Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has filed a lawsuit against a Phoenix-based mortgage loan modification company, Asset Creation LLC, and its owner, Marvin Williamson, for engaging in allegedly deceptive practices. This lawsuit is the latest action in the Attorney General’s crackdown on mortgage loan modification businesses that use misleading advertising or engage in other fraudulent practices. More than 2,500 consumers have contracted with Asset Creation for loan modification services in the past two years.Read more

Amidst all of the discussion of the mortgage crisis and the implementation of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), there has been lots of finger pointing, concerning who was at fault for the meltdown and what should and should not be done to fix the problem(s). Unless you have been in seclusion for the past year, you have heard of the attempts of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to keep appraisers separated from loan originators.Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has filed a lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch, three national agencies that are responsible for providing accurate credit ratings of investments. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on behalf of five Ohio public employee retirement and pension funds, charges the rating agencies with wreaking havoc on U.S. financial markets by providing unjustified and inflated ratings of mortgage-backed securities in exchange for lucrative fees from securities issuers.Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has filed a lawsuit against American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. (AHMSI), a Texas-based company servicing more than 12,000 sub-prime and prime mortgage loans in Ohio. The lawsuit alleges numerous violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act including but not limited to: Incompetent and inadequate customer service, failure to respond to requests for assistance, failure to offer timely or affordable loss mitigation options to borrowers and unfair and deceptive loan modification terms.Read more

DocMagic Inc., developer of DocMagic, a technology for compliant mortgage loan document preparation, has announced that it has filed a lawsuit in United States Northern District Court (San Francisco, CA) against former ePASS and Eeseller partner Ellie Mae for anti-trust violations, intentional interference with contractual relationships, interference with prospective economic advantage and unfair competition.Read more

A class action lawsuit has been filed in an Illinois federal court alleging that JPMorgan Chase Bank engaged in fraud to deny customers access to millions of dollars in their previously-approved home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). The suit claims the bank intentionally used falsified home appraisals to freeze home credit lines. The case was filed on behalf of Pascal Majon of Zion, Ill., who claims Chase denied him access to his HELOC account due to a purported substantial decline in the value of his home. In reality, Majon’s home did not decline in value.Read more

A class action lawsuit, filed Aug. 19, accuses Wells Fargo of fraud, saying the bank froze millions of dollars in home equity loans by falsely claiming that its customers’ home property values had declined significantly. The suit, which was filed in the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that Wells Fargo unlawfully failed to accurately assess the value of customers’ homes before concluding that there had been a significant decline in property value.Read more