Compliance

The risk management firms AllRegs and The Prieston Group have agreed to a multiyear commitment to join forces and offer risk assessment resources to the mortgage industry.

A New York real estate developer who led a mortgage fraud conspiracy resulting in more than $98 million in losses was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to serve nine years in prison.

On Oct. 3, Mark Alan Helsing, a broker for "hard-money lenders," pleaded guilty to multiple felony counts for stealing $6.9 million from investors in a Ponzi and real estate fraud scheme, authorities said. He faces a potential term of 15 years in prison at his sentencing Dec. 5 by Superior Court Judge Craig E. Robison.

Officials from the government-sponsored enterprises continue to encourage lenders to be proactive with their appraisal and origination technology vendors in preparation for the new requirements in the Uniform Mortgage Data Program.

The government indicted a Philadelphia mortgage broker this week, accusing him of masterminding a $4 million mortgage fraud scheme that he allegedly ran through Police & Fire Federal Credit Union.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development late Wednesday said it suspended former LendAmerica president Michael Primeau from conducting any business with the agency after his admission that he engaged in a "wide-scale mortgage fraud scheme."

David Findel, the former CEO of Worldwide Financial Resources, has been sentenced to 63 months in prison for leading an $11 million fraudulent loan scheme.

An agreement has been reached between a risk management firm and a law firm that allows both firms to bring together their services regarding all aspects of residential mortgage banking.

The well-documented flaws in the mortgage loan origination process over the last few years have resulted in stringent regulations designed to bring sanity back to lending, albeit with more stick than carrot.

The California Department of Industrial Relations alleges that over a four-year period, ZipRealty paid its real estate agent employees “less than the minimum wage and no premium for overtime hours worked” because the real estate brokerage improperly classified its agents as outside contractors. The lawsuit requests at least $7.5 million in wages, $1.25 million in overtime and $9 million in penalties.

The Obama Administration's efforts to expand a GSE refinancing program and reach a large number of underwater borrowers will depend on how far the Federal Housing Finance Agency will go in providing lenders relief from loan buy-backs, according to industry officials and analysts watching the effort.

Fearing that the megabanks might get off too easy in the multi-state mortgage settlement talks, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is preparing to file lawsuits against the nation's largest servicers for wrongfully foreclosing on customers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency knew as early as 2009 about potentially abusive foreclosure practices and yet failed to take action to curb them, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement between state attorneys general and the top five mortgage servicers collapsed late last week after California pulled out of the negotiations.

CoreLogic has launched a new credit report designed to provide consumer credit information that enhances existing credit bureau reports.

RBS Securities late last week asked a federal court in Los Angeles to dismiss securities claims against it by the National Credit Union Administration in the failure of WesCorp FCU, saying the now defunct wholesale institution was a sophisticated investor and knew the risks of investing in almost $1 billion of nonprime MBS.

The HUD inspector general wants the Federal Housing Administration to ban corporate officers from the FHA program if they have left a company that has not met its obligations to indemnify the government for delinquent loans.

Within weeks of issuing standards for repaying federal bailout funds, bank regulators relaxed those rules in late 2009 as Bank of America, Citigroup, and other large depositories hurriedly pushed to get out from under the government's thumb, according to a watchdog agency's new report.

Roughly $7.4 billion of fraudulent mortgages will be originated this year, a 40% decline from 2011, a decrease primarily due to significantly lower fundings volumes in 2011, according to a new report from CoreLogic.

A new report issued by the National Credit Union Administration blames the agency's Office of Corporate Credit Unions for failing to identify a high concentration of risky MBS at the now defunct Southwest Corporate Credit Union of Texas, a $12 billion institution.