Lender Processing Services, Inc.

Lender Processing Services, Inc., (LPS), worth about $2 billion, is a major provider of mortgage and consumer loan processing services, and is a large mortgage default processor. Previously known as "Fidelity National Default Solutions," LPS the default servicer for one out of every two mortgages in the United States.

Document forgery, LPS's denial

An LPS-owned company called DocX was one of the nation's biggest forgery mills for fake foreclosure documents. DocX churned out huge numbers of fraudulent foreclosure documents for big banks after the 2008 economic bust, which led to millions of people being illegally thrown out of their homes. DocX generated fake foreclosure documents for some of the country's biggest banks, including Wells Fargo, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, U.S. Bank and Bank of America. DocX hired unqualified people, including some high school students, and paid them $10 an hour to fraudulently sign the name "Linda Green," a fake bank vice president, thousands of time a day on hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents, and hired a notary to falsely notarize the fake signatures.

LPS denied any responsibility in the fraud case, and instead let two employees take the fall for the debacle. LPS also denied that any wrongful foreclosures resulted from the fracas.

Criminal indictments

On November 16, 2011, a Nevada grand jury returned criminal indictments against two of Lender Processing Services' title officers for allegedly directing and supervising a robo-signing scheme in which documents filed in foreclosure cases were signed without proper legal review. The two title officers, Gary Trafford and Gerri Sheppard, were charged with 606 counts of directing employees under their supervision to forge their names on foreclosure documents, and then notarize the forged signatures so that it would look like the pair actually signed the documents. The two then allegedly directed the employees to file the fraudulent documents with the County Recorder's office in Clark County, Nevada.

Mysterious death of key witness in Trafford/Sheppard fraud case

On November 28, Tracy Lawrence, 43, a Las Vegas notary public who had agreed to testify in the fraud case against LPS title officers, Geraldine Ann Sheppard (62, of Santa Ana, California), and Gary Randall Trafford (49, of Irvine, California) was found dead in her home. She was to testify against the two in the case mentioned above, which alleged that tens of thousands of fraudulent foreclosure documents had been filed by LPS subsidiary DocX in Las Vegas. Lawrence had been charged with one misdemeanor count of notarizing the signature of a person not in her presence, and would have faced up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine after pleading guilty, but she failed to show up for her sentencing hearing, which led to the discovery of her dead in her home. Police reported no obvious foul play, and did not report the death as a homicide.

Lawrence had gotten a favorable plea deal after agreeing to cooperate Sheppard's and Trafford's prosecution. Lawrence claimed to have estimated that she had fraudulently notarized over 30,000 foreclosure documents between 2005 and 2008 by attesting to the validity of signatures of people who did not actually sign the documents in her presence. The documents were then filed with the Clark County recorder's office.

External resources

• Huffington Post Business section Tracy Lawrence, Notary Public Who Blew The Whistle On Massive Foreclosure Fraud, Found Dead, November 30, 201

Contact

Lender Processing Services, Inc.
601 Riverside Avenue
Jacksonville Florida 32204
Phone: 904.854.5100
(Toll-free) 800.991.1274

References

mortgage.marketing@lpsvcs.com