Forum Post: How the RICO Segment of "The 1%" Exploit Today's Lawlessness

Mortgage Fraud on the Grand Scale

---

First off, it's not capitalism per se. Milovan Djilas wrote "The New Class" to document the arrival of such a pack of thieves in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. Putin and his KGB cronies are doing quite well indeed.

www.businessinsider.com/putin-palace-black-sea-2011-2?op=1

In America we have a special term:

• Prosecutorial Capture

This is a super-sized partner to Regulatory Capture.

Simply put, America is a crime scene. Today on kos a blogger "war on error" collects up the extent of RICO activities in the mortgage industry.

• Dear Journalists: Here's Housing Crime Details. Why Not Report the Facts?

www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/22/1047829/-Dear-Journalists:-Heres-Housing-Crime-Details-Why-Not-Report-the-Facts

Jeff Connaughton, formerly Chief of Staff for Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), lays out the central dysfunction.

• Obama and the Rule of Law

www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-connaughton/obama-wall-street-laws_b_1157915.html\

"(Obama said) 'Too often, we've seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there's no price for being a repeat offender.' Just five days later on 60 Minutes, he said, 'Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn't illegal.'"

Wrong on both counts. Our president doesn't know what is happening.

---

From Connaughton:

The President is confusing "legal" with "difficult to prosecute successfully." The Justice Department's repeated decisions not to risk losing at trial against Wall Street executives don't make these person's actions legal. (If a district attorney can't prove the actual thief stole your wallet, that doesn't make stealing legal. It simply means that, regrettably, a malefactor goes unpunished.) As Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in Senate testimony in 2009, Wall Street perpetrators "are smart people who understand that they are crossing the line" and "are plotting their defense at the same time they're committing their crime."

Moreover, the President is misleading us when he says that Wall Street firms violate anti-fraud law because the penalties are too weak. Repeat financial fraudsters don't pay relatively paltry -- and therefore painless -- penalties because of statutory caps on such penalties. Rather, regulatory officials, appointed by Obama, negotiated these comparatively trifling fines. This week, the F.D.I.C. settled a suit against Washington Mutual officials for just $64 million, an amount that will be covered mostly by insurance policies WaMu took out on behalf of executives, who themselves will pay just $400,000. And recently a federal judge rejected the S.E.C.'s latest settlement with Citigroup, an action even the Wall Street Journal called "a rebuke of the cozy relationship between regulators and the regulated that too often leaves justice as an orphan."

The Obama Justice Department hasn't tried a single Wall Street executive in a criminal court. Against a handful, it decided to let the S.E.C. bring civil charges of fraud, which are easier to prove. So if defendants' wrists are merely being slapped by the S.E.C. instead of cuffed by the Justice Department, Obama has only his appointees to blame.

---

Meanwhile, the top level of the Manhattan prosecutor office has no credibility whatsoever. Got the big Wall Street cash? Got a problem up to a DUI hit-and-run killing such as the 60 m.p.h. slaughter of Florience Cioffi on Water Street (1/25/2008) ? They got a fix for you. 16 days + a $350 fine.

Not one reporter did follow up on the Cioffi killing.

Prosecutorial Capture was not dominant nationally back during 1991-1995 when 2,517 mortgage industry criminals were convicted and jailed.

Boiler room shops out on Long Island got whacked. Not Merrill. Same crimes and same evidence, of course, including the usual incriminating documentation.

• Michael Wolfe's web site and the Amazon page for "Burn Rate"

www.newser.com/about/michael-wolff.html

"Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet"

www.amazon.com/Burn-Rate-Survived-Years-Internet/dp/0684856212/

Dot.com Scam Spree # 1 - that was where they learned to run an industry-wide fully-RICO-eligible multibillion dollar crime spree and get away with it.

Of course they did it again.

Dot.com Scam Spree # 2 - happened 1996-2000 despite that "Burn Rate" was on book shelves everywhere. "Nobody Reads" ruled. This time the total ran to $500-billion nationally and tanked NASDAQ and caused a national recession. Individual investors were separated from their money with surprising efficiency. Of course, nothing much for Manhattan fraud charges.

Scamming the dumb money is now legal.

Mortgage Scam Cycle is # 3. That's what we are living through 2003-2011-and-counting. Manhattan's prosecutor sides with the sell-side brokerage criminals, which surprises no one. New York State's AG was Hear-No-See-No-and-Prosecute-No Andrew Cuomo. (Since promoted.)

Obama and Holder and Geithner are covered above. The very very least we know from their actions is that faced with Wall Street, they are cowards. The heat is too much and they are the ones in the kitchen.

Tells you the relative power of Al Qaeda and Wall Street.

This cycle has forced 12,570,000 foreclosures in the last 5 years where we have the final numbers. That compares with a normal medical-bankruptcy-driven 900,000 foreclosures a year. .

8,070,000 extra foreclosures. But Obama/Holder/Geithner go along pretending the blind/deaf act. There's plenty of law to throw the crooks in slam. Wanna see a Federal USAO "legal strategy" outline for RICO prosecution with the blanks filled in? Here's a perfectly workable example as filed as a State-level civil action by Martha Coakley AG Massachusetts.

• Five National Banks Sued by AG Coakley in Connection with Illegal Foreclosures and Loan Servicing

www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2011/five-national-banks-sued-by-ag-coakley.html

The complaint.pdf text of this filing presents a black-and-white contrast with the Obama/Holder/Geithner mealy mouthed denials. The only thing I know of that AG Coakley misses is that these Mortgage-RICO gangs entered false text references in their MERS postings, then used the fake text to balloon ARM mortgage payments.

Adjustable Rate Mortgages were popped up to increase the demands for monthly payments. These increases used "updated" adjustment formulas out of the MERS cesspool that exceeded the contractual formulas for which the home buyers had signed their mortgages. Note that the interest rates for mortgages continued to fall all through these years.

The substantive crime entering the "update" changes is forgery. Fraud goes without saying. Conspiracy and RICO might be understandable by a smart cat.

This scam was used to steal as many as 6,000,000 houses. Don't be surprised if they get to steal another 2,000,000 with "update" ARM frauds.

You guys notice that Google dropped its "cache" function? Well, MERS is similarly disabled. You cannot see the Update pattern under a claimed mortgage contract, just a once-a-period tag list. MERS is an engine for ARM fraud.

They are thieves.

The banksters are thieves.

Even doing foreclosures, the banksters are placing their personal interests ahead of the interests of their shareholders, who are largely retirement/pension/investment funds. They foreclose these 8,070,000 houses. Then they dump these houses either to low-return cash-only auctions or to abandonment. The return to their banks is minimized compared to working out realistic payments.

It's class warfare.

These Middle Class home buyers have their equity stolen. If they try home ownership again, they have to start over. They are real estate paupers.

And the stockholders of the banks get screwed.

The RICO-level banksters? They figure that the Fed will always bail them out. There'll always be free money for them. That they can screw home buyers criminally for ever.

Wanna know why there's an Occupy Wall Street? It's anti-effing-crime all the way down. There's enough crime going down 24/7/365 with gutless Feds and the utterly corrupt Manhattan prosecutor so's OWS can do its best and still feel like a spit in the ocean.

Keep going. Set up for the long haul.

Occupy Wall Street does need a skosh of rebranding. And new policies and good process. We're vulnerable to paid right wing provocateurs. Our own undisciplined youngsters and the drum corps have irritated neighborhoods. Getting people arrested only weakens the movement. Planning has to look ahead to next spring and summer.

We do have an OWS version of Dr. King's Nine Principles. This was the basis for successful operations during the Civil Rights Movement. Worked then, hundreds of operations. It'll work here:

---

Pledge For Nonviolence

1. As you prepare for Occupy Wall Street, please open yourself to life, love and the blessings of faith, hope, and charity.
2. Refrain from violence of fist, tongue and heart.
3. Walk and talk in the manner of love; for truth and love are the core of life, neither ambition nor the temptations of control.
4. Sacrifice personal wishes that all might be free.
5. Observe with friends, with false friends and with your foes the ordinary rules of courtesy.
6. Perform regular service for others and the world.
7. Pray or simply ask within to be moved so that all men and women might be free.
8. Remember that nonviolence seeks Justice and Reconciliation – not victory.
9. Strive to be in good spirits and in good health. We are the 99% and we must go in peace.

---

Resource Group is here:

www.nycga.net/groups/occupy-nonviolence/

Nonviolence is the fulcrum. Discipline is the lever.

OWS started out committed to social justice, determinedly anti-crime, and committed to getting policies that put people to work. Do things right and OWS is here to stay.