‘Foreclosure mill’ gave employees jewelry, cars, houses to forge documents

10-19-2010 • RawStory.com

Their statements were published online Monday afternoon. "The two former Sterns employees described long tables where employees would sign as a witness and notarize documents without actually witnessing the signing," reporter Shannon Behnken noted, writing for Tampa Bay Online. "Twice a day, Scott said, the company's chief operating officer, Cheryl Samons, would go into the office and sign 500 documents at a time without reading them." Their revelations come on the heels of a recent controversy over so-called "robo-signers" who were employed by finance firms as "mortgage experts," when their real capacity was to move as much paper as possible with little regard for the facts. The alleged "mortgage experts" were employed by firms like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.