CONSPIRACY FACT, NOT THEORY: WELLS FARGO’S 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 conspiracy fact.

Indeed, the whistleblower that went to Naked Capitalism regarding Wells Fargo a year ago was not just, um…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.

These are the people that need to be deposed, ASAP!

As I argued in this blog’s maiden post, “Bank of America’s Magic Wand,” it’s the underlings that need to be deposed, not the people whose names appear on these phony endorsements.  People like Naked Capitalism’s  whistleblower need to be deposed, because the people whose names appear on the endorsements never have anything to do with actually placing the endorsements on the notes.

According to the unnamed Naked Capitalism whistleblower, his working group didn’t actually manufacture the endorsements, they just inspected them and/or ratified them.  In other words, if the mortgage documents didn’t pass muster with that whistleblower’s unit–made up of temps, very few of whom had any experience with mortgage documentation–those mortgage documents were flagged for made-up, “ta-da” endorsements.

So that gets us ever closer to how the fraud actually occurred.  Maybe that whistleblower–or someone like him–can get us names/job titles of the people who actually manufactured the fake endorsements.  Those are the people that should be deposed, post-haste!