Guilford County Files Robo-Signing Lawsuit

Guilford County is suing some of the nation’s largest banks over forged mortgage documents.

Jeff Tiberii: Local officials want to put a stop to robo-signing. That’s the practice of third-party employees falsifying financial documents. It has been a national problem in the housing crisis. Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen found more than 45-hundred mortgages in Guilford County that appear to have been forged.

Jeff Thigpen: What this suit is about is saying that we found these documents that are questionable. We want to appoint an investigator to be able to look and see if there is any more problems. And we want the banks and the loan servicers to fix this problem.

Thigpen says an erroneous mortgage could cause problems for a homeowner in the future. Forty nine states reached a settlement with large banks over robo-signing earlier this week, but Guilford County is believed to be the first county in the nation to file a similar lawsuit.