The state of New York is suing major US banks for fraudulently foreclosing on thousands of homeowners in the state in the wake of the nationwide housing crash.
The state is suing JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, along with Virginia-based MERSCORP, which it called a "shell company" set up by the banks to process home loans they made but which became a dumping ground for poorly documented and mishandled mortgage records.
"The mortgage industry created MERS to allow financial institutions to evade county recording fees, avoid the need to publicly record mortgage transfers and facilitate the rapid sale and securitisation of mortgages en masse," New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.
MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, is a system for tracking mortgage ownership.
