American youth has been sold a bill of goods, get that college education, you will make more money, it will pay off in the long term, buy now, pay later, get student loans! Lenders even market to unemployed people, borrow our student loan, get that degree that leads to employment! Yet, more college graduates are…
In the Eastern District of Michigan Bankruptcy Court, Detroit, ten percent of the Chapter 7 cases filed are by people without attorneys. Many of the bankruptcy petition preparers abuse the process. First, they charge more than allowed. All of the Judges in the Eastern District of Michigan Bankruptcy Court have signed an order limiting bankruptcy…
The creditor lobby would have you believe that people who file bankruptcy are the ones committing fraud. They sold the bankruptcy law reforms as a way to stop the rampant fraud going on, people filing bankruptcy to skip out on their debts, debts which they could afford to pay. That was the company line. Debt…
Its later than you think. What the economists call the “macro” factors are bad. Leading the way? Our friends, the banks! Mortgage companies continue to lie about their books and records. And won’t show them to the government without being forced. Some of these issues have come up in the MERS and robo-signing scandals. Photo…
Less than two years ago, Michigan foreclosure law was changed in the face of the greatest foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression. Mortgage companies were required to send an initial foreclosure notice that gave the homeowner the opportunity to request a modification. If he did so, the house went off the foreclosure track for 90…
An essential part of the real estate bubble was mortgage securitization, the process by which mortgage loans were sold into investment trusts from which bonds were sold. It was mortgage fraud from A to Z, from the selling of mortgage backed securities trusts, before the trusts were full of mortgages. From the ratings agencies, assuming…
(image from hikojune.xanga.com website) The means test was made law in 2005, at the behest of the creditor lobby to stop abusive bankruptcy filings, which were supposedly costing the average American family $400 per year.. An obtuse formula is used to weed out those who supposedly can afford to pay something to their…
Second mortgages were marketed as home equity loans, or home equity lines of credit, partly to conceal that they were liens on your house, just like the first mortgage. I can’t tell you how many times I would ask a client, How many mortgages on your home? To be told, just one, and we have…
(image from Wall Street Journal) Jessica Silver-Greenberg wrote about debt buyers at the end of last year, but the information is still timely. Companies like Portfolio Recovery Associates, which used many affidavits, like the one pictured, from a person who died before the date on the affidavit. Bad debts are sold in bundles of thousands…
