This settlement arises from multiple abuses found in the servicing of loans and the foreclosure process over the past several years. At the height of the housing bubble, banks sliced and diced mortgages and traded them with little regard for the rules following land recording or securitization to such a sloppy extent that they lost track of the true owner on potentially millions of homes.

To cover up for this massive failure, banks and their servicing units have been found to have routinely forged, back-dated and fabricated documents at county recorder offices and state courts across the country. Furthermore, they employed “robo-signers,” who signed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of documents and affidavits without any knowledge of the underlying mortgages. In addition, investigations uncovered massive servicing abuses, including illegal fees charged to borrowers, putting borrowers into foreclosure at the same time as they were working out loan modifications, failing to honor previous settlements where promises were made on modifications, and countless other errors that maximized servicer profits and gouged homeowners.

There are also cases of wrongful foreclosures where homeowners have been turned out of their homes without just cause, and servicer-driven foreclosures, where servicers illegally added late fees and applied payments inaccurately, pushing the homeowner into foreclosure. This is but a smattering of the examples of foreclosure fraud and servicer abuse found in a series of interlocking investigations, court depositions, reviews of documents in registers of deeds offices, and homeowner testimonials.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman abruptly cancelled a conference call yesterday 10 minutes before it was to begin. The subject was supposed to be the foreclosure fraud settlement, amid speculation Schneiderman would announce that he would join. This would spur other holdouts to join, presumably, and at the very least break the somewhat united front against the settlement. But it didn’t happen, and the cause is likely the banks objecting to the lawsuits he and others have filed or could file.

Banks, not Attorneys General, have become the major sticking point on a foreclosure fraud settlement, as they seek assurances that they protect themselves from future lawsuits. They reportedly freaked out about Scheiderman’s new suits against the bank and what to shut those and other down as part of the settlement. I don’t think he can accept that.

The deadline for state Attorneys General to sign on to the foreclosure fraud settlement came and went yesterday, and the major holdouts – the Justice Democrats, the AGs from the five states who have objected to the settlement all along (Nevada, New York, California, Delaware, and Massachusetts), still aren’t signed on. And they’re still objecting, or at least bargaining.

I don’t know if this report will delay the rush to settlement. But it calls into sharp relief what will be settled: years, decades actually, of ongoing fraudulent conduct.

In the latest of a flurry of under-the-wire lawsuits that seem to conflict with an imminent foreclosure fraud settlement, Eric Schneiderman, the Attorney General of New York and a co-chair of the federal task force looking into the residential mortgage-backed securities market, sued three banks for their use of the MERS electronic registry, which resulted in fraudulent foreclosure filings.

There is a path to a stronger settlement that includes a whole lot more elements than a narrow release of liability. It includes serious enforcement with an independent court-appointed monitor that has actual authority and the ability to impose penalties. It includes real nationwide servicing standards that include an auditing of the servicing software and account records to check for systemic fraud, and much more.

It seems Covington & Burling, the powerhouse law firm that used to employ, and could be expected to re-employ, Attorney general Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer is also the same firm that issued the opinion letter that said that MERS was a valid way to transfer mortgages.

The 1% protects the 1%. That’s all we’re talking about here. The problem for the Administration is that millions of homeowners have paid the price for this protection racket, and there’s an election coming up. So the effort will be made to create a fig leaf of a “solution” to “fix” the housing market and benefit homeowners.

Simply put, Coakley seeks penalties for “unfair and deceptive practices” in violation of state consumer protection laws, in particular the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.