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On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that LPS Inc, the mortgage servicing company, has agreed to resolve a federal criminal probe over foreclosure fraud for a sum of $35 million.
The allegations against the Florida-based company had included involvement in a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million mortgage documents that were fraudulently signed and notarized. LPS was accused of filing such documents in property recorders’ offices across the nation.
Lorraine Brown, the chief executive of the DocX LLC unit of LPS had pleaded guilty in November 2012 to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in the scheme which continued from 2003 to 2009.
The settlement includes a two-year non-prosecution agreement along with several terms and conditions for LPS including cooperating in federal probes, and a condition to alert the government to any abuses in foreclosure documentation in the company.
The $35 million settlement consideration includes forfeiture and criminal penalties and is to be paid within 10 days to the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Treasury.
Most of the foreclosure abuses were caused due to high pressure on executives to meet targets and documents being signed through a process popular as “robo-signing,” without proper verification. In February last year, five large banks and financial institutions agreed to a $25 billion settlement with regulators to settle such probes into their foreclosure abuses.
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