Cue Inspector Renault

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that we are now seeing reports that senior managers actively directed their subordinates to robosign and falsify records:

Employees at major banks who churned out fraudulent foreclosure documents, forged signatures, made up fake job titles and falsely notarized paperwork often did so at the behest of their superiors, according to a federal investigation released Tuesday.

It’s well documented that the nation’s biggest banks routinely “robo-signed” legal papers to keep up with the wave of foreclosures brought on by the housing bust. But the new report from the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development reveals that those shoddy practices often came at the direction of managers at the banks, and that employees in some cases were judged by how fast they could get new foreclosure filings out the door.

“I believe the reports we just released will leave the reader asking one question: How could so many people have participated in this misconduct?” David Montoya, HUD inspector general, said in a statement. “The answer: simple greed.”

HUD investigators launched their inquiries soon after news of the banks’ practices caused a national uproar in late 2010, and government officials used their findings as they negotiated a recent landmark $25 billion settlement with the banks.

HUD reviewed foreclosure practices at all five banks involved in the recent settlement — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial. They issued subpoenas, pored over personnel files, conducted interviews with scores of employees and examined the quality control measures — or lack thereof — at the banks’ mortgage servicing units.

Repeatedly, according to the report, investigators were hampered by poor record-keeping at the banks, sluggish responses to requests for documents and an unwillingness to make employees available for interviews or to allow them to answer detailed questions at the virtual foreclosure factories where they worked.

Nevertheless, investigators pieced together a picture of a deeply flawed system riddled with errors, where employees often had little or no training, where managers encouraged wrongdoing and where haste trumped all else.

You know, maybe the banks had poor record-keeping, and responded sluggishly to requests for documents because, you know, they knew that they were aggressively breaking the law.

Stop the looting, and start prosecuting!