The staff at the Ingham County Register of Deeds office dug up 60 mortgage documents last week that bore the hallmarks of fraud. On Monday, they found dozens more.The documents in question are mortgage assignments, used to transfer ownership of the note underlying a mortgage.
Most have been used in foreclosure proceedings.
All of the documents, the tally now stands at more than 100, were prepared by a now-defunct Georgia company called Docx, whose employees have said they were paid to sign names that weren't theirs to documents they knew nothing about.
"It just shows how widespread this was," said Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel Jr.
"I'm sure Docx is not the only company that was doing this."
But Docx, a company hired by several major banks and other financial institutions to execute mortgage-related documents, happens to have been the subject of a "60 Minutes" expose that aired earlier this month.
The clip was shown at a meeting of the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds last week in Bay City.
Many of those who had been there went home and began checking their files.
"We've identified approximately 40 documents we believe are forged," said Oakland County Register of Deeds Bill Bullard Jr., and that's just from 2008 and 2009. (read more)
