Bank of America - Let us distract you - from the Truth

            Bank of America - Latest attempt to distract - from the truth

5/9/12 Update: Thousands OUTRAGED at shareholder meeting (HERE)
5/9/12: The Nation: photos & updates from North Carolina (HERE)
5/9/12: Top 5 Reasons why Bank of America is being Occupied (HERE)
5/9/12: Outrage - B of A forecloses on cerebral palsy child (HERE)
5/9/12: Shareholder comments:
Roger Davis of Ohio: "I'm an underwater borrower, and I want to keep my home. I’m a responsible homeowner, I’m a responsible American and I’m trying to do the right thing."
Shareholder:  "What is it going to take for Bank of America to start abiding by the law and treating customers fairly?...Bank of America is among the worst."
Shareholder: "If you were a better corporate neighbor, you wouldn’t need to be so scared"

TONE DEAF CEO Brian Moynihan: "I don’t feel threatened at all. We’re here to answer questions and we’ll do it for the rest of the afternoon if that’s what it takes.”

Moynihan suddenly wrapped up the meeting barley past noon, only two hours after it began, thus frustrating many of the shareholders that had comments to make...NY Times coverage... (HERE)

illustration by Victor Juhasz/Rolling Stone

Bank of America's latest effort to announce through traditional media TelePrompter readers "good news"  reeks of bad timing as much as the FRAUDulent news itself. First and foremost is the embarrassing PR effort to sell "good news" and somehow call it a "principal reduction" offer (for underwater homeowners). This "Bank Speak" news release was, I'm sure, sheerly coincidental to the date of the Annual Shareholder meeting (Wednesday May 9th). The news comes just before a shareholder event that is already marred by the police state atmosphere surrounding the meeting and recent warnings from the Charlotte North Carolina police. They have asked their police officers to unconstitutionally harass and arrest protesters, to protect Bank of America from any inconvenience

(Read Abigail Field HERE)

courtesy of AP

Wow - what timing for the previously mentioned principal reduction mailer!....and just in time to share this news with the stockholders! Are you kidding me?...don't your PR people try to create this bullshixx more than a couple days in advance?...so it's less transparent! ohh yeah, I forgot, they're already working 24/7 trying to cover up all the other FRAUD the Bank deals up.

From David Dayen....of FireDogLake:

Bank of America ....{As}you may recall  inked a side deal from the {national foreclosure}settlement that would allow them to extinguish an additional $850 million of the cash penalties, by reducing loan balances more deeply than called for in the settlement. At the time it was announced, the thinking was that BofA could avoid that $850 million by reducing balances on loans it didn’t actually own......So who did BofA reach out to today?

The bank said it planned to contact more than 200,000 homeowners who could be candidates for the offers, sending letters to a majority of them by the third quarter of this year. (that means a letter sent...by September 2012!)

To be eligible for the principal reductions, however, homeowners will have to meet certain criteria, including: having a loan owned or serviced by Bank of America; owing more on the mortgage than their property is worth; and being at least 60 days behind on payments as of the end of January.

Owned OR serviced. In other words, this is exactly as we suspected; BofA will try to extinguish cash penalties by modifying principal on loans they don’t own!!!.
Read the rest of David's accurate take on this phony news and offer (HERE)

RELATED: Bank of America - Not just another foreclosure (HERE)

In other recent Bank of America news.....from Rolling Stone Magazine:

It's been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this mega bank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then.... Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers.

It brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus, "robo-signed" evidence – a type of mass perjury that it helped pioneer. It hawked worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, draining them of hundreds of millions in value.....Bank of America unleashed {on our entire U.S. Court system and in every state} a practice called robo-signing, which essentially involved drawing up fake documents for court procedures. Two years ago, a Bank of America robo-signer named Renee Hertzler gave a deposition in which she admitted...to creating as many as 8,000 legal affidavits a month, {and} to signing documents with a fake title.

Robo-signing is not the disease - it's a symptom of Bank of America's entire attitude toward the law. A bank that's willing to commit whole departments to inventing legal affidavits might also, for instance, intentionally ding depositors with bogus overdraft fees. (A class action suit accused Bank of America of heisting some $4.5 billion from its customers and the bank settled the suit for a mere 10 cents on the dollar.)

Read more of MattTaibbi:  BANK of AMERICA: "Too Crooked To Fail"
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Lisa Epstein - Homeowner Hero wants to help - again!

I'm privileged and honored to call Lisa a friend. She was and remains the inspiration for the Ohio FRAUDclosure blog and this author/blogger. No one single person has done more to put the FRAUDclosure crimes in the national narrative and forever change the legal landscape

LISA EPSTEIN - CLERK of COURTS

Much more to come.....but most important...help Lisa by allowing her to use her skills in office:
You can help Lisa continue the fight!........I WANT TO HELP LISA (CLICK HERE)

I was alongside Lisa Epstein and Michael Redman while they spent another full day in a Palm Beach County (Florida) courthouse. I participated in and witnessed efforts to help homeowners - in a program they call "court watch." They both ducked in and out of the courthouse to field hundreds of calls, emails, and requests for help.....from all over the country! It was an amazing experience and a privilege to watch the dedication, focus and passion. In the middle of the day...between breaks...in the high speed foreclosure docket, Lisa took a call from David Dayen of Firedoglake....the result of the conversation is below:

.....A small band of foreclosure fraud fighters in Florida, ground zero for the housing crisis, decided to get involved in public service at one of the most basic levels possible. These activists want to become the public official who tracks the transfer of mortgages in their respective counties. Sometimes this is called a register of deeds, or recorder of deeds, or a clerk of court. It’s traditionally a backwater for legacy types who, if they’re lucky, never get their name in the papers. But since the foreclosure fraud crisis, a few of these registers of deeds have shown real leadership in exposing criminal fraud in the mortgage document process. Inspired by their efforts, one of the leading foreclosure fraud activists in the nation, Lisa Epstein, is running for office.
“We are allowing an erosion of everything America holds dear,” Epstein told me in a phone interview from Palm Beach County, Florida, where she will challenge a two-term incumbent for Clerk of Court in a Democratic primary on August 14. “Not just property rights, due process rights – a right guaranteed by the Constitution – and basic fairness. But contract rights. The idea that when you make a contract with a party with superior power and influence, they can’t just make things up and lie, especially when an essential need of survival is at stake. Putting myself at risk is not as important as standing up and saying it was wrong.” Epstein has never run for public office before. She was a nurse who lost her job and fell into foreclosure, and in the course, figured out that banks were distributing faulty documents to courts, robo-signing affidavits without knowledge of the underlying mortgage files, and illegally foreclosing on families all over the country.

She and a few others (Michael Redman, pictured left of 4closurefraud) began investigating the foreclosure mess, literally going through court documents and mortgage records, and they started a cottage industry on the Web. They had no money or power, yet their efforts led to a de facto moratorium of the bulk of the mortgage market, and billions in lawsuits and exposure for the banks.
Read more on this amazing person:
 Foreclosure Fraud Activist Lisa Epstein Runs for Clerk of Courts

Federal Government announces Agreements & Settlements

Federal Government & State Attorneys General Reach $25 Billion Agreement with five Mortgage Servicers to Address Mortgage Loan Servicing & Foreclosure Abuses

WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and Colorado Attorney General John W. Suthers announced today that the federal government and 49 state attorneys general (sans Oklahoma)* have reached a landmark $25 billion agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers (Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company,** Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc.{formerly GMAC}) to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses.  The agreement provides substantial financial relief {cough....cough...} to homeowners and establishes significant new homeowner protections {cough...hack....cough}...for the future. 

The unprecedented joint agreement is the largest federal-state civil settlement ever obtained and is the result of extensive investigations by federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, HUD and the HUD Office of the Inspector General (HUD-OIG), and state attorneys general and state banking regulators across the country.  The joint federal-state group entered into the agreement with the nation’s 5 largest mortgage servicers.

The agreement resolves certain violations of civil law based on mortgage loan servicing activities.  The agreement does not prevent state and federal authorities from pursuing criminal enforcement actions related to this or other conduct by the servicers.  The agreement does not prevent the government from punishing wrongful securitization conduct that will be the focus of the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.  The United States also retains its full authority to recover losses and penalties caused to the federal government when a bank failed to satisfy underwriting standards on a government-insured or government-guaranteed loan.  The agreement does not prevent any action by individual borrowers who wish to bring their own lawsuits.  State attorneys general also preserved, among other things, all claims against the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), and all claims brought by borrowers..:....(Read the rest)

For another perspective: The top 12 reasons you should HATE the mortgage settlement
and David Dayen at Firedoglake: 49-State Foreclosure Fraud Settlement - Details*

* Oklahoma AG (Scott Pruitt) felt banks - owed NOTHING - and wouldn't agree to settlement

**Wells Fargo: ...The states and federal prosecutors agreed to relieve Wells Fargo from any claims and allegations on servicing, modification and foreclosure practices, including some claims related to the origination of mortgages (WHAT !!.. Are you serious??)
...(Read Wells FRAUDgo statement)
 Photo courtesy: williambanzai7

And of course...click below link for:
INDEPENDENT Foreclosure Review.***
***For borrowers who lost their home to foreclosure between Jan. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2011,
a settlement administrator designated by the attorneys general will send claim forms to persons eligible for cash restitution. If you believe you are eligible for relief under this settlement but are concerned you will be difficult to locate,{because you are Homeless and were Fraudulently "kicked-out" or "evicted" and/or may be living in your car}...then please contact your Attorney General’s Office. We will collect and forward your information {hopefully you're keeping it all in a paper sack} to the appropriate person {fax machine} to ensure you {can start the whole process - all over again} are contacted if you are eligible

10-page pdf document:
"Return Integrity & Accuracy"{we never had it!} to Foreclosure and Bankruptcy (HERE) 

For more information about the mortgage servicing settlement, go to:
 http://www.nationalmortgagesettlement.com/


And simultaneously from the

 OCC Settles Civil Money Penalties Against Large National Bank Mortgage Servicers for $394 Million; Penalty Assessment Coordinated with Servicers' Actions and Payments Under Federal-State Settlement

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today announced agreements in principle with four large national bank mortgage servicers (Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo) to settle civil money penalties in connection with the unsafe and unsound mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices that were the subject of comprehensive cease and desist orders issued by the OCC in April 2011.

Today’s announcement.......{The} OCC agrees to hold in abeyance imposition of such penalties provided the servicers ......take other actions under the federal-state settlement with a value equal to at least the penalty amounts that each servicer acknowledges....
The amounts for each servicer:
$164 million for Bank of America,
$113 million for JPMorgan Chase,
$83 million for Wells Fargo and
$34 million for Citibank,
If after three(3) years, a servicer has not paid an amount equal to its respective penalty, the OCC will assess a penalty against the servicer..... (Read the rest here)