Yesterday, a Connecticut homeowner, Eric S. Scherz, 44, was sentenced by United States District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant to 37 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for mortgage fraud.

Here’s what happened…

According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Connecticut, in October 2007, Mr. Scherz secured a $417,000 mortgage related to the purchase of a property in Barkhamsted.  Then, in April 2008, he created a “fraudulent release of mortgage on the property” that showed that a fictitious lender (a company Mr. Scherz created), had been paid in full and he filed the fraudulent release with the Town of Barkhamsted.

Over the last 25 years, Michael Winston has held top management positions at Merrill Lynch, Motorola, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Corporations.  He has been responsible at the most senior levels for issues related to organization structure, executive succession planning, leadership development and the management of large scale change.

He served as Global Head, Worldwide Leadership and Organization Development for Merrill Lynch, during one of the most challenging periods in the history of the financial markets, and he spent 11 years at Motorola, becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt, and heading up all organization design, large-scale change, leadership development and succession planning initiatives for the Communications businesses as the company grew from $6B to over $30B.

The Illinois Supreme Court is the latest to get in the “Help Stop Foreclosures” game… which by the way can also be played at home… is no fun for the whole family and makes for lovely graft.  (Hey, if that didn’t make you laugh, you should go lie down.)

The new rules are are the result of public hearings and 21 months of work by the “Special Supreme Court Committee on Mortgage Foreclosures,” which was the brian child of Justice Mary Jane Theis.  The committee’s 14 members included judges, a public interest attorney… and get this… bankers and their lawyers.  (Oh, boy… Lucy you got some ‘splaining to do… somebody’s fired for sure.)

 Part 3 of my interview with UCI Law Professor David Min contains a discussion between David and I that might normally be left on the cutting room floor.  It’s a discussion that wasn’t intended to be a part of the final podcast, but after listening to it, I realized that it was very likely a discussion that many would want to hear.

If you’ve already listened to parts one and two of David’s interview, then you’re all set to tune into this third part… but even if you haven’t heard the beginnings… you can still jump in here and then go back to part one after you’ve listened to Part 3, because this part really does stand alone.

Fed Chief Ben Bernanke came to Congress in 2007 to tell everyone that the financial crisis was just a sub-prime loan problem and that its impact would be contained to sub-prime loans.  Well, I guess he was close.  He only missed that forecast by… um… let’s see… 9 minus 7… times 4… divided by 12… carry the 3… April, June and November… let’s see… oh yeah… by the entire world.