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The New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) published for comment in the NYS Register proposed regulations to implement requirements of recently adopted state law authorizing the DFS to regulate title insurance agents. The proposed regulation addresses, among other things, affiliated business relationships, disclosures and the use of title closers. The proposed regulation would prohibit title insurance corporations and title agents from accepting title insurance business referred from an affiliated person unless the title insurance corporation has significant and multiple sources of business. A title insurance agent or title insurance corporation could not require an affiliated person to refer a specified amount of title insurance to the corporation or agent.

After discovering that an issuing title agent prepared fraudulent documents in a mortgage transaction, an insured bank filed a claim with its title insurer under a closing protection letter. When the title insurer denied the claim, the bank sued for bad faith and negligence. The title insurer eventually moved to dismiss the claims.

The National Notary Association created the first nationwide, easy-to-search database of laws that affect notaries public. The database was created to address changing state laws as well as new regulations set by government agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This free tool will help notaries and companies that employ Notaries find the laws they need to be aware of and comply with.

Todd Bjorklund, a leader in the real estate and mortgage industries, passed away on July 19 at the age of 56. Bjorklund was an entrepreneur, having started his first business when he was only 18 years old.

Black Knight Financial Services announced the development of Closing Insight, a set of web-based solutions designed to help lenders address the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Integrated Mortgage Disclosures rule and to automate the numerous multi-party processes required to close a loan. Closing Insight will be delivered by RealEC Technologies, a division of Black Knight Financial Services, through the RealEC Loan Quality Gateway. The RealEC Loan Quality Gateway is an open technology platform that provides integration, data management, decisioning support and workflow management through a 24/7 data exchange that connects more than 15,000 of the mortgage industry’s service and solution providers.

Wifredo Ferrer, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, George Piro, special agent in charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, and Drew Breakspear, commissioner, Florida Office of Financial Regulation, announce that Karl Oreste, 56, of Miramar, Fla., pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Robert Scola Jr., to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution. Sentencing has been scheduled for Nov. 14, 2014. At sentencing, Oreste faces a maximum possible statutory sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has signed a bill that addresses attorney/client privilege in title insurance by providing that a title producer who is also an attorney may identify and redact any documents containing privileged materials that are requested by a title insurer in an audit. The bill, SB 2816, was introduced by Sens. Marc Cote, D-Woonsocket/North Smithfield, and Roger Picard, D-Woonsocket/Cumberland.

A Pennsylvania federal court has made landmark conclusions in a contentious battle between a recorder of deeds in Montgomery County, Pa., and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. (MERS), in which the recorder alleged that MERS circumvents the need to record the transfer of the note each time a property is sold, violating state law and unjustly enriching the members-only registry for recording and tracking conveyances of property interests. The court issued a formal declaration that the assignment or transfer of a promissory note secured by a mortgage on real estate is, in Pennsylvania, equivalent to a mortgage assignment, and that MERS’ failure to create and record documents evincing the transfers of promissory notes secured by mortgages on real estate in Pennsylvania “is, was and will in the future be in violation of the Pennsylvania Recording law.”

Karen Strasser Steinke, 65, of Millstadt, Ill., was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment followed by three years supervised release as a result of her convictions for wire fraud in a scheme to defraud clients of Metro East Title, and structuring of financial transactions to avoid currency transaction reporting requirements, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois Stephen Wigginton, announced. Restitution was made in full to the victims prior to the sentencing.

In an unpublished decision issued in June, the Court of Appeals of Utah affirmed a district court’s finding in favor of First American in a case where an investment firm attempted to sell a property containing a strip of land owned by an adjacent property owner to a newly divested portion of its company, which the court ruled was not an insured party.