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When caught in the act, bankers change their stories.

This is a continuation of my interview with Nye Lavalle. Sixteen years ago, he began investigating mortgage fraud when a bank attempted to wrongfully foreclose on a family property. Many of the issues he uncovered more than a decade ago, like robo-signing, are just being recognized today. Lavalle continues to try educate others about problems in the banking industry and the US economy.

Nye Lavalle: That’s why it was funny in Florida when that bank said they lost a note. I would kind of laugh, how do you lose a $2.5 million note? That’s like $2.5 million floating around somewhere.

Jennifer Barry: There is some evidence that the banks aren’t necessarily losing the notes so much as destroying them.

NL: But why would someone destroy a $2.5 million note? The only reason someone would destroy a note would be to cover up endorsements on that note which would have indicated another change of title to whomever really owned that note, so they actually destroyed the evidence.

JB: Right, I think that there’s widespread fraud in banking, so they need to “bury the bodies.” Continue reading A House of Cards, Part 3

Defaults and foreclosures are profitable for banks.

Nye Lavalle is best known for his sports predictions. With his family, he founded Sports Marketing Group and stunned many sportswriters with his accurate calls on the popularity of figure skating and NASCAR in the 1990s, among many others. Sixteen years ago, he began investigating mortgage fraud when a bank attempted to wrongfully foreclose on a family property. Many of the issues he uncovered more than a decade ago, like robo-signing, are just being recognized today. He continues to try educate others about problems in the banking industry and the US economy. This is Part 1 of our explosive interview.

Jennifer Barry: Could you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in the whole mortgage fraud and predatory lending and things like that?

Nye Lavalle: Sure. Just to give you an idea, my email, mortgagefrauds@aol.com, has been in existence, since I believe, about 1995.

JB: That’s a very long time.

NL: It all started the night my mom and dad Anthony and Matilde Pew owned a home in Dallas, TX, that we used for our family business called Sports Marketing Group. And I had a place in New York and LA, and we were eventually going to retire to that home at first blush. But we purchased the home, and my family had money, and I had money, we were a business, and basically, soon after we closed on the loan, the bank SOA just started doing all sorts of stupid things. Nobody resided full-time in the home, and they were instructed to send the payment statements to Michigan so that they could get paid on time, and they never sent them there. They sent them to the property address and somebody wasn’t on the property for sometimes two to three months. And they wouldn’t change that. They wouldn’t take off the late fees, then when I would pay bills on time at the bank, it turned out that they would send the payments from the bank to California to the posting center, and they wouldn’t get posted for 10 more days, even though you paid it on time at the bank. And then they would put another late fee onto the account. Continue reading A House of Cards: An interview with Nye Lavalle