The title of this page says it all – “Ocwen Fraud.” Never have we encountered a mortgage loan servicer with so many problems. Problems that can only be described as fraud. We have spoken with dozens of homeowners as well as a few present and former Ocwen workers. The company is a failure and needs to be held accountable. Immediately.
MahanyLaw has teamed up with lawyers across the United States to bring Ocwen to justice. To bring justice to homeowners struggling to stay in their homes. In many instances, the homeowners have done nothing wrong yet they fight a daily battle of unanswered phone calls, conflicting information, unprocessed loan modifications and illegal foreclosures.
It’s not the employees of Ocwen who are causing the problem. They are saddled with policies and communication systems designed to fail. The company’s REALServicing platform is hopelessly outdated and not equipped to deal with hundreds of thousands of loans.
If you ever called Ocwen’s customer servicer number and got the feeling that the “right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing,” you are right. Employees tell us that they are understaffed and that they have no systems in place to know what other customer service reps have done on a file or what advice may have been given previously to a caller.
One former employee says that documents requested form homeowners are routinely shredded because no one is available to review them.
In late April, 20 states took aim at Ocwen and blocked the company from handling any more mortgages in their states. Massachusetts became the 21st state on April 30th and in May, Texas joined the growing list of states that have said, “Enough!” to Ocwen foreclosure fraud.
The states can stop Ocwen from handling mortgages within their borders but that doesn’t help the over one million homeowners left hanging.
MahanyLaw is investigating Ocwen and hopes to file national class action complaints against the company within coming weeks.
Specifically, we are investigating the following allegations of wrongdoing:
Use of a proprietary software known to trigger unsupported fees and speed foreclosures (REAL Servicing);
Knowing use of infirm loan data,
Illegal foreclosures,
Failure to credit borrowers’ payments,
Mismanagement of escrow accounts,
Manufactured force-placed insurance,
Delayed termination of private mortgage insurance,
Charges for additional products without consent,
Mishandling accounts for deceased borrowers, and
Failure to correct errors identified by the borrower.
Ocwen is the largest residential mortgage servicer in the United States. It services hundreds of billions of dollars of home loans. Customers have no choice in who services their loan.
Years ago, banks held their own mortgages. You borrowed money from a bank and for the next twenty years would make your payments to that same bank. No more. Most residential mortgages are sold immediately after closing. They are purchased by institutional investors and pooled into a trust. The trust then chooses who will service the loan.
By servicing, we mean the company that collects mortgage payments, insures taxes are paid, insures the property is insured, handles customer service inquiries, processes loan modification requests and if necessary, handles foreclosure proceedings.
As a servicer, Ocwen gets paid by the holder of the note. In home mortgage cases, that means the trust that purchased the loan from the original lender.
Ocwen also makes money from the charges it passes on to homeowners. That means late payment fees, force places insurance, property maintenance, title searches and the like. In the words of one expert, “Because servicers are permitted to retain ancillary fees, they have an incentive to charge borrowers as much in fees as they can, even if the fees are not provided for by the mortgage loan documents or a direct contract.”
According to one of the members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, “The servicer makes money, to oversimplify it a bit, by maximizing fees earned and minimizing expenses while performing the actions spelled out in its contract with the investor. . . The broad grant of delegated authority that servicers enjoy under pooling and servicing agreements (PSAs), combined with an effective lack of choice on the part of consumers, creates an environment ripe for abuse.”
We agree. In our opinion, Ocwen has taken fraud to a new level.
We hoped that Ocwen had finally met its demise in 2015. That year investors sold off their stock in the company causing the company’s value to plummet. Over one hundred trusts holding $82 billion of mortgages gave Ocwen the boot. Their reasons?
Using trust funds to pay off Ocwen’s obligations owed under a regulatory settlement. Instead of paying what they owe, the trusts say that Ocwen pushed the payments onto them;
Gross conflicts of interests. Ocwen used corporate affiliates such as Altisource and Home Loan Servicing Corporation to further enrich itself and hurt borrowers and the trusts;
Failing to comply with foreclosure and consumer protection laws;
Engaging in illegal and improper loan modification and advance recovery practices;
Improper records practices;
Failing to properly communicate with borrowers; and
Failing to properly pay the trusts.
In other words, it isn’t just homeowners who claimed they were the victims of Ocwen fraud. It is the investors who own the loans too.
Despite almost going under in 2015, Ocwen seemingly rose from the ashes. Unfortunately, its behavior and the way it treated homeowners didn’t improve.
CALL FOR HOMEOWNER VICTIMS OF OCWEN LOAN FORECLOSURE FRAUD
We are seeking stories from homeowners who have been the victims of Ocwen loan servicing and foreclosure fraud. Your stories will help us prosecute anticipated class action and RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges against the company.
In 2014, we helped the government recover a historic $16.6 billion against Bank of America. In our opinion, Ocwen is a worse corporate citizen than Bank of America. Ocwen fraud needs to be stopped immediately. Thousands of homeowners may lose their homes without immediate action and thousands more may have paid too much.
If you are a lawyer representing homeowners in foreclosure defense matters, we certainly want to hear your stories as well. The key to successfully prosecuting companies like Ocwen is documentation. If you have a borrower with good documentation of their dealings with the company, let us know.
Ocwen relies on home owners being disorganized. If you have return receipts, a phone log of your calls to Ocwen or a diary of your dealings with the company, please contact us.
