News related to Mortgage and Foreclosure Fraud

2012

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Article  (Recent Additions)

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7/30/10 NEWEST FORECLOSURE FRAUD AND LIES- CITIGROUP

SHOULD OUR JUDGES CONTINUE TO GRANT FORECLOSURES AND REWARD THE IMPROPER BEHAVIORS OF THOSE THAT CAUSED THE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE?

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog We are all acutely aware by now that the entire subprime mortgage industry and the resulting collapse was a direct result of lies and fraud being committed by most of the players who are now throwing themselves into our local courts and demanding that our courts churn out foreclosures as fast as they can.  (Get ready for a very big case of, “be careful what you ask for” because once the courts get cranked up to start churning all these foreclosures out, the banks are not going to like the end product…they’re soon going to be screaming to stop all the rocket dockets, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog.)
7/29/10** Mass Extinction of Pools Becomes Clearer Lane Houk

In other words, if you have a high quality loan wherein you have a high credit score and received relatively good terms, it was in the “senior tranches.” The senior tranches were paid and closed. They were paid from the meager proceeds of the junior tranches, from insurance, credit default swaps etc. Bottom Line: If you got one of those mortgages, it has almost certainly been paid in full. So why are they still collecting your payments? Because they can.  Your obligation has most likely been satisfied long ago without any rights of subrogation. If you are in foreclosure now with one of these loans, the “Trustee” is in actuality out of the picture because the “Trust” was closed out (IF IT EVER LEGALLY EXISTED).  All of this leads to the politically incorrect conclusion that people gt their houses for “nothing.” But that is not true.  ALL THE MONEY THAT WAS OWED ON THAT LOAN HAS BEEN PAID. WHY SHOULD ANYONE COLLECT ANYTHING FURTHER?

7/29/10**

Press Release

SEC Charges Citigroup and Two Executives for Misleading Investors About Exposure to Subprime Mortgage Assets Citigroup Agrees to Pay $75 Million Penalty SEC.gov The SEC alleges that in response to intense investor interest on the topic, Citigroup repeatedly made misleading statements in earnings calls and public filings about the extent of its holdings of assets backed by subprime mortgages. Between July and mid-October 2007, Citigroup represented that subprime exposure in its investment banking unit was $13 billion or less, when in fact it was more than $50 billion.
7/29/10 Fiserv Predicts Home Prices to Drop Another 4.9% in Year Ahead Carrie Bay - DSnews Despite recent increases in a number of the industry’s home price measurements, and even an uptick in the company’s own index of residential property prices, Fiserv Inc. says the gains will be short-lived. The Wisconsin-based information technology firm is forecasting home prices to fall by nearly 5 percent more over the next 12 months.
7/29/10

Citi Charged with Misleading Investors about Subprime Exposure Carrie Bay - DSnews The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday charged Citigroup Inc. with misleading investors about the company’s exposure to subprime mortgage-related assets.

Citigroup represented that subprime exposure in its investment banking unit was $13 billion or less, when in fact it was more than $50 billion.

7/29/10** The Banks, The Trusts, The Servicers, They’re All Lying (Again) (and Again) (and Again) Attorney Matt Weidner Blog The foreclosure crisis and the economic meltdown were not caused by unsophisticated homeowners who borrowed more than they can afford and who want to live in a home for free….this crisis was far too grand for that.

The crisis was a direct result of devious financial gamesmanship and outright fraud being committed by the highest levels of national and international finance. The Wall Street Fat Cats caused the collapse then they got bailed out with our money.  The lies continue as they accept payments to “review” loans for modifications that they rarely give (although they do get paid for reviewing them).

7/28/10

Three Ex-GE Bankers Indicted as U.S. Probe Broadens William Selway and Martin Z. Braun

Bloomberg

Three former bankers with a General Electric Co. unit that sold investment contracts to state and local governments were indicted for conspiring to profit at taxpayers’ expense by rigging bids, showing the broadening scope of a Justice Department investigation of municipal finance.
7/28/10

Fight The Mortgage Servicers Who Bring These Foreclosure Actions

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Concealing the identity of the real party in interest allows those who made bad decisions to shirk their responsibility in the litigation, a fact that is more important when their conduct could very well make them complicit in creating the situation that led to the litigation.  On a very practical level, litigation pursued by servicers probably prohibits effective settlement or mediation discussions because they lack the risk of loss that forces effective resolutions. 
7/27/10

BOMBSHELL- CLASS ACTION OPEN FOR EVERY CONSUMER WHO HAS BEEN SUED BY DAVID J. STERN

Stern-Class-Action Complaint

(Hopefully, more cases like this will be filed against other Foreclosure Mills.)

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog The lawsuit is stunning both in the allegations made and the detail that describes the collapse of the entire American financial markets and widespread the destruction of property rights across this country.

More will be detailed about this lawsuit in months to come.   For now, I encourage everyone to read this lawsuit carefully and share this lawsuit with judges, reporters and policy makers. 

7/27/10** New York Superintendent of Banks Calls for More Servicer Supervision Amilda Dymi

Mortgage Servicing News

He warned the industry "cannot rely solely on servicers and hotlines to address the growing needs and concerns of borrowers-whether it's homeowners that have just applied to the program or those whose trial periods have ended."

In fact despite efforts to assist them, hundreds of thousands of homeowners may be left worse off after they qualify for a trial HAMP but fail to qualify for a permanent modification.

Neiman sees "the ever-increasing number of homeowners being pushed out of HAMP" as a reason to raise "serious questions" about whether servicers are properly processing these loans or "continue to be plagued by the same documentation mistakes" seen in the past.

7/26/10 Lenders Working Hard to "Avoid" Mortgage Modifications. Attorney Matt Weidner Blog The reports from the federal government regarding the number of homeowners that have obtained permanent mortgage modifications under the HAMP program show once again how hopeless it is to rely upon government programs to resolve the mortgage crisis.  Clients and advocates continue to ask me, “Why won’t the lender work with me on a modification?” I believe the answer is both simple and complex.
7/25/10 Gretchen “Gets It” but misses the mark

“If Wall Street’s profits went up as the quality of mortgages went down, isn’t the obvious incentive to create increasingly bad paper?”

Deutsche Bank also named.

Gretchen Morgenson - NY Times with comments by Neil Garfield

As investigators delve deeper into the mortgage mess, they are finding in too many cases that Wall Street firms did nothing when they learned about problem loans or improprieties in lending. Rather than stopping practices of profligate originators like New Century, Fremont and Ameriquest, Wall Street financiers, which held the purse strings for these companies, apparently decided to simply look the other way.
7/25/10 Who’s To Blame When Mortgages Aren’t Modified or Short Sales Are Not Approved? No one Knows? Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Why are we allowing billions of dollars in property and capital be transferred by judicial process to corporations that cannot be identified and who engaged in fraud and potentially criminal acts?
7/24/10**

Are Circuit Courts Complicit in The Latest Wall Street Con Games?

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog I have been screaming for months now that the lenders, servicers and shadowy entities that are pushing foreclosures through are engaging in more fraud that threatens to destabilize our economy and further damage American’s already shaky trust in government and institutions.
7/24/10**

Foreclosure defense – finding reputable attorneys amidst a sea of lawyers

Stopa Law Blog How can the average homeowner tell the difference between an experienced attorney, who is likely to help, and a “johnny come lately” who is not? 
7/24/10** When Denying Loan Modifications, Mortgage Servicers Often Wrongly Blame Investors PROBULICA Arthur and Alberta Bailey are about to lose their home near New Orleans, and their mortgage company says one thing stands in the way of relief: The investors who own their mortgage won’t allow any modifications.
7/24/10

Are Circuit Courts Complicit in The Latest Wall Street Con Games?

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Judges all across this state are granting billions of dollars in foreclosure judgments, but they have absolutely no idea who they are granting these judgments to.
7/24/10

South Florida foreclosure mill lawyer sued over steep drop in stock price

Susan Taylor Martin

Tampa Bay Times

Specifically, the suit states, Stern and DJSP were slow to disclose a "substantial decrease'' in foreclosure cases referred to Stern's firm by one of its bank clients in April and May.
7/23/10**

Mortgage Securities Big Problem for the Fed

Neil Garfield J.D. The real reason the government can’t sell these securities is that nobody will pay for them. Any due diligence down to the loan level will reveal that the loans were never subject to legally required execution, delivery and recording of transfer or assignment documents, together with indorsements etc. In some cases, this is correctable — at considerable legal expense. In most cases, they are not correctable. 

The bottom line is really simple: the obligation was created, the note was extinguished, and the security instrument became unenforceable, and separated from the note. The illusion that it is otherwise is what is keeping us in stagnation, preventing a solution.

7/23/10**

OUT-[RAGE]-OUS!

17 Bailed-Out Banks Stealing Homes Overpaid Executives $1.6 Billion 

Associated Press Kenneth Feinberg said 17 banks receiving taxpayer money from the $700 billion financial bailout made "ill-advised" payments to their executives. But he stopped short of calling them "contrary to the public interest" — language that would have signaled a fight to get the money back.

The Obama administration's pay czar said Friday that he did not try to recoup $1.6 billion in lavish compensation to top executives at bailed-out banks because he thought shaming the banks was punishment enough.

Instead of receiving prison sentences, Bank executives responsible for stealing millions of homes and creating the foreclosure/financial crisis received  $1.6 billion in overpaid bonuses. MSF

7/23/10

Deutsche Bank Fined $7.5M for Concealing Subprime Delinquencies

Carrie Bay - DSnews The independent securities regulator found that Deutsche Bank, with its U.S. headquarters in New York, misstated and underreported the percentages of mortgages that were delinquent in the prospectus supplements of six subprime residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) issued in 2006, worth approximately $2.2 billion.
7/22/10**

TRICKED, CONNED, SCAMMED- ANOTHER HOMEOWNER’S HOME SOLD WHILE IN ACTIVE NEGOTIATIONS WITH LENDER

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Actually it probably happens hundreds, perhaps thousands of times a week across the state.  A hapless but hopeful homeowner is working with his lender (or someone he thinks is his lender), thinking that he is on the verge of a mortgage modification, when behind the scenes, the lender has convinced a judge to grant foreclosure and the home is sold.  

elliott v. aurora

7/22/10**

CAPACITY IS A FORECLOSURE CASE KILLER!- OCC LETTER: TRUSTS NOT EXEMPT FROM STATE LAWS

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog There is a growing body of evidence that stands for the proposition that the banks and shadowy trust companies sweeping across our nation to take homes are not in fact exempt from state banking and business regulation.  I have posted the Cuomo and Watters Supreme Court cases, but this post contains a very interesting letter from the Office of Comptroller and Currency which makes an even more compelling presentation of the facts and should be included in your pleadings.
7/22/10 The Banks Win, We All Give Up, You Can Have The Keys To The Courthouse Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Forget about the abuse of court process, the fraud, the mistakes the faulty titles that this mess of a foreclosure crisis has dumped in our courtrooms….just think about the very real and practical impact of all this faulty inventory flooding the real estate marketplace.
7/21/10** Non-Securitization Effect on Title Neil Garfield-LivingLies A Wild Deed in simplistic terms is a Deed from someone who is not already in the title chain. The mere filing of self-serving documents as the pretender lenders have done, is a nullity. Any act proceeding from a nullity is also a nullity including the foreclosure and the deed that was issued is a nullity. This is because of the alleged auction sale in which the alleged creditor made a credit bid, was outside of the chain of title. What chain of title? Of course the one in the public records of the county in which the property is located. Add to that the fact that the party who made the credit bid was not a creditor and you can see how messy this venture is getting. The illusion of finality of foreclosure is creating a very expensive nightmare.
7/21/10

California Court Rules: MERS Can’t Foreclose, Citibank Can’t Collect

“Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is VOID under California Law.”

Timothy McCandless Esq “Since no evidence of MERS’ ownership of the underlying note has been offered, and other courts have concluded that MERS does not own the underlying notes, this court is convinced that MERS had no interest it could transfer to Citibank. Since MERS did not own the underlying note, it could not transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to another. Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law.”
7/21/10 BANKS TELL HOMEOWNERS THEY OWN THE NOTES…THEN TELL INVESTORS THEY DO NOT Foreclosureblues Mortgage Servicers feverishly fabricate documents and assignments purported to show that they ‘own the notes’ in order to foreclose, and claim that they do not ‘own the notes’ when investors in the bonds that are supposed to receive payment for the ‘notes’ want to recoup losses due to the fraud. What a circus.
7/21/10** Fannie Mae Execs Were Showered With Countrywide VIP Loans

In 1998, Countrywide sold $25.6 billion in loans to Fannie and $17.7 billion to Freddie. By 1999, the figures were $30.8 billion to $11.2 billion in Fannie’s favor.

4closureFraud In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency – the government agency that regulates Fannie Mae and a smaller competitor, Freddie Mac – Issa said Countrywide’s 153 loans to 37 Fannie employees were part of a attempt to vastly expand business with Fannie to the detriment of Freddie.
7/20/10**

FORECLOSURE FAILS: THE CASE TO FOLLOW IN FLORIDA

SOVEREIGN BANK, v. FLORIDA DEFAULT LAW GROUP

4closureFraud

&

Foreclosure Hamlet

Defendants  compounded  their errors and  failed  to  timely and properly advise Plaintiff of the steps  to take  to reclaim the excess  funds.  Instead,  the Brandts,  the parties  in default,  petitioned  for and received  the $376,200.50  in excess funds… And you know what? The homeowners took the money and ran… HAHAHAHA!
7/20/10 Family Averts Foreclosure & Plants a Cherry Blossom Jorge Newbery

Read Mike Dillon's comments

Reuters’ financial blogger Felix Salmon publicized the Bakers’ plight, scolding Litton Loan and their parent Goldman Sachs for opting to lose money by foreclosing and evicting the family rather than recovering more by approving AHP’s offer.  As a result of the publicity, Litton postponed the sheriff’s sale, approved AHP’s offer and the short sale was completed last week.
7/20/10

Trial in a foreclosure case – my thoughts the day after

If you’re facing foreclosure, don’t give up!

Stopa Law Blog If you fight, and defend your foreclosure case, you give yourself leverage to settle.  If you give up, you lose all leverage, enabling the bank to foreclose without opposition.  Admittedly, defending your foreclosure case does not guarantee a settlement, but at least you give yourself a chance. 
7/20/10

BANK OF SCAMERICA :

– CONFISCATING HOMES THEY DON’T OWN

– BOFA ATTEMPTS FORECLOSURE ON CURRENT LOAN THEY DO NOT OWN

NATHAN HALVERSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Many links to other stories about Bank of America stealing homes they do not own, from people who are current with their payments, and even stealing the wrong house.

WE DEMAND PRISON SENTENCES... NOT FINES.

7/20/10

Deputies serving an eviction notice were met with gunfire and explosives

Two bodies discovered

kolotv.com Records show that the house was sold on July 1st of this year. The neighbor said they knew Christenson was working through some type of foreclosure issue.
7/19/10

Low-Key Judge Raises the Roof With Foreclosure Rulings

Among his rulings: canceling a $292,500 mortgage because of what the judge called 'unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious' conduct by the bank during mandatory loan-modification negotiations

Mark Fass 

New York Law Journal

Judge Spinner habitually refers to the attorneys who appear before him as "nice," "reasonable" and even "wonderful" people. But the 12-year veteran of the Suffolk bench has also issued three foreclosure decisions over the past eight months that have made him the darling of the tabloids and the Internet for, as the New York Post put it, sticking it to "ruthless bankers."

Now that Spinner has gained the lenders' attention, Ullman said, banks no longer entrust cases before him to junior associates: The possibility of losing, and losing big, has become too real. "The banks are scared to death of Judge Spinner," Ullman said

7/19/10 Loan modification are scamming desperate mortgage holders allnews365 It is important to note that the Banks are also making promises that cannot be kept; make representations that your home will be saved, or that they will lower your monthly mortgage payment. MSF has heard from homeowners where the Bank's so-called modification actually raised their monthly payment amount or created a new loan. 
7/19/10

Banks Fighting Subpoenas From FHFA Over Access to Loan Files

Neil says: every day that goes by is another day working in favor of those who stick it out and fight for what is right.

DO NOT GIVE UP!

LivingLies

The battle being waged by bondholders over access to the loan files underlying their investments was brought into the national spotlight earlier this week, when the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator in charge of overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, issued 64 subpoenas seeking documents related to the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in which Freddie and Fannie had invested.
7/18/10

Who benefits from foreclosure?

 

When I see judges (some, not all) doing everything possible to “push through” foreclosure cases – often on behalf of a plaintiff nobody can identify – I often wonder:

Who do you think you’re helping, judge?

Stopa Law Blog Many times, the plaintiff filing the mortgage foreclosure lawsuit is not a Florida corporation (which are required to be registered on the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations, and can be found at www.sunbiz.org), a foreign corporation, or a national banking association.  Often, the plaintiff seeking foreclosure of our neighbor’s home is not an entity that exists in a way that the laws of the State of Florida require.  In these cases, the plaintiff lacks the capacity to sue and the Complaint should be dismissed, as one Florida judge recently ruled in this Order granting the Motion to Dismiss
7/18/10

Foreclosures bring wealth, rebukes for Florida lawyer

Susan Taylor Martin, 

Tampa Bay Times

Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper was outraged.

"The purported assignment was … fraudulently backdated in a purposeful, intentional effort to mislead the defendant and this court,'' Tepper said in dismissing the case with prejudice — meaning the bank cannot file the case again.

7/17/10

 

The MERS Mortgage Twilight Zone- Judges Not Afraid to Do What’s Right Attorney Matt Weidner Blog New York trial court judges Arthur Schack and Jeffrey Spinner have received international attention for their courageous opinions denying foreclosure to banks when the banks present absurd foreclosure cases in front of them and demand judgment.

The point is that opinions like the ones they get attention for could be written by every single circuit court judge in this state if judges would take a deep breath, step back from their courtrooms, and really think about what they are doing.

7/17/10**

Oregon Homeowner Fed up with Mortgage Servicer: Fix it or Foreclose

Denise Richardson

give me back my credit.com

I'm not making one more phone call.    
I'm not sending one more fax.  
I'm not asking for another modification.   
I'm not asking again if the auction is canceled.   
I'm not asking again for someone to explain where those numbers came from. 

For the last 10 months I have had nothing but fight after fight with Nationpoint.

Forced insurance is a common 'trap', a way to jack up payments.  The cost can be hundreds of dollars a month.  They simply claim they are protecting the investor.

 

7/16/10

 

It Will Make Your Blood Boil:

Too Big To Hurt – Goldman Sachs Shakes Off SEC Fine

You can accurately describe this settlement as the largest fine in SEC history and “a steal” for Goldman Sachs, said Michael Driscoll, a former senior managing director at Bear Stearns.

David Dayen

FDL

     THIS IS WHY MINISCULE FINES        DO NOT WORK.  

MUCH LARGER FINES AND PRISON WILL.

Goldman Sachs agreed to a $550 million dollar fine from the SEC yesterday in a civil suit over a package of mortgage-backed securities designed by a hedge fund which was shorting the housing market. It’s both the largest SEC fine against a financial company in history and nothing more than a bug to Goldman Sachs. Because their market capitalization increased by $2 billion once the Street found out about the settlement. So even yesterday, even with this fine, Goldman made money.

7/16/10 California Court Rules: MERS Can’t Foreclose, Citibank Can’t Collect Mandelman Matters “Since no evidence of MERS’ ownership of the underlying note has been offered, and other courts have concluded that MERS does not own the underlying notes, this court is convinced that MERS had no interest it could transfer to Citibank. Since MERS did not own the underlying note, it could not transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to another. Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law.”
7/16/10

A.I.G. to Pay $725 Million in Ohio Case  MICHAEL POWELLandMARY WILLIAMS WALSH  NY Times The American International Group, once the nation’s largest insurance group before it nearly collapsed in 2008, has agreed to pay $725 million to three Ohio pension funds to settle six-year-old claims of accounting fraud, stock manipulation and bid-rigging.
7/16/10 Yellow-dots-of-mystery on your original “Promissory Note and Mortgage” Mario Kenney The information here shows the manner in which promissory notes and mortgages are photocopied and presented to the court as an original.  Photocopies are not recognized by the Uniform Commercial Code.
7/16/10

Massive Fraud Nets Goldman Sachs a Petty Slap on The Wrist instead of paying back ALL the money it stole.

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Goldman Sachs engaged in massive fraud when it packaged many of the mortgages now being foreclosed on by entities like Deutsche Bank.  Homeowners continue to be victims of this fraud, while  one of the chief players in the fraud, Goldman Sachs, walks away from its financial crimes with a petty fine. 
7/15/10

Manhattan banker sentenced to 12 years for nearly $300 million fraud Monika Plocienniczakan, Evan Buxbaum,

CNN

Nemazee admitted before Judge Stein that he duped Bank of America, Citibank and HSBC out of $292 million in deceitful loans from 1998 to 2009 "to finance his posh life and create a reputation as a political kingmaker," United States Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
7/15/10**

Applying for a loan modification does NOT mean you can ignore your lawsuit!

Stopa Law Blog One of the frauds that I see banks commit on a daily basis is when they tell homeowners – “Don’t worry about that foreclosure suit we just filed; we are evaluating your loan modification.”
7/15/10

Banks repossess US homes at record pace

Lynn Adler -Reuters Banks took control of 269,962 properties in the second quarter, up 5 percent from the prior quarter and a 38 percent spike from the second quarter of last year. Repossessions will likely top 1 million this year.
7/14/10

Follow-up on Disqualification of Counsel – Certiorari Petition

 

Denial of Motion to DQ – Cert Petition

Stopa Law Blog The Petition also contains numerous real-world arguments on why this is a big issue in the Florida court system and why the Second District should stop allowing the systemic fraud being perpetuated by banks in cases throughout our courts.
7/13/10

 

Wells Fargo Charged With Fraud In Mortgage Morass

Alex Gabor

Seattle Real Estate Examiner

The complaint alleges that Wells Fargo, their Directors, Officers and Major Institutional Stockholders including Goldman Sachs knew or should have known that billions of dollars in first and second mortgages originated, packaged and sold as securities by Wells contained false financial information provided by real estate brokers. mortgage brokers and borrowers, making it impossible for the borrowers to pay back the loans or to be qualified to even make the monthly payments without refinancing over and over during a 30 year period that falsely inflated the cost of housing in the United States and the world over as a result, causing serious economic damage to hundreds of millions
7/13/10 Bank of America Admits to 'Dollar Rolling' $10 Billion in Debt

Corporate Counsel

law.com

Bank of America said its actions were not "from any intentional misstatement" and were not related to "any fraud or deliberate error."  (Bank of America's "intentional misstatements, fraud and deliberate errors" were used to steal homes. MSF)

Bank of America admitted it wrongly classified the moves as "sales" when they were really a form of secured borrowing. Critics have said it was an effort by the bank to hide the extent of its investments in risky mortgage securities.

7/13/10 SHORT SALES, FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS AND SELLER/REALTOR SHORT SALE LIABILITY Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Short sales still present massive liability for all parties and it is absolutely critical that sellers and all agents involved in these transactions obtain the advice of an experienced foreclosure defense attorney.  Review my blog and contact me directly for more information about this important issue.
7/13/10 Foreclosures Are A Slow Speed Catastrophe Our Courts Are Allowing To Continue Attorney Matt Weidner Blog THE BURDEN TO PROPERLY PREPARE AND PRESENT A FORECLOSURE CASE MUST BE PLACED SOLELY ON THE PLAINTIFF - AND NO DEFENDANT OR COURT SHOULD LIFT A FINGER UNTIL THAT FILE IS PROPERLY PREPARED WITH ALL FACTS AND EVIDENCE IN ORDER AND READY TO GO.
7/12/10

NY Judge Orders Discovery — AMBAC V EMC MORTGAGE

Now that these venerable institutions have turned into ankle-biter’s, their claims to compel production and other forms of discovery are being heard by the same judges that turn down similar claims from borrowers. 

livinglies

In this case AMBAC is suing EMC MORTGAGE alleging that EMC caused loans to be originated without regard to the ability of the borrower to repay the loan. Many of the loans consisted of transactions in which the borrower was known not to have the capability of even making the first payment.  In other cases, as we know, the loans were “qualified” simply on the ability of the borrower to make the first payment, which was substantially reduced by allowing the borrower to pay less than the accrued interest and not of the principal. AMBAC is therefore making the same claims as borrowers and investors.

7/12/10

MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT DENIED- Affidavits in Support of Summary Judgment are Hearsay!

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Judges in Pinellas County have recognized for some time that the Affidavits in Support of Summary Judgment do not form the basis for Summary Judgment in the majority of foreclosure cases.  Now judges from across the state picking up on this.  The laws are the same across the state; we need to be fighting for uniform correct interpretation of these laws.  Palm Beach County has been a tough environment for borrowers and homeowner defense, but the tide is turning even in that county, as evidenced from the attached transcript.
7/11/10

Homeowners Scared the Heck Out of Fannie Mae

 

Mandelman Matters Now that I finally decide to take matters into my own hands, in the best interests of me and my family, now you’re going to try to punish me, you worthless piece of trash, how dare you?  Go to hell, Terrence Edwards.  You’re an insolent punk for saying what you said, for trying to scare homeowners who are trying to survive this inconceivable catastrophe that you and yours created.  You’re an empty suit hiding behind some overpaid government job, nothing more.
7/10/10

KABOOMJPMORGAN CHASE, CREDIT SUISSE, BANK OF AMERICA, BARCLAYS, CITIGROUP, COUNTRYWIDE, DEUTSCHE BANK, GOLDMAN SACHS, MERRILL LYNCH, MORGAN STANLEY, UBS ET AL SUED FOR FRAUD   4closureFraud.org HOW CAN SUMMARY JUDGMENT BE GRANTED IN ANY FORECLOSURE CASE WITH ALL THAT IS NOW KNOWN?

FRAUD ON THE BORROWERS. FRAUD ON THE INVESTORS. AND NOW FRAUD ON THE COURTS!!!

7/10/10

FAIR GAME:

Mortgage Investors Turn to State Courts for Relief

GRETCHEN MORGENSON

NY Times

INVESTORS who lost billions on boatloads of faulty mortgage securities have had a hard time holding Wall Street accountable for selling the things in the first place.
7/9/10

INDYMAC IS A FAILED CORPORATION- THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE IN LITIGATION!

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog

Fight to understand who really benefits if an elected circuit court judge throws their neighbor out on the streets. (Fat Cat Wall Street Bankers and foreign investors like Deutsche Bank)

Fight to uncover, expose and disclose who the real owners and beneficiaries of foreclosure litigation are…don’t let them hide behind servicers or straw-man litigants….make them come forward and fully disclose their claims.
7/8/10

Extra Help Hired to Help Courts Push Homeowners out of their Homes 

 

Palm Beach County had just 3,049 foreclosures in 2005. 

Records show that shot up to 30,227 last year.

Kimberly Miller

Palm Beach Post

"The whole issue of lenders' rights in foreclosure when there are questions of ownership of the note or where there is a securitized trust involved are really complex," Steele said. "It may take some time for these judges to get up to speed with that."

But until the judges get up to speed, the Courts are going to continue kicking tens of thousands of people out of their homes, without determining first if it lawful to do so or not.  

What sort of backlog will we see when more than 90% of these cases MUST be reversed? MSF

7/8/10

Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are the Rich

DAVID STREITFELD

New York Times

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. 

7/7/10 Wells Fargo adds to job losses by shutting 25 Financial outlets in Washington

Puget Sound Business Journal

Wells Fargo said 2,800 jobs will be cut nationally within two months and 1,000 more will be cut in a year. It was unknown how many jobs will be lost in Washington state.
7/7/10 Suicide victim at fire scene faced foreclosure Nicholas C. Stern

The Frederick News-Post

Frederick investigators are considering whether the possibility of foreclosure may have influenced the actions of a Frederick County man who shot and killed himself after setting his home and barn on fire.
7/7/10**

2009 MORTGAGE ASSIGNMENTS – OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS OF ASSETS TRANSFERRED

 

Two systems of justice:

 one for Wall Street and one for Main Street, 

  means no justice at all.

Attorney Lynn Szymoniak 

Fraud Digest

Most of these Assignments, of course, were not actually made in 2009.  Trusts and trustees did not rush to acquire over a trillion dollars in sub-prime mortgages in 2009.  The vast majority of these assignments were made solely for the purpose of “facilitating” foreclosures.

Each day, courts, regulators and law enforcement refuse to act on the issue of fraudulent Mortgage Assignments.  By failing to act, they choose to protect the interests of Wall Street securitizers, hedge funds, Deutsche Bank (and other foreign banks), CDO sellers and purchasers, especially Goldman Sachs and investors, particularly Chinese traders.

If homeowners had committed the equivalent crime and filed millions of fraudulent “Satisfaction of Mortgage” documents, the courts and prisons would be filled with defendants. 

7/7/10**

Fraudulent Foreclosure Affidavits on a Massive Scale

Mike 

Florida Foreclosure Fraud Weblog

Every letter on every affidavit, whether typed or signed, fell in exactly the same place on each sheet of paper – except the notary stamp. What does this mean? The affidavits aren’t affidavits at all – they’re computer-generated images that some foolish notary has been stamping her seal on. Knowing the volume of legal ads run by this paper, they’re probably generating hundreds of them for every issue.
7/7/10

MERS sued on fraud charges

Nevada law firm says Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems deprives counties of fees.

Gregg MacDonald 

            Fairfax Times

"They tout themselves as being a recording-fee avoidance scheme," said attorney Robert R. Hager of Nevada law firm Hager & Hearne, which has filed the suits against MERS.
7/7/10

Foreclosure Cases

Ice Legal firm claims judge treats them with hostility

DBR Lawyer Thomas Ice says in 25 years of practice he has never asked that a judge be disqualified from one of his cases — until Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Meenu Sasser was appointed to the bench. 


Sasser was assigned to preside over all foreclosure cases in Palm Beach Circuit in June of last year, after Gov. Charlie Crist appointed her to the bench in April. Since then, Ice has filed more than 100 motions to disqualify Judge Sasser from cases involving his six-lawyer firm.

Financial Crisis Commission Hearing UPDATES: Bear Stearns, SEC Officials Grilled

Why would you think that a business model based on "extraordinary leverage" and overnight funding would be sustainable through any type of "market disruption"?

It was "part of the investment banking model for many, many years," replied former Bear COO and CFO Samuel Molinaro.

Huff Post Angelides countered with the fact that Bear relied on some $50 to $60 billion in oversight funding -- money that could easily be pulled (which it eventually was). In 2007, Angelides noted, the firm held Level 3 assets -- those assets that are illiquid, meaning they have no ready discernible value -- in excess of triple (269 percent) the firm's tangible common equity. During any time of significant market disruption, Angelides said, the firm could be in trouble.
7/3/10 Foreclosure Rocket Dockets in FL are NOT the Answer – What Can Be Done and What Has Been Done RE: A State Wide Moratorium on Foreclosures 4closureFraud WITH ALL WE KNOW, WITH ALL THE COURTS NOW KNOW, WITH ALL THE FRAUDS PRESENTED, WITH ALL OF THE INVESTIGATIONS STARTED, HOW CAN THE JUDGES OF THIS STATE GRANT SUMMARY JUDGMENTS AT ALL???
7/3/10 The BP Oil Spill and Foreclosures in Florida- Conspiracies, Failures and Incompetence Matt Weidner Blog I am in the middle of researching the surprisingly high number of foreclosure cases that were filed in 2008 and 2009  and did not proceed.  Many of these cases were not defended in any way.  Judges and some parties believe that the homeowners are in modification, but in the majority of cases I’ve found, no modification or deal is in place.    The homeowner continues to live in the home with no payment and no communication from any debt collector, whether phantom or real.  Did the law firm or party that filed the case ever have any business filing that case?
7/2/10

Home Prices Could Fall Another 50%

Peter Gorenstein - Yahoo! Finance Using the S&P/Case-Shiller index as his guide, Suttmeier suggests homes across the country could lose half their value.  “If it gets back, like stocks, back to the 1999-2000 levels, that’s another 50% down in home prices,” he says.
7/2/10**

Bank of America’s Servicer Sued In Texas For Abusing Homeowners with Misinformation, Misdirection

The Complaint

Robert Doggett, 

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid

This lawsuit complains … of a systematic home loan servicing scheme that includes hours of telephone runaround, misleading and inconsistent information, lost correspondence, verbal abuse, and extensive delay, all of which have documented costs not only in terms of money, but in health. The facts in this case reveal the harsh reality that underlies the loan servicer’s press statements about loan modifications and forbearance agreements following collapse of the U.S. housing market.
7/2/10** Bank of America Settlement -- A Sign of True Progress? Henry Sommer - Credit Slips And how is anyone going to find the victims, many of whom have lost their homes due to the overcharges?  Will they receive any compensation for the tremendous hardships caused by losing their homes? Will consumers have to find out about the settlement and submit claims? How was the settlement figure of $108 million calculated? Maybe there are answers to these questions, but they are not in the settlement. Whether the tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of consumers who were harmed can actually access the settlement will be the ultimate test of whether it is more than a headline-grabbing press release and source of funds for FTC “informational” efforts.
7/2/10**

The New Foreclosure Fraud Battleground, Fraud and Motions to Disqualify Counsel

Matt Weidner Blog We should all be aware now that most assignments of mortgage and endorsements traveling around in foreclosure cases are of questionable authenticity and veracity.

Citimortgage admits its own employees signed an assignment of mortgage, essentially conveying a mortgage to itself.

7/1/10

Woman accused of faking death of self, child to avoid foreclosure MyFoxBoston A local woman has been charged with faking the death of a child in the military and herself to avoid the foreclosure of her West Bridgewater home.
7/1/10**

"A Gigantic Ponzi Scheme, Lies and Fraud": Howard Davidowitz on Wall Street

 

Watch the video

Aaron Task -Yahoo! Finance Because accountants and auditors allowed Wall Street firms to carry assets at "completely fraudulent" valuations, he says the industry looked hugely profitable and was able to use borrowed funds to make leveraged bets on all sorts of esoteric instruments. "Their bonuses were based on profits they never made and the leverage they never could have gotten if the numbers were right - no one would've given them the money in their right mind," Davidowitz says
7/1/10**

Feds: Broward cops, FBI agent in mortgage fraud ring JAY WEAVER, JAMES H. BURNETT III AND AMY SHERMAN
Miami Herald
A new mortgage fraud indictment stands out because it accuses seven current and former police officers and an FBI agent -- along with lawyers and brokers -- of conspiring to obtain millions in illegal loans.
7/1/10** Beth Cerni – Robo-Signer – A Symbol of America’s Foreclosure Crisis Lisa
ForeclosureHamlet.org
 Even if America’s foreclosure crisis doesn’t personally affect you; one day you or your loved ones may be in front of a judge who is immune to fabricated evidence presented by the adversary’s attorney who had an employee create whatever evidence is needed to prove the client’s case. Think about it. This is so much bigger than the banker propaganda. Be very wary of anything or anyone who pushes the view that this crisis is about people who lied on a mortgage application.
6/30/10

BANK OF AMERICA PRACTICES FORCE HOMEOWNERS TO FACE FORECLOSURE

 

“These families were acting responsibly to try to save their homes,” said TRLA attorney Molly Rogers.  “But with every bit of contact, Bank of America put up roadblocks to prevent them from succeeding.”

Cynthia Martinez

Texas Insider

Instead of providing them with the information necessary to save their homes, Bank of America provided inconsistent information, lost important paperwork, and failed to notify them of the status of their loans.  In cases where forbearance and loan modification agreements were made, Bank of America ignored the arrangements and put homes up for foreclosure even though families made their payments.
6/30/10

Judge sentenced for forged signatures on loan documents
The Monitor
The jury convicted the suspended magistrate on four counts of forgery.

Elsa Municipal Judge Hilda Caceres was sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation for faking required signatures on a $227,000 loan application.

6/30/10** David J. Stern Enterprises, Foreclosure Rocket Dockets and The Catastrophic Breakdown of Law

 

“You know what I’d like to see?  I’d like to see in one of these cases where a defense attorney cross-examines, takes the deposition of these people and we can see whether they should be charged with perjury for all these affidavits.                                               -Judge Rondolino

Matt Weidner Blog The pressure to “push foreclosure judgments through” is contributing to a fundamental breakdown in the rule of law and a degradation of the judiciary in general.  This breakdown will be dramatically accelerated as more and more courts move to establish “rocket dockets” or when judges operating normal dockets fail to hold foreclosure cases to the same standards of law and rules that all other areas of the law are held to.  The short term outcome of such practices may indeed be pushing cases through, but the long-term consequences are profoundly dramatic and potentially catastrophic.  Those who recognized this early on will be looked to provide leadership to help find our way out of the incredible mess that was allowed to be created.
6/30/10 Homeowners Association That Evicted U.S. Soldier Gets Death Threats Candy Evans

Housing Watch

Now their case is heating up the Lone Star State, and could become a pivotal argument for changing Texas state law. In years past, bills to protect Texas homeowners from the claws of HOAs have failed.
6/30/10

Who Cares? It’s Only a Foreclosure. "Judge, do you have any idea who you are granting foreclosure to?"

Matt Weidner Blog In courtrooms all across this country, basic rules of practice and fundamental rules of evidence and law are being totally ignored and cast aside because, “it’s only a foreclosure” and “we’ve got to move these cases along”.  But the real question is….

Why the big rush to foreclose on homes?

6/29/10** Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

Michael Smith-Bloomberg

Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

6/28/10**

WITHOUT RECOURSE: Hangman’s Noose

livinglies

Collete McDonald & Neil Garfield

Most if not all “assignments” or “indorsements” are without effect, which means that the party having legal title to the instrument is the party named on it. And THAT means that each time the opposition attempts to establish authority under the chain of securitization, they are actually making the case that they have no such authority. You can’t come to court and say I am the Trustee for asset-backed Pool XYZ which has ownership of this loan” and then turnaround and say you also have authority (legal authority supporting the power of sale in non-judicial states and the standing to foreclose in judicial states) to represent the “lender.” Not if the “lender” is named on the note as payee and on the mortgage or deed of trust as the lender. they want to establish some equitable right to enforce the note, they MUST file a judicial action.
6/28/10 Do Mortgage Pools Really Exist? Foreclosureblues Blog Problem is – it is very difficult to get through discovery in courts. Documents produced are minimal – and no one will divulge that the acquiring bank – or its SPV conduit – has long rid itself of your loan.
If anyone here suddenly ran into large sums of money – and paid the trustee for the SPV that claims to hold the collection rights to your mortgage – you would be paying the wrong party. Your payment would never be accounted for – then how can they be the foreclosing party?”
6/27/10

Wall Street Hiring Jumps Most Since 2008 as Guarantees Return

Michael J. Moore  Bloomberg The removal of uncertainty regarding Congress’s financial reform bill may reinforce the hiring rebound. A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference last week diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private-equity funds.
6/27/10

Why We Are Totally Finished

As outlined in "It's Not A Financial Crisis - It's A Stupidity Crisis", we created two back to back bubbles. The air out of the Tech Bubble was sucked up for fuel by our next stupidity crisis: The Housing Bubble.

Financial Sense They gave that borrowed money to a bunch of morons as a reward for stupidity. Morons who created subprime loans, liar loans, no income no documentation loans and other fraudulent instruments. Morons bundled that trash, got it rated AAA and then sold these turds or weapons of mass destruction that they had the audacity to name complex financial instruments or derivatives to pension funds, countries and other "investors".

Then it all blew up.

Big surprise.
6/27/10

INFORMATION ABOUT FORECLOSURE ATTORNEY IN FLORIDA IS POWERFUL EVIDENCE OF FORECLOSURE MONEY MOVING OFF-SHORE

Foreclosureblues Blog

We have long suspected that much of the mountains of fraudulent mortgage securitization money, including 3rd party payments, undisclosed yield spreads, CDS profits, and finally foreclosure proceeds has been moved STRAIGHT OFFSHORE! Evidence is starting to come to light…

6/26/10\   Notice of Appeal Filed - Stay of Court Order to Vacate Injunction Stopping Bank of America Foreclosures in Utah Requested    Morgan Skinner KCSG News  Barlow told KCSG News he was “troubled by Court ruling but unrelenting in pursuit of redress for his client (Cox) and other homeowners who have become victims of mortgage lending gone mad.”
6/26/10

SHOCKING- MIND BLOWING INFORMATION ABOUT FORECLOSURE MILL DAVID J STERN

Matt Weidner Blog  I encourage everyone who practices in foreclosure or who cares one bit about the impact foreclosures are having on our state and our courts to read the document very carefully and consider the implications of each of the statements.  I wish that every judge and every overworked judicial assistant and clerk of court and struggling homeowner and reporter and concerned citizen would read this post and the attached prospectus very carefully. 
6/25/10

MERS sued for fraud, billions in penalties in Nevada, California

FRANK X. MULLEN JR.  RGJ.com

 MERS serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, investors and loan servicers in county land records, but doesn’t own any mortgages.

The lawsuits argue that listing the firm as the owner of mortgages in which it has no interest, in order to avoid filing fees and taxes that are legally required constitutes fraud.

6/25/10**

Do Affidavits in Foreclosure Form The Basis for a Charge of Perjury?

Matt Weidner Blog Judge says:“You know what I’d like to see?  I’d like to see in one of these cases where a defense attorney cross-examines, takes the deposition of these people and we can see whether they should be charged with perjury for all these affidavits.”
6/25/10 Goldman Must Pay Some Bayou Losses LOUISE STORY

   GRETCHEN MORGENSON  

NY Times

Goldman Sachs has been ordered to pay $20.58 million to creditors of a failed hedge fund to settle claims that the bank helped the fund perpetrate a Ponzi scheme.
6/25/10**

Mass. wins $102m in subprime loan case

Morgan Stanley [knew] they were making loans [designed to fail].’’

Beth Healy

Boston Globe

The deal, the first of its kind in the country with Morgan Stanley, followed an investigation by Coakley’s office into the firm for fueling subprime mortgages written by  New Century Financial Corp. , a large California lender that went bankrupt in 2007. She said Morgan Stanley knew that New Century was making predatory loans, but continued to provide the lender billions of mortgage dollars by buying the loans to turn them into securities.
6/24/10** The SEC Just Demanded More Information On JPMorgan Repurchase Liabilities

 

Folks, this is significant.  MSF

Menal Mehta, 

Branch Hill Capital

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently took a much needed step towards improving the transparency of bank balance sheets, particularly when it comes to the adequacy of reserves for mortgage repurchase obligations stemming from banks' violations of representations and warranties.

Due to findings of mortgage fraud and underwriting deficiencies in the mortgage origination process and  misrepresentation in the packaging of mortgages, banks have been experiencing a drastic increase in the number of repurchase demands they are receiving, including from Government-Sponsored Entities (“GSE”), monoline and mortgage insurers and other end purchasers of RMBS securitizations, such as the Federal Home Loan Banks.

6/24/10**

They Keep Stealing - Why Keep Paying?

 

You didn't cause this mess. They did.

Dylan Ratigan 

 "The Dylan Ratigan Show"

If you are one of them, chances are you didn't do anything wrong. Almost all of you were not subprime borrowers or speculators, but merely people buying a house that they thought they could afford at the time. You were just unlucky in that you bought a house during a time when an outdated Wall Street and their complicit politicians decided to use housing to regain the income they lost due to the Schwabs and Etrades of the internet age.
6/24/10**

California jury orders Fidelity units to pay $5.7M

The company had been sued over a mortgage fraud scheme.

Mark Basch Jacksonville.com A California state court jury this week ordered two subsidiaries of Jacksonville -based Fidelity National Financial Inc. to pay $5.7 million in punitive damages after finding employees of the companies played a role in a mortgage fraud scheme.
6/22/10

Sparks man's overdue mortgage leads to sledge hammer beating

FRANK X. MULLEN JR.  RGJ.com The driver -- a contractor for Wells Fargo Bank who was "inspecting" the house because Peterson had missed [a] monthly mortgage payment -- pulled over. An argument ensued and the bank's agent, who claimed self-defense, hit Peterson repeatedly with a sledgehammer, according to a police report.
6/22/10 Crisis Weighs on Securitized Mortgage Loan Performance Amilda Dymi

Mortgage Servicing News

The performance of securitized residential and commercial mortgage loans is expected to further deteriorate in 2010 and for several years to come.

Loss mitigation and modification efforts of servicers of securitized residential mortgage loans have not been able to avoid redefault among "a sizeable amount of these loans."

Just wait until everyone finds out the collateral of more than 60 million mortgages is void and worthless. MSF

6/21/10 Diversified Field Solutions, Inc. Sues Bank of America BUSINESS WIRE BKGG, attorneys for Diversified Field Solutions, Inc. a provider of property preservation services for foreclosed homes, filed a lawsuit against Bank of America Corporation today alleging, among other things, breach of contract and fraud. BAC contracted with DFS to render property preservation services to foreclosed BAC properties in 14 states. DFS alleges that it has been damaged by BAC's failure to uphold terms of the contract.
6/21/10 Freddie Mac / Bank of America / Taylor Bean Whitaker – IMPORTANT INFO & STATEMENT REGARDING ASSIGNMENTS… TRANSFERS… NOTE OWNERSHIP!!! 4closureFraud

Nye Lavalle

“Indeed, it appears as though many loans and other mortgage-related assets have been double and even triple-pledged to various constituencies
6/21/10** Whose Bank to Kick: A Tale of Two Tragedies Ray Brescia

Assistant Professor of Law, Albany Law School

 

Some intrepid state attorneys general have used their powers to bring some subprime lenders to justice, at times even making them establish the kind of fund BP will create. In fact, Bank of America, to settle claims brought by a small group of states against its subprime lending subsidiary, Countrywide, created just such a fund, of more than $8 billion, which is slowly making its way to bank victims. This and other, similar funds are being used to support enforcement efforts and modify predatory loans, like a $10 million settlement of a lawsuit in Massachusetts against the now bankrupt Fremont Bank. But millions of Americans face the prospect of foreclosure without any form of relief, and, apart from modest efforts to date to get a handful of lenders to create such funds, little has been done to force banks to the table to modify mortgages.
6/21/10 Mortgage fraud sweep includes CU cases Credit Union National Association The sweep has credit union ties, namely the now-defunct U.S. Mortgage Corp. and its subsidiary, Credit Union National Mortgage.

Unlike previous mortgage fraud sweeps, Operation Stolen Dreams focused not only on federal criminal cases but also on civil enforcement, recovering money for victims, and increasing cooperation with state and local partners.

6/21/10**

Court Rebuffs American Home Mortgage and HSBC that Foreclosed on Same Home

Video here

Paola Iuspa-Abbott 

Finance Made Simple

“It is not uncommon for two lenders to be suing the same person on the same note,” said Fort Lauderdale foreclosure defense attorney Carol Asbury. “What happens is the loans are sold and sold — sometimes even before the ink is dry — two to three times.”

That inevitably creates confusion, said Asbury, who is not involved in this case. During the housing boom that ended in 2007, lenders made loans that were later sold multiple times to investors led by trusts, like the one administered by HSBC. But lenders didn’t always pass along the proper documentation, including notes and mortgages. Now, trying to prove who owns what can be difficult, increasing the risk of homeowners losing their homes to the wrong lender.

6/20/10 The Inside Story on the Riggs Reversal- Fighting Ghosts, “Evidence” That Changes, Slippery “Facts” Matt Weidner Blog I’ve been arguing for more than a year that Indymac doesn’t have the legal authority to throw my 84 year old woman out of her home because their assets were sold and only the new entity could pursue those assets.  

(Substitute plaintiff Deutsche Bank is NOT the real party either Matt. MSF)

6/19/10**

CALIFORNIA: NEW BILL SB 1275 May allow homeowners to REVERSE FORECLOSURE SALES due to SERVICER’S ERRORS

The bill would provide a means of recourse to homeowners whose homes were lost to foreclosure due to serious servicer errors, and it would prohibit servicers from starting the foreclosure process until a homeowner has received a final decision on their modification.

Chase Home Finance Sucks If a borrower's home is sold in foreclosure due to servicer error, there is currently no means by which to seek recourse. The bill, SB 1275, authored by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), seeks to change this by providing recourse through what is known as a private right of action.

This would allow eligible homeowners to seek limited damages which are directly related to the severity of the servicer's errors, or, in some cases, would allow the homeowner to reverse the foreclosure sale.
6/19/10**

The Foreclosing Banks Created The Crisis Through Fraud and Crimes At The Highest Levels

Matt Weidner Blog The biggest players on Wall Street, JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, Chase, etc... all got together to create larger pools of mortgage backed securities that they sold to investors nationally and abroad. THEY COMMITTED MASSIVE FRAUD UPON THESE INVESTORS BY LYING ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE COLLATERAL IN THOSE SECURITIES.
6/19/10 ROBO-SIGNOR

When 'Bryan J. Bly' became 'NB,' did he know what he was signing?

Florida law says: "Once commissioned, the notary must sign precisely as commissioned by the state of Florida, in the exact name appearing on your notarial commission certificate.''

Susan Taylor Martin,

Tampa Bay Times

According to the transcript of a recent hearing, Pinellas Circuit Judge Anthony Rondolino noted that the same individual alleged the same set of facts on affidavits filed in two different foreclosure cases. The only change was that the individual claimed to be a director of one company on one affidavit and director of another company on the second affidavit.

"That really increased my interest in this subject matter,'' Judge Rondolino said, "because … I don't have any confidence that any of the documents the court's receiving on these mass foreclosures are valid.''

6/18/10 Investigation Highlights Challenges to Foreclosure Docs Kate Berry

Mortgage Servicing News

The backlash is intensifying against banks and mortgage servicers that try to foreclose on homes without all their ducks in a row.

 Because the notes were often sold and resold during the boom years, many financial companies lost track of the documents. Now, legal officials are accusing companies of forging the documents needed to reclaim the properties.

6/18/10 Unofficial Problem Bank List increases to 781 Institutions CalculatedRisk Note: this is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources.
6/18/10 China Could Dump Its Massive Fannie And Freddie Holdings Vincent Fernando, CFA

Business Insider

There's always the risk China could sell down its holdings, hurting the market  value for these assets, even though such an action would end up hurting the value of its remaining Fannie and Freddie assets as well. This would be bad news for American holders of mortgage assets, such as financial institutions and the government.
6/17/10

1,200 charged in federal mortgage-fraud probe

Jim Puzzanghera

And E. Scott Reckard

Los Angeles Times

"We know that mortgage fraud ruins lives, destroys families and devastates whole communities, so attacking the problem from every possible angle is vital," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said. "These schemes are despicable; they are dangerous to our economy, and they will not be tolerated."
6/17/10 North Carolina announces creation of a new Mortgage Fraud Task Force

Chris Baysden

Triangle Business Journal

Locally, Gilmore says that the Eastern District office has gotten convictions out of three cases so far and several other cases are expected to move forward in the next few weeks.
6/17/10 House Republicans Want Penalties for Strategic Defaulters Carrie Bay - DSnews Here we go again. Penalize the borrowers who entered into a contract in good faith, only to discover the fraudsters not only fatally and egregiously breached the contract, but were actually a criminal enterprise following its highly-engineered "Blueprint to Unprecedented Wealth". 
6/17/10 'Save My House' Contest: Saddest Foreclosure Victim Wins A Free Lawyer Laura Bassett - Huffington Post In hopes of saving at least one family's home, Avvo, an online legal directory and lawyer rating system, launched a "Save My House" contest this month for Florida homeowners facing foreclosure. Since the contest kicked off on Monday, June 7th, over 200 foreclosure stories have been posted on Avvo's website.
6/16/10 Foreclosure Fraud in America – Murder/Suicide over Foreclosure Stress – Dismissing Foreclosures, It Works Michael-Edward your

remedy

is in the law.com 

Money problems—and marital troubles that may have stemmed from the man's financial situation—were being investigated as possible motives in Sunday night's shootings. Foreclosure "could have been the issue,"  said Sgt. Martinez. 
6/16/10 More Foreclosure Bloodshed – Owners of Murder-Suicide Home Faced Foreclosure, 3-Year-Old Son, Shot at Least Three Times

4closureFraud

A couple found dead in an apparent murder-suicide that also left their 3-year-old son critically wounded were awash in credit-card debt and about to lose their home to foreclosure, records show.
6/16/10**

 

Taylor Bean & Whitaker’s former chief indicted

South Florida Business Journal

Farkas and his co-conspirators at TBW and Colonial Bank allegedly transferred money between accounts at Colonial Bank to hide the overdrafts. After the overdrafts grew to tens of millions of dollars, Farkas and his co-conspirators allegedly covered up the overdrafts and operating losses by causing Colonial Bank to purchase from TBW more than $400 million in what amounted to fake mortgage loan assets, including loans that TBW had already sold to other investors and fake interests in pools of loans.
6/16/10 Foreclosure Fraud – The Importance of “Truthfulness” in “This Environment” to the Courts RE: Affidavits 4closureFraud The importance of truthfulness in affidavits cannot be overstated. An affidavit is testimony under oath; the same as if the signor were present in court and speaking from a witness stand. Each fact asserted within the affidavit is done so under penalty of perjury.
6/16/10 DEFAZIO URGES PROTECTIONS TO PREVENT ADDITIONAL TAXPAYER BAILOUTS OF FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (From the letter): After injecting over $100 billion to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac viable, taxpayers have bailout fatigue and do not support further expenditures. However, it appears that without swift action, the taxpayers are at risk of having to pay for additional losses. While I am encouraged that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have increased reviews of delinquent loans, it appears that many lending institutions refusing to honor their obligations to take back high risk loans that do not comply with federal standards. This is unacceptable and I urge you to take immediate action to address this matter.
6/16/10**

American Residential Equities Sues GMAC Mortgage for Mismanaged Loan Servicing

Alleges Georgia Elected Official, GMAC Pressured Company for Favorable Treatment

MortgageOrb According to the lawsuit, Rep. Heckstall contacted GMAC on behalf of his brother and requested that his mortgage be modified a second time. ARE contends that GMACpressured the company to offer a second mortgage modification to Cornelius Heckstall, despite the fact that he had failed to make payments according to an earlier loan modification with identical terms.
6/15/10** THIS WHOLE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS A FARCE.  A BROKEN DOWN, FRAUDULENT, SHAKY, DISHONEST AND TERRIFYINGLY CORRUPT SYSTEM. Matt Weidner Blog The press and the general public is starting to pick up on these major systemic issues that judges, attorneys and other insiders have known about for some time…when the whole system collapses we’ve all got a real mess on our hands….stay tuned.
6/15/10

Former AGs were unaware of scam Daniel Barrick
Concord Monitor
Other lawmakers wanted to know whether Ayotte made white-collar prosecutions a priority as attorney general. One wondered why a mortgage fraud task force she announced in 2008 never caught wind of Financial Resources Mortgage. Others asked why Ayotte’s office did not pursue criminal charges against the company, especially after a former attorney with the Department of Justice told an investigator that he believed Farah was breaking the law.
6/15/10

Foreclosure case dismissed after judge finds he’s been misled by alleged lender Kim Miller

Palm Beach Post

A foreclosure case against a St. Johns County couple was dismissed last week following confusion and possible deliberate “fraud upon the court” concerning the actual owner of the promissory note.
6/14/10

Foreclosure Mediations- What You Don’t Know Will Devastate Your Clients

Matt Weidner Blog Given the immense pressures the foreclosure crisis is causing across the country and especially in this state, it really is a testament to their integrity when our independent and committed judges stand up and provide real victories in the fight to ensure that individuals rights in foreclosure cases are being upheld and respected.  We need to continue to support these judges and continue to provide all judges with real facts and critical information they need.
6/14/10

One Crappy Deal

A story that reveals how a toxic cocktail of investment packages helped poison the retirement funds of hundreds of Australians.

Marian Wilkinson 

ABC Australia

Reporter Marian Wilkinson lifts the lid on the behaviour of investment bank Goldman Sachs in the United States. Speaking to a whistleblower who brought allegations against the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI, she also examines key internal company documents that show how the deal was sold in Australia.
6/14/10 Freddie in Uproar Over Bank of America Probe Tied to TBW National Mortgage News Bank of America is seeking access to Freddie Mac's books and to question its officials about the mortgage finance company's "extensive business relationship" with TBW.
6/14/10 Use the Bank’s Greed and Deception Against it to Stop Foreclosure Mortgage Servicing News For homeowners who have dealt with the loss of a home due to a mortgage company’s fraud, misconduct, or illegal activities, it is little surprise that banks most often win their foreclosure lawsuits against the clients they target. Nearly all of the laws are designed to give some token disclosure notices but, more importantly, make sure that homeowners are kept as much in the dark as possible about what is actually happening to them in the mortgage process.
6/14/10 Rapper Chamillionaire Loses Houston Home to Foreclosure

"when the market went down ... the house ended up being worth nothing."

Aaron Crowe  

HousingWire

The Houston native is getting out of a mortgage for a $2 million home there by not making payments on the mansion and letting it go into foreclosure. The trend of walking away from a mortgage in the down market is hitting even millionaire musicians.
6/14/10

Fla. Supremes Order Bar to Prosecute UPL Against Banks

Neil Garfield - livinglies What this does is fill out your argument that the entire transaction was illusory and nothing was what it seemed to be. That is what TILA, RESPA and other consumer protection laws are all about. Yes you signed the documents but that doesn’t mean the documents were properly prepared, nor does it mean that a security interest in your property was ever or could ever be perfected. Yes an obligation was created, but that doesn’t mean you owe the pretender lender. If you shop at Target, the neighborhood supermarket cannot collect the money for your purchase at Target.
6/13/10**

Finally, Borrowers Score Points

"Law firms that have increased their profits a hundred fold by bringing document fabrication and forgery “in-house” are now up for criminal investigations, indictment, conviction and prison."

Finally the ship is turning. More and more Courts are beginning to recognize the fraudulent predatory practices of the nation's largest financial institutions.

Gretchen Morgenson - NY Times

Includes important preface by former attorney Neil Garfield. 

Though Countrywide’s mortgage contracts specifically barred such practices, they served the company well by generating income during downturns when it was harder to keep making money off new mortgages. This “counter-cyclical diversification strategy,” as Countrywide called it, was designed to “extract the last dollar out of the pockets of the most desperate consumers,” said Jon Leibowitz, the F.T.C. chairman.
6/13/10**

M & T BANK - A CASE OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO FLORIDA FORECLOSURE DEFENSE LAWYERS

LYNN E. SZYMONIAK, ESQ., ED., FRAUD DIGEST

[Upon review of Defendants’ motion, the Court finds the plaintiff lacks standing and is not a proper party to the suit. The Court has been misled by the Plaintiff from the beginning. In its initial Complaint, the Plaintiff alleged it owned the note that was lost. Then Plaintiff alleged that not only was the lost Note found, but the Plaintiff actually owned the Note by Assignment. After both of these Complaints were dismissed, Plaintiff then alleged that Wells Fargo owned the Note, while the Plaintiff was merely a servicer of the loan. Moreover, the Assignment on which Plaintiff relied in its First Amended Complaint postdates the filing of this foreclosure action and is inconsistent with the Mortgage, Note, stamps allegedly affixed to the Note, and the Allonge.]

6/11/10

Australian fund sues Goldman for 'bad deal'

Peter Ryan 

ABC Australia staff

The product in question was the Timberwolf collateralized debt obligation (CDO) which, it was revealed in recent US Senate hearings, was described as "one shitty deal" in Goldman Sachs internal emails.
6/11/10 BofA can resume Utah foreclosure sales


Reversal » Federal court judge dissolves an order issued last month in a 5th District ruling.

Tony Semerad

The Salt Lake Tribune

A federal judge on Friday dissolved a court order that had stopped one of the country's largest banks from selling foreclosed homes in Utah.

U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups, after hearing legal arguments Thursday, has granted a Bank of America request to cancel the preliminary injunction against its trustee sales in the state.  [The case is now on appeal. MSF]

6/9/10**

'America's Foreclosure King'

How the United States Became a PR Disaster for Deutsche Bank

 

Christoph Pauly and Thomas Schulz -SpiegelOnline Nevertheless, Deutsche Bank's service providers (Litton Loan) repeatedly try to have houses vacated, even when they are already occupied by new owners who are paying their mortgages. This practice has led to nationwide lawsuits against the Frankfurt-based bank. On the Internet, angry Americans fighting to keep their houses have taken to using foul language to berate the German bank.
6/9/10 Disabled homeowner loses Mom, now fears losing home over Litton Loan mortgage servicing abuse Denise Richardson

Give me back my credit.com

In March of 2006 my mother received a 4th demand letter wanting $1,341.22. She called them to tell them she was not in default. After being on the phone with them for over 1 1/2 hours she had a spell and died of a heart attack shortly after getting off the phone with Litton employees.
6/9/10

Goldman Faces $1 Billion Suit

Basis Capital Cites 'False Representations' in Collapsed CDO; Abacus Factor?

The Complaint

JOE BEL BRUNO AND JOSEPH CHECKLER

Wall Street Journal

An Australian hedge-fund manager filed a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., accusing the Wall Street firm of fraudulently selling a "now notorious" financial instrument called Timberwolf.
6/9/10

Three More Suspects Nabbed in Million-Dollar Bait-and-Switch Home Refinance Scam

California Attorney General As a result of this scheme, many homeowners were forced to sell their homes, come out of retirement, or tap retirement savings.

Who is going after the BIGplayers?

6/8/10 Where's the Justice? EMC Mortgage Servicing Madness turns Homeowner to Activism

At the closing table in December 2006, we were informed that EMC Mortgage Servicing was the company in which we were to make all mortgage payments to. We hadn't even made our first payment when I noticed that EMC had billed us for escrow payments (homeowners insurance and property taxes). I knew this was inaccurate as we had not established an escrow account and our paperwork documented that. 

When I called to inform them of the incorrect bill, I was shocked to learn that I was liable for the billed charges until the matter could be corrected. And that of course could take 60 - 90 days.

Guest Blogger: Tammy Cothran

GiveMeBack

MyCredit.com

The overcharged amount was nearly $500. I was told by EMC the closing documents they received didn't show we were set up on a non-escrow loan. This was quickly corrected after sending documents to them four times. All was well until January 2008. I, again, noticed we were being charged for escrow. I called EMC several times each month after that to rectify this charge. I was promised a call from a representative when the situation was corrected and also promised that my mortgage payments would be applied correctly. So, all was well until six days prior to Christmas 2008 (11 months after the discovery). 

We were served with foreclosure papers.

6/8/10 Most Servicers Fail To Meet Rating Criteria Mortgage Servicing News There is increased interest from servicers and special servicers of various types of assets to get an operational grade by the agency. However, most on both the commercial and the residential side of the market fail to qualify.
6/7/10

Wells Fargo Sanctioned For Contempt and Sloppy Accounting

Matt Weidner Blog

Client makes all payments, but the lenders numbers just keep on changing.  This happens in virtually every case.  The lesson here is the client kept good notes and records and a good team of attorneys fought for them.  Read the opinion and the order and consider how to use these issues in all of your cases: DeLaFuentes, DeLaFuentesOrder.

(Also see this lawsuit servicerfraud)

6/7/10 Countrywide Pays $108 Million to Settle Fees Complaint EDWARD WYATT

NY TIMES

The money will go to more than 200,000 homeowners whose loans were serviced by Countrywide before July 2008, when it was acquired by Bank of America.

 

[“Now more than ever, companies that service consumers’ mortgages need to do so in an honest and fair way,” Mr. Leibowitz said.]...

How about: "NOW MORE THAN EVER, WE NEED TO PROSECUTE AND HANG ALL THE CRIMINALS AND PARASITES THAT SOLE OUR HOMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

6/7/10

PRESS

RELEASE

Countrywide Will Pay $108 Million for Overcharging Struggling Homeowners; Loan Servicer Inflated Fees, Mishandled Loans of Borrowers in Bankruptcy

Federal Trade Commission According to the complaint filed by the FTC, Countrywide’s loan-servicing operation deceived homeowners who were behind on their mortgage payments into paying inflated fees – fees that could add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Countrywide was ranked as the top mortgage servicer in the United States, with a balance of more than $1.4 trillion in its servicing portfolio.

6/6/10

All Summary Judgments of Foreclosure May Be VOID!

Matt Weidner Blog Post includes links to documents.
6/6/10

 Banks Say No. Too Bad Taxpayers Can’t.

Gretchen Morgenson - NY Times

As profits rebound at many of these institutions, however, artful dodging becomes more disturbing. And when disguising problems winds up harming the taxpayer — the same folks who rode to the rescue of banks with billions of dollars — the denial is downright exasperating.
6/5/10

BOMBSHELL!

JUDGE ORDERS INJUNCTION STOPPING ALL FORECLOSURE PROCEEDINGS BY BANK OF AMERICA; RECONTRUST; HOME LOAN SERVICING, MERS ET AL

 

The Judge felt so strong about the case before him, he issued the preliminary injunction order without a hearing halting the foreclosure process. 

4closurefraud

The attorney’s for Bank of America promptly filed to move the case to federal court to avoid having to deal with the Judge who is not unaccustomed to high profile cases and has a history of watching out for the “little people” and citizen’s rights.

Barlow said, “can you imagine the audacity of the Bank of America and other big mortgage lenders that took billions in bailout funds to help resolve the mortgage mess and the financial institutions now are profiting by kicking people out of their homes without due process under the law of the State of Utah.

6/5/10

Florida Supreme Court tightening foreclosure rules

Todd Ruger

 - Herald Tribune

The Florida Supreme Court has reaffirmed its fight against the sloppy legal work being used to retake homes in thousands of foreclosure cases across the state.

 

A review of Manatee and Sarasota county cases showed attorneys for banks and lenders had widely ignored a new high court rule that requires them to verify -- under penalty of perjury -- the accuracy of allegations and paperwork in the foreclosure case.

6/4/10

Lenders Not Acting in Good Faith Should be Denied Foreclosure

Matt Weidner Blog With respect to foreclosures, “the general rule in Florida is that…[the] foreclosure must not be unconscionable or inequitable.”  Pezzimenti v. Cirou, 466 So.2d 274, 276 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985).
6/3/10

Bill SB 1275 to Prevent Avoidable Foreclosure Clears California Senate

PR Newswire

"One of the oldest principles of law is that a right without a remedy is no right at all," said Lisa Sitkin, staff attorney at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland. "In order for laws to be meaningful, violations must have real consequences, and victims must have real avenues to seek redress."
6/2/10

The “A,B,C’s” of playing the odds and probabilities…by crooks, plaintiffs, and their foreclosure mill fraudsters

Matt Weidner Blog What follows below is another excellent essay by a normal, everyday guy who’s getting hammered in this foreclosure process.  The thing that bothers me so much is he’s pointing out major, fatal assaults that my beloved courts are suffering every day at the hands of the Plaintiff’s mills.  I certainly care about my clients, but my much larger concern is how this entire system has degraded and defaced our courtrooms as painstakingly detailed in the attached essay.
6/2/10

WHAT’S THE POINT OF COURTS AND LAWS AND STATUES AND RULES 

 

IF THEY’RE ALL WANTONLY IGNORED?

 

Does The Mortgage Loan Trust Even Exist?
Matt Weidner Blog Has there ever been a time in American jurisprudence where such massive amounts of wealth have been transferred with no evidentiary basis to support the transfers? -Matt

From the Delaware Secretary of State: "I do hereby further certify that the records of this office fail to show that a statutory trust of the above title has ever filed a certificate of trust in this department.”

6/2/10

Justice O'Connor Attends Mortgage Fraud Summit

Supreme Court of Ohio She added that the foreclosure crisis doesn’t appear to have crested in our state. “You can be sure that whatever schemes exist today to separate homeowners from their homes, those schemes will continue and possibly multiply because the foreclosure problem in Ohio is not going away anytime soon.” (But no plan to stop it?)

6/2/10

Government-Sponsored Housing Fraud

Thank the lobbyists and Congress, once again, for refusing to deal with the actual problem – overly-inflated real estate prices, which incidentally, still exists, and instead directing the taxpayer to bend over once again.

Phil Stock World Well there you have it. Congressional and FHFA "mandates" to make loans that are unsustainable and impossible to justify on any sort of conservative, fact-based analytics, which incidentally demand that the solution to this problem is lower prices for homes, which then leads to sustainable mortgages with no more than a 36% back end ratio and 20% down payments!
6/2/10

Curious Trading by Federal Reserve Advisor May Result in JPMorgan Chase $1.264 Billion Windfall

zerohedge

One has to ask what the purpose of this turnover is, given it was sold to the public as a portfolio simply being wound down. Just what has BlackRock been selling off and who is buying the discards? (Could it be the Fed itself?) Is this a case of getting stronger paper into the portfolio for the benefit of JPMorgan Chase, run by President Obama’s "Favorite Banker", Jamie Dimon?

6/2/10

Vile Voice Mails Cost Agency $1.5 Million Michelle Ruiz - Nation Advanced Call Center Technologies, usually in the business of collecting money for its clients, now finds itself $1.5 million in debt to Allen Jones. A Dallas County court awarded him the hefty judgment after a jury found the agency barraged Jones with harassing and racially charged phone calls.
6/1/10

Legal mess over foreclosures deepening

Tom Ruger - Herald Tribune

An attempt to fix the sloppy legal work plaguing thousands of foreclosure cases in Florida has been ineffective, and has now caused a legal mess of its own

The Florida Supreme Court got tough on attorneys for banks and lenders in February, responding to stories of homeowners losing their property based on shoddy or incomplete paperwork. The incomplete filings also wasted judicial resources and clogged up the courts.

6/1/10 Letter to President Obama : Please investigate America's housing fraud.

Homeowners are reporting that no one in your government is responding to housing fraud complaints

AHRC News Services With so many millions burdened with foreclosures, subject to illegal mortgage contracts and judgments especially in California, it is time for you, Mr. President to give some attention to the plight to the millions who have been scammed.
6/1/10**

Court orders Florida Bar to become involved in mortgage Unlicensed Practice of Law case. 

 

Can nonlawyers prepare mortgage documents? No!

Florida Bar The banks used non-lawyer employees to prepare mortgage documents, and in turn the borrowers were charged between $50 and $150 for that work.

The suit claimed that was UPL and the homeowners should be reimbursed.
6/1/10**

A Detailed Treatment of The Cast of Criminals in a Mortgage Foreclosure/Mortgage Backed Securities Case

Article includes Pooling & Servicing Agreement, Prospectus and the Complaint.

Matt Weidner Blog The lawsuit that appears immediately below is a fantastic read for any party involved in the foreclosure process

The bottom line is the complaint alleges that the Fat Cats and The Wall Street Wizards were all lying to one another when they concocted this deal and sold it off to one another.  In this complaint, they allege that:

  • 85% of all loans reviewed breached the warranties and representations
  • 51% were charged off within two years of the transaction closing
5/29/10 How Many Mortgages Not Paid By Borrower Really Are Paid in Full? (It Could Be A Whole Lot) Matt Weidner Blog

What if The Loans Really Are Paid?

Beyond those issues, please consider some very thought provoking questions presented by a very astute reader of Matt's blog.  It’s very complex stuff, but it all boils down to do we have any faith that the well-connected powers that put all this in play have not crafted themselves an “out” strategy that still has them winning?  If you can’t answer that question do you wonder why the lenders won’t accept reasonable short sales?  Do you wonder why there are virtually no mortgage modifications being completed?  Read Matt's article and consider:

5/29/10

FEDERAL BANKRUPTCY JUDGE CRACKS DOWN ON OPEN SHADY HSBC /ATTORNEYPRACTICES

Matt Weidner Blog I remain dumbfound as to why, in light of depositions, findings of fact and other real evidence, judges across this country use their courtrooms as ATM machines churning out hundreds of millions of dollars to Millionaire Foreclosure Millsand their amorphous, unidentified clients and entities when both the law firms and the clients are engaged in systematic unethical conduct
5/28/10

Your Affidavit To Support Foreclosure Says You Have Personal Knowledge…Do You Have ANY Personal Knowledge? NO!

Matt Weidner Blog Every practitioner and consumer should read this deposition and see what we mean when defense attorneys (and increasingly judges) recognize that foreclosures are granted every single day across this state with not one piece of admissible evidence.
5/28/10

 

OHIO AG STEPS IN:

OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL VS AHMSI AMERICAN HOME MORTGAGE SERVICING INC

 

Also see Texas AG v. AHMSI

4closureFraud “For far too long there has been little to no accountability for those who take advantage of the dire circumstances of home foreclosure,” said Cordray. “The acts of some mortgage servicers have gone beyond the point of being negligent—they have become predatory financial practices and in Ohio, they won’t be tolerated.”

The suit also alleges that the terms of loan modifications were unconscionably one-sided in favor of AHMSI.

5/28/10

Non-Judicial Sale is NOT an Available Election for a Securitized Loan

livinglies The problem is that a statute passed for judicial economy is now being used to force the burden of proof onto the borrower in the foreclosure of their own home.This is not being addressed yet, but it will be addressed soon.
5/28/10 Soldier in Iraq Loses Home Over $800 Debt Nick Baumann  MotherJones Capt. Michael Clauer's homeowners' association foreclosed on his family's $300,000 house and sold it for $3,500.
5/27/10**

Title Searches are a Key to Every Foreclosure Case- Problems With Title Are A Consequence of This Attack on Our Judicial System

 

Title search

Matt Weidner Blog The foreclosure courtrooms that are choked now are going to be choked in years to come with title claims as we try to resolve and repair all the damages that were done by sloppy title work and abuses of the court processes. The point of these examples are to remind practitioners and judges that the foreclosure fraud fight is not just about defending homeowners, it’s about defending the fundamentals of the court process and defending the integrity of title to real property which is a bedrock American institution.
5/27/10

Lehman Sues JPMorgan for Billions of Dollars in ‘Lost Value’

Linda Sandler and David McLaughlin - Bloomberg JPMorgan gained extra collateral from Lehman in part by threatening to stop providing clearing services that were the “lifeblood” of the Lehman brokerage and other affiliates, according to the lawsuit. Lehman said JPMorgan put a “financial gun” to its head and gave the already insolvent investment bank nothing in return for the collateral.
5/26/10

SEC Charging Main Street for accessing their database

BARBARA CALDWELL

Knowing where your mortgage is – who owns it now and sometimes what the chain of ownership was, is a critical piece for many people fighting to save their homes.

Now the SEC wants to charge our Main Street angel for the privilege of using their database.

5/26/10**

Hazard For The Title Insurance Industry Part II- New Financial Collapse Coming

 

Matt Weidner Blog As we know from the investigations that are now being made public, and which will continue to develop in the years to come, Wall StreetFat Cats teamed up with shifty players from the mortgage industry to monetize then liquidate the single largest collection of public wealth ever accumulated….the equity Americans held in real estate.  The unchecked, unregulated and unrestrained business practices allowed two entire sectors of the economy- real estate/mortgage and Wall Street/finance to merge together in an orgy of greed, fraud and deceit.  The “screw the rules”, “everyone for themselves” culture eventually led to collapse.
5/26/10

Every Time a Judge Cancels a Mortgage a Homeowner Gets His or Her Wings

Mandelman Matters HSBC and Florida Default, according to the court records, chose to ignore Judge Bailey’s order, didn’t post the bond by April 2nd, as ordered, and quite defiantly went ahead with the foreclosure and an April 9th sale that conveniently ended up with HSBC having the title to Eslava’s condo
5/25/10 Top Banks Conspired to Defraud Taxpayers Alex Newman

New American

More than a dozen top American banks were involved in a conspiracy to swindle taxpayers by rigging auctions in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market, according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice and multiple lawsuits across the country.

Some conspirators are now cooperating with investigators or have already pled guilty, while other alleged participants deny wrongdoing and await trial.

5/25/10

Judge Sentences Wall Street’sGreed and Hedge Fund Founder to Prison

Mandelman Matters

“The void left by the sudden end of my career will never end,” Kurland told AP News.

I hope not, Kurland, because the pain you and others like you have caused won’t end in many of their lifetimes either.  Only difference is… in two years and three months, you’ll be back at the country club or out on your yacht, and the rest of the people you harmed will likely be living on Social Security and standing in line to get food stamps.

5/25/10

BOMBSHELL- Miami Judge Sanctions Florida Default Law-Wipes Out Mortgage on Home

Transcript

Matt Weidner Blog “Judges are looking at these cases a little bit differently than they would have four, five years ago,” said Frankel, who represents King Cole. “They are more aware of what is going on in the foreclosure cases.”
5/25/10

Wall Street's self-diagnosis: We're all fine.

 Duff McDonald - CNN Money For about two decades, they stole trillions from global investors, homeowners, taxpayers and the government and were able to get the government to force taxpayers against their will to give them billions more and nobody does a thing about it except spend more taxpayer dollars holding useless hearings.   [This generation will go down in history as the dumbest population that ever walked this planet. Is that how we want to be remembered? MSF]
5/24/10

Analysts expect barrage of lender lawsuits to recoup mortgage debt

PAUL OWERS

Sun Sentinel

A forgiven mortgage balance through 2012 is not considered taxable income on a primary residence as long as the debt was used to buy or improve the house. But borrowers who walk away from investment properties risk having to pay federal income taxes on the forgiven amount.
5/21/10

Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, and Stop Fretting

 DAVID STREITFELD - NY Times They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero.
5/20/10

A Brilliant Foreclosure Dismissal By Foreclosure Fraud Fighter Jon Coats

Matt Weidner Blog The good attorneys in this area have been doing all this for many months now.  As a result of this research, preparation and effort, we are not just helping our clients, we’re helping our judges understand and see what’s happening in front of them….that’s our job as dedicated and committed members of this bar.

no date**

Rescuing Bear Stearns Maybe Not Such a Benefit for Foreclosure Victims unknown But it is quite ironic that Bear Stearns has been hit so hard by a mortgage crisis that they have actively participated in for years. Bear Stearns owns EMC Mortgage Servicing, a notorious servicer alleged to have been involved in thousands of cases of mortgage servicing fraud. Through some very shady practices, they were instrumental in pushing people out of their homes.
5/19/10

Foreclosure fraud – Where is the Florida Bar?

*Includes Creed of Professionalism*

Matt Weidner Blog As the essay hints at, the judges here in the Sixth Circuit of Florida “get it”.  If you walk into their courtrooms (whether you are defense counsel or plaintiff’s counsel) you’d better have your case in order, your facts straight and you had better not be playing games.  Despite the crushing dockets faced by the judges, they read the cases, they know the facts….they’re not just rubber stamping cases, even those ones that are unrepresented.  This is unfortunately not the case across the state, but this too will change at some point in time.
5/19/10 Mortgage Fraud, Foreclosure Fraud and The Florida Bar Woodward's Bar Complaint and Judgment. Anthony G Woodward A LONG TIME - PROVEN -COURT ROOM LIAR helped ruin the lives of tens of thousands of Florida Home Owners by filing false affidavits in support of illegal and unearned legal fees, for The Florida Default Law Group.
5/19/10

 

Ex-UBS banker pleads guilty in muni-bond conspiracy

Bloomberg News A former Wall Street banker with UBS AG pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to rig bids and pay state and local governments below-market returns on investment deals, the Justice Department said.  Mr. Zaino's plea marks the first time that an employee of a Wall Street bank has admitted to participating in the conspiracy to deliver added profits on investment deals at taxpayers' expense.
5/18/10**

Conspiracy of Banks Rigging States Came With Crash 

Martin Z. Braun and William Selway

Bloomberg

A telephone call between a financial adviser in Beverly Hills and a trader in New York was all it took to fleece taxpayers on a water-and-sewer financing deal in West Virginia. The secret conversation was part of a conspiracy stretching across the U.S. by Wall Street banks in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market.
5/18/10 The Other Foreclosure Menace Fred Schulte, Ben Protess and Lagan Sebert

Huffington Post

One raw day in early February, Vicki Valentine stood by helplessly as real estate investors snatched her West Baltimore home over what began with an unpaid city water bill of $362.
5/18/10

Houston Couple Avoids Foreclosure With Suicide Pact

KHOU-TV Investigators did not publicly identify the couple but confirmed to 11 News that both were unemployed, had numerous bills they could not pay and were in the process of losing their home.
5/18/10** Foreclosure proceeding and the mockery of justice

anonymous

My opinion is that in the foreclosure arena, our justice system is badly broken. Many Courtrooms have simply become nothing more than “defendant slaughterhouses”. The purpose of this article is to document what is occurring every day in courtrooms across our nation and to show how defendants, especially pro se defendants in mortgage foreclosure actions, are facing extreme bias and therefore a travesty of justice that is severely impairing their Constitutional rights to due process, and no one seems to care.
5/18/10 Protests of JPM Chase on Wall St, of Predatory Loans and Mining, Laissez Faire

Matthew Russell Lee

Inner City Press

Of the Big Four American banks, JPMorgan Chase has perhaps benefited more than any other from the financial meltdown. While having securitized many and made some of the most predatory mortgage loans, it was given Bear Stearns, and then Washington Mutual on the cheap. It proceeded to close scores of WaMu branches.
5/17/10 Ordinary people and financial reform Richard Zombeck

The Hill

A lot of people in Washington claim to be on the side of families in the Wall Street reform debate, but a whole lot of ordinary people like me feel shut out and don’t have much of a voice.
5/17/10

Crucial Help for Homeowners Could Never See the Light of Day Richard Zombeck

$hametheBanks.org

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota), who in my opinion should be wearing a cape to work every day, introduced an amendment to the Financial Reform Bill that would create an Office of Homeowner Advocate to assist homeowners who have been denied a loan modification through HAMP.
5/16/10

The Key to Shutting Down Foreclosure Mills- Attacking Their Questionable Assignments

Matt Weidner Blog We must continue to attack all these documents and stop foreclosures based on these attacks.  Soon we’ll have good decisions that will support shutting foreclosures down based on questionable documents.
5/16/10**

HOW MAIN STREET HAS DESTROYED WALL STREET

Capt. Jack

Since the misinformed public and media have been brainwashed by the real culprits; the banks and Wall Street, here is the fairy tale of how Main Street did it.
5/14/10

More Corruption: Bear Stearns Falsified Information as Raters Shrugged

Teri Buhl

Made up FICO scores? Twenty-minute speed ratings to AAA? If government prosecutors like New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo want answers to why the mortgage-backed securities market was so screwed up, they should talk to Matt Van Leeuwen from Bear Stearns' servicing arm EMC Mortgage.
5/14/10

HAMP Certification Process Poses Dilemma for Mortgage Servicers

Kate Berry/American Banker

Servicers are "taking this very seriously" because of "the risk of civil and criminal violations for the person signing the certification,"
5/14/10

Virtually All The Wall Street Banks Under Investigation- Defend Your Foreclosure!

Matt Weidner Blog

When the investigations are concluded, the feds will know what we’ve all learned recently….the loans they’re foreclosing on now were never intended to be paid back or paid on time.

5/13/10 Covering the Bank Investigations: A Cautionary Tale Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica The story of the banks that created investments and then bet against them has reached a particularly unedifying stage.
5/13/10

What Do Those Losses at Fannie and Freddie Mean?

Neil Garfield - livinglies Neil asks these and other questions about the GSE's. 

If they own them, why are they not at least nominal plaintiffs or beneficiaries in foreclosure sales?

If they guaranteed them, and they show a loss, doesn’t that mean they paid?

If they paid, who owns the loan now?

If they report an “inventory” of foreclosed property, who actually is named as the owner and who gets the proceeds of sale?

5/13/10 Bank Investigations Cheat Sheet

Regularly updated.

Marian Wang, ProPublica Here’s our attempt to lay out exactly what’s known about which banks are being investigated by whom and for what. 
5/13/10**

Major Wall Street firms face criminal probe

James Vicini -Reuters The person said the preliminary criminal probe is being conducted with U.S. securities regulators and involves JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

WE CAN PROVE THEIR CASE ON THE INVESTOR SIDE ALSO!!!

5/12/10 NH AG: State Agencies' Failures Worsened Fraud KATHY McCORMACK AP The state AG, state Banking Department and the Bureau of Securities Regulation missed opportunities to protect investors and expose fraud. He called the relationship between the two departments "toxic", but denied a cover-up.
5/12/10

Government Probe into Wall Street Sales Widening

Charlie Gasparino 

FOXBusiness

The SEC’s increased interest would also signal that the Justice Department’s probe of the sale of CDOs is actually wider than the two firms in the news as preliminary targets of federal prosecutors, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The SEC regularly refers to the Justice Department cases which it considers significant.
5/11/10

Law Firm Probed Over 'False' Documents Filed in Foreclosure Cases

Fla. AG's office has received dozens of homeowner complaints about questionable court documents filed by firm's lawyers, according to a source.

Tampa-based Florida Default Law Group "appears to be fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases," according to the attorney general's Economic Crimes Division in Fort Lauderdale, which is leading the investigation. 
The attorney general is also investigating the relationship between Florida Default and an AG staffer who also worked for the foreclosure firm. 
5/11/10

Contact 13 investigates Bank of America

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV)

Nearly 100 angry homeowners took to the streets Monday, protesting what they call unfair treatment by Bank of America, the nation's biggest bank.

They marched from a local law office to the federal courthouse, to show the judge that they mean business. Nevada leads the nation in foreclosures and Bank of America holds more of our mortgages than any other lender.holds more of our mortgages than any other lender.

5/10/10

Florida 6th District Strikes at Heart of Pretender Lenders

Attorney Neil Garfield

livinglies

The main message is that we have a legal obligation in search of a creditor, and the opposition is trying to use the court as a vehicle to steal the house and run with it, while the whole securitization mess is scrutinized.

I think this Order is far more significant than it might seem both statewide in Florida and nationally. This Order, as I read it, requires (1) verification of the Lender’s status and (2) the ACTUAL authority of a designated person in writing, as a decision-maker; in plain language it asks whether the note is actually legally payable to the (pretender) Lender that wishes to foreclose and whether they have an actual live person who has the authority to mediate, execute a satisfaction of mortgage and otherwise make any final decisions on the settlement of the matter. That eliminates virtually 100% of all pretender lenders, which in turn eliminates virtually 100% of all foreclosures.

5/10/10

Fannie Lost $13.1 Billion In 1Q, Needs Another $8.4 Billion Infusion

FOXBusiness

Fannie didn’t shy away from saying it will continue to need cash, saying, “Due to current trends in the housing and financial markets, we continue to expect to have a net worth deficit in future periods, and therefore will be required to obtain additional funding from Treasury.  (Are the GSE's charging all the industry-created toxic loans to the taxpayer? MSF)
5/9/10 Foreclosures- The End Game of Wall Street’s Fraud, Lies and Deceit

In the short term, creating bad loans produced significant but "fictional" income that brought executives huge bonuses that were based on that "fictional" income.

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog Many judges and attorneys still cling to a naive and antiquated professional worldview wherein attorneys, as officers of the court, remembered that they are officers of the court and do not make false statements or engage in misleading practices before the court.  The problem is the entire foreclosure system is now functioning based on fabricated documents, forged documents, false and misleading statements and gross violations of the most basic ethical standards

5/8/10

Report: Homes lost to mistaken foreclosures

Consumer advocates say the lapses continue because they go unpunished.  The Treasury Department has yet to penalize a servicer for breaking the program’s rules.

Paul Keil - ProPublica

Under the federal program, which requires servicers to follow a set of guidelines for modifications, servicers must give borrowers a written denial before foreclosing. When Gomez called Bank of America about the sale, she said she was told there was a mistake but nothing could be done.

JPMorgan Chase approved Hill's modification. Except there was a problem. Chase had foreclosed on Hill’s home a month earlier, and his family was just days away from eviction.

5/7/10**

MORTGAGE SERVICING COMPANIES PREPARING “ REPLACEMENT” MORTGAGE ASSIGNMENTS

Lynn E. Szymoniak, Esq., Ed. Fraud Digest Many mortgage-backed securitized trusts are missing critical documents needed to foreclose – i.e., the mortgage assignment. An excellent discussion of this is found in the decision of Massachusetts Land Court Judge Keith Long reaffirming a 2009 ruling (Ibanez) that invalidated foreclosures on two properties because the lenders did not hold clear title to the properties at the time of the foreclosure sale. Mortgage assignments were a key issue in Ibanez, a case that involved ineffective assignments to the Trust.
5/6/10

Thousands of Foreclosure Judgments Are VOID (But Courts Will Receive Millions in Additional Funding For This Problem!)

attorney Matt Weidner Blog

  • Thousands of people who think the lost their homes have not lost their homes. (They are still the equitable/legal title owners of the property,)
  • The Final Judgment of Foreclosure that granted the foreclosure sale is not Final, it’s Void. (That means is has no force or effect.)
  • Second mortgage holders or lienholders who thought they were wiped out through the foreclosure are now attached to the subject property. (Some will take higher priority based on fraud and problems with the first.)
  • Property owners who think they own a home they bought REO or at a foreclosure sale, are holding worthless title. (Get ready for big claims on the title insurers.
  • Thousands of “active” cases that are sitting on the Pinellas County foreclosure docket are dead, they’re dismissed.  The court can take no further action on them.
5/6/10 How To Argue Florida Assignments To Judges Anthony Martinez

Foreclosure Offense

It is important to note here that judges like rulings from the appellate division that cover their circuit or other opinions from WITHIN their circuit (colleagues).  Find those cases first and if you can’t and have to use other Florida cases, show the judge WHY they should rule the same.  Remember you have 5 minutes to bring it home.
5/5/10

Ex-Bear Stearns chief blames volatility, not risk

Ben Rooney - CNN Money

He said Bear Stearns fell victim to "unfounded" concerns about its exposure to assets backed by risky subprime mortgages. These "rumors" resulted in a "dramatic loss of liquidity" at Bear Stearns as investors fled the bank in March 2008, he said. (MSF says concerns are well-founded and can prove it.)
5/5/10** FCIC Should Ask Bear Stearns Execs About EMC Mortgage Larry Doyle

DailyMarkets.com

How did Bear benefit from owning EMC? In short, the mortgage collateral originated by EMC provided a wholesale source of product which they in turn packaged, securitized, and distributed. For the Bear execs to blame the crisis on market rumors and other weak excuses is a continuation of the shirking of responsibility by Wall Street management. Make no mistake, the core of the Bear Stearns culture was greed. That greed drove Bear’s management to allow EMC Mortgage to originate some highly questionable and likely fraudulently underwritten products. Bear’s senior management was also exceptionally arrogant.
5/4/10

How Big Banks Want to Game the Mortgage Mess

ERIC BRENNER and HAMISH HUME - WSJ

The problem is that servicers also get a free pass to game the system.  Congress is showing a regrettable willingness to adopt constitutionally suspect legislation that runs roughshod over the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the taking of private property without just compensation.
5/4/10 The Hard Work on Financial Reform New York Times The procedural vote in the Senate last week on financial reform did more than end a Republican filibuster. It set up the real test of the Democrats’ resolve to enact the kind of change that the nation’s financial system so badly needs.

5/4/10**

Banks are Home Invasion Felons- Why No Criminal Charges?

Attorney Matt Weidner Blog

In this case they totally had the wrong home, but in thousands of other cases across the country, they get away with burglarizing homes, stealing property and violating the most basic and fundamental laws because they cannot be caught or when they are caught no one is willing to stand up to them.
5/3/10 Rescuing Bear Stearns Maybe Not Such a Benefit for Foreclosure Victims

GETUP

Bear Stearns owns EMC Mortgage Servicing, a notorious servicer alleged to have been involved in thousands of cases of mortgage servicing fraud. Through some very shady practices, they were instrumental in pushing people out of their homes. Whether through outright fraud or forced institutional incompetence, the servicing company is no stranger to foreclosures.
5/3/10**

Foreclosure Standoff

Live feed

JAN LARSON SENTINEL COUNTY EDITOR

Facing eviction from his Stony Ridge home of 20 years, Keith Sadler has vowed to not go quietly.
5/3/10**

SO, HAMP ISN’T GREAT. WE KNOW. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Twenty million homeowners all focused on the House of Representatives is the sort of thing that gives politicians night tremors, restless leg syndrome, and ultimately panic attacks.

Mandelman Matters

Too many American homeowners are living bound by the shame of losing a home or being at risk of losing a home… and it’s wrong… damn wrong… they should not feel as they so obviously do, because where they find themselves today is not their fault.
5/3/10**

Bad Title to Real Estate Will Collapse Florida’s Economy.

Matt Weidner Blog The real struggle now is communicating to our circuit court judges the magnitude of the questionable practices so that they will stop granting summary judgment in these cases, whether the case is defended or opposed at all.  The bottom line is that when the full scope of the frauds are unearthed, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of titles to homes all across the country will be questionable and yes, these issues will be litigated for decades to come. 
5/3/10 Greenspan Wanted Housing-Bubble Dissent Kept Secret Ryan Grim - Huffington  Had the transcripts been released on time, they could have influenced the confirmation of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman. Meanwhile, the Fed policy of releasing a full year at once deprives the public of transcripts from the first four months of 2005, which are now five years old.
4/30/10

Bank of America apologizes for error that nearly cost a Fort Worth man his home

 

sabaker@star-telegram.com Snowden said Bank of America executives admitted that their records had a coding error and know they have no claim to the property. She said it was frustrating trying to get anyone at the bank to listen to her, let alone return phone calls and e-mails.
4/30/10 Bank of America attempts foreclosure on wrong home

So why was Negele's neighbor so sure the bank had the wrong villa?  Scott Mondro claimed, “This has happened twice before.”

Jackie Callaway

abcActionNews

We asked Bank of America for an explanation, and days later they responded with this statement: "The owners have been contacted to apologize for this inconvenience and to let them know that we are rectifying the process internally. 
4/30/10 Goldman Sachs 'facing a U.S. criminal probe into fraud on a historic scale' Mail Foreign Service The Justice Department move came a day after a group of 62 congressmen, including Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, asked Justice to conduct a criminal probe of Goldman.

'On the face of the SEC filing, criminal fraud on a historic scale seems to have occurred in this instance,' the group said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

4/30/10 Paperwork puts foreclosure firm in hot seat

Group suspected of falsifying records to retake homes.

Todd Ruger

Herald Tribune

Twelfth Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth said news of the investigation could prompt judges in Sarasota and Manatee counties to look more closely at filings.

But Haworth said the judges do not have the ability to check documents as thoroughly as they would like.

"I would be very skeptical they're the only ones," Haworth said of the Florida Default Law Group investigation. "Our anecdotal experience are it's pretty widespread."

4/30/10** Chief Economist, Goolsbee: Walk With Me Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

Those reports are crap; I've seen them," I said in response, "Why aren't you talking to the homeowners and people whose loans have been supposedly modified. Why isn't there any oversight or verification?"
4/29/10

More Investigations over use of Fabricated Foreclosure Documents

Denise Richardson

Give Me Back My Credit

The investigation is over allegations of: 
"...fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases. These documents have been presented in court before judges as actual assignments of mortgages and have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient. Presenting faulty bank paperwork due to the mortgage crisis and thousands of foreclosures per month."
4/29/10**

Foreclosure Lawyers Face New Heat In Florida

           Amir Efrati

Wall Street Journal Blog

These are precarious times for lawyers in the business of filing foreclosure cases for banks. This is particularly true in one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, Florida.

As we’ve noted before, the feds in Jacksonville recently started a criminal investigation of a company that is a top provider of the documentation used by banks in the foreclosure process. And a state-court judge ruled that a bank submitted a “fraudulent” document in support of its foreclosure case

4/28/10** What’s the penalty for not complying with the Florida Supreme Court Rule that requires Foreclosure Complaints to be Verified? 

CASE DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE!

THE CASE LAW PROVIDES THAT ONE POTENTIAL SANCTION FOR A PARTY WILLFULLY FAILING TO COMPLY WITH THE RULES OF THE COURT IS A DISMISSAL WITH PREJUDICE.

Matt Weidner's Blog We keep filing our Motions to Dismiss, but the Millionaire Foreclosure Mills just keep on ignoring The Supreme Court of Florida…..that’s obscene in my mind, but I’m just one lawyer fighting for his client. Having said that, out of frustration I researched thoroughly what could be done to fight against the flagrant disrespect for the court. The answer to the vexing question is in the attached motion….
4/28/10**

Predatory Loan Servicing--Part One

Predatory Loan Servicing--Part Two

Predatory Loan Servicing--Part Three

 George Mantor - Keepin' it real
Financial intermediaries were able to reap huge profits, receive TARP funds to which they were not entitled and didn’t need because they had no real losses, and funneled it all into bonuses that catapulted number crunchers to oil Sheikdom wealth.
 
This didn’t happen by circumstance, but is instead part of a large and well organized fraud wherein all of the evidence points directly back to “too big to fail institutions” that are, apparently, too big to prosecute as well.
  4/27/10 Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. foreclosed, hired a company to "trash out" stop

foreclosure

fraud

They believe that Deutsche, as trustee of Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Inc., didn’t realize the house, repossessed in 2006, was not subject to foreclosure.

It is a nightmare that has happened across the nation as the economy tanked, the couple’s attorney, Carlin Phillips, said at a press conference.

4/27/10

Goldman Execs Deny Charges

Will the government become another enabler by letting Goldman get away with it?

Anthony Mason CBS News Goldman executives argued they did not place a massive bet against the housing market but conceded in 2007 they made a half a billion dollar profit on their mortgage investments, (video links may be broken).
4/27/10 Predatory Mortgage Servicing Fraud – Part 3 in a Series George W. Mantor The news of the past week has finally put an answer to the question of why banks would foreclose needlessly, unlawfully, and with sheer malice when that would appear to be bad business. And, the answer is what I have been saying all along…because it is insanely profitable.
4/27/10** Foreclosure Fraud of the Week – Two “Original” Wet Ink Notes Submitted in the Same Case by the Florida Default Law Group andJPMorgan Chase 4closureFraud Each week I will be taking ten random foreclosure cases out of the Palm Beach County court house and picking out the one that has the most fraudulent document in the file.

Be it a Pleading, a BOGUS Assignment, a Fabricated Note, a Forgery, or an Assistant Attorney General that works for both the AG Office and a Foreclosure Mill at the same time…

4/27/10 Deutsche Bank Plays Down Threat of U.S. Litigation Reuters Germany's Deutsche Bank AG (DB) Tuesday sought to play down the impact of possible legal action it faces in the U.S. on how it packaged and traded various products tied to mortgage-backed securities.

Deutsche Bank sought to ease concerns about possible legal action as politicians and regulators mount a fierce offensive against Goldman Sachs, which faces fraud charges brought by the SEC.

4/26/10** WAMU INTENTIONALLY changed my debt to income ratio Rob Harrington

A consumer who would have performed this same act would be GUILTY of LOAN FRAUD, and due to the evidence and motive, would have been prosecuted and convicted of Loan Fraud.

4/25/10

Internet Foreclosure “Myths”

Patrick Pulatie

There has been an explosion of websites featuring foreclosure information. This has been both good and bad for the homeowner facing foreclosure; good because homeowners have been able to learn much about their situation, and know that they were not alone, but bad because there is much “inaccurate” information about foreclosure defenses being presented. This article is intended to help the homeowner sort the good and the bad.
4/25/10 New Mortgage Services from Xerox Accelerate eMortgage Adoption; Help Lenders Prime for Growth Business Wire The MERS integration also allows loan stakeholders to verify the authenticity of the eNotes, resulting in secure and legally enforceable transactions. (No it doesn't. It strips the negotiability from the notes. MSF)
4/25/10 Goldman’s “Fabulous” Fab’s conflicted love letters: Reuters Steve Eder and Karey Wutkowski - Reuters In the email exchanges Tourre comes off as a young, hotshot trader who foresaw the subprime meltdown while still selling shoddy subprime-backed products so prolifically he could peddle them to “widows and orphans.”
4/25/10

Investors Lost, Goldman Won on WaMu Deal

CARRICK MOLLENKAMP AND SERENA NG - WSJ

Goldman bet the loans would fail, while at the same time they had their debt collectors manufacturing performing loans into default.
4/24/10 E-Mails Show Goldman Boasting as Meltdown Unfolded

Dan Strumpf

AP

E-mails released this morning show top executives atGoldman Sachs Group Inc. boasting about the money the firm was making as the national housing market collapsed in 2007.

  4/24/10

 

How to clear the foreclosure docket:

 An open letter to Florida’s judges

Florida Foreclosure Fraud While most of you became judges because you wanted to make important decisions, you’ve now been relegated to the role of case managers – speeding these cases along as fast as you can, ordering people out of their homes in five-minute hearings, relying on “evidence” that you wouldn’t even consider in any other kind of civil case, taking as true the representations of plaintiffs’ lawyers that you know have taken shortcuts in other cases… this isn’t why you went to law school.
4/24/10 Fraud at the Credit Rating Agencies David Dayen - FDL During the financial crisis, the rating agencies, who are owned and funded by the very banks who create the securities they rate, simply gave up any pretense of independent assessment, rubber-stamping toxic assets as triple-A and safe, neglecting the very real dangers for investors and creating a false sense of security.

4/23/10

Time for Handcuffs on Wall Street

Tony Accetta, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, says it’s time to start indicting  mortgage fraudsters on criminal charges.

Angie Moreschi

Consumer Warning Network

Consumer Warning Network Founder and former federal prosecutor Chris Hoyer has long said a $40 pair of handcuffs would go a long way in preventing future financial meltdowns by holding corporate titans accountable. 
4/23/10

Homeowner to Chase Bank: Dear Mr. Lowman, here I am.

Denise Richardson

Give Me Back My Credit

Martha's letter and chronology of events comes in response to Chase Bank and their Mortgage Unit CEO, David Lowman's recent testimony at a House Committee on Financial Services hearing  regardingFinancial Mitigation Programs, where he noted that if folks were not getting answers fromChase when seeking a mortgage modification they should come to him.
4/23/10

The Busted Homes Behind a Big Bet

Carrick Mollenkamp, Mark Whitehouse, Anton Troianovski

WSJ

The government's civil-fraud allegation against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. centers on a deal the firm crafted so that hedge-fund king John Paulson could bet on a collapse in U.S. housing prices.

It all boiled down to whether people like Stella Onyeukwu, Gheorghe Bledea and Jack Booket could pay their mortgages. They couldn't, and Mr. Paulson made $1 billion as a result.

4/22/10** Senate Investigation Says Banks Caused Crisis, Not Borrowers Mandelman Matters  It was the bankers who fraudulently packaged mortgage-backed securities, also called bonds, with loans that were not high quality, and then stood by and watched them get rated AAA.  When investors realized that they were holding bonds that had been improperly rated, they dumped them instantly, and overnight the bond market, and therefore the secondary mortgage market, froze solid overnight.
4/21/10** MISSION: VOID Lender Processing Services "Assignments" (LPS) STOP

Foreclousre

Fraud

Lender Processing Inc. is the TIP of The Pyramid; please click the link to see their admission to this whole scheme of fraud in question. As it turns out Big Brother has been watching!

4/20/10

TILA Statute of Limitations — No Limit

Neil Garfield - livinglies

The only way the other side can get out of that is by admitting the existence of the fee, and then showing that it WAS disclosed — presumably through yet another fabricated document, signed by a non-existent person with non existent authority with non- existent witnesses and notarized by someone three thousand miles away (whose notary stamp and forged signature ws applied to hundreds of pages of blank documents for later use).
 4/20/10 Cease and Desist- Mortgage Modification Scammers

Mortgage Examiner

Michael Richardson

Homeowners facing foreclosure have always been vulnerable to scammers, con-artists, and
thieves. When property values were appreciating rapidly, foreclosure rescue scams primarily focused on obtaining title to the home and robbing homeowners of their equity
4/20/10** New MERS Standing Case Splits Note and Mortgage: Bellistri v Ocwen Loan Servicing

A Missouri appellate court, without trying, may have drawn a map to defend foreclosures.

Court Opinion

Max Gardner

We know that MERS is named as nominee as beneficiary. We know that MERS is NOT named on the note. This appellate case from Missouri, quoting the Restatement 3rd, simply says that the note was split from the security instrument, and that there is no enforcement mechanism available under the Deed of Trust. Hence, the court concludes, quiet title was entirely appropriate and the only remedy to the situation because once the DOT and note are split they is no way to get them back together.
 4/20/10** Open Letter to Sen Edward Lynch, Florida D-19, We Understand – You are NOT a Deadbeat because YOU are in Foreclosure – You were Defrauded Too

4closureFraud

This is where the already flawed system went down the path of imminent destruction as in order to create such returns and guarantee their bets would pay off the various players worked together to create flawed financial instruments that they knew would fail.

4/20/10

Fannie and Freddie Amnesia

Taxpayers are on the hook for about $400 billion, partly because Sen. Obama helped to block reform.

PETER J. WALLISON 

 WSJ

Now that nearly all the TARP funds used to bail out Wall Street banks have been repaid, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac stand out as the source of the greatest taxpayer losses.
4/20/10 Democrats push criminal inquiry for Goldman Sachs

JAKE SHERMAN

Politico

The lawmakers contend that if the mortgage based securities sold by Goldman were devised under false pretenses, the financial giant should return payments byAIG, which insured the products. Insuring these instruments “contributed to billions of dollars of losses at AIG,” they say in the letter.
4/19/10 Open Letter to all Honorable Judges in Foreclosure and Bankruptcy Proceedings

LYNN E. SZYMONIAK, ESQ.

This letter concerns how a Jacksonville, Florida publicly-traded company, Lender Processing Services, Inc. solves Deutsche Bank National Trust Company missing documents in foreclosure cases. 

Deutsche Bank National Trust Company (“DBNTC”) is the plaintiff in the majority of foreclosure actions filed in thousands of counties in America since 2007. Deutsche Bank is sometimes referred to as “America Foreclosure King.” 

There is currently a Department of Justice investigation of LPS and its influence over law firms in foreclosure actions, according to an article in the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review on April 16, 2010.

4/19/10 California AG Announces Court Action Against Moody's

Structured Finance

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced a court action forcing the rating agency to explain why it gave its highest ratings to “risky and toxic” MBS.

Brown said Moody’s and other ratings agencies worked behind the scenes with the same Wall Street firms that created the securities, earning billions in revenue from those firms at a rate close to double what they earned for rating other securities.

4/19/10 More Problems Coming For Goldman?

David Dayen- FDL

Paul Krugman today called Goldman Sachs, in the shrillest possible voice, looters. The law may adjudicate them accordingly, if Levin has his way.
4/19/10

Real Estate Exec Pleads Guilty to Foreclosure Auction Bid Rigging

AUSTIN KILGORE

HousingWire

Anthony Ghio admitted in his guilty plea that he conspired with a group of real estate speculators who agreed not to bid against each other at certain public real estate foreclosure auctions in San Joaquin County, Calif. in order to suppress and restrain competition and to purchase distressed real estate at non-competitive prices
4/19/10

Letter to the U.S. Supreme Court Justices regarding California Court Corruption and the Financial Crisis American Homeowners Resource Center This is but one in a long line of cases in California, where its courts have fined homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars over minor issues, such as a brown spot on a lawn, and caused many to lose their homes, possessions, wages and life savings.
4/19/10** Judge Finds “Fraud” in Foreclosure Mess

Amir Efrati - WSJ

Recently, the mess has attracted the attention of criminal prosecutors who are searching for fraud by banks and their representatives.

The Florida case, U.S. Bank v Ernest Harpster, wasdismissed last month by Judge Lynn Tepper of Pasco County after she found that an “assignment of mortgage” filed in the case, which was meant to show how U.S. Bank obtained ownership of the mortgage, was false.

4/19/10

Goldman Charges Fuel Push for Stronger Wall Street Reform

Carrie Bay

DSNews

Fraud allegations brought against Goldman SachsFriday are still reverberating down Wall Street. Capital market analysts at Bernstein Research estimate that the suit could put Goldman Sachs on the hook for up to $700 million. The implications of the charges, though, stretch far beyond the walls of Sachs. With the federal government already gunning for big Wall Street firms as it pieces together financial reform legislation, the news has given Congress and the White House ammunition for tighter regulations.
4/19/10 BofA Proposes Nine-Month Forbearance Plan for Unemployed

Carrie Bay

DSNews

Bank of America says it is considering giving unemployed homeowners nine months of no mortgage payments while they search for a new job. If during the nine-month forbearance period, the borrower is successful in finding employment, BofA would structure a mortgage modification. If unsuccessful, the customer must be willing to relinquish the home through a deed-in-lieu.
4/19/10 Excess Inventory May Impede Housing Recovery: Fannie Mae

Brittany Dunn

DSNews

The GSE expects to see more moderate declines in home prices this year, but says elevated foreclosures and vacant homes still pose a big risk to home values.
4/17/10 Merrill Used Same Alleged Fraud as Goldman, Bank Says William McQuillen

Bloomberg

“This is the tip of the iceberg in regard to Goldman Sachs and certain other banks who were stacking the deck against CDO investors,” said Jon Pickhardt, an attorney with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, who is representing Netherlands-based Rabobank.
4/17/10

Judge Bashes Bank in Foreclosure Case

Includes case documents

Amir Efrati

Wall Street Journal

A Florida state-court judge, in a rare ruling, said a major national bank perpetrated a "fraud" in a foreclosure lawsuit, raising questions about how banks are attempting to claim homes from borrowers in default.

Judges have said in hearings they are increasingly concerned that banks are attempting to seize properties they don't own.

4/17/10**

Homeowner Road Trip: Rally in Tallahassee

Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

 Florida Bankers, guess what?  You wanted a "Taste of Florida"? You are gonna get one! We are having our own "Capitol Day"! But our collective voices will be a harmony; louder, clearer, unwavering, and with a foundation firmly planted in the historical roots of our country as a nation for WE, THE PEOPLE!
4/16/10

Stockton Real Estate Executive Pleads Guilty to Bid Rigging at Auctions of Foreclosed Properties

FBI Ghio admitted in his guilty plea that he conspired with a group of real estate speculators who agreed not to bid against each other at certain public real estate foreclosure auctions in San Joaquin County. The primary purpose of the conspiracy was to suppress and restrain competition and obtain selected real estate offered at San Joaquin County public foreclosure auctions at noncompetitive prices
4/16/10 BofA Preps $500M CLO

Richard Kellerhals 

Two weeks after Citigroup priced a $525 million CLO and a week after Orix, Apollo and GSO Blackstoneall started arranging their own CLOs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has begun arranging a $500 million CLO.
4/16/10

SEC accuses Goldman Sachs of civil fraud

SEC accuses Goldman Sachs of fraud in failing to disclose conflict in mortgage securities

Marcy Gordon 

AP Business Writer

The government has accused Goldman Sachs & Co. of defrauding investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in mortgage investments it sold as the housing market was faltering.
4/15/10

Former Amerifirst exec convicted in fraud scheme that targeted senior citizens

 

FBI release

ERIC TORBENSON / The Dallas Morning News Jeffrey C. Bruteyn, who ran Amerifirst Funding and Amerifirst Acceptance Corp., faces up to 180 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines after Wednesday's convictions.
4/15/10

Virginia Court Shoots Down “Splitting the Note” and “Double Recovery” Theories

Operative Bite The only problem was that there was no evidence the subject loan had been securitized. The loan had been originated by CTX Mortgage who had sold it to Goldman Sachs who subsequently sold it to Freddie Mac. The list of usual suspects included MERS as nominee for the lender and Litton as the servicer. Regardless, the court held that under Virginia law negotiation of a note or bond secured by a deed of trust or mortgage carries with it the security instrument without formal assignment or delivery.
4/15/10**

Judge Bashes Bank in Foreclosure Case

Court documents included

Amir Efrati - WSJ

The ruling, made last month in Pasco County, Fla., comes amid increased scrutiny of foreclosures by the prosecutors and judges in regions hurt by the recession. Judges have said in hearings they are increasingly concerned that banks are attempting to seize properties they don't own.

4/15/10

Are Toxic Assets Out of The Banking System?

Yahoo Finance

Are we through the housing decline or not? If there's a wave of foreclosures, there could be downward pressure on prices.
4/14/10**

Why Homeowners Aren't Being Heard ... Or Why Congressional Hearing Fails to Listen Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

Lowman's colleagues are coming out in force admitting to rampant unscrupulous tactics, WAMU knew of the mortgage fraud, Wells Fargo did as well, and bank insiders are starting to come clean. "I decided that I cannot live with the extent of the compromises to my value system," said one executive,
4/14/10

Many Texans 'Going It Alone' In The Courtroom

Reeve Hamilton - The Texas Tribune

Last week, Burch went to the first-ever Texas Forum on Self-Represented Litigants and the Courts looking for guidance on how the system could be improved. The two-day affair, held at the Dallas Bar Association's Belo Mansion, brought together a diverse group of legal professionals, from attorneys to judges to legal aid experts to law librarians. The objective: to strategize about how to create a system that can accommodate the increasing number of pro se litigants.
4/14/10**

WaMu: We Don’t Lose Deals to Income!

Plus excerpts from the Senate Committee's press release.

Mandelman Matters

It’s no wonder that Ameriquest boasted that they were the sort that didn’t let a tiny, little, insignificant thing like a borrower’s INCOME get in the way of originating a loan. The documents show that, in the mid-2000s, the bank made a conscious decision to focus on high-risk mortgages, because higher risk loans offered greater profits.  Washington Mutualincreased its securitization of sub-prime loans six-fold, primarily through its sub-prime lender, Long Beach Mortgage Corporation.
4/14/10

To Organize Against Wall St., We Need a Narrative Focusing on Crime and Massive Fraud

How we can be experiencing the largest economic meltdown in decades with no real mass mobilization or ongoing response from the progressive world.

Danny Schechter MediaChannel.org

Some efforts to mobilize against the big banks have begun; three major marches for the end of April are in the works: 

Wells Fargo Shareholder Showdown, 

Tuesday April 27, San Francisco, CA; 

 

Bank of America Shareholder Showdown, 

Wednesday, April 28, Charlotte, N.C., 

 

 Wall Street Showdown

Thursday, April 29, New York City

4/14/10

Watchdog: Obama Foreclosure Aid Leaves Many Out

"Billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent and families will nonetheless lose their homes."

Fox News

The four mortgage companies represented at the hearing are the largest in the country and have come under fire for not doing enough to help borrowers as part of the Obama administration's $75 billion mortgage relief program.
4/13/10 'The Fourteenth Banker,' Anonymous Bank Insider, Describes His Moral Crisis: 'The System Is Built To Be Gamed'

Ryan McCarthy

Huffington Post

Despite the obvious risks to his banking career, the executive, who's been in the industry for more than 20 years, says he can't bear to keep quiet any longer: "I decided that I cannot live with the extent of the compromises to my value system."

4/12/10

Emerging Fraud Trends: Short Payoff Fraud

Freddie Mac's Fraud Investigation Unit, a slight variation of our general definition of mortgage fraud also defines short payoff fraud

Freddie Mac  – "Any misrepresentation or deliberate omission of fact that would induce the lender, investor or insurer to agree to the terms of a short payoff that it would not approve had all facts been known." Misrepresentations in these schemes may include the buyer of the short payoff property, a subsequent transaction at a higher price, and/or the selling borrower’s hardship reason used to qualify for the short payoff. In many instances, the short payoff fraud will involve a "facilitator," engaged by either the listing agent or the selling borrower, to assist with negotiating the transaction.
4/12/10

Nonjudicial foreclosure bill dies in House committee

Kimberly Miller

Palm Beach Post

Proposed legislation that would allow banks to foreclose on Florida homes without going to court died in a House committee Monday, giving supporters scant hope for success this year
4/12/10

One panel removes, another restores nonjudicial foreclosure bill provisions

The Florida Bar News A bill to provide nonjudicial mortgage foreclosures in Florida advanced through a state House committee on March 22, but only after it was amended to make it easier for homeowners to require a judicial foreclosure

4/12/10

Bank Profits Dimmed by Prospect of Home-Equity Losses 

Dakin Campbell and David Henry - Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. andWells Fargo & Co. may have to set aside an additional $30 billion to cover possible losses on home-equity loans, an amount almost equal to analysts’ estimates of profit at the three banks this year.
4/10/10

RALLY

APRIL 21

HB 1523 – Homeowner Relief & Housing Recovery Act – STOP the Madness of Nonjudicial Foreclosure

4closureFraud

READ BILL IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE AND CONTACT THE REPRESENTATIVES  IMMEDIATELY BY PHONE AND EMAIL PROVIDED.

These Florida Bankers may be trying to ease their way on the path of least resistance to confiscate more homes and more wealth from both the homeowners and the investors who funded these loans.

4/10/10

The Lehman Repo 105 Lawsuits Begin Abigail Fields Daily Finance
Retirement Housing Foundation has sued Lehman and former executives, including ex-CEO Richard Fuld, charging that it lost $1 million on Lehman bonds because the accounting trick materially misrepresented Lehman's financial condition.
4/9/10

The Full Story

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going

Jesse Eisingerand Jake Bernstein, ProPublica 

When the crash came, nearly all of these securities became worthless, a loss of an estimated $40 billion paid by investors, the investment banks who helped bring them into the world, and, eventually, American taxpayers.

A hedge fund, Magnetar, helped create arcane mortgage-based instruments, pushed for risky things to go inside them and then bet against the investments.

4/9/10

Mortgage Meltdown – Distressed Homeowners Take on Lenders in Court and Win

If the couple wins at the trial, they may get their $548,000 first mortgage rescinded, said their Miami lawyer Arturo Alfonso. 

Paola Iuspa-Abbott 

Daily Business Review

If the summary judgment is denied, the case can move forward to trial. 

That’s the case of the Ciriglianos, who have spent thousands of dollars in their legal battle. 

Some experts say more homeowners are likely to embrace the Ciriglianos’ strategy of fighting lenders who previously saw most foreclosure cases slide through the system. 

4/9/10**

Foreclosures
Miami-Dade court to fast-track process

Web Extra:
Foreclosure Master Calendar

DBR The foreclosure court will handle only uncontested residential mortgage foreclosure cases, court orders forcing tenants to vacate foreclosed properties and emergency motions to cancel sales less than two days away.
4/9/10 Sara Hansard - Daily Finance The two owned or guaranteed 57% of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market.
4/9/10

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going

Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein
ProPublica

When the crash came, nearly all of these securities became worthless, a loss of an estimated $40 billion paid by investors, the investment banks who helped bring them into the world, and, eventually, American taxpayers.


Yet the hedge fund, named Magnetar for the super-magnetic field created by the last moments of a dying star, earned outsized returns in the year the financial crisis began.
How Magnetar pulled this off is one of the untold stories of the meltdown.

4/9/10

Chase Sued by Couple for Causing Their Foreclosure

Dean JPMorgan Chase allegedly told a California couple to stop paying their  mortgage so they may qualify for a loan modification and then foreclosed on their home anyway.
 4/9/10

Former Top Fannie MaeExecs Grilled On Compensation, Lobbying Of Congress 

Shahien Nasiripour

Huffington Post

FCIC Vice Chair Bill Thomas zeroed in on Fannie's lobbying: "Were you ever present at a meeting in which there was a discussion about how a particular member of Congress might be approached in attempting to advance the quote-unquote business model of Fannie Mae?"
4/8/10

THE GREAT CON JOB

MSNBC

 
4/8/10**

Citi 'Negative' On Subprime Mortgages As Early As 2006, Yet Firm Continued To Pump Out Subprime Mortgage Products

Shahien Nasiripour

Huffington Post

A top Citigroup official testified Wednesday that the firm was reducing its risk to subprime mortgage products as early as 2006, fully expecting housing prices to decline. Yet a review of industry figures shows that in 2007 Citi was still underwriting billions in subprime mortgage securities and was the nation's top lender of subprime mortgages.

It also purchased insurance on those holdings in 2007 in the form of credit default swaps in case they soured,

4/8/10**

California Legislature Pushes Important Foreclosure Bill Forward

Brittany Dunn - DSnews

In a 7-1 vote on Wednesday, the California Senate Banking, Finance, and Insurance Committee approved a measure that would better protect homeowners in the Golden State who are at risk of foreclosure.

The homeowner would have the right to bring an action to either void the foreclosure or recover treble damages or statutory damages in the amount of $10,000, whichever is greater, from the mortgagee.

   4/8/10

Foreclosures for April up from 2009

Jeff Bishop

The Times-Herald

Even those who aren't in foreclosure are being affected negatively by the downward spiral as foreclosures push property values ever lower.

4/8/10**

Repurchased Loans Putting Banks in Hole

APARAJITA SAHA-BUBNA

WSJ

After dodging shareholder questions of liability, lenders such as Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase& Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. will now brave stiff headwinds this year as they face demands to buy back defectively underwritten mortgages.

4/8/10

Bank of America CEO nears the 100-day mark, but hurdles remain

Christina Rexrode
Charlotte Observer

"If you are casting about for reasons why (Bank of America changed its overdraft policies), you need only look so far as the 'foreclosed parrot' story," analyst Bush wrote, referring to an incident in which the bank accidentally foreclosed on the wrong house in Pennsylvania and confiscated a woman's parrot.
4/8/10

Financial Crisis Commission Questions FormerCitigroup Chiefs Robert Rubin, Chuck Prince

Shahien Nasiripour and Ryan McCarthy

Huffington Post

Commission chairman Phil Angelides grilled Rubin and Prince about Citigroup's holdings of toxic securities related to the subprime market. In the below clip, Angelides asks them why the banking behemoth gave conflicting information on the same day to the public and to its own board of directors about its exposure to subprime mortgages.

On October 13, 2008, analysts and the public were told that Citi had $13 billion in subprime exposure -- but Citi'sboard and audit committee were told that the bank's exposure was more than $50 billion, Angelides said.

4/7/10**

 

Forged Foreclosure Filings by David J. Stern anger Pasco judge Florida Foreclosure Fraud Blog Judge Tepper was none too pleased about the fraud. When informed by Tampa attorney Ralph Fisher, she not only threw out the fraudulent assignment documents, she dismissed the case “with prejudice” – meaning that U.S. Bank can never again file a foreclosure action against this defendant. It seems pretty likely, now, that the Harpsters are going to get to keep their house as long as they like.

4/7/10**

New Plan To Help Homeowners: Here We Go Again

The recent plan to modify second mortgages has helped no one.

Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

It may serve as yet another way for banks and servicers to suck more money out of homeowners who are currently treading water as it is.

Past attempts include Barney Frank's Hope for Homeowners plan, started under the Bush administration, costing $300 billion. It helped one (1) homeowner.

   4/7/10**

Chase Sued: Allegedly Told Homeowner To Stop Payments, Then Foreclosed

Arthur Delaney

Huffington Post

JPMorgan Chase told a California couple to quit making mortgage payments in order to qualify for a loan modification but then foreclosed on their Sacramento home, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

4/7/10

Greenspan: Subprime loans did not cause financial crisis

Inquiry commission says former Fed chief ignored warnings about subprime.

"Why in the face of all [the subprime lending] did you not move to contain abusive subprime lending?" asked the panel's chairman, Phil Angelides.

 

Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch

Greenspan replied that the institutions subject to the Federal Reserve's or other federal-banking regulators were not the primary players in the subprime-loan origination business.

"The data show that, in 2004 and 2005, more than half of subprime loans were originated by independent mortgage companies subject to consumer-protection enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission and various state agencies," he said.

4/7/10**

Greenspan Testifies To Financial Crisis Commission, Blames Fannie, Freddie For Subprime Crisis

Shahien Nasiripour and Ryan McCarthy

Huffington Post

"A consequence of what we try to do in our job of trying to explain to Americans what happened, I assure you, probably won't contain one word of what you folks just told us. Did any of you, and I'll just ask a show of hands and I assume you'll be honest in your response, lose one night of sleep over what happened?  No, no hands.
4/6/10**

Predatory Mortgage Servicing Fraud – First of a Series

We’ve had a complete meltdown of our financial system, a thorough looting of the American tax payer, the destruction of the middle class, and just about every other indicator of quality of life has tanked alarmingly.

George Mantor

At the same time, financial intermediaries were able to reap huge profits, receive TARP funds to which they were not entitled and didn’t need because they had no real losses, and funneled it all into bonuses that catapulted number crunchers to oil Sheikdom wealth. 

This didn’t happen by circumstance, but is instead part of a large and well-organized fraud wherein all of the evidence points directly back to “too big to fail institutions” that are, apparently, too big to prosecute as well.

4/6/10**

MICHELE REAGAN SENATE CANDIDATE GETS IT AND GETS SUED FOR HER TROUBLES WITHOUT DEFAULT!

Finally a politician who puts principle ahead of politics!!

livinglies

Michele Reagan, currently an Arizona legislator, deserves support not only for her campaign for Arizona State Senate, but for her battle with her lender. Her lender, Colonial Savings, decided to sue her for asking too many questions about how her loan was securitized. That’s right. She never missed a payment but she became concerned that her title and her money might be going the wrong way. So she did the only sensible thing — she asked.
4/4/10** They Are Trying to Steal Your House after They Already Stole Your Money Cynthia Kouril

  FDL  

Letter by Lynn Szymoniak

It could  mean that the trustee did not actually own your mortgage and that all the money that you have paid on that mortgage that went to pay the holders of the security associated with that trust was paid to the wrong party.

Why? Because the mortgage was not transferred into the trust before your payments were directed to it. And the after the fact assignment doesn’t remedy it, because the trust was required to close the book on adding new mortgages into the trust, on a date long since passed. So, the trustee accepted payments from you even though your mortgage was not a part of that trust. You were paying the wrong party.

Then to add insult to injury, the trustee is trying to take your home away.

Oh, and the last minute assignment –may be a forgery.  Ain’t that just the icing on the cake?

These are the cranium exploding allegations being made by white collar fraud expert Lynn Szymoniak, Esq. In a letter to an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms. Szymoniak alleges

2/20/89

Reposted

The Savings And Loan Crisis:

Finally, the Bill Has Come Due

Time Magazine

Barbara Rudolph;Gisela Bolte and Richard Hornik/Washington and Thomas McCarroll / New York

It is even more interesting to read about the Savings & Loan Scandal of the 1980's, now that the much larger fraud (that was born out of the S&L fraud) is being exposed
4/4/10**

Mortgage Repurchase Requests on Rise

Banks are facing a wave of requests to repurchase troubled mortgage loans in yet another ripple effect from the housing bust.

 Laurie Kulikowski
The Street

The pushback from the parties now stuck with the loans-- namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- began in earnest in the second half of 2009. With delinquencies and foreclosures still running at record highs, there's no sign the demands will begin to abate anytime soon.
4/4/10** U.S. bank-fraud SYSTEMIC and INTENTIONAL – William Black Bullion Bulls Canada

The FBI announced there was an “epidemic of mortgage fraud” in the United States.

What was the response of the Bush regime to the FBI's announcement? Bush stripped the FBI of 80% of the white-collar experts who specialized in such crime. He sent them off after “terrorist” boogeymen, while the world's worst economic “terrorists” were engaged in a fraud scheme greater than EVERY other act of fraud in human history – combined.

4/4/10

More U.S. Mortgage-Fraud

Jeff Nielson 

BENZINGA

After scamming the world for trillions of dollars with their toxic, “securitized” mortgage products,Wall Street's plan was then to throw millions of Americans out of their homes (due to the unaffordable mortgages they had been conned into entering). The problem for Wall Street was these mortgages had been sliced-and-diced to such an extent that in many/most of these mortgages, the paper-trail of who actually held title to a particular mortgage got lost in Wall Street's maze of fraud.
4/3/10

I Saw the Crisis Coming. Why Didn’t the Fed?

MICHAEL J. BURRY 

NYTimes OP-ED Contributor

I had begun to worry about the housing market back in 2003, when lenders first resurrected interest-only mortgages, loosening their credit standards to generate a greater volume of loans. Throughout 2004, I had watched as these mortgages were offered to more and more subprime borrowers — those with the weakest credit. The lenders generally then sold these risky loans to Wall Street to be packaged into mortgage-backed securities, thus passing along most of the risk. Increasingly, lenders concerned themselves more with the quantity of mortgages they sold than with their quality.
4/3/10 U.S. Probes Foreclosure-Data Provider

Lender Processing Services Unit Draws Inquiry Over the Steps That Led to Faulty Bank Paperwork

AMIR EFRATI 

CARRICK MOLLENKAMP -WSJ

The case follows on the dismissal of numerous foreclosure cases in which judges across the U.S. have found that the materials banks had submitted to support their claims were wrong. 
4/1/10

Texas Man Sentenced for Mortgage Fraud Scheme Moe Bedard

LoanSafe

This law enforcement action is part of President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.

President Obama established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources.

4/1/10 Bear Stearns: Some News Is So Big It Needs Its Own Page Huffington Post Headlines:

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

Bear Stearns Bailout Exposes Fed To Billions In Losses

Fed's Bear Stearns Assets It Swallowed in Firm's Rescue

4/1/10

Fed Reveals Bear Stearns Assets It Swallowed in Firm’s Rescue

Craig Torres, Bob Ivry and Scott Lanman - Bloomberg

After months of litigation and political scrutiny, theFederal Reserve yesterday ended a policy of secrecy over its Bear Stearns Cos. bailout.

In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.

4/1/10 Bank of America to Increase Foreclosure Rate by 600% in 2010 4closureFraud If they are foreclosing on more people each month than would be helped by the principal reduction program, then the program is merely a pleasant facade intended to divert attention from the huge volume of foreclosures they will push through.
3/31/10** Fannie Mae Update – MERS must NOT be Named as a Plaintiff in ANY Foreclosure Action Ever Again 4closureFraud Effective with foreclosures referred on or after May 1, 2010, MERS must not be named as a plaintiff in any foreclosure action, whether judicial or non-judicial, on a mortgage loan owned or securitized by Fannie Mae.
3/31/10**

A DAY AT THE COURT 4closureFraud Floridians need to form a grassroots movement to challenge the judges and the banks.  Up to now, the judges have been given a free ride.  These individuals are anonymous to the public but these judges are elected official; and, therefore, public officials.  Although these judges are sworn to uphold the laws of Florida and are elected by the people, the majority of judges in Florida hate the ordinary people of Florida.  Why?  Because the People of Florida bought into the Banks ponzi scheme, now these judges have large case loads that they find unbearable.  Judges have determined that most people are not going to fight the foreclosure so the judges are free to rule against the law; against the people; and get away with it.

3/31/10

FORECLOSURE LAWSUITS ARE BUILT ON LIES

Shapiro & Fishman admits foreclosure claims cannot be verified

In their “Motion for Rehearing,” Shapiro explained that their lawyers cannot ethically swear to the truth of the papers they file with the court, because they rely on information from others:

It is also unclear whether an attorney or law firm representing a lender can verify a mortgage foreclosure complaint based upon information he/she/it obtained from the client or other parties, including the holder of the note and the servicer.

Florida Foreclosure Fraud Ripping the mask off foreclosure plaintiffs’ lies

There’s one giant, gaping hole in Shapiro’s argument to the Supreme Court. In every foreclosure action, these law firms submit to the court evidence in the form of affidavits – sworn written statements – which are supposed to swear to the truth of all the elements of the plaintiffs’ claim. These affidavits are the basis for judgment in more than 99% of all foreclosure cases where the house is sold.

And Shapiro has just admitted that they are false. Because the one person signing them cannot possibly have “personal knowledge” of all the facts of the case – at least, that’s what Shapiro has said.

3/31/10 New York Fed Releases Additional Information on Maiden Lane Portfolios Federal Reserve Bank of New York The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today announced that it has expanded the information that it makes available to the public related to the Maiden Lane portfolios. The new information includes nearly all of the holdings of Maiden Lane LLC (ML)—with the exception of residential whole loans as that would violate individual borrowers’ privacy—and all of the holdings of Maiden Lane II LLC (MLII) and Maiden Lane III LLC (ML III)
3/31/10** The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke

How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone

The county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet.

A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack.

3/31/10 Cuomo brings foreclosure fraud fight to Elmont Matthew Hampton

LIHERALD

Unscrupulous loan-modification companies claim they can renegotiate the terms of mortgages and instruct homeowners in ways to protect their biggest investment. All too often, experts say, these companies are just preying on people who find themselves in a desperate situation.
3/31/10 Fraud and Greed of Trusted Rating Agencies Helped Spread the Credit Crisis Shah Gilani
The Mortgage Pot
Blame has been laid at the feet of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and an investment bankers’ brew of toxic financial products. Ultimately, however, it was the supposedly trustworthy rating agencies that got everyone to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid.

The sheer fraud and greed of rating agency analysts and executives is staggering. That no one has gone to jail, and none of the agencies have been shut down is a travesty of justice on an infinitely larger scale than Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Spring 2010

whitepaper

Northeastern Law Journal  When we selected this topic in late 2008, the United States was in one the deepest financial crises in its history. The mortgage foreclosure rate had increased more than eighty percent in one year, causing almost one million families to lose their homes.
3/30/10 Latest Foreclosure Aid: Free Lawyers Bendix Anderson

Housing Watch

Lots of government officials have promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure, but New York City is finally offering homeowners something of real value: free legal aid to help them negotiate a fair deal from their banks.

"No family facing the loss of their home should be without representation," says New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
3/29/10**

William Black on the Financial Crisis, Mortgage Fraud, and the Top Ten Ways to Crack Down on Corporate Financial Crime

New Economic Perspectives  

Five-part video series

3/29/10 Love in the Time of Foreclosure

Stephanie Walker

 
3/29/10 Task Force Fights Back Against Mortgage Fraud Brittany Dunn

DSNews.com

Mortgage fraud is a key focus of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which was established by President Obama in November 2009. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.
3/28/10 ShameTheBanks.org Gaining Momentum Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

The site is riddled with information, stories from homeowners are coming in every day, and the blogs are active. The contributors to the site are homeowners, consumer lawyers, and even some who worked for loan servicers. A few of the members have blogs on the site. Each of them is dedicated to one purpose: Helping homeowners find information and give them a voice they otherwise may not have had.
3/28/10 Too Big to Live Devilstower  
3/28/10 GMAC: Still Stealing Homes. wavpeac I have written many articles detailing my story withHomecomings Financial now GMAC. You can read my story here. http://www.dailykos.com/... . I have written many stories about the fraud in these loans but am always faced with people who just don't quite believe it.
3/27/10**

Chief Judge of US Court, Los Angeles, Requested to Restore Integrity of Banking Litigations Joseph H Zernik, PhD Cases, such as James E Keener v HSBC Mortgage Services Inc et al (2:09-cv-06956) involving individuals and large financial institutions at the US Court, Central District of California, are evidence of serious, pervasive violations of the Human Rights of the people by the US Courts and the US Government.Moreover, they reflect the true nature of the current integrity/financial crisis, which is consistently covered up by FBI, US Department of Justice, SEC, and banking regulators.
3/26/10

One to watch

JPMorganLehman,UBS Named in Bid-Rigging Conspiracy

Now we are getting to the good stuff.MSF

Bank of America Corp.Bear Stearns Cos.,Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc.  Wachovia  and Royal Bank of Canada are also named.

William Selway and Martin Z. Braun

Bloomberg

At the same time, the government will probably focus on seeking to convict individual bankers, he said. 

“When someone goes to jail for five years, that resonates,” he said. “When a company pays $200 million, it’s simply a balance sheet issue.

 Jail time is what captures corporate America’s attention.”

3/26/10

Frank Statement on the Obama Administration’s Foreclosure Avoidance Program

foreclosure avoidance measures as part of H.R. 4173,

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank More yawn.
3/26/10 Subprimes Not Dead for American General Securitization.net American General has never been a frequent issuer of mortgage-backed bonds, but sees now as an opportune time to use its loan-origination business to carve out a presence in the market. Subprime mortgages were once the lifeblood of the securitization business, accounting for more than $1 trillion of deals in the decade leading up to the 2007 credit-market crash. Amid rampant defaults, the flow of those deals slowed late that year and then shut off entirely in 2008.
3/26/10 US AG brings more money to fight AZ mortgage fraud BOB CHRISTIE

Daily Caller

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder delivered more resources to fight mortgage fraud in Arizona and across the nation Thursday, saying $8 million will be used to beef up investigation teams this spring.

Advanced technologies, new communication tools and top federal law enforcement officials are focused on preventing, prosecuting and punishing mortgage fraud, Holder said.

Mortgage fraud schemes must be stopped in their tracks, and those willing to exploit our national financial crisis for personal gain will be brought to justice.
3/26/10 California AG Brown shuts down foreclosure relief scams California Attorney General California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. has shut down two fraudulent foreclosure assistance companies and secured a court judgment that prohibits three individuals from working in the real estate industry and provides more than $1 million in restitution for victims left with “false hope” after paying upfront fees for nonexistent loan modification services
3/26/10

Bombshell- Substantiated Allegations of Foreclosure/Affidavit Fraud

Attorney Matt Weidner An attorney who works in the Office of the Florida Attorney General is executing documents that are being used to take homeowner’s homes from them.
3/26/10

Foreclosure Fraud Fighters Secret Weapons Exposed! Finding ROBOSIGNERS!

Attorney Matt Weidner Amazingly, many of the key witnesses in the foreclosure fraud cases are more than willing to talk with you.

Soon the corporations that put the robosigners on task are going to turn their backs on their once compliant robots and then they’re really going to want to talk and spill the beans.  

3/25/10 Double-Dip in Housing Will Drag Down Economy

Richard Suttmeier -SeekingAlpha

Serious delinquencies for single-family mortgages continued to rise in January. Tracking the S&P 500. New home sales declined again in February. 
3/25/10 Vacate Florida Foreclosure Judgment & Sale? “No Problem” caseclarity.com In the end, this well-kept secret will continue to fuel the mortgage industry’s rush to displace homeowners even when there is no right to foreclose in the first place.  After all, what’s the risk?
3/25/10

Obama administration revising foreclosure prevention program

Renae Merle
Washington Post
But the changes are incremental and do not address some of the fundamental problems that have plagued the program, which was launched a year ago.

"If they do begin, they often encounter unresponsive lenders, repeated incidents of lost paperwork, and a variety of other administrative frustrations."

3/25/10 Wells Fargo Loses Bid to Dismiss Muni Bond Suit David Glovin

Bloomberg

Wells Fargo & Co., UBS AG, Morgan Stanley and more than a dozen other financial institutions lost a bid to dismiss legal claims accusing them of conspiring to rig bids for municipal derivatives.
3/25/10**

Foreclosure lawsuits are built on lies: Shapiro & Fishman admits foreclosure claims cannot be verified 

Florida Foreclosure Fraud Weblog One of them actually told the Florida Supreme Court so. Shapiro & Fishman, one of Florida’s largest foreclosure mills, has asked the Court to back down from the verification requirement,  with the astonishing reason that   it’s impossible to get anyone to swear to the truth of a foreclosure complaint.
3/23/10

Homeowners Sue Bank of America for Failing to Permanently Modify Loans

Carrie Bay - DSNews Homeowners in Washington State are suing Bank of America, alleging the nation’s largest lender is “intentionally” and “systematically” thwarting and ignoring borrowers’ requests to make reasonable mortgage modifications that would prevent homes from being foreclosed.

Bank of America came up with every excuse to defer the Kahlo family from a home loan modification, from stating they ‘lost’ their paperwork to saying they never approved the new terms of the mortgage agreement,”

3/23/10** Verification of Mortgage Foreclosure Complaints 4closureFraud Typically, the plaintiff in a foreclosure action does not own the underlying note or loan that is secured by the property subject to the foreclosure proceeding. Freddie Mac’s servicers initiate foreclosure actions in their names, even though they are not the owners of the notes or loans in question, because they are the mortgagees as shown on the land records (by fraudulent, fabricated assignments) and they are the holders (not in due course) or otherwise in possession of the (fabricated)notes.
3/23/10 Showtime for Fannie and Freddie Alyssa Katz

Housing Watch

House Republicans piled on to ask whether the U.S. needs government in the mortgage business at all, though Kansas Rep. Dennis Moore did their cause no favor by holding up Ireland and Portugal as examples of nations with strong homeownership despite not having government backing for mortgages.
3/22/10 Full Deposition of Jeffrey Stephan – GMAC’sAssignment / Affidavit Slave – 10,000 Documents a Month 4closureFraud  
3/21/10 Finding in Foreclosure a Beginning, Not an End JOHN LELAND

New York Times

Then they discovered a surprising paradox within the nation’s housing crisis: 

Their power to negotiate began after foreclosure, rather than ending there.

3/21/10 Failure To Inspect Property & Inquire Into Rights Of Parties In Possession Prior To Making Loan Leaves Indiana Lender With Voided Mortgage Home Equity Theft Reporter Even though Trustcorp presumably had no actual knowledge of the oral understanding between Benjamin and his sons about the ownership of the home, and presumably had no actual knowledge of Richard's intent to drain the equity out of the home by pocketing the proceeds of the mortgage loan from Trustcorp. (and thereby screwing over his father out his home of 35+ years), the Indiana appeals court affirmed the lower court in ruling that Benjamin's earlier-acquired, but unrecorded, ownership rights in the home pursuant to the oral understanding he had with his sonstrumped Trustcorp's later-acquired recorded mortgage, and further, ruled that Trustcorp's mortgage was invalid.
3/19/10 Loan Pools That Need Some Sun Gretchen Morgenson 

NY Times

The case also provides interesting details on what the Federal Home Loan Bank said were misrepresentations made by those companies about the loans underlying the securities it bought.
3/18/10**

Judge Buford Slams Mers for Its Own Confusion

Neil Garfield - livinglies That in turn means that whoever owned it before the “sale” still owns it. Which of course means in most cases that there are hundreds of thousands of people who were homeowners that still own the property that was “foreclosed.” It also means,if the house is empty that they have the right to re-enter it.So you see, it is on this simple fact and basic black letter law that the entire foreclosure mess is proved to be an illusion.
3/16/10** Sue Your Lender, Save Your Home

We looked at some homeowners who have chosen one of these routes -- and won.

Sheree R Curry

Housing Watch

Many homeowners are fighting back, the American way: by suing and screaming.

Some lenders and loan servicers believe they can make more money by foreclosing on a home than by modifying a mortgage, so they give excuses for not doling out permanent modifications while trying to appear as if they're trying to help. For others, they just give homeowners the "runaround."

3/16/10** Obtaining Due Process in Non-Judicial Foreclosure States

Courts are making the assumption, unsupported by facts, that the allegations contained in the notice of default and notice of sale are truthful.

George W. Mantor

Rismedia

The Courts, in their haste to apply the first purpose, are ignoring the second and third purpose of the Code. There is now a substantial body of evidence of wrongful foreclosures by entities lacking both authority and justification to do so.

And, how can a properly conducted sale be final between the parties if the party of interest isn’t involved. What about that individual?

3/16/10

Forty Indicted in Major East Texas Mortgage Fraud Scheme

Today's indictment is a strong reminder how serious our system considers this criminal activity.

The indictment

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney Bales specifically noted the breadth of the financial scheme, “This indictment brings to light a criminal scheme that is quite breathtaking in its scope and beyond disturbing as far as the boldness of the fraud. The agents have done a remarkable job putting together this investigation and we look forward to presenting all of the evidence in court. Hopefully, others involved in mortgage fraud will be taking notice—we will be relentless in discovering, exposing and holding accountable those who have committed similar crimes.”
3/15/10**

Freedom of Information Act Requests Show Bank Misrepresentation

BMcDonald - livinglies Most of us are trying to get the info from the banks, which they will not do unless forced. Well, now many of us can walk right in through the back door. FOIA requests! 
3/15/10**

Summary Judgment Should Rarely Be Entered in a Florida Foreclosure Case Matt Weidner Courts should be sufficiently concerned about the poor pleading, fraudulent affidavits and other problems that have become commonplace in this foreclosure crisis such that the courts should have second thoughts about granting summary judgment in any case.
3/15/10**

THE RULE OF LAW AND WALL STREET BY U.S. SENATOR TED KAUFMAN

 

Last Thursday, the bankruptcy examiner for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. released a 2,200 page report about the demise of the firm and which included riveting detail on the firm’s accounting practices. That report has put in sharp relief what many of us have expected all along: that fraud and potential criminal conduct were at the heart of the financial crisis.

SENATOR TED KAUFMAN  Now that we’re beginning to learn many of the facts, at least with respect to the activities at Lehman Brothers, the country has every right to be outraged. Lehman was cooking its books, hiding $50 billion in toxic assets by temporarily shifting them off its balance sheet in time to produce rosier quarter-end reports. According to the bankruptcy examiner’s report, Lehman Brothers’ financial statements were “materially misleading” and its executives had engaged in “actionable balance sheet manipulation.” Only further investigation will determine whether the individuals involved can be indicted and convicted of criminal wrongdoing.

3/15/10**

Obtaining Due Process in

 Non-Judicial Foreclosure States

-  In more and more cases, the borrowers are not even being served with notice as required by law.

- Anyone, and I mean anyone, can record a notice of default, wait the appropriate amount of time, and file a notice of sale; take these two documents to court and get an unlawful detainer.

- The system is being abused by third parties who’s only interest in the property is the desire to collect on credit default swaps.

 

George Mantor

 One way to advance awareness of the problem of pretender lenders would be to record these notices on the homes of all of our congressmen.

- There is no judicial review, no oversight and, as a result, no due process even for those who have done nothing wrong; and nowhere is anyone considering the rights of the true beneficiary.

- There is no review of the legitimacy of the foreclosure, and unless the borrower is willing to go to court and fight, there is no stopping the foreclosure.

- And, with more borrowers rising up to fight their illegal foreclosure, the courts are becoming more crowded and judges are becoming impatient, often dismissing the borrower’s case without even a preliminary review of the facts.

3/15/10 Michael Lewis Says Customers [Expletived] ByGoldman Sachs Should Be 'Embarrassed Rather Than Angry'

PRNewswire

"You would think a firm that traded against its customers would be penalized, and instead the firm that trades against customers the most was rewarded."
3/14/10**

Inside The Collapse: What Led to Wall StreetCollapse and Who Predicted It

60 Minutes

"The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," comes out later this week and it explains how some of Wall Street's finest minds managed to destroy $1.75 trillion of wealth in the subprime mortgage markets.
3/14/10 Fraud charges loom for Lehman Bros

Investigation into bank's collapse questions why $50bn in risky assets was not made public

Margareta Pagano

The Independant

Ex-Lehman Brothers directors and their UK advisers could face a fresh blitz of civil and criminal charges following the publication on Friday of the explosive report into the collapse of the Wall Street bank which claimed it "misrepresented" its financial position.
3/13/10 Debt collectors come after homeowners years after default

Jim Wasserman | Sacramento Bee

Pretender lenders have been quietly selling second mortgages and home equity lines left unpaid after foreclosures and short sales. The buyers: collection agencies, which in California have up to four years to make a claim.

There is a silver lining here if the alleged debtor can prove the security instrument was bifurcated from the note and therefore the foreclosing party had no legal basis to trigger the foreclosure clause. MSF

3/12/10 NY Fed Under Geithner Implicated in LehmanAccounting Fraud Allegation naked capitalism The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abettingLehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.
3/12/10 Lehman Fraudulently Cooked Its Books, Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Helped, Geithner and Bernanke Winked and Slapped Them on the Back Washington's Blog As William K. Black said a year ago, the government's entire strategy now - as in the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").

The stress tests were a total sham, with a pre-ordained passing grade for the banks.

The government has allowed the giant banks to hide their liabilities and maintain dizzying amounts of leverage by using off-balance-sheet gimmicks:

3/12/10** MERS Admits NO Interest in Mortgage and No Loss On Default Mark Mausert, Nevada 

 

Arnold admitted MERS does not have a beneficial interest in any mortgage; does not loan money; does not suffer a default if monies are not paid; etc...the internal agreement used by MERS expressly disavows any beneficial interest.
3/12/10**

Lehman Bankruptcy Report: Top Officials Manipulated Balance Sheets, JPMorgan AndCiti Contributed To Collapse

The Report is also available.

Shahien Nasiripour

Huffington Post

The examiner notes that the issue giving rise to these potential claims was Lehman's creative use ofrepurchase agreements, otherwise known as repo. These are agreements between financial firms that essentially act as loans for cash -- one firm pledges collateral to another in exchange for cash with a promise that they'll buy back that collateral.

Lehman's own accounting personnel described Repo 105 transactions as an "accounting gimmick"

3/11/10** MORE HORROR STORIES OF PRO SE FORECLOSURE DEFENSE DISASTERS Jeff Barnes

We have repeatedly cautioned non-lawyers from trying to engage in the practice of law especially in this ever-evolving field of law where many states do not even have case law on the problems with MERS assignments, the necessity for proof of chain of title in order to foreclose, the elements of legal standing, etc., and where many of the Judges, through no fault of their own, have just not been presented with these issues yet. Although many of the legal concepts in proper foreclosure defense have been around for decades, they have not been applied to the complicated securitization scenarios attendant to the generation of millions of mortgage loans from 2001 through 2007.

3/10/10** Dear FTC: Please go after the real predators. Denise Richardson

Give Me Back My Credit.com

I know countless homeowners who have been pleading with the powers that be to step up and stop unregulated mortgage servicers from stealing their homes

3/9/10

Ohio man losing home and job shoots co-workers then commits suicide 10tv.com Nathaniel Brown not only lost his job, but he was at risk of losing his home.  He was working with his mortgage lender and a mediator to keep his house from going into foreclosure,
3/7/10**

Documents insufficient in foreclosure case

Tom Lyons

Sarasota Herald

The three-judge panel said a bank that was not the original lender and had not proven it had the right to foreclose, because the documents filed did not show how, or if, mortgage ownership had ever been transferred to the bank.
3/6/10** President of BofA Requested to Disclose his Own Alleged Fraud to Audit Committee

"for looting of home owners across the US

Examiner.com The Agreement was to purchase Countrywide for stock exchange at over $4 billion, whereas the true value of Countrywide was in the negative many billions of dollars. 
3/6/10 Banks Swallow Another $30 billion or So in More Losses as Their Share Prices Surge (Again) Reggie Middleton

SafeHaven

JP Morgan has increased its reserves with regards to repurchase of sold securities but the information surround these actions are very limited as the company does not separately report the repurchase reserves created to meet contingencies. However, the Company's income from mortgage servicing was severely impacted by increase in repurchase reserves.

 

3/5/10

Wells Fargo to pay homeowner $155,092.00 for trespassing.

Wells Fargo v. Tyson

Judge Jeffrey Arlen Spinner The Court finds the appropriate measure of damages for the trespass to Defendant’s possessory interest in the property to be in the amount of $ 200.00. The Court further finds that Defendant is entitled to recover $ 4,892.00 representing the value of the personality lost as a direct result of Wells Fargo's actions in trespass. Finally, the Court finds that Defendant is entitled to recover exemplary damages from Plaintiff in the amount of $ 150,000.00.
3/5/10

**

Fannie, Freddie Ask Banks to Eat Soured Mortgages Bradley Keoun

Bloomberg

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may force lenders including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. to buy back $21 billion of home loans this year as part of a crackdown on faulty mortgages.
3/3/10

Borrower Beware - Arizona's Anti-Deficiency Statutes

Anthony J. Meier

Lawyers.com

A recent CNNMoney.com article highlights a hidden danger for some distressed homeowners - deficiency liability to their mortgage lender. Although Arizona and several other states have laws that restrict the lender's ability to sue a borrower for any portion of a mortgage that is not paid off from foreclosure proceeds, the laws vary from state to state and not all home loans qualify for protection from deficiency lawsuits.
  3/2/10

New York Judges Slam Baum Law Firm and JP Morgan Chase Citing Questionable Legal Work

livinglies

Most people are walking away from homes they still own on the basis of a claim by a party who is NOT a creditor. The TILA Audit, if it includes conclusions drawn from an analysis of the securitization of the transaction, will provide the homeowner with ample ammunition to raise issues of fact and require proof from the pretender lender.
  3/1/10

Court urged to require foreclosure mediation Mark D. Killian

 The Florida Bar News

“These financial storms have hit Florida with the financial force of a category five hurricane,” Miami’s Kendall Coffey wrote for the petitioners, which include Jeffrey B. Crockett of Miami, the Florida Justice Institute, Legal Services of Greater Miami, and Florida Legal Services. “There are a projected 423,700 foreclosures in Florida in 2009 and a projected 1.4 million in Florida over the next four years.”
2/28/10 Abandoned foreclosures a mounting crisis in Manatee   bradenton 

   2/28/10

Liening on NY homeowners

Chase and law firm law firm draw scrutiny over tactics in foreclosure cases

 

Judge: “There must be hundreds, if not thousands of [Nuers] . . . who get this stuff done to them all the time.”

RICHARD WILNER - NY Post Diana Adams, the US Trustee in Manhattan, filed papers in court supporting punitive financial sanctions against the bank for a string of bad behavior, including seeking to foreclose on homes after they rejected the attempts to make on-time payments and for failing to prove they own the mortgage on a home even as they move to seize it.
    2/24/10 

Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Hosts Mortgage Fraud Summit in Miami

"This task force has a straightforward mission: To protect families against financial fraud and restore the confidence of consumers in our markets," said Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West. 

Department of Justice

"We will hold accountable not just those responsible for the corporate fraud that created our current financial crisis, but those responsible for the financial fraud that affects too many working families, like mortgage fraud and lending discrimination. And by holding these people accountable, we will seek to prevent another meltdown from happening again."

"The mortgage fraud crisis cannot be ignored. Mortgage fraud puts lenders at risk, and forces homeowners to confront the real possibility of foreclosures, or worse, the loss of their homes," said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jeffrey H. Sloman .

2/24/10** Foreclosure Case Killer 

The Subpoena Duces Tecum

Weidner Law

The lenders and banks that brought our country to the verge of collapse with fraud, misrepresentation and lies have now brought these same practices into local courtrooms.  Every day, judges who sign foreclosure orders are confronted with legal pleadings that do not conform to the most basic requirements of professional standards, but who really cares about that…the real issue is that because the lenders cannot produce the evidence they need to proceed with their cases, they….produce the evidence they need to proceed with their cases.

2/23/10** Secret AIG Document Shows Goldman SachsMinted Most Toxic CDOs Richard Teitelbaum

Bloomberg

A potentially more important development slipped by with less notice, Bloomberg Markets reports in its April issue. Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, placed into the hearing record a five-page document itemizing the mortgage securities on which banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA had bought $62.1 billion in credit-default swaps from AIG.
2/23/10**

Central Florida Judge Voids Foreclosure Sale, Allowing Homeowner Victimized By Sewer Service To Recover Title To Home Home Equity Theft Reporter As foreclosures continue to overwhelm the court system, there is a growing concern that sloppy and careless work in foreclosure cases is making Berta's experience a common one.
2/23/10**

Bogus foreclosure claim not isolated

The Florida Bar has confirmed, that some bulk-rateforeclosure firms are seriously cutting corners. 

Tom Lyons Herald Tribune.

"It's a cruel joke," says Charney, a Legal Aid lawyer who has been teaching foreclosure seminars for area lawyers and judges. "We are finding these all over the country."

 

Such flagrantly self-identifying bogus documents are only a bit more obvious and extreme than routine ones that often have equally shaky and unproven mortgage assignment claims, Charney says.

 

"It really is kind of pathetic," she says, and it shows why judges should be angry, and why more struggling homeowners should get legal help.

2/22/10**

An abrupt eviction, narrowly averted

 

"They tried to use their knowledge of the law to steal my house."

Todd Ruger Herald Tribune.

His home has cars in the driveway, the water and power are on, and he says his two dogs bark at anyone who knocks on the door of the home.

Yet the bank foreclosing on his five-acre property told a judge that Berta had abandoned the home, could not be found and might even be dead.

 

That declaration allowed Wells Fargo Bank to take possession of Berta's home in December without him ever knowing that a foreclosure case had been filed

2/22/10**

Another Rubber-Stamped Foreclosure Judgment Gets The Boot From Appeals Court; Trial Judge Fails To Apply Binding Precedent To Standing-Lacking Lender Home Equity Theft Reporter The court stated: "We are convinced that the later joinder of the real party in interest could not have cured the Bank of New York’s lack of standing when it filed its foreclosure complaint."
2/22/10

Judge approves SEC-Bank of Americasettlement on Merrill deal

Larry Neumeister, Associated Press

A federal judge said Monday he would reluctantly approve an amended $150 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America to end civil charges accusing the bank of misleading shareholders when it acquired    Merrill Lynch .

But U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff called the revised pact "half-baked justice at best."

2/22/10

RED ALERT: Mortgage Bankers Strongly Oppose New Foreclosure Bill in California – SBX8 38 Mandelman Matters Because this bill is proposed during special session, it is not subject to the normal rigors of legislative scrutiny, and may become binding law within a matter of weeks
2/19/10**

Mortgage fraud and kickbacks alleged atCitibank, JP Morgan Chase & Bank of America Maryann Tobin

Political Spin Examiner

Real estate industry insider Jeremy Brandt told CNBC,“at least 200 real estate agents said they have had these requests made by representatives of Citi Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other large banks.”
2/19/10 My Mortgage Company is stealing my money--and my home! 

A new definition of "Home Robbery"

Denise Richardson

Give Me Back My Credit.com

Peoples' homes are being stolen, and though they are not being removed from their foundations and carted off to pawn shops, they might as well be.  Crooks are pushing families and children out of their homes and neighborhoods without cause--and nobody seems to care.
2/19/10

Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure

Man Says Actions Intended To Send Message To Banks

See the results of the survey.

WLWT.com Hoskins said he'd gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure.

Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum. "I'll tear it down before I let you take it," Hoskins told them. And that's exactly what Hoskins did.

2/19/10**

Press Release

Judge Throws Out Bank Eviction, Calling into Question Validity of Evictions across California Tenants Together "it is unfair that an innocent tenant can be punished for standing up to a bogus eviction. Our legislators need to expand protections for innocent tenants who exercise their right to go to court, especially against these banks that are systematically violating California law."

We see a lot of these confusing notices after foreclosures. In my opinion, they are invalid, and apparently, the Court agreed."

2/17/10** Garbage Pleadings Are a Part of Virtually Every Foreclosure Case In Florida

Garbage in = Homeowner Out

Matt Weidner The typical foreclosure case filed by any one of theforeclosure mills across the state like David Stern,Marshall Watson and Florida Default Law is an unprofessional mish mash of conclusory and often inconsistent statements from which no court should enter summary judgment against a defendant. 
2/17/10**

Foreclosure Case Killer- Motion to Strike Affidavit of Amounts Due and Owing.

Matt Weidner Some brilliant legal research by my colleague Michael Fuino (3L at Stetson Law) confirms that these affidavits are flawed and should not be permitted to be relied upon to grant summary judgment.
2/17/10** That's Not Happening: Cuomo Refuses to Turn Over Bank of America Transcript to SEC

 

many documents and links included

Corporate Counsel

Manhattan federal district court Judge Jed Rakoff asked Bank of America and the SEC to give him more information before he would decide whether to approve a $150 million settlement reached by the two parties. Rakoff was struck by the disparity between the SEC's version of the events surrounding the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. in 2008, as reflected in the settlement filings, and a more incriminating version laid out in a complaint filed by Cuomo this month.
2/17/10**

Judges in Pinellas County FL Have Begun to Deny Defendant’s Motions To Dismiss Without Hearing – .... A Stunning Denial of a Homeowner’s Fundamental Rights! 4closureFraud THE COURTHOUSE IS CLOSED TO LOCAL HOMEOWNERS WHO PAY TO KEEP IT OPEN!

When challenged on these crucial details, the Plaintiffs often commit fatal evidentiary and pleading issues by submitting false affidavits questionable endorsements and bogus assignments of mortgage.

2/17/10 The Coming Foreclosure Flood

Expect home prices in areas with lots of foreclosures to plummet. Yes, more.

Alyssa Katz

Housing Watch

Many homeowners have fallen behind on their mortgages or stopped paying, but foreclosure has not yet arrived. Mortgage servicers, the folks who send you the bills and file for foreclosure when you can't pay them, are overwhelmed. Courts, too, are backed up. Mortgage modifications and foreclosure moratoriums have put off the day of reckoning for borrowers, but not forever. And unemployment is sabotaging more homeowners every day.
2/16/10** Mortgage Insurer Asks Court to Bless Claim Denials Sara Lepro
Insurance Networking News
The mortgage insurance unit of Old Republic International Corp. is asking a court to back its refusal to pay claims on soured mortgages originated by Countrywide Financial Corp.
2/16/10 Beware of the Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act Denise Richardson Give Me Back My Credit.com Forget the fact that the lenders are going to benefit because they can foreclose more quickly through the speediness offered in a non-judicial foreclosure. What really worries me is, what will this do for borrowers who are facing unfair and often illegal foreclosures? Consumers are being railroaded.
2/13/10** The Whole Country is BOGUS – Fabricated Mortgage Assignments All Over the Country

"This is much more than a clerical error. It is outright blatant fraud."

4closureFraud Now, we are seeing BOGUS assignments all over the Florida public records.  At first I though it was some kind of joke. Well it is, and the joke is on all of us. Doesn’t anyone look at these papers before filing them? Do the courts even care they are allowing peoples homes to be taken away by some BOGUS document?
2/13/10**

A Hundred Thousand Homeowners 

Voices of Hope & Change

Mandelman Matters

The foreclosure  crisis MUST be stopped.  And it would have been months ago… if America’s homeowners had a VOICE in Washington…

2/12/10

Homeowners beware: Lenders use loophole to win foreclosure by default

If the homeowner does not show up in court, the lender automatically wins by default. Banks know this and are using a loophole in the law to cheat their customers out of a chance to fight back.

Examiner In some states, like Florida, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, there is no legal requirement for lenders to notify homeowners of their foreclosure hearing by certified mail. 

The court is not required to send notice either. It is all up to the lenders attorney, and the only requirement is an ordinary postage stamp. Therefore, if the letter gets lost or caught between a pile of junk mail, the homeowner’s fate is sealed. The bank wins.
2/12/10**

Bank of America admits to filing false claims in condo bankruptcy

 Paul Brinkmann

 South Florida Business Journal

Bank of America, already accused of fraud on a national scale for lying about its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., admitted it filed false claims in a Miami bankruptcy court legal motion.

“I don’t know what you all were thinking. I don’t know what else to say,” Isicoff said, according to a transcript. “I am going to issue an order to show cause why Bank of America and its counsel should not be sanctioned for the cost of all attorneys appearing at this hearing today for filing this motion and the affidavit.”

2/10/10**

Recently Discovered Flaw in Recording System Clouds Titles on Previously Foreclosed Properties

"A significant number of previously foreclosed properties have unconnected chain of assignments in the mortgage history. This could represent a title defect which could technically affect ownership rights for future owner.”

PRWEB Even if the foreclosure has long since passed, a loophole in the way mortgages are recorded can create a serious title defect for future owners. 

Title analysis performed this month by AFX Title has detected this error to be common in random samples of properties it reviewed. “This could affect the property ownership of millions of homes nationwide” said David Pelligrinelli, of AFX Title. “The mortgage recording method which created this title flaw did not exist until recently.

Technically, the foreclosing bank has no recorded title rights to foreclose in the first place.

2/9/10** MORTGAGE ASSIGNMENTS AS EVIDENCE OF FRAUD

Title insurance companies issued policies guaranteeing that the trust had clear title to the mortgages

Lyn Szymoniak,ESQ. If a Mortgage Assignment is dated, notarized and filed in a year after the year set forth in the name of the grantee trust on the Assignment, it is actually an Assignment specially, and in many cases, fraudulently, made to facilitate foreclosures.
2/8/10** Judge Questions Bank of America’s New Deal With S.E.C. NYTimes The judge said he regarded the $150 million settlement as “still quite small” and suggested that $300 million or $600 million would be more appropriate.
2/8/10**

Strategic Defaults and The Moral Imperative

George Mantor - Keepin' it real
Homeowners have found themselves in foreclosure for a number of reasons, most beyond their control and not the result of poor decisions by them.  
 
Because the economy was largely derived from betting on economic failure, mounting and compounding failures are taking their predictable toll on the lives of hardworking people who did not get rich as a result of the greatest transfer of wealth in history.
2/8/10**

Foreclosure Fraud- Video Examples of False Affidavits Filed in Courts Across The Country Matt Weidner Blog Video shows, in black and white, papers filed in courts across the country how employees of law firms and lenders are creating false affidavits and assignments then submitting these in courts as part of the Bank`s campaign to take borrower's homes even though they have not established the legal right to do so.
2/7/10**

An Anarchist’s Strategy To Dismiss Every Foreclosure In Florida

 

Courts Are Overwhelmed With Foreclosures

Matt Weidner Blog I’m told at least two Circuit Court Judges in Pinellas County (Linda Allan and Douglas Baird) have announced they were no longer going to hear Motions to Dismiss filed by Defendants in foreclosure cases, but were going to start just denying them across the board without even having a hearing on the matter. Now that’s one way to deal with the crisis.  It’s an unconstitutional, unfair and totally biased approach that completely ignores the law and the rights of the citizens these judges took an oath to serve.
2/7/10 The Most Common Signs of Mortgage Servicing Abuse Phoenix Refinance Attorneys for corrupt mortgage servicers are just as corrupt. These attorneys will receive information they know to be inaccurate or misrepresented from the servicer and file motions in court like it was legitimate — another case of lawyers abusing their positions in order to keep a rich client happy. But the lawyers also know that they can overcharge for legal and court fees and it will be charged to the borrowers’ accounts. These fees may even be in excess of what courts have approved.
2/7/10

The role illegal aliens played in the mortgage crisis (and continue to play)

 

Examiner.com Those elected to represent we the American people, decided instead to represent the bankers and allow illegal aliens to borrow money, often using the stolen Social Security numbers of American citizens. This so-called sub-prime mortgage crisis was actually nothing more than a massive case of fraud.
2/7/10 In housing meltdown, cities turn into buyers CHRIS HAVENS, Star Tribune "I can guarantee if we weren't doing what we're doing, we'd lose the properties to investors and flippers," said Cecile Bedor, St. Paul's planning director.
2/7/10** Lawyer discusses walking away from your home 

So, I say FIGHT YOUR FORECLOSURE!

Chip Parker, Jacksonville Consumer Attorney I am NOT saying you will likely lose your home in foreclosure, and I am NOT saying you should give up.  To the contrary, every day that I am in this fight for middle class home ownership, I realize that most homeowners have tremendous leverage against the mortgage companies.  The banks’ confidence only comes from the fact that most people do not fight.  Truthfully, the banks are losing ground in contested foreclosure cases.
2/5/10**

Judge in Countrywide Case Removed  Over Claim of Discount Loan

Cary O’Reilly

BusinessWeek

A Florida judge was ordered to remove himself from a foreclosure proceeding by Bank of America Corp.’s Countrywide unit after the homeowner claimed the judge received a discount loan from an affiliate of the mortgage lender.

2/4/10**

 

(Video) Evidence of Bank of America fraud

“These are securities fraud that would bar a person from the financial industry for life,” stated Dr. Zernik yesterday

Deborah Dupre'

Examiner.com

Bank of America (BofA) shareholder Dr. Joseph H. Zernik, Ph.D. claims to possess evidence of BofA President, Brian Moynihan securities fraud and that the SEC v BAC (1:09-cv-06829) litigation was a bogus litigation.

2/4/10**

MERS’ Role in Massive Foreclosure Fraud Nationwide- A Peek Behind Their Shady Curtain

Matt Weidner Blog  The MERS system is about to collapse as courts around the country, circuit courts, federal courts and federal bankruptcy courts have called into question the legitimacy of the MERS system.
2/4/10

FTC Press Release

FTC Testifies About Stepped-Up Efforts to Protect Consumers Affected by the Economic Downturn Federal Trade Commission In addition to prosecuting mortgage foreclosure and loan modification scams – with our state attorney general partners bringing more than 200 lawsuits last year – the FTC has targeted a variety of other deceptive and fraudulent schemes, including those in mortgage servicing. [Then why are you still allowing EMC Mortgage to scam homeowners after your investigation and settlement with EMC? MSF]
2/3/10** Florida foreclosure problems are brewing ahead! Denise Richardson

give me back my credit

Homeowners are going to be at even greater risk of losing their homes now because they will have even less time to prove that the lenders have started illegal proceedings against them due to errors, fraud, misinformation or deceptive practices.
2/2/10** Fannie and Freddie In Full Put-Back Mode Bank Lawyers Blog Fannie and Freddie have unleashed armies of auditors and other employees to sift through mortgage files for proof of underwriting flaws, lies and fraud.
2/2/10 No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away DAVID STREITFELD

New York Times

New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.

2/1/10**

SEC Complaint filed against Bank of America Corporation and its president, Brian Moynihan

 

Continued denial of access to public records in such landmark litigation casts a doubt regarding integrity of both the courts and banking regulation in the United States.

LiveLeak Complaint was filed by Joseph Zernik, PhD, Stockholder, against Bank of America Corporation [NYSE:BAC] and its new President, Brian Moynihan. Mary Schapiro, Chair of SEC, confirmed receipt. Stockholder Zernik also requested that Ms Schapiro release public information that would allow better assessment of integrity of operations at BAC prior to the February 23, 2010 Special Stockholders’ Meeting. Integrity of operations at BAC has been a major subject of concern in the past two years, including ongoing investigation by NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and multiple litigations alleging securities fraud by BAC.
2/1/10

Are Appraisals the New Organized Crime?

Greedy appraisers, who put lofty valuations on properties to please lenders and line their pockets, played a large role in the housing bubble.

Sheree R Curry

Housing Watch

Some say the appraisal management companies (AMCs) may only make things worse, after all, some of them are owned by banks. (Landsafe, an AMC, is a subsidiary of Bank of America). The well-known New York appraiser Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, calls it all "an accident waiting to happen."

2/1/10** The Bankers Are Coming To Steal Your Home

The banks and pretender lenders that caused the American economy to collapse and then were rescued with Bajilliions of our tax dollars have caused themselves such problems and have engaged in such widespread fraud and conspiracy that they can no longer rely on courts of justice to help them extract ill-gotten profits from consumers and taxpayers through foreclosure.

Attorney

 Matt Weidner's Blog

In recognition of this increasingly apparent fact, the bankers and mortgage companies that caused the collapse are now working hard to remove their disputes from court systems where judges and attorneys can force them to account for their actions.

A bill that will be introduced in the 2010 session of the Florida Legislature called the  Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act would remove foreclosures from the circuit court systems and would allow lenders to throw a homeowner out of their home without the due process of law.

Jan/Feb Issue

Mortgage Sharks Foreclosing

Can Anyone Stop the Predatory Lenders?

Walters' discovery that her home had been sold out from under her marked the low point of a four-year fiasco that began when Ocwen Loan Servicing became her mortgage servicer in late 2004. 

Andy Kroll

Mother Jones

Through no fault of her own, Ocwen incorrectly processed or lost dozens of Walters' payments and charged her more than $2,000 in late fees and thousands more in additional charges—all without notifying her. The Florida-based company tried to foreclose on her three times. After she paid more than $10,000, Walters figured things were settled. But Ocwen had other ideas.
1/29/10

Florida bankers move to dramatically speed up the foreclosure process

 James Thorner

Tampa Bay Times

If bankers get their way, Floridians facing foreclosure could be kicked out of their homes in as little as three months.

1/28/10

Problems with MERS and Some Recent Wounding of the Company

Although  MERS is a secretive company is not often in the news, it has been receiving more scrutiny with the collapse of the housing market and the huge increase in securitized mortgages.

Foreclosure

Fish.com

In fact, the actual owner of the loan is kept so secret that only members of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System have access to this information. Everyone else, from county recorders to the press to the homeowners facing foreclosure, are not allowed to know which company currently has ownership of a loan. This causes some huge problems with MERS and the law. 

 

1/28/10

Bank of America at it AGAIN! Central Florida

Couple Faces Foreclosure Despite Having Proof That All Mortgage Payments Were Made

4closureFraud Megan, who handles Wilsford’s financial affairs, said she can’t get Bank of America to accept the TBW cancelled checks as proof he made the three payments.
1/28/10

Loan Modifications:

 A $4 Billion Con Game

Richard Zombeck

Huffington Post

In truth, a disturbingly large percentage are denied permanent modifications and given no reason as to why they are denied. These people will most likely face foreclosure, ruined credit, and shame, despite their best efforts and their proven ability to afford and pay the new mortgage. Bank of America for example, in what I can only assume is their "friends and family plan" permanently modified 98 mortgages of the 156, 864 trial modifications they started.

1/28/10

Lenders Beware—Here's One More Twist When You Fail to Record That Mortgage!

What happens when the bankruptcy trustee eventually learns that the original lender never recorded the mortgage

Dykema If you guessed that there would be "no harm, no foul" because the original lender was really an unsecured creditor anyway and therefore would have dropped to the bottom of the list behind the secured creditors and therefore would not have received anything from the bankruptcy estate, you would only be half right.
In one recent case out of Minnesota with precisely the facts above, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc. v. Lindquist, No. 08-3442 (8th Cir. Jan. 11, 2010), the bankruptcy trustee reopened the case when it learned of the initial failure to record. Thereafter, the court not only treated the bank as an unsecured creditor but also ordered it to pay to the bankruptcy trustee the unpaid principal balance of the note! 

1/27/10

Examining The Enforceability Of Securitized Mortgages

REQUIRED READING: An important and far-reaching decision recently issued by the Massachusetts Land Court significantly changes the state's foreclosure practice and detrimentally affects many real estate titles derived from foreclosures completed under the usual and customary foreclosure procedures.

JAMES L. ROGAL MortgageOrb The issues raised by this case, as well as some recent cases from the Massachusetts Bankruptcy Court, bring into question the ability of holders of securitized mortgages to exercise their right to foreclose. It is vital for any lenders and servicers referring foreclosures in Massachusetts to understand the implications of these decisions. This memorandum will provide a brief overview of Massachusetts foreclosure practice, describe the case, critique its holding and then offer some possible solutions to the problems it creates.
1/25/10 Tell bank CEOs: We want the straight story. SEIU These same banks are kicking families out of their homes because they can't afford their mortgages, but they're offering their own executives loans they don't have to pay back? The American people deserve to know what's going on.
1/25/10 The New Mortgage Revolution: Walk Away

It's just not fair to expect borrowers to follow rules that the lenders don't.

Alyssa Katz 

Housing Watch

Morality has nothing to do with it. You are a cog in the wheel of a machine that is killing this country and if you remain a cog you enable it. Remove your cog and the machine will not keep running. Remove millions of cogs and the machine gets replaced."

Now the call for a borrowers' revolt is being joined by folks who know an opportunity when they see it: real estate agents.

1/21/10 FBI: Hedge Fund Ponzi Scheme Used Bogus Mortgage Deals FINalternatives But the FBI and prosecutors say that, in at least two cases, those mortgages were never bought. In February 2009, authorities say, Landberg used $3 million on unrelated interest payments and transferred the rest of the money into an account he controlled, rather than buy the Florida mortgage he claimed he was buying.
1/21/10 Foreclosure Crisis Continues to Worsen Angie Moreschi 

Consumer Warning Network

The number of people dealing with foreclosures reached a record number of nearly 3 million in 2009.  Americans saw that dramatic increase despite efforts, like President Obama’s Making Home Affordable  Program, to reduce foreclosure filings. So, what’s going wrong?
1/21/10

Obama prepares media blitz on bank tax, consumer agency

Michael Kranish
Globe Staff
A White House statement yesterday that reaffirmed the president’s commitment to the stand-alone Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of any financial regulatory overhaul pleased consumer groups but frustrated Republicans. Obama has said such an agency would protect consumers from the questionable lending practices that led to the 2008 financial meltdown, but Republicans instead support rules that allow existing agencies to establish stricter protections for consumers.
1/20/10 State Regulators Warn Of Failing Foreclosure Prevention Efforts Shahien Nasiripour

Huffington Post

Struggling homeowners are increasingly falling behind on their mortgage payments. Not enough of them are getting help from lenders, mortgage companies or the Obama administration's foreclosure initiative.
1/20/10 Short sale fraud CNBC’s Diana Olick Basically, second liens on properties like home equity loans have a blocking interest that can prevent a home from being sold for less than its mortgage value – a so-called short sale. If they refuse to agree to a primary mortgage holder’s short sale, they can send a homeowner into foreclosure. This sets up a conflict between the primary mortgage holder and the secondary liens. 
1/20/10

Pilot Program Helps Homeowners

Philadelphia provides model for avoiding foreclosures

FoxNews  
1/20/10** $8 million in assets - and can't get a mortgage Les Christie - CNN Money One client was turned down for a mortgage twice -- despite an 800 credit score, more than adequate down payment and plenty of income.
1/19/10

Punishing Lawyers in Corporate Frauds

DealBook It is rare that an outside lawyer is prosecuted for legal representation of a client, and the case can be understood as part of a growing trend in which federal prosecutors and regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, focus on those who enable corporate fraud along with the officers and directors who orchestrate it.
1/17/10

Ron Paul on Wall Streets Bailout FRAUD Judge Napolitano  
1/15/10** Taking Aim at Bonuses based on $23.7 Trillion in Taxpayer Gifts livinglies

If they earned it, what business is it of ours or the government?  On the other hand… if they stole it, why are they not in jail?

1/15/10** Big Banks Accused of Short Sale Fraud

Video

Diana Olick ; CNBC CNBC's Diana Olick reports that for homes with two mortgages, the second mortgage holder is often demanding a short sale buyer pay them in cash on the side, and they're not reporting it. And that's against the law.
1/14/10 Foreclosure Filings Near 4 Million In 2009, Worst Since Depression Peter G. Miller

OurBroker

The bloated foreclosure numbers are in large measure a by-product of the more than 7.2 million jobs lost since December 2007 and the huge numbers of toxic loans issued by lenders from 2004 through 2007. Unfortunately, foreclosure totals in 2010 will likely be similar to the numbers seen in 2009.
1/13/10

Subpoenas served on 15 mortgage firms, including 2 in Dallas AP Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general, Kenneth Donohue, said he wanted to determine why defaults are so elevated among the 15 companies being probed and whether any have committed fraud.
1/12/10 Ohio debt collection question goes to U.S. Supreme Court

 

Also see Courthouse News Service article

Sheryl Harris, The Plain Dealer The dispute boils down to whether a debt collector can use a legal error as a defense for failing to comply with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the law that protects consumers from abusive debt collection efforts.

It started when Countrywide hired the Cleveland law firm Carlisle, McNellie, Rini, Kramer & Ulrich to file a foreclosure action against Karen Jerman, who had already paid off the mortgage on her Ashtabula home.

1/11/10

  Banks’ Losses May Spell Shake-Up in Germany

The criminal investigation is a new twist in the troubled history of Germany’s state-owned banks, but the massive losses are not.

JACK EWING New York Times The Landesbank rescues — reminiscent of the meltdowns at the U.S.-backed lendersFreddie Mac and Fannie Mae — have placed a serious burden on German state governments already suffering from slumping tax revenue, as well as the federal government, which is helping to cover some of the losses.
1/8/10 MOVE YOUR MONEY!  move your money.info/ “It’s time to make those Too Big To Fail banks just a little bit smaller by moving your money to a local community bank.”
1/7/10

    

 

Debt Collection Supervisors Settle FTC Charges New FTC Video Explains Consumer Rights Federal Trade Commission “The FTC wants to remind debt collectors of their responsibilities and obligations under the law. Abusive collection actions are illegal, and if debt collectors use abusive tactics they could face legal action,” said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “At the same time, we want consumers to understand their rights if their debts go into collection. Money matters, and the more people know about managing their debt and dealing with debt collectors, the better off they will be.”
1/7/10   Walk Away From Your Mortgage! ROGER LOWENSTEIN - NY Times John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their friends.” Courson was implying that homeowners — record numbers of whom continue to default — have a responsibility to make good. (The banks committed major frauds against the homeowners, investors, governments and others, and they expect the homeowners to make good on the bank's fraud by giving the banks money on an INVALID and sometimes non-existent debt that the banks have already been paid on... over and over again?)
1/7/10

Geithner's New York Fed Pushed AIG To Keep Sweetheart Deals Secret (READ THE AIG EMAILS) shahien@

huffingtonpost 

An arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.
1/6/10

The Fed Did NOT Cause the Credit Crunch, It Was Securitization: Here Is Proof!

 

Andrew_Butter

marketoracle.co.uk

The main reason they could not (would not) was because the value of the collateral that they had put up to guarantee the loans they had taken out turned out to be a lot less than they (and the people who had lent them money), thought it would be worth when they borrowed the money.

So they didn’t pay the money back, so then the people who had lent the money got stuck with the collateral, that didn’t cover the loans they had made,  and so they couldn’t pay money back to people they had borrowed it from, and so there was a credit crunch.

1/5/10 Bondholders Considering Plan to Tell Servicers: "You're Fired!"

Securitization Chart included.

subprime

shakeout

When servicers refuse to service loans in the best interests of the ultimate owners, which they're contractually-obligated to do, they should be shown the door just like anyone else that fails to perform their basic job functions. The question is whether any of these institutional investors will have the courage to break ranks and stand up to banks that have demonstrated unparalleled influence in Washington and on Wall Street.
1/4/10** Behind the Christmas Eve taxpayer massacre at Fannie and Freddie. Wall Street Journal The government wants taxpayers to think that these are profit-seeking companies being nursed back to health, likeAIG. But at leastAIG is trying to make money. Fan and Fred are now designed to lose money, transferring wealth from renters and homeowners to overextended borrowers.
1/4/10

   Credit SuisseAccused of Defrauding Resort Investors

REUTERS

The lawsuit filed Sunday in federal court in Boise, Idaho, seeks $24 billion of damages against Credit Suisseand the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc, and class-action status for more than 3,000 investors who bought land or homes.
1/4/10 Banks 'Making A Killing' On Government Toxic Asset Program Huffington Post The program that was supposed to help banks dispose of these toxic assets instead made those assets so marketable that banks bought more -- which has pushed Wall Street's titans to even greater exposure to the stalled housing market. The banks apparently decided that the government's entry into the mortgage security market was simply a guaranteed money-making opportunity.
 1/4/10 No Good Deed Goes Unpunished as Banks Seek Profits Christopher Condon and Jody Shenn

Bloomberg

 To understand the meaning of no good deed goes unpunished, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner can look no further than Wall Street where the banks that received the biggest taxpayer bailouts are seeking to reap trading profits from securities rescued by the government.
1/3/10

This Is The Government:

Your Legal Right To Redeem Your Money Market Account Has Been Denied

Tyler Durden - zerohedge The next time there is a market crash, and you try to withdraw what you thought was "absolutely" safe money, a back office person will get back to you saying, "Sorry - your money is now frozen. Bank runs have become illegal." This is precisely the regulation now proposed by the administration.

1/3/10**

Wall Street Banks Don’t Own Toxic Loans: ABC

Wall Street Banks that allegedly lost hundreds of billions of dollars - never lost a dime!

REALITY: The main point missed by nearly everyone is that in the securitization of real estate loans — residential and commercial — the Wall Street Banks do not own the toxic loans and never did. 

Neil Garfield The simple ABC is that the loans were executed by homeowners and then trafficked like illegal drugs through middlemen until they ended up in the hands of investors (pension funds, sovereign wealth funds etc.). The actual amount and movement of money was kept carefully hidden from investors and homeowners, violating Federal, State, and common law. Much of this money actually belongs in the hands of homeowners, investors, and taxing authorities from Federal State and Local governments.
1/3/10** FLORIDA FORECLOSURE MILLS EXPOSED  

Comments to the article below.

Neil Garfield The clerical staff of foreclosure mills, sometimes charged with the responsibility of fabricating documents, has no idea what they are doing. The paralegals don’t know anything about the loan, the securitization, or anything else. The junior lawyer who signs off on the foreclosure hasn’t the foggiest idea of what he is signing and whether the allegations or representations are true, false or unknown.
1/3/10** Law firm gorges on home defaults Florida Default Law Group charged her more than $4,000 for delivery of legal documents Mike Sasso  TBO Florida Default Law Group and Wells Fargo "have engaged in the systematic process of churning out unrefined and unexamined form pleadings, instead of producing and filing carefully considered legal papers," a bankruptcy judge wrote.
1/1/10**

U.S. Loan Effort Is Seen as Adding to Housing Woes

Ms. Smith made all three payments on time and submitted required documents, Chase confirms. She called the bank almost weekly to inquire about a permanent loan modification. Each time, she says,Chase told her to continue making trial payments and await word on a permanent modification.

 PETER S. GOODMAN

New York Times

Then, in October, a startling legal notice arrived in the mail: Chase had foreclosed on her house and sold it at auction for $100. (The purchaser? Chase.)

Jack Schakett, Bank of America’s credit loss mitigation executive, confirmed that even borrowers who were current before agreeing to loan modifications and who then made timely payments were reported to credit rating agencies as making only partial payments.

1/1/10** Lining Up for the Wall Street Gravy Train

On Christmas Eve, the Treasury Dept announced that it would lift existing caps on the mortgage-finance giantsFannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two GSE’s will no longer be limited to a ceiling of $200 billion in losses each.

Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
Although, the Treasury’s action looks like it was designed to support the housing market, the real beneficiaries are the banks whose balance sheets are coming under greater pressure from the relentless uptick in foreclosures. It is widely believed that Treasury is laying the groundwork for a major revision of the Obama’s mortgage modification program which has, so far, been a dismal failure. If the critics are right, the administration is planning to slash the principle on millions of mortgages sometime in 2010, thus shifting the sizable losses onto the US taxpayer. Otherwise, the banks will face potential losses on another 4 million foreclosures in the next year alone. (according to Credit Suisse)
Winter 2010

Staunching the Foreclosure Crisis

‘Project No One Leaves’ keeps people in their homes

Elaine McArdle

Harvard Law Bulletin

We want you to know that under Massachusetts law, tenants have a lot of rights, and you don’t have to just move out, even if the bank tells you to or gives you money to leave."

The HLS students have also participated in successful eviction blockades, and they are now using a new tactic of moving families back into properties from which they have been kicked out.

1/1/10 2010 Will Be Worse Monty Pelerin
American Thinker
Debt must not exceed some percentage of income, or else it cannot be serviced. Equivalent conceptual ratios for individuals and businesses have been used by the banking industry as lending criteria for more than a century. For various reasons, banks neglected these guidelines over the past couple of decades, contributing greatly to the credit bubble.
12/30/09 Does Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac own my loan? Chip Parker, Jacksonville Consumer Attorney One thing I’ve learned is that mortgage servicers don’t want homeowners to know who owns their loan.  In about half of all foreclosure complaints I see, the servicer is the plaintiff, and the identity of the owner is not revealed in the pleadings.
12/30/09 Fraud Alert: Color Copies being Used to Fabricate Alleged Originals livinglies I have received a number of reports that “outsource providers” are servicing the foreclosers by creating color copies of documents and submitting them as originals. One report is that the “original” was examined at the courthouse and found to be a printout from a very good color printer. It’s a neat trick and one that has probably worked many hundreds if not thousands of times.
12/29/09 Mortgage Fraud and Home Foreclosures: Community Impacts and Collaborative Responses The Bureau of Justice Assistance  The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) convened a working group of representatives from communities in different regions of the country to examine crime as both a cause and result of foreclosures. (BJA) convened a working group of representatives from communities in different regions of the country to examine crime as both a cause and result of foreclosures.
12/29/09 Treasury urged to investigate potential mortgage fraud

Cuna

The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) encouraged U.S. Department of the Treasury General Counsel George Madison to "undertake an expeditious investigation into a troubling matter that involves the fraudulent conveyances of residential mortgage loans to the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA)."

copyright MSFraud.org