Ohio Secretary Of State Asks Feds To Open Criminal Probe Into 'Robo-Notary' Abuses Involving Mass-Produced Foreclosure Docs; Lists 5 Violations Of Law

From the Office of the Ohio Secretary of State:

• Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s chief elections officer and the state officer responsible for licensing notary publics, [...] revealed that she has referred specific instances of notary abuse occurring at Chase Home Mortgage in Columbus and by the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) to a federal prosecutor for investigation.

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• Secretary Brunner, in two letters dated Aug. 11, 2010 and Sept. 1, 2010, referred matters of alleged notary abuse in thousands of home mortgage foreclosures by Chase Home Mortgage and the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. to U.S. District Attorney Steven Dettelbach in Cleveland. Citing two depositions, (one & two) of Chase employee Beth Cottrell, taken in Columbus in May of 2010, and a deposition of MERS Secretary and Treasurer, William Hultman taken in New Jersey in April of 2010. These depositions contain sworn testimony that at Chase Home Mortgage, 18,000 documents per month are executed and notarized per month by eight people, with admissions that:
  
  1) it is the notary and not the document signer who gives an oath who fills in numbers in the affidavits used in court ordered foreclosures,
  
  (2) no oath is administered for the signing of each document,
  
  (3) notarized documents are not verified by the person signing and giving oath that they have personal knowledge of the contents of the documents, but rather, signers are relying on verification by others,
  
  (4) documents are signed in bulk and notarized in bulk separately,
  
  (5) notaries know this at the time they notarize documents in this process.
  
  
• It’s not fair to consumers or to the employees who by virtue of their jobs, are signing these documents. I urge the U.S. Department of Justice to take up this investigation with vigor and purpose to protect consumers and hold financial institutions to the standards of scrutiny and exactitude required by law, even if it means prosecuting some of our largest corporations. These apparent violations of state law point to schemes that merit federal investigation of large institution lending practices and use of the U.S. Postal Service.

For the entire Ohio Secretary of State press release, see Secretary Brunner Outlines Two Lines of Attack in Fighting High Ohio Foreclosure Rates.