Livinglies's Weblog

Shame is the reason why most borrowers don’t contest foreclosures. That shame turns to intense anger when they realize that they were used, screwed, abused and now they are targets in a continuing blitz to embezzle much needed money from their lives and from the financial system generally.

The genius behind companies like Citi is… Deception by Branding.  “Citi” is not a company, it’s a brand of a conglomerate of companies.  Even its subsidiary “Citibank N.A.” is deceptive.  First let’s dispel the myth that subsidiaries are equal to their parents.  Not true, not even when they are wholly-owned subsidiaries.  They are separate companies, albeit owned by a common parent. —- From Anonymous Writer

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
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Probably the biggest goof of the court system in foreclosure litigation (and in business litigation) is mistaking a brand for a company and not realizing that there is both a business and legal distinction between even a wholly owned subsidiary and another subsidiary or parent company.

The reason that is such a big goof is that the actual transaction is being ignored while a small part of the transaction is being treated as the entire matter. That is like taking the spark plug out of car and then selling it to someone as though it was the whole car. It doesn’t work that way.

In conglomerates like “Citi” the brand intentionally blurs the factual and legal distinctions. And these distinctions make a difference precisely because the debt, note and mortgage are split and transferred multiple times between subsidiaries wherein each one is either moved off the books entirely or each subsidiary is showing an “asset” that it sells into the shadow banking market.

These practices results in a ten-fold increase in the apparent size of the asset, which is then owned by dozens, perhaps hundreds of different unrelated investors. And that enabled the banks siphon literally trillions of dollars out of the US economy and trillions more out of the world economy.

Through the devices of branding and “off balance sheet transactions” this wealth is controlled by handful of people; but this wealth is directly derived from one simple plan — to market the signature, reputation and identity of borrowers who were led to believe that they were executing loan documents. In fact they were executing the foundation documents for a string of transactions and book entries that would result in profits far beyond the amount of the loan.

These unsuspecting consumers had become ISSUERS without ever knowing it and they still don’t know it or understand it. So they still believe that somehow the investment bank behind the scheme is actually entitled to collect on a debt that the bank sold multiple times through multiple affiliates and subsidiaries in transactions that were often “off balance sheet.” And the fact that in virtually all cases the proceeds of foreclosure sales are not applied to reduce the debt owed to the owner of the debt is completely overlooked.

The clear issue that investment banks have been avoiding is that every one of their originated loans is part of a larger intended transaction, and that the homeowner gets absolutely no clue or disclosure that the bulk of the transaction is actually very different from a loan and actually the antithesis of a loan. Clearly the two were both unrelated and related.

The borrower thought it was a loan and it was a loan but the loan was a part of a larger transaction in which the attributes of a loan were shredded. So the loan was essentially a sham entry to allow the investment banks to profit regardless of the performance of the loan. Hence the transaction was not really a loan anymore. This is true even for loans acquired after origination by an actual lender.

Risk underwriting, the most basic part of lending, was thrown to the winds because it was irrelevant. And legally required disclosures were also thrown to the winds because lending laws (TILA) clearly state that compensation received after the loan closing must be disclosed.

What would have happened if the borrowers knew their signatures, reputation and identity were the real subject of the transaction and that they would be sold in a myriad of way producing compensation far beyond the amount of the loan. How would bargaining have changed? It’s obvious.

Even the most unsophisticated homeowner would have gone shopping for someone who would offer a share of the bounty. And that is why the “free house” PR gimmick is a myth. If the investment banks had not concealed the major attributes of the transaction, the mortgage meltdown would never have occurred.

And if “securitization” had proceeded anyway then homeowners would have received immediate and possibly total reductions in the amount due. Yes I recognize that this is a contradiction because if there is no loan then there are no derivatives to be sold. But that is not a problem created by homeowners or borrowers or consumers. It is a problem created by fraud and deceit by the investment banks.

In the final analysis the investment banks used homeowners and investors to issue unregulated securities and instead of turning the proceeds over to the issuers they kept the money. In any world of law enforcement they should have been jailed for that.

The goal was to get the signature and then sell it. That is not a loan. And the failure to disclose it violated everything about Federal  and State lending laws that require disclosure of identities of the real parties in interest and the amount of money they are getting as compensation for their role in “the transaction.”

The investment banks chose to unilaterally define “the transaction” as just the part dealing with the origination of the debt, note and mortgage. That was a lie. It concealed the fact that the borrower was in fact a real party in interest in a much larger transaction in which at each step profits, fees, and other compensation would be distributed in amounts vastly exceeding the amount that was disclosed to the borrower as the value of the transaction. For each $1 “loaned” there was $20 in profit.

By concealing this information the investment banks took all of the profit, fees and compensation without allowing the homeowner to participate in what amounted to a monetization of their signature, reputation and identity.

Thus the most essential part of the Federal and State lending laws was thwarted: that the “borrower” must know the identity of the parties with whom he/she is dealing and the “borrower” must know the amount of compensation being earned as result of the “borrower” signing documents at loan closing.

Instead the homeowner had become the issuer of unregulated securities, the proceeds of which were largely concealed and withheld from the homeowner. No lawyer would have permitted their client to enter into such a scheme — if the facts were known.

Borrowers get lost in the weeds when they make these allegations because they can’t prove them. Truth be told, even the bank could not prove them because of the number of transactions that occur “off balance sheet.” Abraham Briloff (in his book Unaccountable Accounting) first observed over 50 years ago, the invention of this ploy of “off balance sheet” transactions was an open door to fraud that would likely occur but might never be proven.

We are a nation of laws not opinions. Our laws depend upon findings of fact, not opinions or political views. That is the only control we have to prevent fraud or at least bring fraudsters to justice, or at the very least prevent them from continuing to reap the rewards of their multiple violations of statutory laws, common law  and the duty of good faith, honesty and fair dealing.

So when the robowitness signs affidavits, certifications or other documents or testifies at deposition or in court, be aware that in nearly all cases, he/she is either an independent contractor with absolutely no knowledge or authority concerning the subject transaction (as a have defined it herein) or an employee of a subsidiary with no connection to any transaction involving the homeowner or both.

You can reveal the lack of actual personal knowledge and thus then lack of foundation for evidence proffered in a foreclosure by discovery, motions to enforce discovery, motions in limine and good cross examination which always depends upon one single attribute to be successful: follow-up.

And in many cases the robowitness is not nearly as stupid as his/her script makes him out to be. The  robowintess often knows everything that is contained in this article. Good cross examination can frequently reveal that — that is where the case turns from enforcement of a legitimate debt to a case in which both the claim and the claimant have not been proven by any standard.

That is all you need to win. You don’t need to prove how they did it. You only need to reveal the gaps that exist because the substance is not there — the claiming parties have all long since divested themselves, at a profit,of any interest in the debt, note or mortgage. There is no debt left to pay, at least not to them. Stop feeling guilty and be a warrior.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, MBS TRUSTEE, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motions, originator, Pleading, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, STATUTES, TILA, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy |