BofA Foreclosure Reviews: Whistleblowers Reveal Extensive Borrower Harm and Orchestrated Coverup (2)

via Carlos, Occupy Fights Foreclosures

Bank of America Foreclosure Reviews: Whistleblowers Reveal Extensive Borrower Harm and Orchestrated Coverup (Part II)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/37705.html

In the executive summary to this series, we provided an overview of OCC/Federal Reserve foreclosure reviews which were abruptly settled at the beginning of January. Critics anticipated that the flawed design, of having supposedly “independent” review firms hired by the banks themselves, meant the reviews were highly unlikely to find much if any damage to homeowners. Leaks during the course of the reviews confirmed these concerns, revealing that the review process at many of the major servicers was chaotic and the reviews were designed and scored so as to make a finding of harm virtually impossible.

As bad as that sounds, the reality is even worse. We obtained extensive review documentation from whistleblowers at Bank of America and debriefed them at length. They provided compelling evidence that the foreclosure reviews were plagued by persistent, widespread efforts by Bank of America to avoid any finding of borrower harm. These efforts were supported and enabled by its “independent” review firm, Promontory Financial Group.

The whistleblowers, all of whom were told their role would be to act as investigators and help borrower get compensation they deserved, described the review process as seriously flawed. Yet even with those obstacles, they saw abundant evidence of serious damage to borrowers. The whistleblowers reviewed 1600 borrower files in a “live” environment, and saw hundreds more in the attenuated start-up period. Reviewer estimates of harm varied widely primarily because they worked on different tests and thus focused on different documents and issues (see Appendix II to the Executive Summary for a description of tests). Whistleblowers were asked to estimate the percentage of harm and serious harm in the files they reviewed. The lowest estimate of harm was 30% and the highest estimate of serious harm was 80% of files reviewed.

We said we would set forth the support for our major findings, in a series of additional posts. These findings are:

(...are at the link.)