I mentioned earlier today that Shaun Donovan tried to sell the weak $2,000 pittance provided to foreclosure victims in the recent servicing settlement by saying that the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) reviews still offer the opportunity for individuals who were wrongly foreclosed upon to reap restitution. I scoffed at this because those OCC reviews are widely seen as ineffectual and designed to whitewash the problem, with the banks self-reporting their own reviews through “independent consultants” they hire and pay.

As it turns out, Martin Andelman, with excellent timing, got an insider at Wells Fargo to expose just what a sham these foreclosure reviews are.

I’ve been amused by the consistent pushback from HUD’s Shaun Donovan, who has made himself into a leading figure just by his ubiquitousness, as it relates to the foreclosure fraud settlement. Donovan has been the point person to rebut criticism of the settlement, and he is back again today in CNN.

If you thought the foreclosure fraud settlement was bad, get this: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the weakest federal regulator in the financial sphere (I’ve taken to calling them the Office of Bank Advocacy), decided to use the cover of the big settlement to announce their fines in their consent order with big bank servicers.

Maybe the foreclosure crisis hasn’t been fully solved. But at least we have those consent orders on the top mortgage servicers. At least federal regulators will lay down the law and we’ll get to see those independent reviews of each mortgage company and the wrongful foreclosures they initiated. I mean, at least there will be some transparency and discovery, right? right?

About a year ago, I appeared at Netroots Nation with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Professor Elizabeth Warren on a panel called “The Forgotten Foreclosure Crisis.” Speaking with Merkley today, I remarked that we could hold the same panel again this year, without changing a word of it, and not be out of date in the slightest. Sen. Merkley agreed.

Somehow I’m not shedding a tear for Citigroup and the $35 million a year it will take for them to staff their servicing unit adequately and pretend not to defraud customers. I think given the 10 years or more of avoiding county recording fees and the hundreds of billions they ought to be on the hook for given the scope of the fraud, $35 million is a fairly light touch.