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[Tiptopper]

    In the business experience I've had, when we made a guarantee, we insured the risk with a third party.
Verification via the phone could be augmented by asking for certain coded phrases agreed upon by both parties.
One wonders,

The falcon flies at midnight.  Your Lohan is showing.  Obama is the Second Coming.(Of Jimmy Carter)

We can only hope.
d

[Teddie33]

I've never heard of any other state doing thumb prints besides in CA and to think using notaries will stop fraud is wishfull thinking. Most notaries have no concept of what a notary realy does. I think the Gaerke's would had still pulled this off with a well meaning bank notary.

I knew i could get a brilliant reply out of you eventually.Now if i could just get someone to decode it for me

You Go Girl! You are the best when talking about something you know nothing about.

[Teddie33]

I've never heard of any other state doing thumb prints besides in CA and to think using notaries will stop fraud is wishfull thinking. Most notaries have no concept of what a notary realy does. I think the Gaerke's would had still pulled this off with a well meaning bank notary.

I have had to do the thumbprint thing here in Texas before.

A Texas notary can ask for that if they wish.

[Teddie33]

The process is flawed - it has humans in it. 

• My wife had to have something stupid notorized (I think it was for my daughter's school)
• She signed it
• To save my wife the effort, I took it to my work, to a notary that I know well (with a copy of her drivers license)
• She notarized it after doing a quick look at the two signatures

You are correct as this happens all the time.

[HollowOak]

This was a clean c promoted by my then group leader. Vetted, proclaimed income at $100k a year or more.

I hadn't realized this was a supposedly vetted group loan -- I wonder if the GL claimed to have spoken with the borrower.

ETA:  Sheesh, I see it was thisguy's group.  That's a shame.  I wonder what he would have to say about all this.  Even though he posted incessently, I liked thisguy, and am on a few of his group's loans.

ETA2:  I just PM'd thisguy with a link to this thread and a request for any info he can shed on this loan.  Who knows if he'll get it, but can't hurt to try.

OK, I sent thisguy a note through the "official" Prosper messaging system. Perhaps he'll get that and drop by.  That could make things very, very interesting.

ETA:

I did get a response from thisguy:

Hi, I received a message from IRA01 for the same info and sent him a response which he can relay to the group. Sorry for the mess - no voice ID but did get a lot of information from them in a relatively timely manner - W2s, paystubs, housing, utility bill and all that. But very easily could of been a spouse since all that info would be available to them.

I did not keep the records and deleted emails of any borrowers for their privacy sake. But it was all done electronically. A motivated cheater could game me, just as easily as they game Prosper.

I assume Prosper did not call the house to confirm.

With regards to the highlighted phrase, I'd venture to say the correct wording for him (and most of the other group leaders that built "groups" of individuals over the Internet, the correct phrasing would be: "easier than they game Prosper," since they had fewer credit-checking and id-verification tools at their disposal than Prosper had.

[Gogmagog]

With regards to the highlighted phrase, I'd venture to say the correct wording for him (and most of the other group leaders that built "groups" of individuals over the Internet, the correct phrasing would be: "easier than they game Prosper," since they had fewer credit-checking and id-verification tools at their disposal than Prosper had.

Some Group Leaders DID ask for Credit Reports and other non-kosher things in the good old days.  Several of them were even Lending Pros.  It still didn't matter.  It was simply a re-verification of data Prosper already had, or it was verification of trivial items that had no bearing on repayment.  Vetting simply added confidence without an increase in useful information. 

[Mtnchick]

Hey Gog, for about the fifth time you have ignored this -- care to comment finally?

Sorry, lots of posts, little time. 

Regarding the notary, it might help a bit.  However you do realize that the powers of a notary aren't the same in all states?  In some states, notaries can't verify documents, they can only be an impartial witness to oaths. Also, the standards of getting authorized as a notary are pathetic.  These aren't crack legal scholars, waiting to verify your identities and documents.  If you get a fake ID that can get you past a bouncer, you can fool a notary.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/notary_fraud.html
Requiring a notary is false security. Notary fraud is commonplace.

It is also an expense for Prosper to handle yet ANOTHER piece of paperwork to process a simple loan. Notarization only matters if Prosper checks with the Notary for every one.  Otherwise, it is worthless as a pre-loan verification.  The only thing requiring a notarization gets you, is another person to sue if things go belly up. 

I don't think requiring notarization will contribute enough to the safety of the process to compensate for the extra burdens it places on honest Borrowers, and the additional cost to Prosper.  Cheap and effective is what you need, Notarization is neither.

Then it would be fraud/ID theft and P-----r would have to honor their guarantee. Probably why they don't required notarized statements.

[Gogmagog]

I don't think requiring notarization will contribute enough to the safety of the process to compensate for the extra burdens it places on honest Borrowers, and the additional cost to Prosper.  Cheap and effective is what you need, Notarization is neither.

Then it would be fraud/ID theft and P-----r would have to honor their guarantee. Probably why they don't required notarized statements.

Yes, this must be the real reason. mtnchick has won.

[ira01]

I don't think requiring notarization will contribute enough to the safety of the process to compensate for the extra burdens it places on honest Borrowers, and the additional cost to Prosper.  Cheap and effective is what you need, Notarization is neither.

Then it would be fraud/ID theft and P-----r would have to honor their guarantee. Probably why they don't required notarized statements.

Yes, this must be the real reason. mtnchick has won.

Actually, the real reason is obvious -- Prosper doesn't do more to prevent ID-theft (and to make it easier to prove it when it does occur), because doing so is not in its financial interest.  Prosper just wants to originate as many loans as it possibly can, because it makes money off each one, regardless of whether the loan if fraudulent, and regardless of whether the borrower ever pays it back.  Lenders take all the risk of fraud and ID-theft, except in those circumstances where lenders can prove ID-theft to Prosper's satisfaction, something that used to occur with some frequency before Prosper methodically eliminated lenders' ability to do so, by scrubbing every trace of PII it can from the listings.  That's why Prosper has only repurchased one loan that originated in the last almost 13 months.  Without the city information and borrower-supplied PII, we can no longer find the Victoria Crawfords who take out 10 loans in other people's names (discovered by forum detectives, not Prosper), the infamous Leporello discovered NY ID-theft loan, (which Prosper had studiously ignored, including being given the freaking name and phone number of the NYPD detective handling the ID-theft investigation, until there was such a shitstorm on the forum that Prosper had no choice but to repurchase it), etc. 

And let's not forget all the fraudulent listings discovered by forum detectives thanks to PII (and no thanks to Prosper), including StylumCEO (who was caught by forum detectives offering to trade his camera for being added as an authorized user to a person with good credit's account so as to fraudulently raise his credit score, Indictment-Man (who was outed as being under indictment for LOAN FRAUD; did Prosper thank the forum detectives who found this?  No, it suspended one for posting a link to an FBI PRESS-RELEASE announcing the indictment), Conviction-Man (who was discovered to have been convicted of federal crimes and was soon to report to a federal prison for 24+months -- "coincidentally" his Prosper loan listing was in the amount of the criminal fine/restitution order he had to pay), etc.  So does Prosper learn from all of this that they need to tighten their review of listings, and provide more information to lenders so we could find more of these miscreants?  Of course not -- instead it cut lenders off at the knees in being able to protect themselves (can't interfere with the number one goal of increasing originations, after all).

[bamalucky]

Conviction-Man (who was discovered to have been convicted of federal crimes and was soon to report to a federal prison for 24+months

Is this the guy with the pic of his Amex Black card?

If not,don't forget him.

[Nora_Lenderbee]

After 20 pages of this, here's what it comes down to:

If you want to go after Prosper for not honoring its ID-theft guarantee, go for it, and I'll support you.

But please--choose a different loan! Choose one where ID theft is obvious!

The Gaerke loan is too muddy. It is not a clear and obvious example of ID theft. Because spouses were involved, and the money went into a joint account, there is a real possibility that the husband was involved, or at least that he knew and did nothing. If it were my money, I would not give up so easily.

There are so many better ID theft cases out there, as Ira so ably describes. Why do you focus on this bad one?!?

[Xenon481]

After 20 pages of this, here's what it comes down to:

If you want to go after Prosper for not honoring its ID-theft guarantee, go for it, and I'll support you.

But please--choose a different loan! Choose one where ID theft is obvious!

The Gaerke loan is too muddy. It is not a clear and obvious example of ID theft. Because spouses were involved, and the money went into a joint account, there is a real possibility that the husband was involved, or at least that he knew and did nothing. If it were my money, I would not give up so easily.

There are so many better ID theft cases out there, as Ira so ably describes. Why do you focus on this bad one?!?

That isn't the only thing this thread is about.  The real clear issue is that Prosper flat out LIED to the court with a statement that is exactly opposite of what they state to us in their own LRA with us.

[xraider]

Nora, please give me some concrete examples of ID theft, and I'm happy to go after those.

[Nora_Lenderbee]

After 20 pages of this, here's what it comes down to:

If you want to go after Prosper for not honoring its ID-theft guarantee, go for it, and I'll support you.

But please--choose a different loan! Choose one where ID theft is obvious!

The Gaerke loan is too muddy. It is not a clear and obvious example of ID theft. Because spouses were involved, and the money went into a joint account, there is a real possibility that the husband was involved, or at least that he knew and did nothing. If it were my money, I would not give up so easily.

There are so many better ID theft cases out there, as Ira so ably describes. Why do you focus on this bad one?!?

That isn't the only thing this thread is about.  The real clear issue is that Prosper flat out LIED to the court with a statement that is exactly opposite of what they state to us in their own LRA with us.

I totally agree that that is the real issue. So can we focus on that issue???

[Nora_Lenderbee]

Nora, please give me some concrete examples of ID theft, and I'm happy to go after those.

Ask Ira. He's got them at his fingertips, obviously.