Mortgage Servicer Charged With Foreclosure Forgery In Missouri

DocX, a company that until recently was one of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers, and its president, Lorraine O. Brown, have been indicted for forgery related to mortgage foreclosure documents that the company prepared. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster says that “the indictment alleges that mass-produced fraudulent signatures on notarized real estate documents constitutes forgery.” 

The 136 count indictment, reported today in an article by Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times, asserts that Brown acted “knowingly in concert with DocX and its employees” to defraud a Missouri recorder of deeds.
 
This is one of the few criminal charges brought to date in connection with alleged fraud in the wave of mortgage foreclosures that have occurred since the beginning of the Financial Crisis. The charges by the "Show Me" state - not by New York, California, Florida, or other states with substantial numbers of foreclosures - come within days of President Obama's creation of a task force to investigate the mortgage-backed securities industry.