“How do you get people to go to work every day and do these things and think it’s okay?”

[Hissyspit]

Reason Why Occupy Wall Street #3,014:

http://www.alternet.org/investigations/152723/how_bank_of_america_covered_up_fraud_by_silencing_whistleblowers

How Bank of America Covered Up Fraud by Silencing Whistleblowers

Countrywide made life hard for an internal investigator, and a court ruled that when BofA took over, she was illegally fired in retaliation.

October 13, 2011 |

In the summer of 2007, a team of corporate investigators sifted through mounds of paper pulled from shred bins at Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage shops in and around Boston.

By intercepting the documents before they were sliced by the shredder, the investigators were able to uncover what they believed was evidence that branch employees had used scissors, tape and Wite-Out to create fake bank statements, inflated property appraisals and other phony paperwork. Inside the heaps of paper, for example, they found mock-ups that indicated to investigators that workers had, as a matter of routine, literally cut and pasted the address for one home onto an appraisal for a completely different piece of property.

Eileen Foster, the company’s new fraud investigations chief, had seen a lot of slippery behavior in her two-plus decades in the banking business. But she’d never seen anything like this.

“You’re looking at it and you’re going, Oh my God, how did it get to this point?” Foster recalls. “How do you get people to go to work every day and do these things and think it’s okay?”

MORE AT LINK

[Aerows]

1. Because of a pervasive system of pure greed

"Everyone" is doing it, so they think it's just fine to do it, too. That's why people needed to go to jail in this fiasco, so that they will discover that it's not okay and "everyone" needs to stop doing it.

[KurtNYC]

2. More people have suffered from the point of a fountain pen than from a gun."

W. Guthrie

[leveymg]

3. Workers commit fraud to keep their own jobs and homes. Banksters do it for fun and profit.

Who usually ends up going to jail?

[Jackpine Radical]

4. To think there was a time

when we all would have been shocked by something like this…

[myrna minx]

5. There would have been a time when some of the crooks would be held accountable

for their crimes too.

[DURHAM D]

6. Thanks for posting.

I have an employee who is way under water on a Countrywide loan. I tried to talk with him at the time he was re-financing with them (2008) and he explained to me that his "wife handled everything". I was concerned because it was their third re-finance in 5 years and they were taking money out each time.

He inherited his small farm from his father 25 years ago (debt free) and now he will likely lose it because his wife is a compulsive shopper (including new loans) and he likes his toys - motorcycle, boat, travel trailer, etc. It is sad but I don't have $300K to help him out. He is 66 and his wife is 68 and I found out last month that he has already taken all the money from his IRA.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. You cannot rescue them from themselves. Trust me on this.

You can explain it TO them
but you can't understand it FOR them.

[WinkyDink]

7. Indictments will come.....never.

[LadyInAZ]

8. Banks want to control printing money...

lol... a joke... when many are out of work... no wonder we are in a recession

[librechik]

9. this would make a great in depth story at Frontline

I hope the author sends it to them