LAS VEGAS (CN) – Lender Processing Services, the nation’s “dominant” provider of mortgage default services, forged foreclosure documents in exchange for referral kickbacks totaling “millions of dollars,” Nevada’s attorney general says.
Nevada recorded the nation’s highest foreclosure rate in October, for the 58th consecutive month. And “LPS is the nation’s dominant provider of mortgage defaults services, processing more than fifty percent (50%) of all foreclosures annually,” Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto says in the complaint. “As of 2010, defaults management services comprised the largest part of LPS’ business, accounting for approximately forty-three percent (43%) of the company’s total 2010 revenue of $2.456 billion.”
The attorney general says that LPS, based in Jacksonville, Fla., required employees to execute or notarize up to 4,000 foreclosure-related documents a day that were fraudulently notarized, and that the company demanded kickbacks and referral fees from foreclosure firms.