Your Mortgage: Servicing Risks & Fraud with Marie McDonnell

Marie McDonnell joined me on the Solari Report last year to help you learn how to successfully originate a mortgage without falling into the financial fraud traps and schemes that have become common in the United States: Your Mortgage: Financing Your Home with Falling for Fraud.

Once you have successfully originated your mortgage – even when you have done things right – problems can occur and some of them are down right fraudulent. Marie returns to the Solari Report to brief us on servicing risks and what to do to ensure that your mortgage servicing goes well for the life of your mortgage – and what to do if it does not.

Marie is President of McDonnell Property Analytics. She is a Mortgage Fraud and Forensic Analyst™, a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and a Master Analyst In Financial Forensics (MAFF) with significant experience in transactional analysis, mortgage auditing, and mortgage fraud investigation. Her firm provides a variety of analytical services to individual clients and offers litigation support, mortgage-backed securities research and foreclosure forensics to attorneys nationwide. McDonnell Property Analytics also advises and performs services for county registers of deeds, attorneys general, courts and other governmental agencies.

Because mortgage servicing is a complex affair, Marie has generously prepared and provided supporting documents, including a list of servicing abuses and example case studies for people she has successfully helped to defend. When we post the audios, please login to find a wealth of handouts that support our discussion and which you can use to study at your convienence, including:

Servicing Outline: Mortgage Servicing Abuses and Case Studiees
Flowchart: Mortgage Servicing Abuse in Escrow Accounts
Document Custodian Checklist
Glossary of Terms
Sample Call, Correspondance & Payment Logs

One point you will hear emphasized repeatedly – it is essential that you understand the documents that you are supposed to have and that you sign and that you maintain all copies. Unfortunately, horror stories abound of what can go wrong. However, if you take care to manage the payment and monitoring of your mortgage and do a good job of archiving your documents, you should be able to avoid potential pitfalls and present your proofs if things outside of your control go wrong – such as your mortgage being transferred to a sloppy or fraudulent servicer.