The article is too long to post here; but the gist of it is that many  consumers are being defrauded & the villains are sham llcs.

Some of the people they interviewed for the article signed up for what they thought was a refinance to get them out of the financial hole they were in- what they actually signed was a deed for nominal consideration to an LLC & naturally enough, their o/s mortgage obligations were never taken care of leading to complete financial ruin.   I do feel terrible for those people - most of them were elderly & unaware of how the entire process worked &  just how much equity they were sitting on.  The younger people, though, would have benefited from some caution and attorney representation,    What I found interesting though was the number of forged signatures on deeds.  One woman had moved out of her brownstone & then discovered that her name had been forged to a deed to an LLC

The LLCs, though, are the real problem according to the article- because there's no way to find the true owners to bring a suit against them.  It's all a shell game.  Apparently the state of NY is now starting to require that LLCs register the real owners - for tax purposes; but it seems that it's just a drop in the bucket. 

My question about the whole thing is what happens after someone discovers a sham conveyance.  What kind of recourse would there be.  Some of the comments in the article blamed the Registry system as antiquated & unable to reach property owners so as to let them know a conveyance had been made- but I am pretty sure that is beyond the scope of what the Registry does anyway.