Compliance & Regulation

Lender Processing Services has filed a motion to dismiss charges made by Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto against the company and two subsidiaries for fraudulent business practices.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its first semi-annual report to Congress Monday, outlining the steps it has taken to get the bureau off the ground in its first six months.

The expansion of the Home Affordable Modification Program is getting a lot of applause even though judging from past performance it may not get a standing ovation when the new deadline expires in December 2013.

On Jan. 17, Raymond Foakes, a former leader of a Hells Angels chapter in Sonoma County, Calif., was sentenced to nearly 70 months in prison for his role in a $10 million mortgage fraud scheme. He was ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution.

Evidence of insufficient or misleading disclosures during RMBS sales will be a focus of the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, according Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's division of enforcement.

One of the co-chairs of the new federal/state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group is preparing to file cases in the next few weeks against Wall Street firms involved in the packaging and selling of MBS.

JPMorgan Chase late last week told a federal court in Wichita that NCUA's negligence suit against top executives of WesCorp Federal Credit Union proves it was the shortcomings of those executives - and not any misrepresentations by the Wall Street bank's sales force in the sale of MBS - that caused the failure of WesCorp and three other corporate credit unions.

In this election year, there certainly is no shortage of political rhetoric and drama in every debate and speech we encounter, including the recent State of the Union address by President Obama. In the address, President Obama addressed the latest of this administration’s efforts to thwart the woes of the housing market.

Facebook is about to go public. Whoopee! Here's how an IPO works: all the private equity firms that have been funding a startup's operations get to cash out, recovering their seed money and then some. I'm not a Facebook user, but I get the model, though my doubts about the company stem from this basic belief: what's to prevent a bunch of low-cost competitors from offering the same service?

Identity theft continues to be a major problem across the country as scammers are creating schemes to steal the identifications and Social Security numbers of individuals in order to collect money for their own needs. Luckily, these fraudsters are being caught by the Department of Justice before prolonging their scams.