The flawed practices in their foreclosure procedures that "GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have recently begun investigating are so prevalent, lawyers and legal experts say, that additional lenders and loan servicers are likely to halt foreclosure proceedings and may have to reconsider past evictions," according to an article on today's front page of The New York Times by Gretchen Morgenson.

"Problems emerging in courts across the nation are varied but all involve documents that must be submitted before foreclosures can proceed legally. Homeowners, lawyers and analysts have been citing such problems for the last few years, but it appears to have reached such intensity recently that banks are beginning to re-examine whether all of the foreclosure papers were prepared properly. In some cases, documents have been signed by employees who say they have not verified crucial information like amounts owed by borrowers. Other problems involve questionable legal notarization of documents, in which, for example, the notarizations predate the actual preparation of documents - suggesting that signatures were never actually reviewed by a notary. Other problems occurred when notarizations took place so far from where the documents were signed that it was highly unlikely that the notaries witnessed the signings, as the law requires," the article maintained.

"On still other important documents, a single official's name is signed in such radically different ways that some appear to be forgeries," the article said.

The article cited a foreclosure action taken by Deutsche Bank against a borrower in the Bronx in New York in which the bank said it had the right to foreclose because the mortgage was assigned to it on Oct. 15, 2009.

"But," the article continued, "according to court filings made by David B. Shaev, a lawyer at Shaev & Fleischman who represents the borrower, the assignment to Deutsche Bank is riddled with problems. First, the company that Deutsche said had assigned it the mortgage, the Sand Canyon Corporation, no longer had any rights to the underlying property when the transfer was supposed to have occurred. Additional questions have arisen over the signature verifying an assignment of the mortgage. Court documents show that Tywanna Thomas, assistant vice president of American Home Mortgage Servicing, assigned the mortgage from Sand Canyon to Deutsche Bank in October 2009. On assignments of mortgages in other cases, Ms. Thomas's signatures differ so wildly that it appears that three people signed the documents using Ms. Thomas's name."

The article reproduced on the front page of the newspaper three different signatures allegedly signed by Ms. Thomas and added that "reached by phone on Saturday, Ms. Thomas declined to comment."

"Given the differences in the signatures," the article continued, "Mr. Shaev filed court papers last July contending that the assignment is a sham, 'prepared to create an appearance of a creditor as a real party in interest/standing, when in fact it is likely that the chain of title required in these matters was not performed, lost or both.'"