A bit of good news for a change for some of the victims of wrongful foreclosures:

Some 96,000 borrowers who received checks to compensate them for wrongful foreclosures on their mortgages will be getting an additional check to correct for errors in the initial payment, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday.

The Fed said the affected borrowers received initial compensation amounts that were too low because of errors made by Rust Consulting, the company handling the payments.

The new checks will make up the difference between the amounts that should have been paid and the lower amount paid by Rust. Borrowers are being told to cash both the original check and the new checks, which will be mailed around May 17. The borrowers affected had loans serviced by former subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

About 96,000 of the 217,000 checks that were mailed to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley borrowers had incorrect amounts, according to the Fed.

The payments were part of a settlement reached with the government by 13 of the nation's largest banks in January of this year. The banks agreed to pay a total of $9.3 billion in cash and mortgage balance reductions to borrowers who either lost their homes or were at risk of foreclosure.

Banks settled complaints from regulators that they had wrongfully foreclosed on borrowers through "robo-signing," automatically signing off on foreclosures without properly reviewing documents.

The settlement covers borrowers whose homes were in various stages of the foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010.

The Fed said that borrowers with questions should call Rust at 1-888-952-9105 to confirm eligibility, update their contact information or get answers to other questions.

Short sales end with the homeowner out of the home. This is the most common "penalty" on banks in the mortgage settlement.

Bloomberg News:

While the banks are stepping up efforts to help borrowers stay in their homes, they are still spending most of the settlement on short sales and forgiveness of home-equity loans that allow them to take bad loans off their books. Profits from new lending are increasing even as regulators enforce penalties for modification missteps and foreclosures pursued with fraudulent or missing documents. Last year, mortgage revenue at the four largest lenders -- Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and U.S. Bancorp --surpassed the amount they spent on consumer settlements and investor demands they buy back faulty loans.

“The banks have shown a knack for sidestepping government attempts to have them redress their role in the foreclosure crisis and keep people in their homes,” said Arthur Wilmarth, a law professor at George Washington University in the nation’s capital. “A lot of these efforts end up helping the banks, not the homeowners.”

Lets recap: The Big Banks pay a small (Small in Banker dollars, anyways) "penalty" *cough* to the DOJ for fraudulent foreclosure practices, and agree to review their own foreclosures and decide which homeowners will receive aid from the "penalty" funds paid to the DOJ that are allotted to homeowner aid. Then typically, the Banks are going to punish the homeowner with a short sale of their home that A) Results in the homeowner losing their home, and destroys their credit. B)Helps the Bank complete their obligation to the DOJ. and C)Allows the Bank further forgiveness by erasing home equity loans from their books.

The Big Banks have struck a Trifecta with Eric Holder's Department of in-Justice. For troubled homeowners, there is homelessness and despair, and just a small glimmer of hope.