REPUBLIC TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT: The Company will not insure title to any property which has been foreclosed by Ally Financial, Ally Bank or GMAC until further notice.
This follows a series of similar announcements over the past year from smaller title companies who, recognizing the enormous liability that the banks were attempting to shift to them, simply refused to issue the policies either issuing a “letter of declination” or issuing a policy that includes EXCEPTIONS for any claim arising out of the mortgage, the securitization of the mortgage, or the perfection of the lien.
We have reports now from people who have gone to the trouble of going to title companies and asking for a title commitment so that they would know whether they could sell or refinance their home. The title agents are flatly refusing (letter of declination) or issuing a commitment to get the fee from the homeowner WITH exceptions for the securitized mortgages. Of course what this means is what I have been saying for three years — title is either clouded or fatally defective.
And THAT means that there are facts supporting a claim to quiet title and remove the mortgage or deed of trust from the property, or even remove the trustee or clerk’s deed if the property was “sold” at auction. It also means that the claims for wrongful foreclosure, slander of title, predatory lending, violations of TILA, RESPA, HOEPA etc., are coming up to the front burner. If people make their claims and the lawyers do their job, the great theft of wealth from the middle class can be partially reversed, saving both the housing market and the economy.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: commitment, POLICY, quiet title, Republic Title, slander of title, title, wrongful foreclosure |
A purchasers expection of Title insurance includes ” search and disclocure” You don’t get that with Fidelity National Title. They run a shoddy operation. When their agents and CEO Foley say, “it is proper to fight for a forged deed, what this company is saying is “we didn’t jpay attention to the search before the policy was issued.”
As Fidelity National Title’s scam gets known they will have to defend against lawsuits by the true owner of the property.
What we find wonderful is the go around come around issue that the Banks were given billions in bailout monies and leniencies to assist the mortgage crisis and they buried mom n pop home owner in BS/quagmire so much that most could not even get past stage one on the computerized mortgage assistance phone lines.
All the banks that participated in these schemes and especially the ones that go the bailouts deserve the butt whipping they are now getting; as the courts punish JP Morgan and Bank of America or others who acted in extreme bad faith after benefiting from tax payer dollars.
We even have a case of Elder Abuse where 2 sons threw their dad out of the house they lived in for 25 years; when their mom died.
One son (the eldest (JR)) – was soooo mean he actually threatened to pull the Fen Phen tube out of his mom’s chest (while she was on deaths door) if he did not get some of the settlement she rec’d.
They took advantage of the fact that their dad did not know the law or his rights and the fact that most states give surviving spouses 60 days to stay in their house litigation free (foreclosure FREE).
But this kid, whom his dad did not know better, took a false document and scanned it into the computer and placed a scan of his moms signature thereon. So his father believed his wife conspired with his son to steal everything from him. Though she never worked and he was in the Union in the movie biz for 4 decades; the sons got over $1.4 million in cash and precious items.
Then
even when the court settled – giving the father the right to stay in the house until he died. The sons had squandered their money, did identity theft against their relatives perfect credit and then forged the Deed into JR’s name where he borrowed money from Bank of America employee.
That’s right – not from Bank of America – but an employee of Bank of America. Sr’s other son was trustee and got on in the scam when his money ran out. He had been taking money (as Trustee) from his father and living with him (purportedly sharing the bills) for 3 years and even had a renter paying money to cover all of seniors side of the bills.
Then the sons threw out the renters and it turns out the son (Trustee) never paid any bills – including his Court Ordered half of the Real Estate Taxes.
Where the sons played soooo many games with the Title/Deed – the father lost the Prop 13 status of the house and the bills RE Tax went from $3900 to $12.000 per year.
The sons had their father evicted until we took on the case in December 2009. Now, after nearly a year, a trial is concluding where the sons have told the court so many lies – they may get prosecuted for Perjury as well.
But the $200,000 illegal loan was by a Bank of America employee – whom the son even confessed let the kid see the fathers bank account whenever he wanted to.
Get these scoundrels now or – as you can see by the SR/JR case – bank employees are getting in on the action as well!
CLOUDEDTITLES.COM is now online and the book is available. I will start reporting news articles from our front lines shortly.
Using this strategy, we stopped another foreclosure sale in Seattle today. The other side admitted in a letter that they slandered title and admitted guilt … in writing. The client is now suing the Trustee … details to follow.
anyone has copies of the pleadings of the case between AMBAc and BOA in NY?
THE A MAN
I believe only District Attorneys, the State AGs or the Justice Department can file the kind of criminal charges you expect to be filed.
Foreclosures Slow as Document Flaws Emerge
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: September 30, 2010
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The foreclosure machinery that has forced millions of Americans out of their homes is beginning to seize up as some lenders and their lawyers are accused of cutting corners in their pursuit of rapid home repossessions.
GMAC and JPMorgan Chase have acknowledged legal missteps, and have suspended new foreclosure actions in 23 states.
* Citigroup Inc
* Bank of America Corp
* JPMorgan Chase & Co
* Federal National Mortgage Assn
* Wells Fargo & Co
Evictions are expected to slow sharply, housing analysts said, as state and national law enforcement officials shine a light on questionable foreclosure methods revealed by two of the country’s biggest home lenders in the last two weeks.
Even lenders with no known problems are expected to approach defaulting homeowners more cautiously and look more aggressively for resolutions short of outright eviction.
Despite the turmoil, some economists said the breakdown could ultimately lay the groundwork for a real estate recovery.
Stricken neighborhoods across the country, for example, could benefit. One big factor undermining home sales is fear of a large number of foreclosed homes coming to the market. If the foreclosures are delayed or never happen, housing prices might find a floor.
“Maybe this is like shock therapy,” said the economist Karl E. Case. “Maybe this will actually get the lenders to the table and encourage them to work out deals that are to the benefit of everybody.”
While such a happy ending is possible, the near term is more likely to produce paralysis and confusion.
As more defaulting homeowners become aware of the lenders’ problems, they are expected to hire lawyers and challenge the proceedings against them. And if completed foreclosures were not properly done, families who bought the troubled homes could be vulnerable to claims by the former owners.
Apparently alarmed about such a possibility, one of the major title insurance companies, Old Republic National Title, has sent a bulletin to agents saying that “until further notice” it would not insure title to properties foreclosed upon by GMAC Mortgage, the country’s fourth-largest home lender and one of the two big lenders at the center of the current controversy.
GMAC declined to comment, and Old Republic representatives did not return calls.
GMAC has acknowledged legal missteps in processing mortgages, and JPMorgan Chase has acknowledged the possibility of missteps, and both have suspended all foreclosures in the 23 states where they need a court’s approval. That’s 56,000 in the case of Chase alone; GMAC declined to provide a number.
Attorneys general in half a dozen states are demanding action or opening investigations. The Treasury Department said Thursday it was asking regulators to look into “these troubling developments.”
“We’re seeing a fundamental breakdown in the system, because no one cared that much about getting things right,” said Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat of Florida, who unsuccessfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt all foreclosures in that state.
Wall Street was examining the impact the disclosures could have on the lenders. Moody’s Investors Service has placed the servicer ratings of GMAC and Chase on review for possible downgrade.
The federal government has been the majority owner of GMAC since supplying $17 billion to prevent the lender’s failure during the financial crisis.
Other lenders said Thursday that their foreclosure filings, including the crucial affidavits, had been properly done.
A Citigroup spokesman said the lender required “annual training for our foreclosure employees on the proper execution of affidavits, including having personal knowledge of the information in the affidavit.”
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said “the affidavits we sign are accurate.” A spokesman for Bank of America, Rick Simon, said, “We do not have anything to tell you at this time.”
GMAC and Chase are in trouble because, overwhelmed with foreclosures, they tried to process them as quickly and cheaply as possible, defense lawyers say. The companies say they are reviewing their procedures to take care of any violations.
The missteps stemmed from the affidavits the lenders file as they seek a quick or summary judgment in thousands of foreclosure cases. The affidavits state certain facts about the case, including the amount owed, which the signer indicates he has personal knowledge of. Without the affidavit, the lender would have to prove the facts at trial.
In depositions taken by lawyers for homeowners, executives at GMAC and Chase said they or their teams signed 10,000 or more affidavits and related documents a month. That did not give them time to review the cases.
Defense lawyers say the disclosures are symptomatic of the carelessness, if not outright fraud, that lenders have been exhibiting for years in their rush to file cases. Many necessary documents have disappeared, with defense lawyers saying the lenders often do not even have standing to foreclose.
In a number of pending cases in Florida, defense lawyers there said, GMAC has already withdrawn affidavits. The lawyers said they would try to have the cases thrown out for possible fraud, although they acknowledged that might be difficult.
GMAC said it would refile the affidavits. Chase said it had not withdrawn any affidavits.
“The way the plaintiffs’ lawyers have handled this has corrupted our legal system,” said Thomas Cox, a Maine lawyer whose deposition of a GMAC executive in June helped prompt the current disclosures. “They tried to manufacture foreclosures the way you’d manufacture cars, on an assembly line. It can’t be done that way.”
Mr. Cox is representing pro bono a rural woman who is in foreclosure on a $82,000 mortgage. The plaintiff in the case is Fannie Mae, the mortgage holding company that failed during the financial crisis and is now under government conservatorship. GMAC serviced the loan for Fannie Mae.
This week, the judge in the case set aside his summary judgment in favor of Fannie when he read Mr. Cox’s deposition of a GMAC executive, Jeffrey Stephan, who said he never reviewed the file he had signed. The case will now go to trial.
“I don’t think they are going to give up easily,” said Mr. Cox.
As the foreclosure crisis has deepened, the length of time borrowers spend waiting for the end has lengthened.
In January 2009 the time between the owner’s first missed payment and eviction was 319 days, according to LPS Applied Analytics. By August it was 478 days.
Since spring, the data firm says, the lenders have been trying to clear their backlog. They have stepped up the rate at which they put defaulting owners into the formal foreclosure process. In August, they started 283,000 foreclosures, up from 220,000 in April.
Now, as the lenders are pressed to examine more closely their filings, those foreclosure starts are likely to fall, prolonging the owner’s time in limbo. Many borrowers use this period, when they are living in their home but not paying for it, to try and get their financial house back in order.
“Here It Comes: Title Insurance Problems
Now we got trouble.
I am in receipt of a copy of a bulletin from Old Republic Title in which it states:
The Company will not insure title to any property which has been foreclosed by Ally Financial, Ally Bank or GMAC until further notice.
Oops.
I suspect this is going to spread fast, given that this “wee problem” is NOT specific to GMAC and Ally. In fact, JP Morgan/Chase has reported “similar discrepancies”, and then today we had my report on a ruling from a court in which a counterfeit summons was issued not by the court, but by a law firm.
There isn’t going to be any clean way to fix this folks. These bad affidavits and other forms of fraud upon the courts render these judgments voidable. Title companies are potentially on the hook if they write a policy on such a home and the title turns out be not just clouded but unmarketable as there’s a valid claim that someone else holds!
This crap has to be cleaned up and the firms and individuals involved must face SEVERE sanction for these acts. If in point of fact, as I have suspected, there is no actual conveyance into the MBS trusts that ever took place (and as I noted, this too has been documented in at least some cases) then we have a ****storm of biblical proportions.
The institutions involved in this cannot be allowed to paper over it or “get away with it.” Private property ownership is the foundation of this nation. If these banks and their agents have in fact done what it appears they have done, these institutions and firms must be dissolved and their principals prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for each and every forged, counterfeit or fraudulent document, and the titles must be unwound, with funds returned to the sellers up the line, until a clear and clean status is regained.”
pulled from the Market Ticker
Wirtten by Mr. Denninger
Dear Mr. Garfield,
These crooked lenders and their criminal element lawyers are now trying to form a matrix of opinion that once they “TRAIN’ their robo signers and that once they actually half read the file, they can foreclose because they would have personal knowledge.
What happens then with the fact that they are not disclosing all the relevant facts and these individuals have no actual knowledge or even proper access to the info regarding the true accounting on the loan file, either by omission, misrepresentation or concealment?
They will try to fudge the issue and come up with more affidavits and falsified statements, what will they testify now that their robo signers are being trained ans the people from Citi have said. Citi declared through a spokesperson that they do not have the false affidavit issue, because they have plenty of people doing the work and strong training. Am I missing something here?
when the governor of california is renegotiating the short term loans of California with bank of america.
is there a conflict of interest here with the superior court judges?
Well, I’m in 13 right now and got the judge this week to look into the banks standing to bring a Motion for Relief From Stay.
Seems Freddy owns the loan not the bank, so I’m alleging fraudulent filings and broken chain.
Leap,
The judge told me in open court to amend my plan. So I will, and put the loan down as unsecured.
Quiet title may be next as I document the broken chain and absense of assignments. I have a lot to learn and looking for help.
So far, the LL has been a great resource and I hope to be of help to others as I get this dialed in. It’s quite a learning curve.
TWO THINGS …
#1:
For those of you that think your chain of title is broken …
(NOT LEGAL ADVICE)
I do not believe that you will need to refer to securitization until you get well into a quiet title action and the true parties are attempting to prove they own the note. The unfortunate thing here is that your strategy will have to change. You are not arguing the note in a quiet title action … you are arguing lack of agency and assignment and broken chain of title. Proof of that alone could very well disconnect the deed or mortgage from the note.
The banks will come in with the deadbeat issue. They are off point. Anyone properly prepared for a QT action will understand how to counter this. I do NOT recommend going into this pro se because this is a highly procedural action and anyone who does not have litigation experience is going to have a “worse” than a tough go at it. A QT action weighs on exhibits heavily. You need competent counsel to take this on. Again, this is your home, not some damned traffic ticket!
#2:
The eBook I have been working on is loaded onto the website and should be up and running within 24 hours at cloudedtitles.com. I will repost on this blog when it is fully launched.
Any other communication can be directed through the website link.
Anonymous Atlanta
email me have help in this arena
David, I was thinking along the same lines as you. I also want to know if in a BK dispute the judge finds my loan is unsecured rather than secured, what happens then? Do I then need to also file a quiet title suit?
Can we do anything to shepard this along?
For those of us who have done enough work to demonstrate our loan was securitized and/or the chain of title broken, what is the best way to insure all title companies will stay away.
Is their a document we can record?
I say, as part of our activism, we help the title insurance companies stay away from ALL securitized loans, not just the ones from certain servicers.
I am developing evidence of broken chain between Citi and Freddy. They aren’t on the list yet.
I KNEW this had to be coming. What I don’t understand is WHY the big news stations or newspapers aren’t publishing this news? Is it because all the big banksters own the media?
7 major lenders ordered to review foreclosure procedures
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 30, 2010; 10:39 PM
A top federal bank regulator said Thursday that he has directed seven of the nation’s largest lenders to review their foreclosure processes after learning about the widespread mishandling of homeowner evictions by the industry.
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7 major lenders ordered to review foreclosure procedures
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Lost in the system that took the house
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John Walsh, acting director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told lawmakers during a hearing on the financial regulatory overhaul enacted this summer that some lenders “clearly had deficiencies” in their system for foreclosures.
The banks contacted by regulators include J.P. Morgan Chase, which announced Wednesday that it was freezing 56,000 foreclosures after finding errors in its preparation of documents, according to OCC spokesman Kevin Mukri. Other lenders contacted include Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
“We both want to see that they fix the processing problems but also to look to see whether there is specific harm [that has been caused] in individual cases,” Walsh said.
Revelations about widespread paperwork problems with foreclosures led Ally Financial, another major lender, to suspend evictions last week in 23 states where a court order is required to seize a property. Since then, the industry’s handling of foreclosures has come under close scrutiny from regulators, with attorneys general in several other states calling for Ally to halt foreclosures.
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The paperwork problems range from potentially forged documents to bank employees who never read borrowers’ files before signing off on an eviction.
In J.P. Morgan’s case, Mukri said the bank “determined that its affidavit procedures were non-compliant with foreclosure processing requirements in some states.” He added that although J.P. Morgan has fixed internal procedures, the “negative impact or harm to customers has not been determined at this point.”
“While we don’t expect our review to find that consumers were harmed, we will take appropriate action if we find any impact,” JP Morgan spokesman Tom Kelly said.
Mukri would not comment about other banks but said that the OCC has teams permanently stationed at each one and that those teams have been in close contact with senior management at the banks to ensure the reviews are completed in a timely manner.
Citibank declined to comment on the OCC’s request but said it has strong training to ensure that employees in its foreclosure group are aware that they should have personal knowledge of the information in documents that require this before signing them and that staffing levels are adequate to allow them to review them properly.
There was no immediate comment from the other banks on Thursday.
Walsh made the remarks in response to questions from Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, about the spreading problem with foreclosure processing.
Referring to a front-page article in The Washington Post, Dodd called the news about lenders initiating improper foreclosures “very troubling.” He asked senior bank regulators at Thursday’s hearing – including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila C. Bair and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke – to comment on the matter.
Bair, whose agency insures deposits at thousands of U.S. banks, called the issue of document processing errors “troubling” and said “it’s just a further indication of how wrong we went with the mortgage origination process and securitization process.”
Bernanke said that “it’s been a managerial challenge to the banks to deal with these foreclosure modifications.” And, he added, “they haven’t always met that challenge.”
ATTORNEY SOUGHT TO FILE CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST JUDGES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND ATTTORNEYS REPRESENTING ANY BANK THAT HAS SECURITIZED LOAN.
“MERS” + “AWL”= nothing,(Countrywide is not mentioned on the Security Deed) my last option is BK7, But I will Challenge every thing. I think the Law suit side swiped them and I now know that time is running out for me. “The FINAL REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE” has been denied in part and granted in part, I will not continue with an ATTY that I have to raise. I did not receive a formal Law degree but am considering it now. I am in Georgia and like Texas we need competent Council now.
Can a non entity assign a Security Deed to another bank, Countrywide is not mentioned on my SD. I am out of money and have been disabled for almost 2 years, however I do rent out 3 bedrooms and have a 1500.00/month income from that. How would “AWL” stand in court? anyone