I added to my Lender Processing Services…
I added to my Lender Processing Services short. I’d buy long-dated puts on this name to boost my possible returns if the company collapses under prosecution as I expect it eventually will for its many roles in the ongoing rampant foreclosure and mortgage fraud systems in this country, but there aren’t any dated into 2012 or so and I think it could take a year or so for this collapse to play out. Take the pitches they throw you, right? Anyway, here’s some additional analysis and information about the company for you, courtesy of one of my favorite economic blogs, nakedcapitalism.com:
LPS (Lender Processing Services). You may have heard of them because they have been implicated in multiple criminal investigations for producing fake documents for foreclosure cases. LPS ran DocX, the company that sold “authentic” documents to foreclosure mill law firms at cut rates. And they continued this profit center even outside of DocX:
Questionable signing and notarization practices weren’t limited to its subsidiary, called DocX, but occurred in at least one of LPS’s own offices, mortgage assignments filed in county recorders’ offices show. And rather than halt such practices after the federal investigation got underway, the company shifted the signing to firms with which it has close business ties. LPS provided personnel to work in the new signing operations, according to information from an LPS spokeswoman and court records including an October 21 ruling by a judge in Brooklyn, New York. Records in county recorders’ offices, and in the judge’s opinion, show that “robosigning” and preparation of apparently false documents went on at these sites on a large scale.
In one instance, it helped set up a massive signing operation at the nearby office of a major client, a spokeswoman for the client, American Home Mortgage Servicing, confirmed. LPS-hired notaries who worked there said in interviews that troves of documents were improperly handled. They said that about 200 affidavits per day were robosigned during the two months the two notaries remained there.
