A former executive at Lender Processing Services who was also the president of DocX LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of LPS that shut down three years ago, was sentenced today in the Middle District of Florida to serve five years in prison for her participation in a robo-signing scam.
Last November, Lorraine Brown pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. In May, she was
In addition to her prison terms, Brown was ordered to pay a fine of $15,000.
According to Brown’s plea agreement, DocX employees under the direction of Brown and others fraudulently signed and notarized over a million mortgage-related documents on behalf of residential mortgage servicers with property recorders’ offices throughout the country over a six-year period.
Only specific personnel at DocX were authorized by clients to sign the documents, but they were fraudulently notarized as if actually executed by legitimate DocX employees. Brown mentioned in her plea agreement that DocX hired temporary workers to act as authorized signers and that some of these workers were able to sign thousands of mortgage-related documents a day.
Brown said she implemented these illegal signing practices at DocX so the company could make more money. Between 2003 and 2009, DocX generated approximately $60 million in gross revenue.
In her plea, Brown admitted she understood that property recorders, courts, title insurers and homeowners relied upon the documents as genuine.
“The documents that were fraudulently produced under Brown’s direction were relied upon in court proceedings, including a significant number of foreclosure and bankruptcy matters,” said Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division. “Today’s sentencing represents appropriate punishment for someone who sought to capitalize on the nation’s housing crisis."
