Monthly Archives: March 2011
Madoff Bankruptcy Trustee Increases His Claim against Wilpon and Friends to One BILLION Dollars
You can ask for anything you want in a complaint, but when you start off by asking for $300 million from the Wilpons and Saul Katz, and then increase your demand to one billion, one would assume there’s a reason for that: The amended complaint also provides additional substantiation of the inter-dependent relationship between Sterling and BLMIS as well as certain Sterling partners’ knowledge of Madoff’s dishonesty in his investment advisory business. For instance, the amended complaint details a multi-million-dollar interest- and cost-free bridge loan from Madoff to Sterling in connection with its purchase of the broadcast rights for the […]
Single foreclosure bank deal still goal-US regulator
WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) – U.S. federal and state authorities still hope to strike a single settlement with banks over alleged abuses of mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices, a top banking regulator said on Tuesday. “We each have our own separate responsibilities and areas of jurisdiction, but to the extent possible we are trying to coordinate our actions,” John Walsh, acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said at an American Bankers Association conference. “Whether this is possible remains to be seen.” On March 3 state attorneys general sent banks aspects of a proposed settlement endorsed […]
HSBC’s Foreclosure Moratorium and Robo-Signing Claims Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny
In HSBC’s 2010 annual report, the bank asserted that it had stopped “processing foreclosures” and that it “suspended foreclosures” in December, even though the information wasn’t made public until Feb. 28, when HSBC (HBC) filed the report with the SEC. But based on at least two cases still working their way through Florida’s courts, that delay in disclosure apparently also meant that HSBC didn’t tell attorneys bringing foreclosure actions in the bank’s name to put their cases on hold. Indeed, if HSBC had systematically put its many pending foreclosure cases on hold in December, the news surely would have come […]
Foreclosures stretch to an average 17 months, may get longer
On February 21, 2011, USA Today reporteted that the average U.S. borrower in the throes of foreclosure hasn’t made a mortgage payment in 17 months, up from nearly 11 months two years ago — and the time frame may get even longer. Banks and mortgage servicers, who collect payments for lenders, are taking more time to complete foreclosures because of huge volumes of defaulted mortgages. Other factors include time-consuming reviews for loan modifications and additional delays that followed revelations late last year about improperly filed foreclosure documents in tens of thousands of cases. Last year, the number of days that […]
Forgiven debt such as credit card settlements can trigger a tax bill
Getting a tax bill after you’ve gone through foreclosure is like having a bucket of ice water poured over your head after someone has made off with your pants. You’ve lost your home and probably don’t have much money, so why would you owe the IRS anything? Here’s why: The IRS treats forgiven or canceled debt as taxable income. For example, suppose you owe $400,000 on a home that goes into foreclosure, the bank sells it for $300,00 and writes off the rest of your loan. Under the tax code, the $100,000 in forgiven debt is taxable income. In 2007, […]
