bomb-sniffing dogs and police barricades on hand at its New York City headquarters, - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/18/2009 - Anti-Trust Action Coming Against Banks? - Fortunately, there is an alternative - one laid out neatly by Krishna Guha of the Financial Times on Tuesday. Instead of pursuing the issue of those "too big to fail" financial institutions exclusively through legislation, the administration could launch instead one or more serious antitrust investigations into the behavior of our biggest banks. - www.baselinescenario.com

01/18/2009 - Financial Times Blasts Lack Of Competition In Banking - How the big banks rigged the market - In the description of Whitehall insiders, Goldman executives reacted with anger and aggression. The threat was that the bank would scale back its business in London. For a moment it seemed Gordon Brown's administration might wobble. In the event, Goldman's lobbying failed to persuade it to soften the impact of the tax. - www.ft.com

01/14/2009 - Big Banks Repeatedly Bending Loan Modification Rules - Housing advocates say they frequently see homeowners rejected or kept in a trial modification for questionable reasons. "There's a real resistance on the servicers' part to making permanent modifications," said Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center. - www.propublica.org

01/13/2009 - Goldman CEO Compares Crisis To An Act Of God - The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission held its first hearing in Washington today; with another session scheduled for tomorrow. (Watch the hearing live here.) - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/13/2009 - Fed Shuts Down Credit Card Practices Congress Forgot To Ban - While the new law will forbid arbitrary interest rate hikes on existing balances and over-limit fee traps, some worried the industry would simply pioneer more obscure tactics to soak consumers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/10/2009 - BofA Mistakenly Seized Doctor's Home, Left 75 Pounds Of Fish To Rot, Says New Lawsuit - A West End property owner is suing Bank of America Corp., asserting its agents mistakenly seized a vacation house he owns free and clear, then changed the locks and shut the power off, resulting in the smelly spoiling of about 75 pounds of salmon and halibut from an Alaska fishing trip and other damages. - www.galvnews.com

01/08/2009 - American Banker: Huffington Post Campaign Resonated for a Reason - The real impact of the movement is in the education it provides people about their banking options - something that may not move them to close accounts, but could stick with them next time they need bankservices. unions. - www.americanbanker.com

01/08/2009 - SAYING 'ENOUGH!' WATCH: ABC News Profiles Move Your Money Campaign - On Friday, ABC's World News Tonight reported on Move Your Money. Describing the project as a grassroots movement with growing momentum, the report explained how Move Your Money aims to change the practices of America's too-big-to-fail banks by encouraging account holders at those banks to withdraw their money and deposit it into smaller community banks or credit unions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/08/2009 - 'Move Your Money' Movement Surges In Social Media - Press coverage hardly captures the whole movement, however. Across social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, a surge of grassroots organizing is showing how Americans are making the Move Your Money initiative their own. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/08/2009 - Christian Science Monitor: Mad About The Bailouts? Move Your Money - Take your money out. That's right. Take your checking and savings account out of that big money-center financial institution and move it to a community bank or credit union. - www.csmonitor.com

01/07/2009 - Geithner's New York Fed Pushed AIG To Keep Sweetheart Deals Secret - An arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Arianna And Rob Johnson Explain How Moving Your Money Can Change The System (VIDEO) - The initiative encourages account holders to withdraw their money from big, mismanaged banks and move the funds to smaller, better-managed community banks--institutions that are still lending. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Consumers Are Moving Their Money to Credit Unions, Rising Membership Shows - In fact, consumers are already voting with their wallets in favor of credit unions. The data collected by my organization, - ( the Credit Union National Association -- the industry's trade group ) shows that credit unions are on pace to post 2% membership growth in 2009. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Rabbi Shmuley Boteach - Mortgage Ignominy at JP Morgan Chase - But when it comes to screwing the American tax payer out of funds designed to alleviate his mortgage burden, JP Morgan Chase emerges as the great celestial black hole, sucking in every last particle of cash before it devours your very home into eternal foreclosure darkness. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Bailed Out Banks Spend Millions Sponsoring College Football - But sponsoring college bowl games isn't typical advertising. It's another example of finance companies worming their way into the lucrative college market, associating their names with institutions of higher learning. - www.chron.co.uk

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Over 340,000 Searches For Community Banks In First Week - People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis.
Fueled by the personal initiatives of thousands, it’s a grassroots effort that has the potential to shift power in the financial system away from Wall Street and to Main Street.
Check out the video, - read up on what inspired the idea, connect with others through - Facebook and - Twitter and then use the - tools and links provided to find a community bank or credit union in your area.

01/06/2009 - Time.com: '3 Cheers For Move Your Money' - I know the Independent Community Bankers of America also have a community bank locater on their site too - www.icba.org If you insert the zip code 10024, I found 20 community banks within a 5 miles. I found a number of small banks around my zip code too. - www.curiouscapitalist.com

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Over 340,000 Searches For Community Banks In First Week - My name is Dennis Santiago. I am the CEO of Institutional Risk Analytics, a company that most of the world had never heard of until December 29, 2009. That's the day the country became aware of a tool we donated to help the - MoveYourMoney.info campaign. The response to this tool has been inspiring. The large outpouring of a nation expressing itself remains one of the wondrous things about being an American. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/05/2010 - Felix Salmon Explains Benefits Of Move Your Money Campaign. Is the Huffington bank boycott a good idea? - Banks make their money in a lot of ways, such as by collecting fees. For instance, banks are projected to collect $38.5 billion in overdraft fees this year, some 90 percent of which is paid by only 10 percent of the customer base. - www.reuters.com

01/04/2009 - Goldman Sachs May Leave London To Escape New Taxes And Regulations - Goldman is one of the most profitable financial institutions in the world. Despite the downturn, it has had a bumper financial year and in the first three quarters of last year alone it set aside £ 10.5bn to cover pay and bonuses. - www.telegraph.co.uk

01/04/2009 - Too Big To Fire? 92% Of Managers At Top Bailout Recipients Are Still In Same Jobs - The Obama administration's approach seems to be: the people who got us into this crisis are the ones best equipped to get us out of it. The numbers behind the sheer lack of management change on Wall Street are nonetheless shocking. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/29/2009 - Risky Lenders Did More Aggressive Lobbying: IMF Report - Excessive risk, in other words, is correlated with campaign cash and lobbying money. Banks and corporations which committed millions to lobbying, the report rather timidly suggests, may have received "preferential treatment" and influenced policy decisions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/21/2009 (PART 1) - At Top Subprime Mortgage Lender, Policies Were An Invitation To Fraud - First of two articles about the roots of the subprime lending bubble. An inside look at Long Beach Mortgage - many of whose lending practices were common among subprime loan companies - adds another dark chapter to the evolving narrative of the financial crisis. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: GO TO PART 2,

12/22/2009 (PART 2) How A Subprime Loan Goes Bad. The Fate Of A Subprime Loan: Can This Man Hold On To His Mortgage? (VIDEO) - (Second of two articles about the - roots of the subprime lending bubble.) a web forum where users share employment-related information, released the results of its survey of the best and worst companies to work for. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: GO TO PART 1

12/14/2009 - Obama to banks: 'Rebuild our economy' - President tells Wall Street execs gathered at the White House that he expects 'an extraordinary commitment' to aid the nation. But one banker calls the conversation 'uneventful.' - www.cnn.org
Read More: financial legislation to reshape

11/30/2009 - The Next Credit Crisis Will Involve Private Equity, Says Author Josh Kosman - The next credit crisis may be caused by private equity companies, which bought over 3,000 companies this decade by forcing them to take on enormous amounts of debt, argues financial reporter Josh Kosman, the author of - "The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis." - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/24/2009 - 5 reasons banks don't get it (and a few banks that do) - Tired of being taken for granted by the people who hold your dough? Here's what a bank you could love might look like -- plus a few that are starting to get the right idea. - www.cnn.org
Read More: MINT.COM

11/18/2009 - Feds Launch Anti-Fraud Crackdown - Updating a seven-year-old, post-Enron task force first formed under former President George W. Bush, this new effort will go after financial crimes relating to the current crisis and recovery efforts. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/17/2009 - Small biz loans: $10 billion vanishes - Reports to the Treasury confirm what small business owners have known all year: Banks are cutting back on Main Street lending. - www.cnn.org

11/04/2009 - Bloomberg: Wall Street Demands Bonuses, Or Else. Wall Street Cries 'Feed Me' or World Will End: Susan Antilla - A year after the world's banking system almost collapsed, you might think financial bosses would be agonizing over how they would be depicted in history books, and anyone with a job would be offering to stick around and clean up the mess for a pittance. - www.bloomberg.org

11/04/2009 - John Varley Defends Bonuses: Profits Are "Not Satanic" Barclays CEO Tells London Church Crowd - According to Bloomberg, Barclays CEO John Varley spoke at London's Anglican St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church Tuesday night and defended profits and compensation to employees at financial firms. Varley went on to assert that Christianity is compatible with banking and bonuses. In October, Brian Griffiths, an International advicer to Goldman Sachs told a panel at St. Paul's Cathedral in London that inequality helps us all, saying, "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all." Griffiths also used religion to justify his stance, saying, - "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest." - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Goldman Sachs's Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All

11/04/2009 - Mortgage Bankers Post Huge Profits... Again - average profit of nearly $1,400 on each loan originated during the second quarter, a figure that at least one housing expert expects to significantly decline in the coming months. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/04/2009 - JPMorgan Settlement: Bank To Pay SEC Over $700M Over Charges Of Illegal Payments - agreed to pay $75 million in fines and forfeit $647 million in fees to settle federal regulators' charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/03/2009 - States Are Pondering Fraud Suits Against Banks - Frustrated by the banks' inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications. - www.nytimes.org

11/01/2009 - Wall Street's New Halloween Trick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.org

11/01/2009 - Mystery: Why did Goldman stop scrutinizing loans it bought? - The lenders, he said, "just wanted somebody, anybody to sign a note" so they could sell it to Wall Street, where ratings agencies that were paid hefty fees by the investment banks bestowed triple-A grades or their equivalent on most subprime bonds.
www.mcclatchydc.com - VIDEO -

11/01/2009 - How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash - In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
www.mcclatchydc.com - VIDEO -

10/30/2009 - Wall Street's New Halloween Trick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.org

10/30/2009 - Too Big To Fail, Too Small To Survive: Small Bank Failures Mount, While Big Banks' Profits Soar - The top 10 bailed-out banks -- Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, U.S. Bancorp, SunTrust and Capital One - have reported combined profits this year of $13.5 billion in the first quarter, $16.8 billion in the second quarter and $11 billion in the third quarter after a massive $18 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2008. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/30/2009 - Bankers Expect Rising Bonus Pay To Break Records - In the financial world, most executives expect their bonuses to match or exceed last year�s, with 1 in 10 predicting their best-ever payout. - www.bloomberg.org

10/27/2009 - U.S. schools homeowners to spot loan rescue scams - launched on Monday by government agencies, local leaders and housing advocates to stop scammers preying on desperate borrowers nationwide. - www.reuters.org

10/27/2009 - Robert Reich: Breaking Up The Big Banks, And Why Congress Won't Do It - The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/27/2009 - Ed Yingling: Banking Industry's Top Defender Got It Wrong Over and Over Again - At the height of the housing bubble in 2005, Yingling penned an op-ed for American Banker, titled "Regulators Shouldn't Make Boards Micromanage," in which he argued that "asking boards of directors to analyze specific loan activity... runs counter to good governance." - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/26/2009 - Subprime and the Banks: Guilty as Charged - "There has not been a case made that there is an enforcement problem with banks," Edward Yingling, the head of the American Bankers Association, said last week. "There is a problem with enforcement on nonbanks." - www.executivesuite.org

10/26/2009 - Wall Street and Their Seductive Loan Promotions Tricked Many on Main Street - Too many companies like JP Morgan Chase rushed into this sub-prime mortgage spotlight of praise and profit to the demand of the investors, but now after being invited to take their rightful places on the stage of reality and responsibility, nobody's walking. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/26/2009 - 6 loans in 6 years: How one woman lost her home - She was forced to sell after six Washington Mutual mortgage loans in six years stripped much of the equity from her nearly million-dollar home. She got them all from the same loan officer at WaMu's home-loan center at Northgate, loans that were far too complex for a stroke survivor to understand. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Part one | Reckless strategies doomed WaMu - WaMu's riskiest loans raked in money from high fees, but because the bank skimped on making sure borrowers could repay them, they eventually failed at disastrously high rates. As loans went bad, they sucked massive amounts of cash that WaMu needed to stay in business. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Part two | WaMu: Hometown bank turned predatory - In particular, the bank promoted as its "signature loan" a complex product known as the option ARM. This adjustable-rate mortgage, much like a credit card, gave borrowers the choice of making low minimum payments. But that option didn't cover the interest and only dug them deeper into debt. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Showdown In Chicago: Sheila Bair Speaks To Protesters, Backs Consumer Protection Agency (VIDEO) - Before she appeared at the American Bankers Association annual convention today, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation head Sheila Bair addressed protesters at the conference. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/25/2009 - PORTAL - Debtor's Hell - This Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation into the world of consumer debt in the United States found a system where debt collectors have a lopsided advantage, debtors are often treated shabbily by collectors and the courts, and consumers can quickly find themselves in a life-upending financial crisis. - www.boston.org

10/25/2009 - Oprah.com - Foreclosure and Consumer Difficulties - Foreclosure Crisis, Lender Deceptions, Biased Courtrooms, Consumer Responsibility and Disadvantages. - www.oprah.org

10/25/2009 - Has A MERShole Opened Up? - If state law requires an unbroken chain of recorded assignments in order to document ownership of a mortgage and thus standing to foreclose, MERS cannot override this state law by fiat. - www.market-ticker.org

10/25/2009 - The Mers Fifty Million Mortgage Meltdown - PART I. The Promissory Note Evidence Ownership of Debt and Standing to Bring Suit. - www.loanworkout.org

10/25/2009 - Judges Scrutinizing Lenders' Methods In Foreclosure Fights - Homeowner's $460,000 Debt Canceled - The reason that notes have gone missing is the huge mass of mortgage securitizations that occurred during the housing boom. Securitizations allowed for large pools of bank loans to be bundled and sold to legions of investors, but some of the nuts and bolts of the mortgage game - notes, for example - were never adequately tracked or recorded during the boom. In some cases, that means nobody truly knows who owns what. - www.nytimes.com

10/20/2009 - Bob Herbert: Why "Too Big To Fail" Is A Bailout For The Rich. Safety Nets for the Rich - We've spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government - while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they've wanted. - www.nytimes.com

10/20/2009 - JPMorgan, Citi Sued for Student Loan Scheme - According to the suit, JPMorgan and Citi alledgely "ratified and/or authorized the wrongful acts of Nelnet and have benefitted from such conduct. - www.businessinsider.com

10/20/2009 - Big banks take your money and run - The titans that survived last year's tumult have gathered deposits by the bushel. But they have shown less of a knack for lending it out. - www.cnn.com

10/20/2009 - How Uncle Sam is killing your savings - Ultralow rates are hurting the nation's prudent savers as they bear the brunt of Wall Street. - www.cnn.com

10/20/2009 - Perks And Benefits Go Up At Rescued Financial Firms - Bosses benefit after bailout Fringe compensation rose 4 percent last year - www.washingtonpost.com

10/16/2009 - Dylan Ratigan, Michael Moore Slam Wall St. Over Bonuses - They burned down our economy. They completely crashed it. And now they're getting rewarded for it... It's absolutely insane that we allow this to happen. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/14/2009 - JPMorgan Earnings: Bank Posts $3.6 Billion Profit, Despite Big Loan Losses - However, traditional residential mortgages and home equity loans as well as credit cards continue to default at a rapid pace and that has eaten into JPMorgan's profits. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/13/2009 - Walking Away From Your Mortgage: Why It's Not Unethical - foreclosure numbers are again - at record highs. As the foreclosures rise, so too does the criticism of "walkaways" who hand the keys to their drastically devalued houses back to the bank. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: MORAL STANDARDS, , OTHER REPORTS, , DEFAULT ACCUSATIONS,

10/13/2009 - Citigroup Fined $600k For Investments That Helped Customers Dodge Taxes - The development comes as governments around the world crack down on tax evasion as they look to close widening budget gaps fueled by economic weakness. - www.cnbc.com

10/13/2009 - Analysts Predict $23 BILLION Bonus Pool At Goldman Sachs - "Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger," Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of - Goldman Sachs, said last month. "And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate." - www.nytimes.com

10/12/2009 - NYT: Citigroup Hires Former S&L Crisis Lobbyist - The New York Times takes a look at Citigroup's hiring of Richard F. Hohlt -- a former lobbyist with a controversial past who - will now advise the volatile bank on policy issues.www.nytimes.com

10/12/2009 - Home rescue was a scam, jury says - Gideon Rechnitz and business associate Thomas Cook pretended to help in 2006, but actually had Costa sign over the deed to Rechnitz while leaving her personally responsible for the mortgage and all the maintenance and taxes on the home. - www.heraldtribune.com

10/10/2009 - States Should Be Allowed To Protect Consumers From Big Banks - With the major banks immune from state laws, the measures are largely worthless. Some states have abandoned efforts to provide consumers with added protection from predatory lenders; others have scaled back existing rules after being pressured by federal agencies. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/09/2009 - Banks Hoarding Cash, Not Lending - A new report shows that, in the year since TARP's creation, commercial bank credit has fallen in just about every category. Full-Year TARP Results: Banks Hoard More Cash, Make Fewer Loans - www.foxbusiness.com

10/09/2009 - Predatory-lending lawsuits on the rise - Homeowners and government officials are taking mortgage lenders to court for unfair lending. While many of these suits are still winding their way through the legal system, some banks have already settled for millions of dollars. practices. - www.cnn.com

10/09/2009 - In Housing Report, Civil Rights Commission Decides NOT To Investigate Civil Rights Violations - But instead, the Republican commissioners explicitly sought to investigate whether "federal efforts to increase homeownership among minority and low-income individuals may have unintentionally weakened underwriting standards and lending policies." - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/02/2009 - Michael Moore And Sean Hannity Face Off: Did Hannity Fib About Going To Church? (VIDEO) - Moore hammered Hannity for arguing that the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting financial meltdown can be almost entirely blamed on low-income borrowers who took out mortgages they couldn't afford. - www.huffingtonpost.com

Michael Moore, Sean Hannity Talk Mortgage Crisis

 

Michael Moore Confronted By Hannity About "Capitalism"

 

Sean Hannity and Michael Moore Debate Previous Administrations' Roles in

 

Hannity & Michael Moore : The Great Debate.

10/02/2009 - Hightower: Wall Street's Latest Ghoulish Gimmick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.com

10/01/2009 - Lawsuit: Wells Fargo Pockets The Difference When Customers Make ATM Errors - Wells Fargo customer Brandi McLay says that when she and other customers have made ATM deposits and mistakenly entered a dollar amount lower than the amount of the cash or checks on the keypad, the bank "pockets the difference," as first reported by Courthouse News Service. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/01/2009 - Newsweek: Credit Rating Agencies Should Go The Way Of Enron - when it comes to bad decision making, these seven folks arguably deserve the bulk of the blame. - www.newsweek.com

09/30/2009 - THE UNACCOUNTABLE ANALYSTS - No Credit Rating Agency Employees Covering AIG Or Lehman Have Been Fired... Lawmaker Proposes Making Agencies Collectively Liable For Inaccuracies. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/30/2009 - Vanity Fair Details Secret Meetings Between Government And Goldman Sachs - Sorkin's reports go further than any other published accounts in establishing a link between the government's actions during the financial crisis and the benefits Goldman Sachs received during the bailout. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - Wall Street Bonuses Set to Increase - With the financial sector recovering, banks face a conundrum. Big bonuses could spark a backlash, but small bonuses could cause top talent to flee. - www.cnn.com

09/29/2009 - Credit Cards: Federal Reserve Closer To New Limits - The public, industry and other interested parties will have an opportunity to weigh in on the Fed's proposal. The provisions are slated to take effect on Feb. 22, 2010. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - Shahien Nasiripour The Wall Street Technique That Led To Billions In Bad Loans - How Securitization Encouraged Bad Loans. the bundling and packaging of loans, which are then sliced into securities for sale to investors -- grew tenfold from 2000 to 2005, reaching a peak of over $1.5 trillion in 2006, the report notes. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - AIG's Joseph Cassano In Westport, CT: BACK On U.S. Soil - The former AIG exec dubbed "The Man Who Crashed The World" by Vanity Fair is back in the U.S. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Financial Crisis Financiers, The Man Who Crashed the World, Feds eye AIG exec Cassano, Joseph Cassano, AIG Execs Could Face Grand Jury In Brooklyn

09/29/2009 - Foreclosure blight: The cleanup crawls along - The Neighborhood Stabilization Program, passed by Congress last year, gives states and localities money to acquire and rehabilitate abandoned properties. The big problem: officials are having trouble getting their hands on those houses, which are being scooped up instead by private investors and homebuyers at rock-bottom prices. - www.businessweek.com

09/28/2009 - U.K. Gets It Right: Annual Bank Bonuses To Be Banned - annual bonuses for bank executives will be outlawed in an attempt to curb excessive risk-taking in the country's huge financial sector. - www.businessweek.com

09/28/2009 - Banks Still Trading In Risky Derivatives - Bailed-Out Banks Still Making Billions Off Risky Bets - U.S. commercial banks earned $5.2 billion trading derivatives in the second quarter of 2009, a 225 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the Treasury Department.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/27/2009 - Fed Held Back As Evidence Mounted On Subprime Loan Abuses - As Subprime Lending Crisis Unfolded, Watchdog Fed Didn't Bother Barking - The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses.www.washingtonpost.com

09/25/2009 - Citigroup's New Plan: Fewer Locations, Most Lending Limited To The Wealthy - Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in TARP funds -- in addition to billions in government asset guarantees -- has come up with a brash tax-payer funded restructuring plan: cut U.S. locations and limit most lending to only the wealthy.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/24/2009 - Why Authorities Haven't Been Able To Stop The Growth Of "Foreclosure Rescue" Scams - "Foreclosure rescue" companies promising -- in exchange for a large up-front fee -- to persuade lenders to modify desperate homeowners' mortgages. And authorities are again finding themselves ill-equipped to deal with the deluge.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/23/2009 - Matt Taibbi: "Mortgage Market Was A Giant Criminal Enterprise" - This is a potentially gigantic story. It seems that a court has ruled that about half of the mortgage market has been run as a criminal enterprise for years, which would invalidate any potential forelosure proceedings for about, oh, 60 million mortgages.www.trueslant.com

09/22/2009 - Bank Of America Trial With SEC Coming - a judge threw out the bank's $33 million settlement and rebuked the agency for not pursuing charges against executives.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/21/2009 - WHERE ARE THE CULPRITS? - More than a year into the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression, millions of Americans have seen their home values and retirement savings plunge and their jobs evaporate. www.mcclatchydc.com

09/16/2009 - Cuomo Subpoenas Bank Of America Board Members - board members are expected to be questioned about what they knew regarding the mounting losses and bonus payments at Merrill ahead of the deal's completion. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Andrew Cuomo, Bank Of America Board, BofA, BofA Board, Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch Bonuses, New York Attorney General, NY Ag,

09/16/2009 - Break up the big banks - Citigroup, Bank Of America, JPMorgan And Wells Fargo Control 39 Percent Of All Deposits. - www.reuters.com
Read More: Bank Of America, Banking Monopoly, Banking Reform, Banks, Big Four Banks, Citigroup, Fdic, Financial Crisis, JPMorgan Chase, Too Big Too Fail, Wells Fargo, Business News

09/15/2009 - Where are the subprime perp walks? - Three years after the housing bubble popped, prosecutors have yet to bring a major case tied to the subprime fiasco. What gives?www.cnn.com

09/15/2009 - The Foreclosed Malibu Beach House An Ex-Wells Fargo Exec Partied In - Check out the PHOTOS, which are courtesy of Irene Dazzan-Palmer Of Coldwell banker (www.IreneDazzan-Palmer.com)
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/15/2009 - Wells Fargo fires banker for 'misconduct' for parties in bank-owned home see 9/11 below - On Monday, Wells Fargo & Co. said it terminated an employee for misconduct at a bank-owned property in one of California's most well known celebrity enclaves.
www.cnn.com

09/12/2009 - WALL STREET SIZZLES AS REFORM FIZZLES - "Not A Lot Has Changed In That Culture"...Obama's Proposals "Weak And Watered Down". A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.
www.nytimes.com

09/12/2009 - The $33 million bonus saga. The Merrill Lynch bonus saga drags on - Bank of America and the SEC exchange jabs, but ask federal judge once again to sign off on $33 million settlement over bonuses paid to Merrill execs.
www.cnn.com

09/11/2009 - Exec. In Charge Of Foreclosures Moved Into Bank-Owned Malibu Beach House, Neighbors Say - spent long summer weekends in a $12 million Malibu beach house, moving into the home just after it had been surrendered to Wells Fargo to satisfy debts.
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/10/2009 - Prepared Statement of The Federal Trade Commission - Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs "How the FTC Works to Halt Fraudulent Schemes Exploiting the Economic Downturn and the Stimulus Package" Washington, D.C. September 10, 2009
www.trashoutpro.com

09/10/2009 - Con Men Exploit Stimulus Program To Scam Thousands Of Americans, Say Government Auditors - So far, 270,000 Americans have been affected by stimulus-related scam, according to Federal Trade Commission.
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/09/2009 - Banks To Make $27 Billion On Overdraft Fees - Banks and credit unions have long pitched debit cards as a convenient and prudent way to buy. But a growing number are now allowing consumers to exceed their balances - for a price.
www.nytimes.com

09/09/2009 - Biggest banks stepping in to payday arena - A few of the nation's largest banks -- including Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco, and Fifth Third Bancorp of Cincinnati -- are now marketing payday loan-type products, with triple-digit interest rates, to their checking account customers.
www.startribune.com

09/09/2009 - "Rescission": Health Insurance Companies' Latest Tactic To Withdraw Coverage - Blue Cross claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire "preexisting conditions" Marrari said she did not know she had.
www.washingtonpost.com

09/09/2009 - Mortgage surplus money: $18 million waiting for homeowners to claim - "I have $18 million in mortgage surplus money that is sitting there waiting" to be claimed, Brown said during a news conference Monday at Chicago's Englewood District police station.
www.chicagotribune.com

09/09/2009 - Mortgage Surplus Search - If your home was foreclosed upon, and the sales or auction price exceeded the amount you owed on the mortgage, then the Clerk's Office may be holding your surplus or equity money, to which you are entitled. Use the search form below to find out if the Clerk's Office is holding money for you.
www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org

09/07/2009 - Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance - The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash - $400,000 for a $1 million policy - www.nytimes.com

09/04/2009 - CFTC Accuses Dutch Firm Of Manipulating Oil Prices - Inquiry Stokes Unease Over Trading Firms That Shape Markets. - www.nytimes.com

09/04/2009 - Where Are The Handcuffs Now? Thousands Of Bankers Went To Jail During S&L Crisis - In the cutthroat world of high-frequency trading, success is a function of speed, secrecy and often a bit of intrigue. Few have been more adroit at these arts than Optiver. - www.ft.com

09/03/2009 - FACTBOX-Bailed-out banks paid execs handsomely in 2008 - Following are the 20 financial services firms that borrowed the most from taxpayers, and how much they paid their top executives in 2008, according to the report. - www.reuters.com

09/03/2009 - Top Execs At Bailed-Out Banks Stand To Make Millions In Stock Options - The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million - www.reuters.com

09/03/2009 - Pearlstein: Wall Street Hustlers Who Squandered Billions Are Back At It - So You Just Squandered Billions . . . Take Another Whack at It - www.washingtonpost.com

09/02/2009 - Housing flipper facing charges - One of the Sarasota area's most successful property flippers is accused of gutting a home that he could no longer afford. - www.heraldtribune.com

09/01/2009 - Bankruptcy Judges, Justice Dept. Rip Mortgage Companies - Many homeowners in bankruptcy have legal representation and must settle claims with servicers. As a result, the process has revealed and documented a slew of servicer problems. - www.propublica.org

09/01/2009 - Is Angelo Mozilo a villain or just vilified? - Looking Back At Countrywide's Founder, The "Typhoid Mary" Of The Housing Bust. - www.latimes.com

09/01/2009 - Taibbi: Why The Recent TARP Profit Reports Are Just Propaganda - Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation's biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again. - www.trueslant.com

09/01/2009 - Ex-Countrywide Execs' Firm Modifies Bad Loans for Taxpayer Cash - PennyMac, a firm founded by the former president and chief operating officer of Countrywide, buys distressed home loans on the cheap with the goal of modifying them and later selling them for a profit. - www.propublica.org

08/28/2009 - Living in Bed-Stuy - Buying and Selling in Bedbug City - Complaints about bedbugs have risen sharply over the last few years in New York, according to city officials, and no neighborhood in the city has been spared. - www.nytimes.com

08/28/2009 - Ban on robocalls takes effect on Tuesday September 1, 2009 - Businesses that try to push products on consumers with automated and unsolicited calls will face fines of up to $16,000 per call, according to the Federal Trade Commission. - www.cnn.com

08/28/2009 - FTC drops the banhammer on prerecorded "robocalls" - Still, the list of exceptions mean that the calls will go on, because charities, politicians, banks, and telcos can continue their prerecorded pitches. - www.arstechnica.com

08/27/2009 - Barbarians back at bank gates - As failing banks pressure the FDIC's deposit insurance fund, regulators reach out to private equity investors for help. - www.cnn.com

08/24/2009 - Sergey Aleynikov: "Goldman Spy" Arrest Offers Glimpse Inside $8B Market - Investment banks have been repackaging old mortgage securities and offering to sell them as new products, a plan that's nearly identical to the complicated investment packages at the heart of the market's collapse.
www.youtube.com - VIDEO -

08/24/2009 - Remember me? Wall Street repackages debt for sale - Investment banks have been repackaging old mortgage securities and offering to sell them as new products, a plan that's nearly identical to the complicated investment packages at the heart of the market's collapse. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/22/2009 - Foreclosure data comes up short on Dade website - Because the sale was a foreclosure, and the Property Appraiser's Office isn't recognizing foreclosure sales, the new sales price wasn't listed and the old, previous price and date remained -- with the new buyer attached to it. - www.miamiherald.com

08/22/2009 - Real Estate Scams. Mortgage Fraud Update with Rachel Dollar - Mortgage Fraud Blog is the premier website for news and information on mortgage fraud and real estate fraud - www.fraudproblem.com

08/22/2009 - Real Estate Scams - The wide range of Real Estate and Loan Fraud scams is almost hard to imagine. Click on a name to view the details of the Scam - www.fraudproblem.com

08/22/2009 - Mortgage Fraud News: July 2009 - Fannie Mae has become aware of a new variant of property flipping involving preforeclosure (short) sales. - www.trashoutpro.com

08/21/2009 - In Appraisal Shift, Lenders Gain Power and Critics - Brokers, real estate agents and banks asked appraisers to do a lot of pretending during the housing boom, pumping up values while ignoring defects. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/15/2009 - Homeowner Left Hanging After Mortgage Lender Is Shuttered - A New Hampshire cancer survivor who nearly lost his home four months ago due to "immoral" practices of his mortgage company now claims he's left "in the dark" after the same company was shuttering by federal agencies due to possible fraud. - www.foxnews.com

08/15/2009 - Rich Americans Scrambling Over Tax Dodge Crackdown - A deal with Switzerland settling U.S. demands for the names of suspected tax dodgers from a Swiss bank has a lot of wealthy Americans with offshore accounts nervously running to their tax advisers -- and the Internal Revenue Service. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/14/2009 - Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: - surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/14/2009 - Loophole in government program to buy toxic securities could cost taxpayers - Without safeguards, traders in the $40-billion program could use inside information to profit -- and any losses would be largely borne by taxpayers. - www.latimes.com

08/13/2009 - NAR economist: Lawrence Yun, Home prices and sales surge - Prices might be stabilizing but Mr. Yun has always been an idiot. Look at his record he has been predicting better prices since 2005. It's no wonder people get confused with these nonsensical press releases by the NAR and the continuous media pump. Quarter to quarter comparisons are useless, you need to look at year over year......good grief. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/13/2009 - Banks Shun Federal Small Business Loan Program Over Lack Of "Incentives" - There's not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years. - www.nytimes.com

08/12/2009 - Debt consolidators purchased tickets with client's credit cards - Employees of Ticket Mania then sold tickets at a discount to other customers. Economic Crimes Detective Kenneth Wright said customers lost about $13,000 in fraudulent charges posted on their credit cards. - www.orlandosentinel.com

08/11/2009 - 7-cent mistake costs a lot more; late payers now losing their home - "The bank seems more interested in having another empty house in Michigan than working with the family," - www.miamiherald.com

08/09/2009 - Wall Street Revives The Guaranteed Bonus, No Matter How Employee Performs - The resurrection of the guaranteed bonus is sure to become a hot-button issue for the Obama administration's pay czar, - www.nytimes.com

08/09/2009 - Banks Make $38 Billion From Overdraft Fees - with the bulk of the revenue coming from the most financially stretched consumers amid the deepest recession since the 1930s. Fees Are Nearly Double Those In 2000 - www.ft.com

08/09/2009 - Delinquent owner driving a new car - Last month one of the owners being foreclosed upon moved back into the unit. He now is driving a new car and has a new large screen TV and cable connected. What is the problem and how can we force payment of our delinquent fees? - www.miamiherald.com

08/09/2009 - No local agencies sought federal aid to fight flip fraud - Earlier this year, the federal government set aside tens of millions of dollars to help local law enforcement agencies fight mortgage fraud. But none of that grant money will make its way to the Sarasota area. No one applied. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/09/2009 - We got $4 gasoline and he gets a $100 million bonus? - Andrew J. Hall is an oil trader who lives and works in Connecticut, though he also owns a 150-room castle in Germany. He runs a company called Phibro, which is owned by Citigroup, which at last count was into U.S. taxpayers for $45 billion in bailout money. - www.stltoday.com

08/08/2009 - Flipping real estate in Florida - Cumulative look of property flipping in Florida since 2000.
www.heraldtribune.com - VIDEO -

08/08/2009 - Suspicious flipping in Southwest Florida - Taking a look at four large pre-platted neighborhoods.
www.heraldtribune.com - VIDEO -

08/07/2009 - Drywall was just the start - Sarasota-Manatee area allegedly has one of its first cases of Chinese drywall-connected burglaries. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/07/2009 - Wife Of Monkee Micky Dolenz Arrested For Defrauding Affordable Housing Program - Investigators say Quinter failed to disclose that she was sharing the apartment with a friend who paid rent. The home also wasn't her only residence. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2009 - Buffett's Betrayal - A good chunk of his fortune is dependent on taxpayer largess. Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company's stock holdings would have been wiped out. - www.reuters.com

08/06/2009 - "Morning Meeting" Panel Uses Masterpiece Theater To Explain Credit Rating Agencies Corruption - A key actor in causing the financial crisis were the credit rating agencies.
www.huffingtonpost.com - VIDEO -

08/05/2009 - Mortgage Servicers Accused Of Harassing Borrowers, Illegal Fees - The AP found that at least 30 servicers have been accused in lawsuits of harassing borrowers, imposing illegal fees and charging for unnecessary insurance policies. More recently, the companies also have been criticized for not helping homeowners quickly enough - delays that lead to more fees for homeowners and profits for servicers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2009 - Regulators Inquire About Goldman Sachs' Bonuses And Derivatives Trading - Compensation, especially bonuses, and credit derivatives have been among the most hot-button topics in the financial services industry since the credit crisis peaked last fall. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/04/2009 - Goldman Employees Told To Avoid High-Profile Purchases - Blankfein has Goldman in particular, should be toned down in light of the billions in bailout money that banks, including Goldman, have gotten from Uncle Sam. - www.nypost.com

08/01/2009 - $100 Million Payday Poses Problem for Pay Czar - If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will. - www.nytimes.com

08/01/2009 - $100 Million Payday Poses Problem for Pay Czar - If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will. - www.nytimes.com

07/31/2009 - Borrowers in foreclosure hit with dubious fees - questionable practices among lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some legal specialists to contend that companies instigating foreclosures may be taking advantage of imperiled borrowers. - www.deseretnews.com

07/30/2009 - Recession Sparks Rise In Health, Tenant/Landlord Complaints - growth in home foreclosure "rescue" scams and complaints about debt collectors, according to a consumer survey released Thursday. - www.mcclatchydc.com

07/30/2009 - Ft. Meyers, Florida Condo Tower Has 1 Tenant, 32 Stories - Vangelakos, 45, his wife Cathy and their three children are the only residents in the 32-story Oasis I condo on the east edge of downtown Fort Myers. - www.news-press.com

07/29/2009 - Former Countrywide Execs Want To Profit From The Housing Bust - Countrywide Alumni Seek Profits From Housing Collapse (Update1) - www.bloomberg.com

07/28/2009 - Loan Modification Warnings - some customers say they're not getting their money's worth after putting down big money up front. - www.myfoxla.com

07/28/2009 - Bank Account Scams - Consumer advocates: Situation out of control. - www.myfoxla.com

07/28/2009 - VIPs Weren't Kept in the Dark - Influential officials who received discounted Countrywide Financial mortgages knew of their preferential treatment, a new report alleges - www.foxbusiness.com

07/28/2009 - Chris Dodd, Kent Conrad deny knowing about VIP deals - Congressional ethics rules bar lawmakers from getting special deals or benefits not available to the general public. - www.politico.com

07/25/2009 - Do Payday Loan Borrowers Have Any Idea What They're Getting Into? - 400 Percent APR-Is That Good? - Do people take out payday loans because they're desperate-or because they don't understand the terms? - www.slate.com

07/21/2009 - White House: TARP Money Might Not Be Traceable - The money that has been loaned to the banks, he argued, was not "followable" because of its "fungibility" on the books of the major financial institutions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/21/2009 - House Dems To Geithner: Stop Backroom Deals With Wall Street - Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) would require the Treasury to sell warrants in a public auction and do so in a transparent way. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/21/2009 - In Spain, An Outbreak Of Bank Robberies During Recession - Bank executives argue that there is no link between the falling economy and the rise in bank robberies, many Spaniards say they think the trends are more than coincidental. - www.nytimes.com

07/21/2009 - Goldman Sachs Exec Named To Key State Dept. Position - Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of investment bank Goldman Sachs, has been tapped for a key U.S. State Department post, White House officials say. - www.upi.com

07/20/2009 - Subprime Lenders Modify Home Loans For Government - For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront, they promised to negotiate with lenders to lower payments - www.ritholtz.com

07/20/2009 - They're Baaack! Subprime Brokers Resurface As Dubious Loan Fixers - Despite making promises of relief to homeowners desperate to keep their homes, Federal Loan Modification Law Center (FedMod) and other profit making loan modification firms often fail to deliver - www.nytimes.com

07/13/2009 - Homeless stand in for lobbyists on Capitol Hill - Squatting next to a white wall outside a Senate hearing room recently with a cell phone glued to his ear, Gomes is being paid to hold a place in line for a lobbyist. - www.cnn.com

07/12/2009 - The Bailout Swindle, Act II - Numerous are the ways the government's multi-trillion-dollar bailout has scammed taxpayers. - www.motherjones.com

07/12/2009 - The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold - How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System. - www.motherjones.com

07/09/2009 - Mini-Madoffs: The New Breed Of Downmarket Ponzi Schemers (SLIDESHOW, VOTE) - Bernie certainly wasn't alone. As BusinessWeek recently pointed out, there's currently a "bull market for investment scams".
www.huffingtonpost.com - SLIDESHOW - VOTE -

07/09/2009 - Too Big To Jail? Prosecutors Pass On Major Wall Street Executives - Why prosecutors won't hit Wall Street hard in the subprime scandal. The subprime-mortgage-backed securities scam-perpetuated by Wall Street. - www.newsweek.com

07/09/2009 - Study: Most Payday Borrowers Take On More Loans In A Hurry - Eighty percent of people who take out a payday loan take out more than one per year, according to the study, and nearly nine out of ten of those repeat borrowers take out their next loan before their next payday. - www.huffingtonpostews.com

07/08/2009 - 'BANKSLAUGHTER': Should Execs Be Held Liable For Killing Banks? - Should U.S. Criminal Law Include A 'Bankslaughter' Provison For Financial Execs? - www.foxnews.com

07/08/2009 - 'BANKSLAUGHTER': Should Execs Be Held Liable For Killing Banks? - Should U.S. Criminal Law Include A 'Bankslaughter' Provison For Financial Execs? - www.foxnews.com

07/02/2009 - The Great American Bubble Machine - the Wall Street Bubble Mafia - Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi On "How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression"
www.rollingstone.com             VIDEO 1     VIDEO 2     VIDEO 3     VIDEO 4     VIDEO 5

07/01/2009 - Government Cracking Down On Get-Rich-Quick Scams - The economic downturn appears to be bringing out the worst in some people. - www.rollingstone.com

06/24/2009 - Nine Nasty Online Scams You Need to Be Aware Of - Internet scams have been around for years, but the Federal Trade Commission's recent crackdown on robocallers pushing car warrantees has put a spotlight on the thousands of tactics used by scammers to bilk Americans out of millions. - www.foxnews.com

06/23/2009 - The Fraud Squad: How Miami Police Led The Fight Against Mortgage Crooks - This part of Florida has seen more than its share of real-estate bubbles over the years and been home to countless schemes, scams, and cons. There's a reason some call it "Fort Frauderdale. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/04/2009 - Debt Collector Harassment: Coming To A Library Near You - A debt collector had been giving the library's address to people from whom it was aggressively trying to recover debt. Banks sell these accounts to these bottom feeders.


www.youtube.com - 3 VIDEOS -

05/01/2009 - Safeguard Properties Inc. Complaint - Foreclosure Scam!! Stealing personal property.... - Property Preservation/Inspection - complaint.tv

04/29/2009 - Shmuckler Group: Another Mortgage Rescue Firm Accused Of Scam - In early April the government announced a crackdown on companies running mortgage modification scams. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/28/2009 - How Mortgage Modification Scammers Dupe Desperate Homeowners - Mortgage Vultures Dupe Cash-Strapped Homeowners - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/21/2009 - Wall Street Raided 401(k) Plans - managers became flush with cash from hidden fees.

04/21/2009 - HuffPost Readers Share Credit Card Laments; Banks Blame Economy For Rate Hikes

04/21/2009 - Credit Card Companies Gouge HuffPosters

04/20/2009 - Menendez To Geithner: Stop Bailed-Out Banks From Hiking Credit Card Rates On Consumers

04/11/2009 - Cleaning Foreclosures - Scams to Be Aware Of

04/08/2009 - Subprime Swindlers Reconnect to Homeowners in Scams (Update1)

04/08/2009 - Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan sues two mortgage-rescue firms

04/08/2009 - Heartbreak: Firm Offering People "Second Chance" Mortgage Help Accused Of Fraud

04/06/2009 - Foreclosure prevention: Don't get scammed

04/06/2009 - Crackdown on housing scams

04/03/09 - Freddie Mac - Avoiding Mortgage Fraud - Recognize and understand the signs of mortgage fraud.

03/18/09- Mortgage scams are widespread - Tulsa World

02/18/09 - Mortgage Fraud Resource Center

02/18/09 - Mortgage scams still out there

02/18/09 - Don't hand your house to a thief.Mortgage scams are like Baskin-Robbins offerings - they come in 31 flavors. Here are three top choices of con artists and how to avoid them.

02/18/09 - Don't get caught in a tax scam. Swindlers send out fraudulent e-mails claiming to be from the IRS.

02/16/09 - Mortgage fraud reports up 26 percent

03/10/09 - Credit Cards Are the Next Credit Crunch

02/27/09 - Foreclosure Scams Up as 'Piranhas' Circle

02/10/09 - Creative Consumer: Avoid Telephone Bill Scams

07/14/2008 - Debtors' Prison: Escape Collectors' Calls

/02/2008 - Buyer Beware: Top 15 Scams, Annoyances The Government Details All the Ways American Companies Abuse You

10/20/2008 - 'For Profit' Credit Repair: Don't Fall for It

03/05/2008 - Free Credit Report: How The Ads Soak Consumers

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