Poor Mojo's Newswire

. . . Meanwhile, as American Banker reported today, the banks have not stopped fabricating documentation in order to foreclose on borrowers: Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners. The practice continues nearly a year after the companies were caught cutting corners in the robo-signing scandal and about six months after the industry began negotiating a settlement with state attorneys general investigating loan-servicing abuses. Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose. In several instances, banks were signing over documents from lenders that no longer exist. For example, one Bank of America executive “signed a mortgage assignment on July 29 of this year that purported to transfer ownership of a mortgage from New Century Mortgage Corp. to a trustee, Deutsche Bank.” However, “New Century, a subprime lender, went bankrupt in 2007; and the Deutsche Bank trust that purported to hold the loan was created for a securitization completed in 2006 — about five years before Juarez signed it over to the trust.” . . .

GameStop has acknowledged that it removed coupons for free OnLive copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from the boxed retail editions it's selling. OnLive and Square Enix announced yesterday that as an extra incentive for gamers who couldn't quite bring themselves to pull the trigger on the new Deus Ex release, all boxed copies of the game will include a coupon for a free copy from cloud gaming company OnLive. I don't really see it as a "seal the deal" offer but it might come in handy someday and hey, free stuff is free stuff, right? Not if you bought it from GameStop. Shortly after it went on sale, buyers began reporting to GameSpy that their supposedly brand-new copies had been opened and that the OnLive coupon was missing. Dodgy, yes, but things didn't get full-on greasy until an anonymous source provided the site with a photo of an email, allegedly from GameStop management, telling employees to pull the coupons and throw them away. "Our desire is to not have this coupon go to any customers after this announcement," the memo said. . . .

The City of Gainesville, Florida has recently imposed a 130-meals-a-day limit to some area soup kitchens. For a variety of reasons, none of which seem logical or humane, Gainesville is telling soup kitchens to turn away those who are hungry, if they happen to come after the 130 person limit. To see additional coverage of this incredible story, check out this recent post. There has been some local coverage of the story as well. The Gainesville Sun recently reported that at a City Hall meeting, an 8 year-old girl named Mackenzie Case said, "It makes me sad that we have hungry people we aren't allowed to feed." She also held a hand-written sign that said, "If I was No. 131 you wouldn't feed me?" The pleas of this courageous little girl speak volumes. She has the dignity and reason that is somehow lost among the commissioners. We need to let the City of Gainesville know just how outrageous and inhumane this limit is. Apparently, this has been a heated debate between the City of Gainesville and St. Francis House, a local soup kitchen that has had to impose this limit begrudgingly for the past year. St. Francis House plans to petition the city to overturn the limit. This past June, the Commission voted to allow the soup kitchen to provide meals above the limit on three days only: Thanksgiving, Christmas and a holiday of the facilities' choosing. This Thanksgiving, St. Francis House had over 300 people come to eat a hot meal. Yet if these same 300 people showed up any of the other 362 days of the year, only 130 would be fed. . . .