So far, the government has only cited incomplete documents, an explanation that has done little to quiet the outrage at home and abroad.
Michelle Kersch, a senior vice president for Lender Processing Services, said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday that the names were just "placeholders". "Unfortunately, on occasion, incomplete documents were inadvertently recorded before the missing information was obtained," she said.
The incomplete documents poured into county offices.
Items submitted after this date or incomplete documents will not be accepted or considered for payment.
Janice Fetsch, head of compliance for Smith Barney and its fleet of stockbrokers, also warns people never to sign blank or even incomplete documents.
"Based on the incomplete" documents that KPMG has provided, Mr. Halpert wrote, the I.R.S. has already identified hundreds of people and businesses who used 11 KPMG shelters.
Furthermore, Pan's design framework provides services that degrade gracefully in the presence of malformed documents, incomplete documents, and inconsistent information.
But there have been other instances in recent years in which lawyers have been accused of submitting false, inaccurate or incomplete documents in foreclosure-related proceedings so as to churn through cases and collect fees.
The S.E.C. complaint against Mutuals.com said the company made illegal trades after the 4 p.m. market close by filing incomplete documents; misrepresented the identities of customer accounts, including hedge funds; and formed two brokerage firms through which it arranged undetected short-term trades, known as market timing.
While GMAC is the first big lender to publicly acknowledge that its practices might have been improper, defense lawyers and consumer advocates have long argued that numerous lenders have used inaccurate or incomplete documents to remove delinquent owners from their houses.
