by Clinton Kirby
Wells Fargo's "How-to fraud mortgage manual" suggests this "Too Big To Fail" bank may be going down. Here's the link to download the actual Wells Fargo 'how-to create mortgage fraud' manual.
So, once again, the "conspiracy theory" that banks
manufacture/massage/manipulate the documents they need-but don't have-in
the foreclosure context has proven to be fact. Indeed, the whistleblower that went to Naked Capitalism regarding
Wells Fargo a year ago was not just, whistling Dixie, as it turns out.
Wells Fargo indeed doctors/manufactures documents, and according to a lawsuit in New York, they actually have a manual on how to do it! Naked Capitalism quotes a New York Post article about the lawsuit:
"In a filing in New York's Southern District in White Plains for a local homeowner in bankruptcy, attorney Linda Tirelli described a 150-page Wells Fargo Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual created November 9, 2011 and updated February 24, 2012. According to court papers, the Manual details 'a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.'"
If Wells Fargo does it, you can rest assured that the other big banks do it-after all, they have to compete! Check out this quote that gets right to the heart of the kind of thinking that causes this copycat, groupthink fraud from an article entitled "Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters"
"Because if now, as the senior member of a bank, or the board of a bank, I know that there are no criminal penalties for breaking the rules, don't I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders to actually play fast and loose? Because if I get caught, that's just the cost of doing business?"
Yep. All the banks are doing it, not just Wells Fargo. We just don't have the other banks' manuals - yet.