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[ira01]

In reviewing the comments to Fuller's JDB sale update on Prosper's blog, I noticed that christoofar215 posted:

I would like Prosper to separate the loans that only had 0 or 1 payments before they went into default and reserve those for legal action and investigation for ID theft/fraud, especially some of these that had AA/A/B credit.

It is one thing to fall into a debt hole and not be able to climb out of it; it’s another to take out a Prosper loan premeditated on the basis of intentionally not making a single payment on it.

The perennial Prosper ass-kisser replied:

@Christoofar215
According to the Prosper days video, loans like that are already screened for ID theft/fraud.

That got me to thinking.  So I poked around on Lendingstats, and found that out of the 21,970 loans that have originated on Prosper, there are a grand total of 122 with status "repurchased."  66 of those are the NAT loans, leaving only 56 that have been truly "repurchased" (i.e., where Prosper paid lenders their principal back).  11 or 12 of these are the Victoria Crawford loans, leaving only 44 or 45 other repurchased loans.  I'm pretty sure there were a handful of loans repurchased due to some sort of Prosper data problem a couple years ago, so there were about 40 loans altogether repurchased presumably under the ID-theft guarantee (beyond the Crawford scam). 

Out of Prosper's 21,970 originated loans, 8,797 were originated after August 1, 2007 -- 40% of all of Prosper's originations.  Yet Prosper has only repurchased ONE loan (originated November 13, 2007) originated in all of that time -- over nine months.  Does anyone really believe that there has only been one case of identity theft in the last nine months?  It seems far more likely that Prosper would rather bury its head in the sand, "see no evil," and hope to repurchase as few id-theft loans as possible.  Undoubtedly, that is made much easier by their elimination of their real forums, since lenders there discovered many, if not most, of the id-theft loans that Prosper previously had to repurchase. 

Does anyone know how to get a list of all repurchased loans by date of repurchase, rather than by origination date?  It does not seem possible to do that on LS or Eric's, but I imagine it is possible elsewhere.  Also, does anyone know how to obtain a list of all loans that made zero payments, and all those that made only 1 payment, and all those that made only 2 payments?  That too does not appear to be possible on LS or Eric's, but should be possible from the data Prosper makes available.

[Staneslav]

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[onthefence]

Remember.  According to prosper, it doesn't count as identity theft unless you can find the true person who the identity belongs to, explain the situation to him or her & get him or her to fill out some paper work & send it back to prosper before the debt sale.

Even if they find out, imagine all the people saying 'Why the @#*& do I care.  I didn't make the loan.  It's not my problem.  Just try to collect it.'

[BrassKnuckles]

 

[112233]

Mark12547's signature reminds us of a very memorable Prosper quote

If, as you have indicated, you don’t trust Prosper to detect fraud when it exists or to remunerate you when we find it, then you should reconsider whether you want to lend on Prosper.

[ira01]

Mark12547's signature reminds us of a very memorable Prosper quote

If, as you have indicated, you don’t trust Prosper to detect fraud when it exists or to remunerate you when we find it, then you should reconsider whether you want to lend on Prosper.

I remember that thread well -- each post of Shira's contained more and more nonsense.  She is really something else.  A perfect fit for Prosper.

[Staneslav]

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[christoofar215]

I am in the midst of cleaning my pad (my apartment is going up for sale Thursday as I am upsizing to a rowhouse I'm leasing), but I intend to suck down Prosper's public database and start examining the data to see if I can get at it; hopefully I will have free time this weekend or I can do it while I am at work--see if the database has any payment detail on it that would yield some clues as to how many "theft" loans Prosper has been making.

[Caladia]

I remember when they first made that guarantee.  I thought, "wow, that's kind of a scary promise to make; what if lenders contend that pretty much *every* loan that doesn't make its first payment is an ID theft loan?  How will they research 'em all?  They'll need to have some very stringent criteria for defining 'ID theft.'"  And sure enough, they did. 

Looking at it now, I realize that it was shortly after they made that guarantee that they started taking away information that lenders had been using to detect fraud (borrower's city, for example).  I'm more cynical than I used to be, and now I wonder if taking that info away was not just to protect borrowers' privacy, but also to keep lenders from being able to sniff out ID theft loans on their own, and thus invoke the guarantee. 

If that's the case, then it would have been better for everyone if they had NOT made the guarantee, and had instead allowed lenders to continue searching out fraud.  Lenders were *good* at it (better than Prosper's people, as was proved in multiple cases) and lenders were willing to work for free. 

[iLIE]

I'm more cynical than I used to be, and now I wonder if taking that info away was not just to protect borrowers' privacy, but also to keep lenders from being able to sniff out ID theft loans on their own, and thus invoke the guarantee.

This has only been said about 20,000 times before you.

Nice toy see you come around.

[Caladia]

I'm more cynical than I used to be, and now I wonder if taking that info away was not just to protect borrowers' privacy, but also to keep lenders from being able to sniff out ID theft loans on their own, and thus invoke the guarantee.

This has only been said about 20,000 times before you.

Yes, now that I think of it, I remember the discussion when Leporello found an ID theft loan, and 112233 made the same point. (I just now looked up the thread on Prosperreports just to see if I was remembering correctly-- ironic that it was also 112233 who archived the old forums for us!)

Prosper never should have made that guarantee.  As a PR move, it backfired on them big time.   

[ira01]

I'm more cynical than I used to be, and now I wonder if taking that info away was not just to protect borrowers' privacy, but also to keep lenders from being able to sniff out ID theft loans on their own, and thus invoke the guarantee.

This has only been said about 20,000 times before you.

Yes, now that I think of it, I remember the discussion when Leporello found an ID theft loan, and 112233 made the same point. (I just now looked up the thread on Prosperreports just to see if I was remembering correctly-- ironic that it was also 112233 who archived the old forums for us!)

It wasn't only the infamous Leporello ID-theft loan (which Prosper let fester in "4+ month late" status for about 11 months, despite Leporello providing Prosper with the name and phone number of the NYPD detective handling the ID-theft case regarding other creditors, although Prosper never bothered to call him; Prosper only repurchased the loan when a public shit-storm errupted on the forums after Lep described the situation), but also the Victoria Crawford case (in which forum detectives discovered an id-theft case involving 11 or 12 loans, forcing Prosper to repurchase them all) that shortly preceded Prosper's determination to eliminate each piece of PII that lenders could use to protect themselves from fraudulent loans.  As Bama points out, MANY people (including myself) publicly posted that this was probably not a coincidence. 

Eventually, there will be a massive lawsuit against Prosper, and we will finally learn the details about this, and other shady circumstances.

[beerbud1]

I'm more cynical than I used to be, and now I wonder if taking that info away was not just to protect borrowers' privacy, but also to keep lenders from being able to sniff out ID theft loans on their own, and thus invoke the guarantee.

This has only been said about 20,000 times before you.

Yes, now that I think of it, I remember the discussion when Leporello found an ID theft loan, and 112233 made the same point. (I just now looked up the thread on Prosperreports just to see if I was remembering correctly-- ironic that it was also 112233 who archived the old forums for us!)

It wasn't only the infamous Leporello ID-theft loan (which Prosper let fester in "4+ month late" status for about 11 months, despite Leporello providing Prosper with the name and phone number of the NYPD detective handling the ID-theft case regarding other creditors, although Prosper never bothered to call him; Prosper only repurchased the loan when a public shit-storm errupted on the forums after Lep described the situation), but also the Victoria Crawford case (in which forum detectives discovered an id-theft case involving 11 or 12 loans, forcing Prosper to repurchase them all) that shortly preceded Prosper's determination to eliminate each piece of PII that lenders could use to protect themselves from fraudulent loans.  As Bama points out, MANY people (including myself) publicly posted that this was probably not a coincidence. 

Eventually, there will be a massive lawsuit against Prosper, and we will finally learn the details about this, and other shady circumstances.

Sooner than you think my friend. Sooner than you think!!

[Staneslav]

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[mothandrust]

Prosper's marketing department needs the portfolio plans to show a decent rate of return.

For a while they were doing a good job honoring the guarantee for the AA's, which kept the default rate down.

The legal test let them take some of the ones that weren't ID theft loans out of the database at no cost (literally).  It was called the "legal test" because it was a test to see whether lenders would think that Prosper's actions were legal--and they flunked.

1 repurchase in 9 months?!  Is that really the number?!?!  If that's true then they must be seriously strapped for cash.