• Current list of Deputies/Supervisors contact info (name/email/phone/Borough Office)

Government Regulations Committee Chair Matt Cahill issued a memo this morning.

Good morning.  As discussed at last Tuesday’s NYSLTA EC meeting, the confusion over mortgage assignments coming out of Signature Bank and Signature Bridge Bank should be coming to an end. 

Tom Glatthaar, Frank Carroll and myself had a meeting with the FDIC and it’s outside counsel.  The FDIC has created a template for mortgage assignments, allonges and lost note affidavits.  The attached template has been slightly revised from the template circulated last week.

For the assignments, there will be one instrument which effectuates an assignment from both the FDIC as receiver for Signature Bank as well as the FDIC as receiver for Signature Bridge Bank, N.A.  It is likely the instruments will be executed by one of three individuals who are each acting pursuant to a limited POA.

The FDIC has recorded the original POA’s in Dallas, so it will not be providing an original at closing.  We will have to order certified copies and submit them for recording with the assignments.  Attached are copies of the recorded POA’s in Dallas. 

As a certified copy of each POA is recorded in a particular county, we should keep track of the recording information so that future assignments in that county can reference the recoding information for the POA.  The POA’s do expire in 2024, so we will need new POA’s at that time.

The form of acknowledgement being used is a modified version of the NY acknowledgement.  As discussed, the FDIC has its reasons for the revisions.  If the clerks notice the revisions, we may need to explain that this is the only form the FDIC is willing to have its employees sign.  I assume the clerks will give the FDIC a wide berth.  

I am advised that the various law firms preparing assignment documents have be advised of this process and that closings involving assignments out of Signature will begin resuming.

Member companies are reporting increased instances of FedEx Dropbox break-ins and the theft of pay-off checks.

We have warned several times to deliver checks in-person to the institution or to the physical location of a FedEX or UPS Office.

Here is a clip from a recent Politico article quoting a letter to the American Bankers Association from Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown and Sen Warren:

“Check washing has become an elaborate and organized method of successfully scamming consumers and banks,” they wrote in a letter to ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols on Wednesday. Fellow Banking Committee member Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) also signed the letter.

Banks in 2022 saw an 84 percent increase in check fraud, according to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

This is a national problem.

All it takes to remove document envelopes from a drop box is a D-Con glue trap and a shoelace.

A bill (S1326 ) signed by the Governor may be relevant to a business owner or company hiring manager, especially as relates to remote workers.

The following is from the bill jacket.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Pursuant to approval memo 45, this legislation clarifies job advertising
in the law, and excludes remote job opportunities performed entirely
outside of the State without a connection to a New York office or super-
visor.

A bill (A610 / S2220) has been signed by Gov. Hochul and chaptered.

The bill prohibits agencies from charging a fee for records where an electronic copy is already available from a previous request made within the past six months except for the actual cost of a storage device or media if provided to the requester.

The following is from the bill memo.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
 
Section one of this bill would clarify that charging a fee for requests
under Article 6 of the Public Officers Law, constituting the Freedom of
Information Law (FOIL), shall be prohibited when an electronic copy for
such record already exists for the same request made within the previous
six months, except when a different fee is otherwise prescribed by stat-
ute or if the reproduction of such record is in the form of a storage
device, in which case the actual cost of that device or media may be
charged.

JUSTIFICATION:
 
In cases where a public record has been previously requested and exists
in the form of an electronic copy, the agency that furnished the record
can provide an electronic copy of that record upon subsequent request at
no additional cost to the agency. In those circumstances, agencies
should not be able to charge a fee for the original time taken to
produce the record. They may charge for the storage device or media
provided to comply with the request. This bill seeks to clarify such
changes made pursuant to Chapter 745 of the Laws of 2022.