Category Archives: Ridiculously obvious scams

Yes, Really, Truly, No Joke, That Schneiderman Mortgage Task Force is Gonna Get Someone….Soon!

I’m sure the banksters are quaking in their boots. Eric Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general whose joining a heretofore moribund mortgage fraud task force and withdrawing from opposition to the horrid mortgage settlement allowed the Administration to push the bank-friendy deal across the line, is now making noises that really, truly, he and his Federal best buddies are gonna nail some baddies really soon. From Reuters:

Michael Olenick: Textbooks – Predatory Business Practices, by the Book

By Michael Olenick, creator of NASTIACO, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick or read his blog, Seeing Through Data

Textbooks are the latest abuse in predatory consumer business. As the economy remains mired, both young people and middle-aged workers have returned to school in record numbers. What they find, in the form of textbook pricing, is enough to shock a subprime mortgage broker.

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Bad Math on AIG

Memo to Andrew Ross Sorkin: if you are going to try to discredit someone, it’s more effective if you are less obvious about it.

New Real Estate Train Wreck Coming: Securitized Rentals

No matter how bad things get, it turns out they can always get worse. Wall Street is about to foist a new “innovation” on investors that even the ratings agencies won’t touch.

Private Equity: A Government Sponsored Enterprise

By Nanea, a private equity insider, and Yves Smith

Private equity practitioners, including most famously Mitt Romney, often depict their sector as the epitome of private enterprise. These claims are false. Private equity firms not only depend directly and substantially on government support, they have also actively cultivated links to the state.

Quelle Surprise! SEC Plans to Make the World Safer for Fraudsters, Push Through JOBS Act Con-Artist-Friendly Solicitation Rules

If you merely looked at the SEC’s record on enforcement, you’d conclude that it suffered from a Keystone Kops-like inability to get out of its own way. The question remains whether that outcome is the result of unmotivated leadership (ex in the safe realm of insider trading cases) and long-term budget starvation leading to serious skills atrophy, or whether the SEC really, truly, is so deeply intellectually captured by the financial services industry that it thinks industry members don’t engage in fraud, they only make “mistakes”?

It’s sure looking like the latter.

How to Beat Vulture Debt Collectors

In a bit of synchronicity, last weekend I had dinner with a buddy whose sibling recently was dunned by a buyer of junk debt. For those not familiar with this dark underbelly of the credit markets, these vultures buy consumer debt from banks (mainly credit card receivables) that the bank has written off. That means they don’t think it’s worth pursuing. At best it’s too close to the statute of limitations expiring or the documentation is questionable or the amounts are all wrong. Most of the time. it’s worse than that: the debt was never owed (they are going after the wrong person), the debt was paid off or discharged in bankruptcy, the statute of limitations has long passed.

Is Facebook’s Ad Model a Scam?

I’ve watched the Facebook phenomenon with considerable skepticism, and have refrained from commenting on it, save linking to stories such as GM canceling all of its Facebook ads because they didn’t see the benefit.

But this item via reader Chuck L was a real eye-opener.

New Zealand’s Ian Taylor: Helping Ireland’s Biggest Bankrupt To Hide Assets?

Is there a connection between New Zealand’s Ian Taylor and Sean Quinn, Ireland’s asset-hiding bankrupt? Could be…

SIFMA Fires Shot, Excludes Mortgages in Localities that Adopt Condemnation From To-Be-Announced Market

On Monday, the financial services industry association (aka lobbying group) SIFMA said that it would exclude mortgages in localities that had condemned mortgages from the to-be-announced market, which is an important source of liquidity for new Fannie and Freddie loans. The promoters of the program, Mortgage Resolution Partners, issued a wounded-sounding response.

So what does this all mean? The short answer is that on the surface, this looks like a clever bit of banker thuggery.

New Zealand’s Company Register: Even More Out of Control Than You Thought

My last post on this little mess implied that there was pretty slack official monitoring of the NZ Company Register for obviously false or impermissible registration information. But one or two other sightings invite the question: does anyone in New Zealand take Para 1, Section 377 of the Companies Act seriously, any more? 377 False statements […]

New Zealand Companies Office Turns a Blind Eye to Registration Abuses

In a previous post, we looked briefly at NZ companies that have now, or have ever had, “Bancorp” in their name, uncovering a rich vein of seediness. Filter out the more-or-less legit-looking companies and the more-or-less dodgy ones that I wrote about then, and there’s more. There always seems to be more.

The New Zealand Companies Office is asleep on the job.

New Zealand’s Rogue Incorporator, Ian Taylor, Sighted in Malaysia (and UK)

In my last post on the attempts to clamp down on New Zealander Ian Taylor’s buccaneering (ahem) company registrations, which have facilitated arms-smuggling and massive moneylaundering, I wrote of his latest venture

Naturally, various official and unofficial sleuths will now be sniffing after this new firm and the “reputable Asian jurisdiction”…

One awaits the next grisly sightings of Taylor’s legacy, registered in “Asia”, or Delaware, or London, or wherever.

So How Much Did the Banksters Make on Libor-Related Ill-Gotten Gains?

Commentators and analysts have been starting to estimate what the costs to banks for their Libor manipulation might be. We’ve pointed to an estimate by the Economist that says the damages for municipal/transit authority swaps due to Libor suppression (during the crisis and afterwards) could be as high as $40 billion. Cut that down by 75% and you still have a pretty hefty number. Other observers (CFO Magazine) have argued that the losers were mainly other banks, and since banks are pretty much certain not to sue each other, the implication is the consternation is overdone. But these markets were so huge ($564 trillion was the 2011 trading volume in one contract, the CME Eurodollar contract, which uses dollar Libor as its reference rate) that even a little leakage to end customers still adds up to a lot of exposure.