Scandal enveloped multiple Wall Street megabanks in 2010 when it was discovered that throughout the housing bust and the foreclosure crisis that ensued, the nation’s largest banks were caught robo-signing — the practice of approving foreclosures without verifying mortgage information and fabricating other loan documents. At the time, the banks promised to end the practice and attempted to escape blame by tying the scandal to low-level employees.

In reality, bank managers knew about the potentially illegal and fraudulent practices and in some cases directed them, according to a report by the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other banks, documents were rarely verified, and even when employees raised concerns they were told by management to proceed, the New York Times reports:

At Wells Fargo, now the nation’s largest mortgage servicer and originator, employees told the inspector general’s office that the company’s management had assigned them bogus titles, including “vice president of loan documentation,” even though they had no training in document review. Before becoming vice president, one employee worked at a pizza restaurant. [...]

As at Wells Fargo, employees at JPMorgan Chase took on titles like “vice president of Chase Home” even though “the titles were given by Chase for the sole purpose of allowing individuals to sign documents and came with no other duties or authority.”

There were other indications that management knew about the practices. At Bank of America, employees raised concerns but were told by management to proceed; Wells Fargo squashed a study into foreclosure practices and told the employee conducting the study to continue signing documents without reading or verifying data; and Citigroup management admitted that the bank regularly signed foreclosure documents without verification, even as the bank was telling regulators that internal reviews found its practices to be sound. Despite promises to stop when the scandal broke, banks continued robo-signing for at least another year.

The IG report falls in line with recent accounts provided by former Wall Street employees and whistleblowers. A Bank of America whistleblower last week said the bank had intentionally prevented homeowners from getting federal mortgage help, and a former JPMorgan employee told Reuters in November that exploiting consumers was “the purpose of the banking industry.” An investigation into 400 San Francisco-area foreclosure cases, meanwhile, found that nearly every one of them had potential legal issues.

“I believe the reports we just released will leave the reader asking one question — how could so many people have participated in this misconduct?” HUD Inspector General David Montoya said in a statement. “The answer — simple greed.”

Among Wall Street banks, Wells Fargo has been one of the biggest perpetrators of fraud, deception, and abuse during the housing and foreclosure crisis. The bank has used robo-signers to fraudulently sign foreclosure documents, foreclosed on homeowners who followed the bank’s directions, and illegally foreclosed on military veterans.

Now, Wells Fargo and other banks have found another way to mislead consumers. While trying to sell the properties it holds in foreclosure, Wells Fargo has urged real estate agents not to disclose that such properties are bank-owned, and in other cases, it has used divisions it owns to avoid identifying itself as the owner of foreclosed homes, the Palm Beach Post reports. Under such conditions, would-be homeowners don’t discover that the property is in foreclosure until they place a contract on the house:

It’s a little-known fact that Wells Fargo Bank’s Premier Asset Services division, which sells bank-owned homes, instructs agents who sell these houses to list the owner as “Owner of Record,” and not Wells Fargo. Premier Asset Services also sells homes owned by other banks.

The Multiple Listing Service, which is used by real estate agents to list properties, includes a category for bank-owned property. But here again, agents are told by many banks not to disclose the fact that the property is, in fact, owned by a bank. [...]

If a buyer wishes to put a contract on a bank-owned home, then it will become clear through paperwork the property is a foreclosure, and any defects or repairs can be corrected or reflected in the sales price, Smith said.

Wells Fargo makes such strident efforts to avoid labeling homes as “bank-owned” because there is a “negative connotation” associated with those properties, Tyler Smith, a vice president at Premier Asset Services, said. But as consumer activists told the Post, many home buyers aren’t interested in such properties because bank-owned homes often have “deferred maintenance, hidden defects and a host of problems caused by neglect or vandalism,” as the banks often ignore their foreclosed-upon properties.

Worse yet, Smith acknowledged that the practices were deceptive in nature, but said the bank’s true motivation for misleading customers was to protect local communities. In reality, though, the decision likely boils down to money. “There’s definitely a perception the bank is going to sell the property for a lower price than if it was a regular seller of a home in a neighborhood,” a local real estate attorney told the Post. “The bank wants as much money as it can get because it’s costing (the bank) homeowners association fees and insurance.”

Angry at the Wall Street banks that were at the center of the financial meltdown, Americans have spent the last six months moving their money to credit unions and community banks in unprecedented numbers. More than 650,000 people moved to credit unions in one month last year, and 5.6 million Americans switched banks in the last three months.

Religious organizations have been at the forefront of movements to get consumers to move their money. The New Bottom Line, a coalition of faith groups, pledged to move $1 billion this year, and before Thanksgiving, churches moved $55 million away from Wall Street banks with pledges to remove as much as $100 million more. This week, churches in San Francisco announced they were moving another $10 million, Faith in Public Life reports:

This week, a group of clergy in San Francisco added another $10 million to that total with an Ash Wednesday press conference calling on Wells Fargo to put an immediate freeze on its foreclosures and repent for their misconduct.

Watch a news report about the group’s efforts:

Wells Fargo issued a statement on the protest, saying, “We make every effort to avoid foreclosure.” The bank’s practices, however, tell a different story. Last July, it foreclosed on a family after telling it to skip payments in order to get a loan modification. It was found to have engaged in discriminatory lending practices, investigated for illegal foreclosures on military veterans, and fined for its subprime lending practices.

According to consulting firms, the nation’s 10 biggest banks could lose $185 million in customer deposits because of customer defections.

The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests — as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said — makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession.

While the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did a lot to ensure that a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis won’t occur — through regulation of derivatives, a new consumer protection agency, and new powers for the government to dismantle failing banks — the biggest banks still have a firm grip on the financial system, even more so than before the 2008 financial crisis. Here are eleven facts that you need to know about the nation’s biggest banks:

– Bank profits are highest since before the recession…: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.

– …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

– Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually down from before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.

– Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.

– The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.

– The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: In the 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets. Today, they control 60 percent.

– The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent of the country’s GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assets equal to about 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Now their assets equal 63 percent of GDP.

– The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives: Nearly the entire market in derivatives — the credit instruments that helped blow up some of the nation’s biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG — is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.

– Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth: Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the Great Recession, and total family wealth is still down “$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 — its last peak.”

– Big banks don’t lend to small businesses: The New Rules Project notes that the country’s 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.”

– Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in 2008: According to the New York Attorney General’s office, “nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008.”

In the last few decades, regulations on the biggest banks have been systematically eliminated, while those banks engineered more and more ways to both rip off customers and turn ever-more complex trading instruments into ever-higher profits. It makes perfect sense, then, that a movement calling for an economy that works for everyone would center its efforts on an industry that exemplifies the opposite.

Last week, mega-bank Wells Fargo was slapped with an $85 million fine by the Federal Reserve for strong-arming borrowers who qualified for prime loans into subprime loans. The fine is the largest consumer protection enforcement action ever.

But pushing borrowers (and particularly minorities) into riskier, more expensive loans is hardly the end of Wells Fargo’s ills. As Andrew Cohen laid out in the Atlantic, the bank (which received $25 billion in bailout funds) also foreclosed on a Massachusetts family for failing to make its mortgage payments, after explicitly telling the family that it should skip those payments:

They verbally agreed with their lender, Wells Fargo, to take certain steps toward such a modification. The bank told the Dixons to stop making their payments on the loan (funds that would later be added to the modified loan amount) and to provide loan officers with certain financial information. The Dixons complied and began to work with bank officials.

Eighteen months later, however, instead of modifying the loan, Wells Fargo told the Dixons that they had defaulted upon their payment obligations — because they hadn’t made their monthly payments. The bank told the family it intended to foreclose upon their house. The notice from Wells Fargo, which arrived 17 days before Christmas 2010, gave the family roughly 30 days notice.

This is not an isolated problem, and it arises principally because banks are allowed to “dual-track” borrowers, which means they can proceed with foreclosure proceedings even while examining whether a family is eligible for a mortgage modification. Bank employees, confused over the modification process, tell families to stop mortgage payments in order to qualify for a modification, and then the bank promptly forecloses.

At the moment, 20 percent of mortgages in the nation are underwater, meaning that the borrower owes more on the mortgage than the house is worth. Foreclosures will likely top 1 million, this year, and mortgage abuses, including robo-signing, are still ongoing. With all that, doing away with dual-tracking would do a world of good.