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Who is Authorized to change the trustee in a securitized loan. US Bank National Association was the Trustee before we went into the Bankruptcy Process. Once the Bankruptcy proceedings started, Wells Fargo’s (Servicer)’s Attorneys created documents to appoint individuals within thier lawfirm as trustees. Im no attorney, but something just does not seem right about that. James 443 677 2799 jsmith5915@msn.com
Reblogged this on Livinglies's Weblog.
JG,
Simple: societies that realize people are all interconnected and interdependent survive. Societies that understand that what happens to one happens to all and that by depriving any one person all people end up deprived thrive.
Societies that don’t get it collapse. Where does the US moral, intellectuall and financial collapse come from? Too much caring? Too much understanding? Too much interest in others?
Polarization on money kills a society. Polarization on anything other than on its people, its true assets, kills a society. And polarization on MERS hasn’t changed anything to the foreclosure landscape.
Sounds like Christine is having nervous FOREIGN IMPOSTER TBTF KORPORATE AMERIKA POOPS….THERE ARE PRIVATE RESIDENCES AND PRIVATE BUSINESSES FIGURATIVELY BURNING TO THE GROUND IN EVERY STATE WITH AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO PAY FOR EVERYTHING STILL LIVING IN THEM…..ARIZONA IS NOT THE ONLY STATE THIS IS HAPPENING. THOSE ARE JUST THE OBVIOUS FIRES BEING SET…FRAUDCLOSURE IS IN FACT BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY BURNING OUR PROPERTIES TO THE GROUND RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES THESE TBTF KORPORATE AMERIKA FOREIGN IMPOSTERS ARE STEALING OUR PERSONAL & NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY..
THAT IS WHAT 9/11 WAS ….AN UNDECLARED WAR ON US BY AN UNSEEN ENEMY.
THE ONGOING TBTF BAILOUTS…FRAUDCLOSURE AND OBAMACARE ARE THE THEFT OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC…ALL OF OUR LIBERTY…FREEDOM….AND INDEPENDENCE.
WE NEED TO KEEP OUR EYE ON THE BALL…NOT THE INTENDED DISTRACTIONS.
Johngault,
What happened to Cubed2k? How is Deborah Wynn doing in AZ, where so many fires happened that hundreds of homes were burnt to the ground?
Do you care? Is MERS really your sole point of focus? Got news for you: you’ve been posting here for ever… about MERS!!! Have you made one dent in that system? Have you brought anything of substance that helped someone win against MERS? Have you helped one person save his/her home? Have you saved yours? And you’ve been harping on MERS for how long again? 5? 6? 7 years?
For a while, I had some respect for you. You did ask the right questions. There comes a time when you stop asking and you DO something. Start doing. Because so far… no respect left here.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/102417758/U-S-Banks-says-It-Would-Not-Pay-MERS-for-Assignment-No-Money-Due
I have said that no money is due for the assignment of a dot, since it’s the note which requires consideration. So why do assignments 1) recite consideration and to 2) MERS of all people?! Because it’s willful misdirection, The consideration is (allegedly) for the note, the note, the note, and nothing else which is included in the assignment as a byline. The assignment of the note AND the consideration recited (gag) is prima facie evidence that the note is just now being assigned, which is if taken as factual (that mers could do such a thing – i.e. a sale and assignment agreement for the note), is a post-default event, meaning the trust is not a hidc. I just read that an assignee must
evidence it’s agreement to an assignment and will link when I find it again.
That is eight million four hundred thousand and growing….Christine.
“Serving Over 8,400,000 Visitors”… Just as I expected.
Where were you when the properties were being outright stolen from the American people…? LIARS….!
WOW HOW INCREDIBLE EVIL AND SADISTIC ….! Now these crooks want their victims to appeal fraudclosures and thefts that should have never happened…! THAT IS EVIDENCE OF FOREIGN TERRORISM ON U.S.SOIL AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS…..! PAY BACK WHAT YOU STOLE YOU CROOKS…!
Oh Yeah…! The truth is finally becoming common knowledge and the worms are turning…! Way to go Living Lies….! Neil you rock…! All the best to you guys …!
Oh boy. It’s pretty special when a junior judge will lie about the legislative history and work of a senior judge. Especially when that senior judge is judge of the year. MD 14-207.1 was specifically designed to fight fraudulent documents but don’t tell that to Judge Mickey Norman. I heard him say otherwise in open court after he threatened to arrest me if I recorded anything, ahem.
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2013/05/kingcast-and-mortgage-movies-watch-hand_4.html
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The Supreme Art of War is subdue the enemy
The Art of Winning the war is to
Subdue the enemy
without ever fighting
-Sun Tzu
If your not using the appellate court
To defeat the banks your not really fighting to
Win
Florida Defense Team 631-317-0076
Republican & Democrat alike
When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.
Wall street and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”,
Our government should not be immune from similar risks.
Therefore:
Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members.
Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then, reduce their remaining staff by 25%.
Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.
Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:
$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165 ,200 pay/member/ yr.)
$437,100,000 for elimination of their staff. (Estimate $1.3 Million in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Million in staff per each member of the Senate every year)
$108,350,000 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.
$7,500,000,000reduction in pork barrel earmarks each year. (Those members whose jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion/yr).
The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and improve efficiencies.. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country!
We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.
Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (Telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)
Note:
Congress does not hesitate to head home for extended weekends, holidays and recesses, when what the nation needs is a real fix for economic problems. Also, we had 3 senators who were not doing their jobs for the 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all accepted full pay. Minnesota survived very well with only one senator for the first half of this year. These facts alone support a reduction in senators and congress.
Summary of opportunity:
$44,108,400 reduction of congress members.
$282,100,000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.
$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.
$70,850,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.
$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.
$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.
$8,084,558,400 per year, estimated total savings. (That’s 8-BILLION just to start!)
Corporate America does these types of cuts all the time.
There’s even a name for it.
“Downsizing.”
——————————
Also, if Congress persons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits, taxpayers could save a bundle.
Now they get full retirement after serving only ONE term.
Ita is time to fire these thieves who are no better than the banksterss who defalted your neighborhood and stole your savings account.
I have been a follower of Livinglies since 2008 and by following the advice and logic of Niel Garfield and other foreclosure defence websites, I have retained in my home that has been in foreclosure since that time. In that time I have studied the causes that has led this country to the place we find ourselves in. I know this is off topic, but it concerns us all.
The people who are really controlling politics in America are very happy. These people want the American people evenly divided, and they have succeeded. They control the mainstream media, and both major political parties, and have for decades. This control was started with the Kennedy coup, to facilitate the Vietnam war, then Nixon opening trade with China ” most favored status ” and Kissinger setting up and naming OPEC in 1973. They were the big steam behind NAFTA. They were behind the false flag attack of 9/11/2001, to engage the US in two wars based on lies, the planed economic crisis of 2007, and the embassy attack of 9/11/2012.
These people are generational in their plans. They have the greatest concentration of wealth in the world. They are the overlords of gold and fiat currencies, and control and manipulate stock markets…around the world. They own/control the Bank of England, our FED, and what is called the military industrial complex, ” Eisenhower warned us ” and the TBTF Banks. They are the ones pumping the money to parties for all the advertising, and divisionism of national politics.
These people are the Rothschild Banking Cartel. They have been causing and financing wars for over 500 years.
For more information watch ” The Secrets of Oz ” on YouTube. It was voted Best Documentary of 2010, and is the best history of money documentary I have found, and it should be shone in every classroom in America, and the world.
We need to end the FED, and restore the control of money to Congress, as it belongs under the Constitution.
God Bless the people, and the Constitution of the United States of America.
http://youtu.be/swkq2E8mswI
@SC
I have an awesome, yummy husband who adores me—thanks for asking.
I just want to know one thing … Do Carie or Enraged either one have a Man? Insolvent has toys for that ……..
Oh dear—poor little @enraged just has to be a bitch or she’ll pass out…alone and unloved…sad.
Oh dear…
Amazing how much power the poor thing keeps giving people over her…
And, don’t forget, @enraged—once again—this whole back and forth started with YOU—your same old untrue comments directed at me…so—once again—you started with the BS—and I have to set the record straight—that’s all. If you just stop with the stupid lies, I won’t respond…I guess you enjoy bickering or something…makes you feel superior—your favorite emotion.
Yes, enraged you have a sad lonely life because all you do is think of ways pretend to be superior to everyone…that doesn’t sound like a happy life to me.
“…Amazing how simply pointing out certain behaviors can get people who engage in them so… riled up.”
See—there you go again with your lying. I’m not “riled up”, and I didn’t behave the way you are alleging.
Do you do ANYTHING else with your time except post stuff here that isn’t true?
Guess not.
Sad, really sad.
“You have a sad, lonely life…” Projecting again, I see. Don’t pretend to know what my life is like.
“I just find it so bizarre that this person (enraged) won’t let things go”: interesting. For each one of my posts, 3 are written back. I supposed that is the way to “let it go”.
Amazing how simply pointing out certain behaviors can get people who engage in them so… riled up.
Sorry Deb—I just find it so bizarre that this person (enraged) won’t let things go, and has to keep harping on things aimed at me. It’s so odd. I know I should just ignore her, but when something is said that isn’t true—and is said so meanspiritedly—well, I feel the truth needs to be out there.
That’s the only reason I keep posting all that securitization/collection rights and GSE information from ANONYMOUS. Because there are people that come here that have never seen that information—and I keep posting it for them….also, I feel that Neil needs to talk about the whole truth—but he seems to only really be working for the investors…which is too bad.
People thank me for posting the information…so I will continue to do it—because I believe it’s the truth and it needs to be out there.
I’m tired of the truth of all this being obfuscated and covered up.
well what ever floats ya boat. i guess if it serves you, in some way,al is fair in love n war as thery say, me i think i benefit from this site but at all, be discerning because things are never ever what they at first appear to be, go with your gut.
@DebW
“if you cant say something kind, dont say much at all”
You are absolutely correct.
And when someone is being bullied—it needs to be stopped.
@enraged—and you’ve revealed your total self-centered haughtiness with YOUR words. You have a sad, lonely life because of it. Pathetic…why are you still here—when you are so superior to everyone here? Please, please go away…like you promised.
Christopher ing absolutely awesome…he gets in their face just like my brit hero Roger Cook, that guy got beaten with baseball bats on national tv and still went back for more( with his body guard)…this is how we get the 99 % informed simply and quickly, the other stuf is being sabotaged, completely and those who started to help with good intentions for whatever reason , its not working, and shame on all who have sabotaged this site for whatever reason, i taight my son when he was just 6, if you cant say something kind, dont say much at all.eryone, i mean everyone is fighting their own internal battle and no one else has walked in your shoes. namaste all. and Martha rock it lady.
‘ i honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells, i honor the place in you which is of love of truth of peace and of light, and when i am that place in me, and you are that place in you, we are one, namaste , namaste , namaste, – thats the essence of ” namaste.”
So insecure and immature… Very revealing choice of childish vocabulary. Quite enlightening indeed.
One last thing, @enraged (since I’ve decided not to take your shit anymore),—my kids are DEFINITELY not taught to be stuck up, obnoxious, conceited, haughty bullies…like you.
Like the saying goes: “Mean people suck.” That’s you…sad that you don’t even care.
@enraged
Also, since you also chose to attack my mothering abilities and my children by your not-so-subtle, haughty “generation” comment—my kids are the most wonderful kids anyone would ever want to meet. Kind, sweet, smart, talented, compassionate, and loving. Their teachers say they wish all their kids were like my kids. So—once again—your statements are obnoxious and reek of serious mental and spiritual issues. Sad…you really need to get a life—away from livinglies.com
@enraged
You did not hit a nerve—someone justs needs to tell you the truth of what you really come across as—since you have no idea.
And—I thought you were leaving? Why are you still here? No body likes you or cares about what you have to say—you’re not helpful—you’re just distainful…and a big baby.
Go play Queen of the Universe somewhere else. Your mirror awaits.
Another nerve hit.
Another shoe appears to fit… Childish reaction. Those are the people who are raising the generations of tomorrow. Interesting. And afflicting.
Poor little @enraged…throwing a little temper tantrum ’cause she can’t be “Queen of the Comment Section”…waaaa!!!
Go play somewhere else if you hate so much—we should all be so lucky.
Also, @enraged—enough already with the “very defensible” foreclosure bullcrap—my docs would have looked exactly like Brian Davies’…pure hell—and he has spent a ton of money and not won.
IT’S CALIFORNIA—and you have no idea what you are talking about. California is not like any other state.
You are so full of yourself, it’s ridiculous.
Did you get your new mirror, yet?
@enraged
You’re so full of it. Your whole agenda is that of an obnoxious know-it-all who desperately wants to be “Queen of the comment section” or something, to promote your self described massive brain and ‘culture’—or a book—or I don’t know what. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you or follow every piece of your “advice” is condemned, while you lord over them with your haughty know-it-all BS.
I copy paste ANON’s stuff because it’s the truth—and she left because no one was taking it seriously. I do take her knowledge, information, and research seriously—and if I want to keep posting her info over and over and over so it doesn’t get buried by all the other nonsence that is being posted I will—if you hate it here so much why don’t you just go away permanently—that would be nice.
Or better yet—go buy a new mirror and gaze away at your superior perfectness—no body cares about you being here.
Your Source for Information, Resources and Help with Your Loan Strategy – Serving Over 7,600,000 Visitors
It’s a joke! A pathetic one at that. 80% of this site has been taken over by two certified narcissistic loonies, who use it as a social forum and have been publicly carrying private conversations no one wants to read and which bring absolutely nothing of value to anyone.
Another 10% has been forever highjacked by someone who, despite having cowardly walked away from a very, very defensible foreclosure without even trying to fight it, is now playing big-brain-on-campus and posting ad nauseam the same cut-and-paste things over and over (written by a very knowledgeable Anonymous, holder of a masters in finance and former college finance teacher, involved in her own court fight and so completely disgusted by this insanity that she, herself, quit coming here months ago).
The last 10% is shrinking by the day. 7.6 million visitors is a blatant lie. 7.6 million visits is more like it, out of which, however, a great majority is useless, does not help anyone, is a waste of time and an embarrassment to humankind.
A country rotten from within… and too happy to advertise it for the world to see.
Question from @iwantmynvp:
“…Carie, please explain how I the borrower bought a junk bond? How did they sell me anything and how did I pay? If I did buy a junk bond, as the borrower, please tell me where my quarterly dividend is, and how much cash I provided. Is the GSE defaulted loan paying me the dividend?”
ANSWER:
“…First, borrowers did not buy junk bonds. The bonds are junk because they were derived from JUNK loans.
That is, loans already charged-off by the GSEs. (there is concrete proof of this). Subprime refinances were not valid mortgages – they were mods of classified default/non-compliant debt, which is why the subprime “bonds” were junk.
Borrowers are only considered as in default with GSEs, not the servicer and/or “investor,” because the servicer advanced payment to GSE and refinanced the GSE default loan (the JUNK).
Agree that hedge funds were not duped. Anyone who actually read the prospectus to the subprime REMICs would understand that the “loans” being securitized were high risk with highly questionable compliance.
Hedge funds are considered sophisticated investors – it is not good enough to say you did not read the prospectus.
Further, the mezzanine tranches to the subprime trusts were sold FIRST to the hedge funds. These mezzanine tranches provided the credit enhancement to the higher tranches, which the banks retained themselves.
By the nature of the structure of the REMIC itself, the mezzanine tranches were considered high risk. It is through these tranches that the collection rights are swapped out of the trusts.
Thus, since the mezzanine tranches required little capital for investment, these tranches provided the hedge funds, and other distressed debt buyers, to make a nice profit by acquiring collection rights, dirt cheap, for a property they counted on eventually acquiring.
Hedge funds are not stupid, they know a bargain when they see one. ..”
GOVERNMENT CONTINUES THE COVER-UP OF THIS TRUTH.
DEBT COLLECTORS WITH COLLECTION RIGHTS ONLY TO JUNK DEBT ARE STEALING/FORECLOSING OUR HOMES WITH FRAUDULENT MISREPRESENTATION…among other things…
Questions:
1. where are the WINS?
2. where are the WINS published utilizing any/all assistance provided here?
3. where are the testimonials from plaintiff/defendants that prevail?
4. when the meat meets the metal in civil/circuit/federal court…where is the WIN published when the property owner prevails?
5. where is the Win count, Tally board….Scorecard being kept?
**there’s plenty to read on this site…but where are the WINS?
**we can all read….and do…so…where on this site are the stories about successful strategies that have been utilized to provide relief kept?
***Publish the scorecard…
The scorecard will show that there are no wins…..
“Banks prep lending facilities for foreclosure-rental bonds”
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/04/us-real-estate-banks-idINL2E8K46VK20120904
This just makes me so sick I can’t even begin to speak or write about what I think of it. If you think nice young couples who could not afford to buy five years ago are now buying homes – think again. Long time homeownership is over. It doesn’t pay the short term money makers anymore and never did until they found a way for a decade or so.
They stripped the equity and made trillions, then made trillions on the default, then they made trillions on the foreclosure and cashed in their free house. All with the blessing of the govt. and the courts. Now they are leveraging the “renters”.
They will make trillions kicking them to the curb too all over again and sell the houses for a profit again while raising the “rent.” No “regulators” to answer to either.
How much was that signature worth on the “Note”? How much is the signature worth now on the “Lease”? Mainstream needs to get it somehow – we need to participate in the profits made off our backs and take back our nation. Where there is a will there is a way. Where is the politician or movie star who can figure this out and articulate it?
When the homeowner class is gone, and the consumer class is gone, and the “middle” class is gone, and the small business class is gone, small banks gone, public sector gone (don’t forget that stable income paid the mortgages, taxes, and bought the goods and services from moms and pops in long time stable communities and the private sector just cannot pick up the slack – cannot hire fast enough) – what happens if the renter class evaporates into rv’s or just dies. Will they securitize the body parts? The jokes of yesterday keep coming true.
What happened to Marha? Was LivingLies becoming to toxic or did something else happen?
@Brian in Virginia
in some cases, there are settlements and the homeowner is not allowed even to mention that there was a settlement. The settlement agreements may stipulate that.
Some folks may fight in court but go into mediation and then there is a settlement.
Los Angeles City Attorney Kicks Butt–files huge lawsuit against US Bank as Trustee for a myriad of securitized trusts! See If yours is listed!! Charges Illegal Evictions and Blight and various other violations! read the complaint here
http://www.scribd.com/doc/104655945/Los-Angeles-City-Attorney-Kicks-Butt-files-huge-lawsuit-against-US-Bank-as-Trustee-for-a-myriad-of-securitized-trusts-See-If-yours-is-listed-Cha
Good luck, Martha. Your comments made me think of this quote:
“O BRETHREN! Be forbearing one with another and set not your affections on things below. Pride not yourselves in your glory, and be not ashamed of abasement. By My beauty! I have created all things from dust, and to dust will I return them again.”
(from bahai.org)
I am not going to be posting on here for a while, if ever again.
If anyone reads my book or has followed my writng, I am in the stage of the rewriting of it, now that I found out what book I want to leave my name on.
Its a book that started when i was defrauded, and it is hopefully going to be read by a lot of people. It is melancholic, but it will now be re-written as I found what I was seeking.
There is only two energies in the world, Happiness or Unhappiness, good and evil, patriot or dissenter, light and dark.
I refuse to let the poison of the dark taint me. I chose light. I chose happiness. I chose to be the very best citizen that I think my government would want me to be.
I do not know the truth of everything, I just know I want to be thought of my my family, my county, my country, as an asset. Someone that shows others how to be good citizens. Someone who can go into hell, and come back and not sit around only remembering hell, but someone who can tell others how lucky they are to be here. To be an American. To be able to choose to be happy, no matter what hell you have went into. I will do whatever I can to make this happen. To make up for my errors of the past.
This site is a poison to people. A horrible fraud happened to me over a period of many years. This was very wrong. My identity was stolen. My husbands was stolen, used to purchase multiple houses, and on one house we were put into, the lot number was switched and the loan numbers. On the second one, we never got the grant deed.
What is the normal, intelligent person supposed to do with this. You cannot modify this situation, with loan restructures, as it’s impossible of course due to the crimes.
We did not set out to suddenly stop paying, we were put in the situation of no true choice. No one would correct the crimes on us. You cannot modify a fraud.
This caused me severe emotional distress, and I crossed over into insanity. It was not hereditary, it was cultural.
I my childhood I was subjected to extreme religious trauma. If you have seen the movie “Carrie” Then you saw my exact childhood, except for the fire.
It was this crime on me, and the childhood trauma, and my own abilities as a science fiction writer that all combined to drive me over the edge, of to where I drank so much to just cope, it then added to the issue, and now I must be hospitalized or the withdrawal will cause a worse psychosis.
This cruel and unusual crimes done to me is against god, and it was wrong. No one on earth offered any real help, I mean it was illegal what they did over all those years.
I tried to be a better person as I got older, I tried to stop the loans, the occupancy statements. I did try.
This extreme trauma of fraud on me, caused me to again seek out faith, and that was probably not a good idea, for someone who suffered my childhood.
When I began to think vampires were really out there, maybe that was a sign my family should have saw, but everyone left me to suffer. Then when I thought every other person was a CIA agent, maybe another sign of illness, YA THINK!
Then when I thought aliens and vampires were related, and out there, maybe another ?
or that the government was substituting us with robots,
and that my husband might have bought me in a secret salve auction?
Finally I saw that the German Deutsch bank was really after the Jews, and maybe, if there is a God, then I was sent to help protect the jews, to protect people in one family related somehow to mine.
Everything combined together to cause the chasm in my sanity, and now I see how ridiculous this all was, and that I need help for this illness that WAS brought on by the fraud done to us.
This site is a poison to people. No one wants to be a person that others feel is a dead beat, they don’t want to be. Give the people some hope.
Show the citizens how to get out of this mess. Stop the secretive foreclosure methods. The U.S. has the power to save its people. I hope it sees the harm the banking system did and gives the people some structured way to either pay what they can afford, or relocate them in a faster manner. Not let them stay in the homes years on end, suffering in the pain of this, as it hurts. It hurts the people, and it hurts the economy.
No one wants to be a person that is not a good citizen, well at least me at least.
I want to be thought of as a patriot, someone that loves this country, and will protect it. I have been very proud of my patriot ancestry. Show us how to do this, stop the sites like this from allowing poison of the minds of others. Show us how to be good citizens again, and to be productive, to be happy again. Give us hope.
I hope to get well again, and I do not know the truth of what happened I only know enough to know this was insanity brought on by the distress and I am hurting. And if all of this is possible, then I do not want to know about it. I am sorry about accusing people of being witches, vampires, Jews hunted by the Germans
If my husband did buy me, then I guess I had better be a better wife to him, of that I was obviously not.
I am now clearly incompetent to continue to fight the fraud and crime done to me.
Anyone out there on this site thinking about suing, do NOT, it will drain your soul, just as though a vampire bled you dry.
Take any mod you can, or do not take it if you cannot afford the house in 2 years. Take whatever they offer you and leave.
Be a good citizen, and do your part to get this whole mess behind us.
Do not blame the government. We are all the government. Stand behind this country, do not grumble its they system.
Do not listen to the poison of anarchists, or people that are not good citizens, or it will corrupt you, and you have a duty to the country to be a patriot, not a grumbler.
My dad, all he did was talk bad about the government, and not in a way that was anarchist or subversive, but just a constant blaming of them, just grumbling. Do not be like this, as he was forever unhappy.
Show your family the path to happiness and freedom, the way to be a good citizen by your example. Think about what you want your family to remember you by, that is more important than a house. Show your children how to be good citizens, by setting an example.
Drop your lawsuit, as its going to not resolve this. It will not be good for you. Trust me. Please, or get a lawyer.
This was not the fault of the government, it was just a chaos that happened.
Get out of the house if you cannot afford it, and find a place you can pay your bills, and feel good again, that you are doing your best that you can.
Let your children, your neighbors hear you be a good person, a happy person, not a complainer, a negative person. You can see evil everywhere if you look for it, so do not look. Stop complaining about the government, as you do not want to choose this attitude.
Do not listen to the threats on here or the poison of anarchist views, listen to your heart, and ask yourself if you are doing your part to help this country, and if the county would value you for your views, or think otherwise.
If you read enough science fiction, you can convince yourself its possible, so do not let negative views corrupt you, get out of the house if you do not think you can afford it, and show your children its the right thing to do., Show your children how to be good people, not bad citizens, show them the path to happiness.
That should be the only strategy anyone ever thinks about.
“KingCast & Mortgage Movies Lorayne Souders v. Bank of America et al update: BNY/Mellon files frivolous foreclosure action, then dismisses it!”
Christopher King
1:34 PM (0 minutes ago)
to michael, mharbert, lthomas, sregalbuto, MBarry, asoven, Lorayne
Well I’m here again Counselors…. any comment?
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/08/kingcast-mortgage-movies-lorayne.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5bywwcVvZc
I do so hate to be presumptuous so I give you the opportunity to respond each time I post a movie our journal entry. Also I see now that there are distaff attorneys present, so I welcome you ladies to the fold. Enjoy your day.
Best regards,
Oh boy…. quel coincidence!
James Holmes’ likely murders overshadow father Robert Holmes’ Libor testimony.
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/07/kingcast-and-mortgage-movies-remain.html
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/07/mortgage-movies-souders-v-bank-of.html
Mortgage Movies: Souders v. Bank of America — BoA & Michele Sjolander nailed on robo stamping, timely removal and default judgment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4YaDH6Xtc
Lorayne Souders v. BoA et al., 2012-CV-01074 removal filed 6 June 2012, last served Defendant in her fraud case: 4 May 2012…. see 28 U.S.C. §1446(b)… thirty (30) days folks… whoopsie-daisy?
Bank of America is facing some serious issues as it attempts to remove Plaintiff Lorayne Souders’ Fraud lawsuit in Pennsylvania. Some of these issues include failure to answer her complaint, untimely removal (they filed removal on and robo stamping, which may have been done in post hoc fashion in an attempt to cover their tracks after the note never reached the trust pool…. a REMIC violation of course. A New York Court slammed BoA and the same exact cast of characters for such conduct in Bank of NY v. Alderazi, 929 NYS 2nd. 198 (2011). Will Pennsylvania follow suit with Stare Decisis? Stay tuned. Meanwhile don’t forget these links from earlier this week at bottom as the revolution continues in small screens all across America.
Because if something isn’t done, otherwise law-abiding citizens might well turn into Al Pacino or Sonny Wartzik for a day….[snip]
Thank You Nancy! You Get It! 🙁 I have seen this day in and day out for years now. What pulls my chain is that it still continues …. LOL@Enraged! FEMA is to good and taxpayer funded and gov controlled … we all need to take stock in a privitized prison (where we control things) via software of course. That way when they complain that they are getting screwed repeadtly and they are starving, we can respond by saying … It was just a technical software error …. we can fix that with paperwork. Just give us a few years … 🙂
HeHeHe…
30 years a piece, that sounds good! See? I knew they weren’t building the FEMA camps for us! They had big plans and they wanted to keep it a surprise! 🙂
Isn’t this what the servicers are doing:
Wire Fraud
18 U.S.C. § 1343 provides:
Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.
@Brian,
It’s been my gripe all along: where are the wins?
Mark Stopa jumps up and down when he successfully opposes a motion for summary judgment. Max Gardner stated during a Mandelman Matters podcasts that winning is relative and that just obtaining a mod qualifies as a win. Matt Weidner has more negative than positive to post on his interactions with the courts.
Meanwhile, 1 out of 4 homeowner is underwater. Last year, around this time, I seem to remember that it was 1 out of 12.
Questions:
1. where are the WINS?
2. where are the WINS published utilizing any/all assistance provided here?
3. where are the testimonials from plaintiff/defendants that prevail?
4. when the meat meets the metal in civil/circuit/federal court…where is the WIN published when the property owner prevails?
5. where is the Win count, Tally board….Scorecard being kept?
**there’s plenty to read on this site…but where are the WINS?
**we can all read….and do…so…where on this site are the stories about successful strategies that have been utilized to provide relief kept?
***Publish the scorecard…
[…] Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: CLE, Fort Lauderdale, Garfield Continuum, Livinglies, LOAN SPECIFIC ACCOUNTING AND ANALYSIS, LOAN SPECIFIC SECURITIZATION ANALYSIS, LOAN SPECIFIC TITLE SEARCH AND ANALYSIS, MEMBERSHIP, NEIL GARFIELD, SEMINARS, SUBSCRIPTION Livinglies’s Weblog […]
Nora -note to consider – only the Mortgage Brokers can input into the computer desktop system the information!!! Accountbility with Responsiblity and Authority – they can’t beg out of such facts! Consumer did and never did and never could place data into desk-top systems that govern the 1003 FannieFreddie Loan Approval Secondary Market Systems.
Happy Fathers Day, Let the troubles be set aside for Today!
[…] on Foreclosure Defense 2nd Edition Attorney Workbook,Treatise … … Follow this link: Your Source for Information, Resources and Help with your Loan … ← Searching Out the Best Newport Beach Homes for Sale Tip Number […]
@ wickster
I found some of Clark’s statements insulting. The suggestion that borrowers falsifying their income was partly responsible for the crisis is just plain inaccurate, and suggesting that borrowers provide a budget to deduce whether or not they could afford the mortgage payments before applying for a loan is further an insult to those of us who have practiced financial responsibility and purchased within our means. He claims he was an “insider” who wants to help improve things, but his rhetoric still smacks of the spin the compromised main stream news outlets put on things; “the borrower is partly to blame.” The greed of Wall Street psychopaths and government corruption are where the blame squarely lies for the financial crisis, all the handiwork of those who think they inherited some divine right to rule. Locking up the lunatics is the only way the world can recover/ be made whole again.
[…] more here: Your Source for Information, Resources and Help with your Loan … ← Wells Fargo to Limit Refinancing to Only in-House Loans » Real […]
today for the first time in a long time i am liberated and you will be to i could not wait to spread the word yesterday i went to walmart with my daughter and i asked to stop by the half price book store i swear to god an angle mst have been guiding me i thought i have been overwhelmed lately going trhough this paper work on the internet just struggling to find answers somone who can help filling out complaints that give you 15 min to complete or they diappear and i am not that good at the internet i am half blind 7mounths sleeping from couch and how its a travisie how edwards got away with stealing money during his campain all over tv nobdy says a word about the people in this country are and have and keep getting there striped of there lives theredignity there hope there money there cedit and the hope of anthig even getting acknowledged i swear i feel like i am the only one here the president the fbi attorney general fha hud justice dept gov officials news media turn a blind eye when i try to talk criminal hotline they act like there mad at me its like im in the twilight zone cant trust anyone to help they want mone i dont have i just am so frustrated and felt like i could not go on anymore and i decide to buy a book mybe educate myself in case i call fha or hud to ask for relocation help and i ran in i was in a hurry there were so many i grabbed 2 how to stophome forclosure and protct your finaces and i was so diappionted all about short sales and if you cant do that you shold have left befor forclosure and bought a different house before forclosure because now you are doomed for a life in hell wow thanks than i started reading the second one the story behind the morgage housing meltdown by kenneth clark and my god i have been up all night i tried to find this guy on the internet to tell him you are my hero and heis hard to find keeps a low prfile but the info he gives is i thingit blows my mihd look for yourself youy my god he was i fha mogage banker for and gov. and was getting rich and he could not stand watching it anymore.he says there are things we are not being told because there are those who dont want you to know and my dear god almighty he was not kidding kook for yourself hope this helps you like lt helped me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50fXCojAkI
Drouin Case — Wells Fargo, Sand Canyon and Option One Lose Motion to Dismiss in NH Federal Court.
TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012
KingCast and Mortgage Movies Video: Drouin Case — Wells Fargo, Sand Canyon and Option One Lose Motion to Dismiss in NH Federal Court.
This case supports everything I’ve been arguing to the U.S. DOJ about my status as a journalist exempt from payment of FOIA fees as noted in yesterday’s journal entry:
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/05/kingcastmortgage-movies-to-…
NH District Court Judge LaPlant recognized in Drouin v. AHMSI, Wells Fargo and Option One (NH Dist 11-CV-596) that Sand Canyon did not exist and could not have Assigned ANYTHING, as I noted more than a year ago in the Jeanne Ingress NH cases where Judge Diane Nicolosi played dumb and allowed Wells Fargo lawyer Shawn Masterson to provide hearsay testimony about having the original documents “in his desk.” Selected clips are provided in this dual-purpose documentary short film that will be posited with the DOJ later this week as a Motion for Reconsideration to DOJ Counsel Janice Galli McLeod. Query, will Judge Paul Barbadoro ignore this precedent from his Brethren when Ms. Ingress mounts this argument later this week? Will there be a split between judges in the same single District? The mind boggles.
KingCast/Mortgage Movies: We know exactly what the hell we are talking about.
OMG…. KingCast & Mortgage Movies present: Robo-signing: Fein Such Kahn name partner Henry Fein lied about his identity while hiding from camera.
How can anyone trust Henry Fein’s ethics when you have a name partner at a major foreclosure mill using fake documents by Bethany Hood and Lender Processing Services and lying about his identity? Truly unbelievable. Here is your back story.
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/05/kingcast-mortgage-movies-present-robo.html
nice
http://www.centplay.com/affiliate/id_878/
@enraged….I have to agree with you about the # of visits to this website. I saw your name and many posts here for the past 2 yrs that I have been accessing this blog DAILY and several times a day.
Neil,
Once again, I find this title incredibly misleading, almost to the point of blatant lie.
Serving 6,300,000 visitors? No way! Your site may have received 6,300,000 VISITS. Most of them however, are from repeat visitors, people who check it out sweveral times each day, each week, each month. That’s one of the main problems in this country: using numbers to make them say what you want.
Where on earth are we ever find honesty?
@Maryanne,
You need an attorney who went to Max Gardner boot camp. Contact Max Gardner, NC atty. You can find his blod and websites on internet.
If he is not available, contact Matt Weidner. Same thing: he has a blog and a website and connections in the entire country.
Lastly, if neither pans out, contact Martin Andelman at Mandelman Matters.
Good luck.
Oh boy…. on tour with a former Mortgage Broker in NJ….
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/terrified-faces-at-robo-signature.html
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2011
Terrified faces at robo-signature foreclosure mill Fein, Such, Kahn & Shepard pt.1
Robo-signing and fake docs once again….. notaries run away from Thomas P. Dore….
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-strengthens-in-nyc.html
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2011
Occupy Wall Street strengthens in NYC with Catholic Worker Maryhouse/040 + How M&T Bank & foreclosure mill attorney Thomas P. Dore run Maryland Courts.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011
KingCast, Mortgage Movies, Occupy Wall Street, Union Federal and Anchor Bank Foreclosure Fraud and my chat with a one percenter.
Note: I have spoken with the Landlord and he is forgiving the tenant, perhaps I can interview her about how Union Federal tricked her and how scared she was and that is why she paid them rent even though they had no receivership hearing.
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/kingcast-mortgage-movies-occupy-wall.html
We got a real doozy for you today folks, from sunny Wisconsin, home of the Union Beat-Down!
In the Spirit of Bob Fosse I’ll say “It’s Showtime, Folks” — KingCast and Mortgage Movies Across America folks, red-eye to I’ll tell you where later!
It appears that Union Federal Bank has jumped the gun in making Randy L Paul’s tenants fork over money to them just because they filed a foreclosure action. As I will note in today’s movie from the Courthouse, the case law I have seen researched holds that they have to have a hearing first, especially in a State that has not ratified the Draconian Universal Assignment of Rents Act (UARA). And the Court has allowed it to happen, thereby violating this mans Substantive and Procedural Due Process Rights…..
Time to check the CAFRA Accounts, right. Today comes the Courtroom. Stay tuned for the next city after a weekend pause and reflection.
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/bob-fosse-kingcast-and-mortgage-movies.html
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2011
Bob Fosse, KingCast and Mortgage Movies say It’s Showtime, Folks! — in Madison, Wisconsin.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2011
KingCast and Mortgage Movies look forward to seeing some original mortgage documents today from Harmon Law Offices and Nationstar Mortgage in Marie Miller foreclosure.
The Bank ran away after Mortgage Movies and a State Rep showed up to the party!
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/kingcast-and-mortgage-movies-look.html
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/10/senator-kelly-ayotte-stumbles-over.html
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011
Senator Kelly Ayotte stumbles over Occupy Wall Street, FRM Ponzi and Mortgage Fraud questions at Nashua Town Hall meeting.
Mortgage-related Freedom of Information Requests with Martha Coakley and U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee Larry Sumski:
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2011/10/kingcast-catching-up-with-martha.html
Martha Coakley/Massachusetts Division of Banks issues, background:
1. How much money in mortgage fines did you take in 2006 to present?
2. What did you do with it, where was it allocated?
3. Did the AG’s office approve a 12% rate for Bank of America to charge to cash a $50 check?
***********
Outstanding FOIA request: For U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee Larry Sumski to determine if or when his office has EVER challenged a proof of claim in the manner that many responsible Trustees are so doing….
Also under the Law Neil and I are clearly journos who should get this information free of charge:
s849 Open Government Act — 552(a)(4)(A)(ii) of title 5, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following…..
Got plenty banks are going down This corruption will be espouse out there Counterclaims are file , people have to tell us or face prosecution . There are big law firms with money waiting . We all know . This is USA. Never back down to corruption . Law and constitution will win . Not fix technical law. That is way is a supreme court state and federal . It is all about money . Just check a case in Wi Clearly fraud where is the law . So if you have no money you loose where is the government
@ Foreclosureblues…………..That link you left to foreclosureblues is no longer available.
Any links to the info you posted would be greatly appreciated…
Banks Financing Mexico Drug Cartel Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
Posted on June 29, 2010 by Foreclosureblues
Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.
Banks Financing Mexico Drug Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
Here you go:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2011
Kelly Ayotte N. Haverhill Town Meeting: She will gut CFPA; woman tells KingCast “Ayotte’s full of shit.”
Oh lord the Kelly Ayotte shit show continues…. she finally answered my question about CFPA, she would gut it.
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2011/08/kelly-ayotte-n-haverhill-town-meeting.html
10 AUGUST 2011
Kelly Ayotte N. Haverhill Town Meeting: She will gut CFPA; woman tells KingCast “Ayotte’s full of shit.”As you can see, former NH AG Kelly Ayotte just can’t wait to see me! Well not really, but she did finally sort of tell me where she stands on CFPA regarding the CDO Fraud…….
You appear to have many good things to say regarding the fraud that banks have committed on the American people. There are good and bad, men and women in every industry in this country. I can only speak for the appraisers I know in my area alone. When the banks created mortgage programs were you didn’t need any money down, closing cost and you get to pick how much you want to pay that month from three different choices of payment method…..you have a problem. Interest only, negative amortization, arms, no doc just to name a few. Houses were selling themselves. This was the first time the no good appraisers had to work for a living. The honest appraisers couldn’t beat down the values. The banks created the allure of homeownership by letting borrowers take virtually NO or very little risk. So little that everyone was foolish not to try and obtain the American dream. I never saw anything like it in (25) years. The demand was so great, values were increasing on an average of every two to four weeks. It made me sick! The DEMAND for housing increased values, not appraisers. We can’t under value a property just because we think it’s a trend that may go away in a few years. That’s not the appraisal process. Our values are dictated by comparable market sales based on what a willing seller and willing buyer agree too, along with current trends and many more components. This is all based on the effective date of the appraisal. People at that time were willing to pay what every the price was and often more, for a home, just to get their foot in the door. Why wouldn’t they…..they really had nothing to loose and everything to gain or so they thought. I knew the banks were up to no good back then.
it boils down to what you can personally live with or rather not live with i chose to fight because i believe its worth it there are serious principles and consumer protection that have been sqandered and i want whats mine, or should be.im not talking about the home.
(withheld) said:
(such as Texas, where mortgages/Deeds of Trust are considered private contracts
I had a judge, her name was Judge Judy…Judge Judy Hobbs in Taylor, Texas.
She was so quick to rule in favor of the Fannie Mae who got a Special Warranty Deed from PNC who entered into my private contract with NCM, that in her rush to judgment she called me a Defendant (which I tried to correct in my answer, when I said they were suing the wrong party.
She said the Defendant failed to answer – sooo not true, I did and parts of my answer were admitted as evidence. In-equal justice for all.
She said ‘whereas the Plaintiff purchased the property at a foreclosure sale’. Boing! Bang! Crash!
Nope, the Plaintiff did not purchase it, a TRUSTEE’S DEED from Bryce Vander Linden and Wernick was part of the evidence and it shows that law firm, states “Their client declared a default”, and a bunch of ‘to the best of their knowledge’ statements to justify doing what they did for the benefit of their client.
That law firm call them a beneficiary ‘outside’ the Deed of Trust, in a notice to the court declaring me in default.
That ‘notice’ which will disappear in two years and be destroyed.
It is the foundation of all the documents that will remain and legitimize the theft. Only thing needed was a judge so confident in her ability to issue a writ of possession, that she’d feel no need to view an answer to the suit, let alone view the evidence by the one who objects to being entered into a lawsuit as if there was a dispute over who should have the property.
Bryce, Vander Linden and Wernick is liable for theft of my property, and did not want my Notice of Fraud entered as evidence of their activity with the fraudulent Appointment and the Fraudulent Trustee’s Deed, and the judge agreed with them stating it was only an ‘opinion’.
Judge Judy Hobbs, thanks for lying in your judgment. You are so good at your job, you used a canned judgment and found me guilty of ‘forcible detainer’ and was going to issue a ‘writ of possession’ to an entity who has a special deed from a trustee’s deed that was conveyed without a warranty at all from a fraud foreclosure sale, as a trespass and dispossession of the true owner of the unencumbered, lawfully siezed property.
Judge Judy Hobbs entered into a private contract and decided I should be ‘enjoined’ with Fannie Mae and PNC Mortgage so that that connection would allow their claim of me possession their property could stand and I could be removed.
So Judge Judy Hobbs, by her judgment gave the law firm power to come back and get her magic paper so I could receive a visit from a man with a gun who was immune from any actions he took to remove me from MY PROPERTY (called in the judgment, “the premises”) as he served the writ of possession.
Judge Judy Hobbs, I ain’t stupid enough to stand around and wait for a man with a gun to show me what he can do to make me leave what’s mine, and hurt me and my child in the process, or just by threat, duress, and coercion, make me vacate my possessions, and property and be dispossessed because you didn’t want to do what you had the power to do and were placed there to do.
If I didn’t show up, you were going to give it to them.
I answered in writing as a woman, with all rights reserved,
In my answer I told you they were suing the wrong party, they should be suing the party who made them believe they had a right to my property when they had none.
I even thought if I wrote a Notice for Relief from Final Judgment you’d look at it, but you were so confident in your ‘misrepresented and deceptive judgment’ that you told your clerk, to send me a letter stating “You can’t get a new trial after an eviction.”
How nice! Anyone who wants to call themself your Landlord, can, even if there has never been a Landlord/Tenant agreement, and anyone who wants to remove you from your property can, as long as they filed a document that says they have a right to do so, but if someone tells you there is no contract, and they never did business with the company trying to take your property, you
‘assume’ they are lying and are trying to deceive, you.
Oh, my, what a dilemma. Don’t listen to the verbal truth you think is a lie, and rely on the paper lie you think is the truth.
In the movie ‘Poetic Justice’ with Janet Jackson, there was a truck that had these words written on it.
There’s no Justice, it’s Just Us.
Yep, truth in plain sight. Some unknown financial mogul owns pieces of the United States a million foreclosures at a time.
How many foreclosures would it take to own or at least control the State of Texas? Ask Judge Judy Hobbs, of Taylor Texas how many she’s assisted with.
I’ll forever remember the day, Judge Judy Hobbs helped someone steal from me, and how I got a letter in the mail with her flawed judgment that it was just a ‘Comedy of Justice’ how it all played out.
July 22, 2010, thanks Judge Judy Hobbs, that’s they day you showed me that you can issue a default judgment whether I appeared or not, answered or not, challenged the jurisdiction of the court to hear the case, said the Plaintiff was suing the wrong party, said I was not a Defendant, denying anyone a right or remedy or right to possession, provided a written answer, with exhibits that through some strange sequence of events I managed to have entered as evidence, reserved all my rights in writing, and lost them all in you court room. etc..so on..and so forth.
Judge Judy Hobbs, you allowed the Notice to be entered as evidence, but you failed to read the words that stated —–
They gave no warranties, including no warranties of merchantability, sold it “AS IS”, “at the purchaser’s own risk”, “at his peril”, and then said they bought it! Wow.
———————
“No warranties, expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose shall be conveyed at the sale, save and except the Grantor’s warranties specifically authorized by the Grantor in the Deed of Trust. The property shall be offered “AS IS”, purchasers will buy the property “at the purchaser’s own risk” and “at his peril”, and no representation is made concerning the quality or nature of title to be acquired. Purchasers will receive whatever interest Grantor and Grantor’s assigns have in the property, subject to any liens or interest of any kind that may survive the sale. Interested persons are encouraged to consult counsel of their choice prior to participating in the sale of the property.”
—————
Then stating all that in a (document that will expire and be destroyed in two years, never to exist, ever again) Notice filed in the courthouse for the sale naming an unknown, no contract, no standing, no capacity, no security interest entity named PNC; Bryce, Vander Linden and Wernick, performed a fraud sale, and they granted a Special Warranty Deed to Fannie Mae, and provide the very warranty they said was not available when they “stole” MY PRIVATE PROPERTY, and represented Fannie Mae in court.
So they can sale without warranty and issue a deed with a warranty.
Hmm….how’s that possible? In Texas and in Judge Judy Hobbs’ court.
Had Judge Judy Hobbs been a person of ‘justice’, she would have seen the information in both my answer and the evidence and told them NO, you can’t dispossess this ‘woman’ from her property, she has provided evidence to make me pause and not rule in your favor, or whatever an honorable person who wants to be called ‘Your Honor’ would say to someone bringing a fraud lawsuit.
I suffered threat, duress, and coercion for 6 months, and you helped them carry out their threat, the last duress and coercion would come from a sheriff.
No thanks. If I tried to defend, you’d show me on the news like those other people trying to defend their right to possession. The law would put me in jail like those other people trying to defend their right to possession. Or people tear it down, or burn it down than to let you have it. Those people are crazy, they know when there is an imbalance in justice and that they’ve been wronged.
I am smart enough to follow how it was done, and see the entire process. Texas Attorney General, has a case, but like anyone says, they never say anything and I’m dispossessed.
I would be happy with a judgment of three times the value of the stolen property, a revocation of the licenses of the law firm, plus an additional financial remedy for my child who was also affected by the theft, a public apology for the defamation of character posted by the Notice of Sale, from all involved.
Light and Love,
and the waters get even deeper government is purportedly going to sell fannie and freddie yeh you guessed it to the major banks
By the way…the third party that filed this Assignment of Deed of Trust just so happens to be the party who is now pursuing a wrongful foreclosure against my home…
If this party was acting in good faith, then why did they want another party’s name to appear as “lender” versus their own name? Why wasn’t this Assignment disclosed at the closing of the loan?
I searched my county’s court records online and discovered documents relating to my property that I was unaware of–namely, that an Assignment of Deed of Trust was filed two days before I closed on my property, which means that the information on my closing documents was fraudulent.
Also, this Assignment appears to be questionable in its own right in that it does not bear the authorization or signature from the parties involved in the transaction. The notarized “authorization” comes from a third party who appears to have misrepresented their title.
Would this fraud in the execution entitle the homeowner to void the entire contract? Would the homeowner be entitled to recover all payments made under such a contract?
Also, in states where fraud in the inducement/ execution of a private contract results in forfeiture of the rights of the defrauding party (such as Texas, where mortgages/Deeds of Trust are considered private contracts), would the homeowner then be able to obtain Quiet Title resulting from that forfeiture?
Can a notary be compelled to provide the proper identity (in regard to the person’s job title) of the signator? Can a notary be held liable for not verifying the proper identification and proof of authorization of a signator?
Can you give us an update as to when we will receive any information on the results of the securitization searches? It’s great you have the kinks worked out. Can those of us that were the initial supporters get an update as to when we will have to make our final payment and get our reports? thanks!
The MERS Mortgage Twilight Zone- Judges Not Afraid to Do What’s Right
Posted on July 17, 2010 by Foreclosureblues
Editor’s Note…This discusses the newly famous “Twilight Zone” decision by a judge in favor of a NY homeowner. What it would be like to be the first attorney or homeowner on your block to enter….”The Twilight Zone.”
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com
The MERS Mortgage Twilight Zone- Judges Not Afraid to Do What’s Right
Today, July 17, 2010, 2 hours ago | Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
http://www.4closureFraud.org
Discussion
“The instant renewed motion is dismissed for untimeliness. Plaintiff made its renewed motion for
an order of reference 204 days late, in violation of the Court’s May 2, 2008 decision and order.
Moreover, even if the instant motion was timely, the explanations offered by plaintiff’s counsel,
in his affirmation in support of the instant motion and various documents attached to exhibit F of
the instant motion, attempting to cure the four defects explained by the Court in the prior May 2,
2008 decision and order, are so incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous that they
should have been authored by the late Rod Serling, creator of the famous science-fiction
televison series, The Twilight Zone. Plaintiff’s counsel, Steven J. Baum, P.C., appears to be
operating in a parallel mortgage universe, unrelated to the real universe. Rod Serling’s opening
narration, to episodes in the 1961 – 1962 season of The Twilight Zone (found at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt005250/quotes), could have been an introduction to the arguments
presented in support of the instant motion by plaintiff’s counsel, Steven J. Baum, P.C. – “You are
[*7]traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A
journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone.”
With respect to the first issue for the renewed motion for an order of reference, the validity of the
September 10, 2007 assignment of the subject mortgage and note by MERS, as nominee for
CAMBRIDGE, to plaintiff HSBC by “Nicole Gazzo, Esq., on behalf of MERS, by Corporate
Resolution dated 7/19/07,” plaintiff’s counsel claims that the assignment is valid because Ms.
Gazzo is an officer of MERS, not an agent of MERS. Putting aside Ms. Gazzo’s conflicted status
as both assignor attorney and employee of assignee’s counsel, Steven J. Baum, P.C., how would
the Court have known from the plain language of the September 10, 2007 assignment that the
assignor, Ms. Gazzo, is an officer of MERS? She does not state in the assignment that she is an
officer of MERS and the corporate resolution is not attached. Thus, counsel’s claim of a valid
assignment takes the Court into “another dimension” with a “journey into a wondrous land of
imagination,” the mortgage twilight zone.”
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 really absurd thing about all the attention these judges have gotten is that there isn’t anything courageous about the opinions at all. Not to diminish at all the good work of these judges and the other judges that are actually challenging the absurd standards of the foreclosure mills–because they really are acting courageously–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 the judges would take a deep breath, step back from their courtrooms and really think about what they are doing.
Sometimes we all need to take a step back and view our world and our work from a different perspective. I implore each of you to read the attached MERS Mortgage Twilight Zone opinion. Print this opinion out and share it with every judge you come in front of. Share the opinion with the new senior judges.
They may scoff and disregard you at first, but you’re not seeking a “kill” right there. You may not convince that judge to change his or her perspective on the spot, but I am convinced that if the judges take this opinion home and read it not in the pressured environment of their courtrooms, but in the quiet space of their homes, they will start to see absurdity playing out in their courtrooms. I’ve learned how important it is to share my work with my significant other and with folks who are not immersed in this world. Recognition is the first step. Solutions come next. Read the opinion in its entirety and think about how it applies directly to each of the cases you find yourself involved in…
Banks Financing Mexico Drug Cartel Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
Posted on June 29, 2010 by Foreclosureblues
Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.
Banks Financing Mexico Drug Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
Editor’s Note…This is what your down home law abiding upstanding honorable red white and blue American Banks of patriotic character get to do. Funny how we didn’t hear screaming F-16s and Justice Department Announcements on the 6 o’clock news. Makes you wonder, what was on the news that night when they found out? Probably something about low interest refinance or house prices goin up…
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com
June 29 (Bloomberg) — Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets reports in its August 2010 issue.
This was no isolated incident. 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.
‘Blatant Disregard’
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.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.
Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.
45,000 Troops
Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, and he’s since deployed 45,000 troops to fight the cartels. They’ve had little success.
Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. The U.S. has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels.
In May, President Barack Obama said he’d send 1,200 National Guard troops, adding to the 17,400 agents on the U.S. side of the border to help stem drug traffic and illegal immigration.
Behind the carnage in Mexico is an industry that supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to Americans. The cartels have built a network of dealers in 231 U.S. cities from coast to coast, taking in about $39 billion in sales annually, according to the Justice Department.
‘You’re Missing the Point’
Twenty million people in the U.S. regularly use illegal drugs, spurring street crime and wrecking families. Narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion a year — enough to cover health care for 30.9 million Americans — in overburdened courts, prisons and hospitals and lost productivity, the department says.
“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network.
“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point,” Woods says.
Cleansing Dirty Cash
Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s financial crimes unit.
Miami-based American Express Bank International paid fines in both 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.
Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank by assets, an investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.
Following Rules
Those two banks weren’t accused of wrongdoing. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton and HSBC spokesman Roy Caple say laws bar them from discussing specific clients. They say their banks strictly follow the government rules.
“Bank of America takes its anti-money-laundering responsibilities very seriously,” Norton says.
A Mexican judge on Jan. 22 accused the owners of six centros cambiarios, or money changers, in Culiacan and Tijuana of laundering drug funds through their accounts at the Mexican units of Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc. and HSBC, according to court documents filed in the case.
The money changers are in jail while being tried. Citigroup, HSBC and Santander, which is the largest Spanish bank by assets, weren’t accused of any wrongdoing. The three banks say Mexican law bars them from commenting on the case, adding that they each carefully enforce anti-money-laundering programs.
HSBC has stopped accepting dollar deposits in Mexico, and Citigroup no longer allows noncustomers to change dollars there. Citigroup detected suspicious activity in the Tijuana accounts, reported it to regulators and closed the accounts, Citigroup spokesman Paulo Carreno says.
Criminal Empires
On June 15, the Mexican Finance Ministry announced it would set limits for banks on cash deposits in dollars.
Mexico’s drug cartels have become multinational criminal enterprises.
Some of the gangs have delved into other illegal activities such as gunrunning, kidnapping and smuggling people across the border, as well as into seemingly legitimate areas such as trucking, travel services and air cargo transport, according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.
These criminal empires have no choice but to use the global banking system to finance their businesses, Mexican Senator Felipe Gonzalez says.
“With so much cash, the only way to move this money is through the banks,” says Gonzalez, who represents a central Mexican state and chairs the senate public safety committee.
Gonzalez, a member of Calderon’s National Action Party, carries a .38 revolver for personal protection.
“I know this won’t stop the narcos when they come through that door with machine guns,” he says, pointing to the entrance to his office. “But at least I’ll take one with me.”
Subprime Losses
No bank has been more closely connected with Mexican money laundering than Wachovia. Founded in 1879, Wachovia became the largest bank by assets in the southeastern U.S. by 1900. After the Great Depression, some people in North Carolina called the bank “Walk-Over-Ya” because it had foreclosed on farms in the region.
By 2008, Wachovia was the sixth-largest U.S. lender, and it faced $26 billion in losses from subprime mortgage loans. That cost Wachovia Chief Executive Officer Kennedy Thompson his job in June 2008.
Six months later, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which dates from 1852, bought Wachovia for $12.7 billion, creating the largest network of bank branches in the U.S. Thompson, who now works for private-equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners LLC in New York, declined to comment.
As Wachovia’s balance sheet was bleeding, its legal woes were mounting. In the three years leading up to Wachovia’s agreement with the Justice Department, grand juries served the bank with 6,700 subpoenas requesting information.
Not Quick Enough
The bank didn’t react quickly enough to the prosecutors’ requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.
Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.
If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.
Wells Fargo regrets that some of Wachovia’s former anti- money-laundering efforts fell short, spokeswoman Mary Eshet says. Wells Fargo has invested $42 million in the past three years to improve its anti-money-laundering program and has been working with regulators, she says.
‘Significantly Upgraded’
“We have substantially increased the caliber and number of staff in our international investigations group, and we also significantly upgraded the monitoring software,” Eshet says. The agreement bars the bank from contesting or contradicting the facts in its admission.
The bank declined to answer specific questions, including how much it made by handling $378.4 billion — including $4 billion of cash-from Mexican exchange companies.
The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to report all cash transactions above $10,000 to regulators and to tell the government about other suspected money-laundering activity. Big banks employ hundreds of investigators and spend millions of dollars on software programs to scour accounts.
No big U.S. bank — Wells Fargo included — has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again.
‘No Capacity to Regulate’
Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.
Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.
The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.
“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says. “They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they’re caught.”
Wachovia’s run-in with federal prosecutors hasn’t troubled investors. Wells Fargo’s stock traded at $30.86 on March 24, up 1 percent in the week after the March 17 agreement was announced.
Moving money is central to the drug trade — from the cash that people tape to their bodies as they cross the U.S.-Mexican border to the $100,000 wire transfers they send from Mexican exchange houses to big U.S. banks.
‘Doesn’t Stop Anyone’
In Tijuana, 15 miles south of San Diego, Gustavo Rojas has lived for a quarter of a century in a shack in the shadow of the 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) steel border fence that separates the U.S. and Mexico there. He points to holes burrowed under the barrier.
“They go across with drugs and come back with cash,” Rojas, 75, says. “This fence doesn’t stop anyone.”
Drug money moves back and forth across the border in an endless cycle. In the U.S., couriers take the cash from drug sales to Mexico — as much as $29 billion a year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would be about 319 tons of $100 bills.
They hide it in cars and trucks to smuggle into Mexico. There, cartels pay people to deposit some of the cash into Mexican banks and branches of international banks. The narcos launder much of what’s left through money changers.
The Money Changers
Anyone who has been to Mexico is familiar with these street-corner money changers; Mexican regulators say there are at least 3,000 of them from Tijuana to Cancun, usually displaying large signs advertising the day’s dollar-peso exchange rate.
Mexican banks are regulated by the National Banking and Securities Commission, which has an anti-money-laundering unit; the money changers are policed by Mexico’s Tax Service Administration, which has no such unit.
By law, the money changers have to demand identification from anyone exchanging more than $500. They also have to report transactions higher than $5,000 to regulators.
The cartels get around these requirements by employing legions of individuals — including relatives, maids and gardeners — to convert small amounts of dollars into pesos or to make deposits in local banks. After that, cartels wire the money to a multinational bank.
The Smurfs
The people making the small money exchanges are known as Smurfs, after the cartoon characters.
“They can use an army of people like Smurfs and go through $1 million before lunchtime,” says Jerry Robinette, who oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations along the border in east Texas.
The U.S. Treasury has been warning banks about big Mexican- currency-exchange firms laundering drug money since 1996. By 2004, many U.S. banks had closed their accounts with these companies, which are known as casas de cambio.
Wachovia ignored warnings by regulators and police, according to the deferred-prosecution agreement.
“As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk,” the bank admitted in court. “Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business.”
One customer that Wachovia took on in 2004 was Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, a Puebla, Mexico-based currency-exchange company. Pedro Alatorre, who ran a Puebla branch in Mexico City, had created front companies for cartels, according to a pending Mexican criminal case against him.
Federal Indictment
A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Puebla, Alatorre and three other executives in February 2008 for drug trafficking and money laundering. In May 2008, the Justice Department sought extradition of the suspects, saying they used shell firms to launder $720 million through U.S. banks.
Alatorre has been in a Mexican jail for 2 1/2 years. He denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer Mauricio Moreno says. Alatorre has made no court-filed responses in the U.S.
During the period in which Wachovia admitted to moving money out of Mexico for Puebla, couriers carrying clear plastic bags stuffed with cash went to the branch Alatorre ran at the Mexico City airport, according to surveillance reports by Mexican police.
Alatorre opened accounts at HSBC on behalf of front companies, Mexican investigators found.
Puebla executives used the stolen identities of 74 people to launder money through Wachovia accounts, Mexican prosecutors say in court-filed reports.
‘Never Reported’
“Wachovia handled all the transfers, and they never reported any as suspicious,” says Jose Luis Marmolejo, a former head of the Mexican attorney general’s financial crimes unit who is now in private practice.
In November 2005 and January 2006, Wachovia transferred a total of $300,000 from Puebla to a Bank of America account in Oklahoma City, according to information in the Alatorre cases in the U.S. and Mexico.
Drug smugglers used the funds to buy the DC-9 through Oklahoma City aircraft broker U.S. Aircraft Titles Inc., according to financial records cited in the Mexican criminal case. U.S. Aircraft Titles President Sue White declined to comment.
On April 5, 2006, a pilot flew the plane from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Caracas to pick up the cocaine, according to the DEA. Five days later, troops seized the plane in Ciudad del Carmen and burned the drugs at a nearby army base.
‘Wachovia Knew’
“I am sure Wachovia knew what was going on,” says Marmolejo, who oversaw the criminal investigation into Wachovia’s customers. “It went on too long and they made too much money not to have known.”
At Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London, Woods and his colleague Jim DeFazio, in Charlotte, say they suspected that drug dealers were using the bank to move funds.
Woods, a former Scotland Yard investigator, spotted illegible signatures and other suspicious markings on traveler’s checks from Mexican exchange companies, he said in a September 2008 letter to the U.K. Financial Services Authority. He sent copies of the letter to the DEA and Treasury Department in the U.S.
Woods, 45, says his bosses instructed him to keep quiet and tried to have him fired, according to his letter to the FSA. In one meeting, a bank official insisted Woods shouldn’t have filed suspicious activity reports to the government, as both U.S. and U.K. laws require.
‘I Was Shocked’
“I was shocked by the content and outcome of the meeting and genuinely traumatized,” Woods wrote.
In the U.S., DeFazio, who had been a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent for 21 years, says he told bank executives in 2005 that the DEA was probing the transfers through Wachovia to buy the planes.
Bank executives spurned recommendations to close suspicious accounts, DeFazio, 63, says.
“I think they looked at the money and said, ‘The hell with it. We’re going to bring it in, and look at all the money we’ll make,’” DeFazio says.
DeFazio retired in 2008.
“I didn’t want anything from them,” he says. “I just wanted to get out.”
Woods, who resigned from Wachovia in May 2009, now advises banks on how to combat money laundering. He declined to discuss details of Wachovia’s actions.
U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan told Woods in a March 19 letter his efforts had helped the U.S. build its case against Wachovia.
‘Great Courage’
“You demonstrated great courage and integrity by speaking up when you saw problems,” Dugan wrote.
It was the Puebla investigation that led U.S. authorities to the broader probe of Wachovia. On May 16, 2007, DEA agents conducted a raid of Wachovia’s international banking offices in Miami. They had a court order to seize Puebla’s accounts.
U.S. prosecutors and investigators then scrutinized the bank’s dealings with Mexican-currency-exchange firms. That led to the March deferred-prosecution agreement.
With Puebla’s Wachovia accounts seized, Alatorre and his partners shifted their laundering scheme to HSBC, according to financial documents cited in the Mexican criminal case against Alatorre.
In the three weeks after the DEA raided Wachovia, two of Alatorre’s front companies, Grupo ETPB SA and Grupo Rahero SC, made 12 cash deposits totaling $1 million at an HSBC Mexican branch, Mexican investigators found.
Another Drug Plane
The funds financed a Beechcraft King Air 200 plane that police seized on Dec. 29, 2007, in Cuernavaca, 50 miles south of Mexico City, according to information in the case against Alatorre.
For years, federal authorities watched as the wife and daughter of Oscar Oropeza, a drug smuggler working for the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, deposited stacks of cash at a Bank of America branch on Boca Chica Boulevard in Brownsville, Texas, less than 3 miles from the border.
Investigator Robinette sits in his pickup truck across the street from that branch. It’s a one-story, tan stucco building next to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Robinette discusses the Oropeza case with Tom Salazar, an agent who investigated the family.
“Everybody in there knew who they were — the tellers, everyone,” Salazar says. “The bank never came to us, though.”
New Meaning
The Oropeza case gives a new, literal meaning to the term money laundering. Oropeza’s wife, Tina Marie, and daughter Paulina Marie deposited stashes of $20 bills several times a day into Bank of America accounts, Salazar says. Bank employees got to know the Oropezas by the smell of their money.
“I asked the tellers what they were talking about, and they said the money had this sweet smell like Bounce, those sheets you throw into the dryer,” Salazar says. “They told me that when they opened the vault, the smell of Bounce just poured out.”
Oropeza, 48, was arrested 820 miles from Brownsville. On May 31, 2007, police in Saraland, Alabama, stopped him on a traffic violation. Checking his record, they learned of the investigation in Texas.
They searched the van and discovered 84 kilograms (185 pounds) of cocaine hidden under a false floor. That allowed federal agents to freeze Oropeza’s bank accounts and search his marble-floored home in Brownsville, Robinette says. Inside, investigators found a supply of Bounce alongside the clothes dryer.
Guilty Pleas
All three Oropezas pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brownsville to drug and money-laundering charges in March and April 2008. Oscar Oropeza was sentenced to 15 years in prison; his wife was ordered to serve 10 months and his daughter got 6 months.
Bank of America’s Norton says, “We not only fulfilled our regulatory obligation, but we proactively worked with law enforcement on these matters.”
Prosecutors have tried to halt money laundering at American Express Bank International twice. In 1994, the bank, then a subsidiary of New York-based American Express Co., pledged not to allow money laundering again after two employees were convicted in a criminal case involving drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego.
In 1994, the bank paid $14 million to settle. Five years later, drug money again flowed through American Express Bank. Between 1999 and 2004, the bank failed to stop clients from laundering $55 million of narcotics funds, the bank admitted in a deferred-prosecution agreement in August 2007.
Western Union
It paid $65 million to the U.S. and promised not to break the law again. The government dismissed the criminal charge a year later. American Express sold the bank to London-based Standard Chartered PLC in February 2008 for $823 million.
Banks aren’t the only financial institutions that have turned a blind eye to drug cartels in moving illicit funds. Western Union Co., the world’s largest money transfer firm, agreed to pay $94 million in February 2010 to settle civil and criminal investigations by the Arizona attorney general’s office.
Undercover state police posing as drug dealers bribed Western Union employees to illegally transfer money, says Cameron Holmes, an assistant attorney general.
“Their allegiance was to the smugglers,” Holmes says. “What they thought about during work was ‘How may I please my highest- spending customers the most?’”
Smudged Fingerprints
Workers in more than 20 Western Union offices allowed the customers to use multiple names, pass fictitious identifications and smudge their fingerprints on documents, investigators say in court records.
“In all the time we did undercover operations, we never once had a bribe turned down,” says Holmes, citing court affidavits.
Western Union has made significant improvements, it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and works closely with regulators and police, spokesman Tom Fitzgerald says.
For four years, Mexican authorities have been fighting a losing battle against the cartels. The police are often two steps behind the criminals. Near the southeastern corner of Texas, in Matamoros, more than 50 combat troops surround a police station.
Officers take two suspected drug traffickers inside for questioning. Nearby, two young men wearing white T-shirts and baggy pants watch and whisper into radios. These are los halcones (the falcons), whose job is to let the cartel bosses know what the police are doing.
‘Only Way’
While the police are outmaneuvered and outgunned, ordinary Mexicans live in fear. Rojas, the man who lives in the Tijuana slum near the border fence, recalls cowering in his home as smugglers shot it out with the police.
“The only way to survive is to stay out of the way and hope the violence, the bullets, don’t come for you,” Rojas says.
To make their criminal enterprises work, the drug cartels of Mexico need to move billions of dollars across borders. That’s how they finance the purchase of drugs, planes, weapons and safe houses, Senator Gonzalez says.
“They are multinational businesses, after all,” says Gonzalez, as he slowly loads his revolver at his desk in his Mexico City office. “And they cannot work without a bank.”
I am looking for an Attorney in Northern Ohio that understands all of this. Does anyone have any referrals? Thanks!
90 F.3d 600 (1st Cir. 1996)
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION, As Receiver For New
Maine National Bank, Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
Roland HOUDE and Ora Houde, Defendants, Appellees.
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION, As Receiver For New
Maine National Bank, Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
Roland HOUDE and Ora Houde, Defendants, Appellants.
Nos. 95-1853, 95-1854.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit
July 24, 1996
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Page 601
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
Heard March 8, 1996.
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Page 602
Jaclyn C. Taner, Counsel, Washington, DC, with whom Ann S. DuRoss, Assistant General Counsel, Colleen B. Bombardier, Senior Counsel, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Andrew Sparks, Paul E. Peck, John B. Emory and Drummond & Drummond, Portland, ME, were on briefs for plaintiff.
Jeffrey Bennett, Portland, ME, with whom Melinda J. Caterine, Clare S. Benedict and Bennett and Associates, P.A. were on briefs for defendants.
Before BOUDIN, Circuit Judge, CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge, and LYNCH, Circuit Judge.
LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) appeals from an order, entered in the United States District Court for the District of Maine, dismissing its complaint to collect the amount due on a $275,000 promissory note executed in 1986 by defendants Roland and Ora Houde and made payable to the Maine National Bank, and to foreclose on the mortgage securing the Houdes’ indebtedness. The Houdes cross-appeal from the district court’s denial of four pretrial motions. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court’s order.
I.
In November 1986, Roland and Ora Houde borrowed $275,000 from the Maine National Bank (“MNB”), a federally insured national banking association, to finance a business venture. They executed a note and allonge made payable to MNB (collectively the “Note” or “Houde Note”), and secured by a mortgage on property located in Maine. After MNB declared insolvency in January 1991, ownership of the Note passed to the FDIC as receiver, the FDIC says. The FDIC also says that it transferred the Houde Note briefly to the New Maine National Bank (“NMNB”), a bridge bank set up by the FDIC. After the dissolution of NMNB in July 1991, many of its assets were purchased by Fleet Bank and the rest, as recounted by the FDIC, passed to the FDIC as the duly appointed receiver for NMNB. The FDIC asserts that the Note was among the remaining assets transferred to it. All parties agree, in any case, that the original Note was in the possession of the FDIC at trial.
The FDIC says that it hired Recoll Management Corporation (“Recoll”) to manage the receivership assets of NMNB. The FDIC maintains that Recoll took over management of the Note as well as other obligations owed by the Houdes. These other obligations included loans from MNB to Turcotte Concrete, a corporation of which Mr. Houde was a 50% shareholder, that were guaranteed by the Houdes. Turcotte Concrete filed for bankruptcy in 1991, and as part of the bankruptcy proceeding, Recoll, on behalf of the FDIC, negotiated an agreement in June 1993 resolving Turcotte Concrete’s debt (the “Conditional Amendment to Guaranty Agreements and Promissory Notes,” or “Conditional Agreement”). According to the FDIC, Recoll separately negotiated with the Houdes concerning their personal debt evidenced by the Note. The Houdes, however, contend that the Conditional Agreement resolving Turcotte Concrete’s obligations, by its own terms, released their personal obligations on the Note. On this theory, they have made no payments on the Note since June 1993.
In July 1994, the FDIC sued the Houdes in Maine state court to collect the amount due on the Note and to foreclose on the mortgage securing the debt. The Houdes removed the action to the United States District Court for the District of Maine and then moved to dismiss or for summary judgment on the ground that their personal indebtedness on the Note had been discharged by the Conditional Agreement. The district court denied the motions in September 1994, concluding that there were genuine issues of fact as to the meaning and intent of the Conditional Agreement. In early 1995, the Houdes moved for judgment on the pleadings as well as for summary judgment, reiterating their claim that the Conditional Agreement
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Page 603
unambiguously released them from the Note. In the Houdes’ Statement of Undisputed Material Facts submitted in connection with their summary judgment motion, the Houdes acknowledged that the FDIC had been appointed as receiver for MNB. The Houdes also moved to dismiss, or for a default judgment based on a claim that the servicing agreement between the FDIC and Recoll violated the Maine champerty statute. See 17-A M.R.S.A. § 516(1). The FDIC cross-moved for summary judgment. In May 1995, the district court denied these motions.
A jury trial was scheduled for early June 1995. Shortly before trial, the FDIC filed a motion in limine seeking to preclude the Houdes from questioning the FDIC’s standing to recover on the Note. The Houdes opposed this motion. The district court denied the motion without addressing the merits of the standing issue. At trial, the parties stipulated that (1) the FDIC possessed the original Note, (2) the Houdes’ signatures on the documents were authentic, and (3) the Houdes had made no payments on the Note since June 1993. The FDIC offered in evidence the original Note which was payable to MNB and had not been indorsed to any other entity. The FDIC called as a witness James Golden, the FDIC account officer, who had only been the custodian of the Houde file for the two weeks prior to trial. Golden testified to the series of events occurring after the failure of MNB up until the time of trial: (1) the FDIC was appointed receiver of MNB, (2) the Note passed to NMNB, a bridge bank set up by the FDIC, (3) the FDIC dissolved NMNB, (4) the Note passed to the FDIC as receiver for NMNB. Golden testified that the Note was not among the NMNB assets that Fleet Bank purchased from the FDIC. The FDIC did not offer or have with it any public or business records evidencing the transfers to which Golden testified.
The Houdes objected to Golden’s testimony and to the introduction of the Note in evidence, arguing that Golden’s testimony was inadmissible hearsay, as he had no personal knowledge of the transactions to which he testified. In addition, they argued that Golden’s testimony was not the best evidence of the transactions in question. The district court sustained the Houdes’ objection and struck Golden’s testimony. The FDIC then requested a short continuance to allow it to obtain documentation of the underlying transactions to which Golden had testified. The court denied a continuance, granting judgment as a matter of law in favor of the Houdes. The court stated that there was “no basis whatsoever on which a jury could conclude that the plaintiff is entitled to enforce this note.” [1] In response to the FDIC counsel’s indication that he would file a motion for reconsideration of the directed verdict later that afternoon, the court indicated that it would not reconsider its decision. The court issued a final judgment dismissing the FDIC’s action on June 8, 1995.
II.
The FDIC contends that the district court erred in finding that the evidence of the FDIC’s ownership of the Note was so inadequate that the FDIC’s claim to enforce the Note against its makers, the Houdes, fails as a matter of law. Alternatively, the FDIC argues that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to grant a brief continuance so as to enable the FDIC to procure records that would establish its requisite interest
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Page 604
in the Note. The Houdes reply that the FDIC never presented competent proof of the various transactions through which it allegedly acquired lawful ownership and possession of the Note, Golden’s testimony having, in their view, been rightly stricken as hearsay. They argue that without such competent evidence, the FDIC’s case failed as a matter of law.
The district court dismissed the case because it concluded that the FDIC had failed to meet its burden of presenting sufficient evidence to establish, prima facie, that it was a party entitled to enforce the Note. Without proper proof of ownership, the Note would not be admissible as a basis for the FDIC’s claim. The question, of course, would not be whether the FDIC’s right to enforce the Note was conclusively established but whether enough of a case was made out to go to the jury. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a) (“If … there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [a] party on [an] issue, the court may determine the issue against that party and may grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law against that party.”).
1. The FDIC’s Burden of Proof
The FDIC argues that possession of the Note was a sufficient basis for it to be entitled to a presumption that it could enforce the Note. The FDIC points to federal law, set forth in FIRREA, [2] providing expressly that the FDIC succeeds by operation of law to a failed bank’s right and title in all its assets, see 12 U.S.C. § 1821(d)(2)(A), infra. FIRREA, however, does not spell out what the FDIC needs to prove in order to show its entitlement to sue on a transferred asset like the Note. The Supreme Court has recently held that matters left unaddressed in FIRREA are controlled by state law. O’Melveny & Myers v. FDIC, 512 U.S. 79, —-, 114 S.Ct. 2048, 2054, 129 L.Ed.2d 67 (1994). We look, therefore, to Maine law to supplement FIRREA in determining what the FDIC, as receiver of NMNB, needed to show for it to be found a party entitled to enforce the Note. See, e.g., RTC v. Maplewood Invs., 31 F.3d 1276, 1293-94 (4th Cir.1994) (holding that question of whether RTC is a holder in due course is governed by state law); see also FDIC v. Grupo Girod Corp., 869 F.2d 15, 17 (1st Cir.1989) (applying Puerto Rico law to determine whether the FDIC was a holder in due course); FDIC v. Bandon Assocs., 780 F.Supp. 60, 63 (D.Me.1991). But see FDIC v. World Univ. Inc., 978 F.2d 10, 13-14 (1st Cir.1992) (pre-O’Melveny case).
The applicable Maine law, set forth in the Maine Uniform Commercial Code, Negotiable Instruments, 11 M.R.S.A. 3-1101 et seq., [3] provides that a note qualifying as a negotiable instrument can be enforced by “holder[s]” and “nonholder[s] in possession of the instrument who [have] the rights of [ ] holder[s].” See 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-1301. [4] The
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FDIC is plainly not a “holder” under Maine law because the Note was not indorsed to the FDIC and therefore was not “negotiated.” [5] See 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-1201 (“[I]f an instrument is payable to an identified person, negotiation requires transfer of possession of the instrument and its indorsement by the holder.”); [6] see also Calaska Partners Ltd. v. Corson, 672 A.2d 1099, 1104 (Me.1996) (holding that holder in due course status is not conferred when financial instruments are transferred in bulk to the FDIC).
Not being a holder, the FDIC had to show, as a prerequisite to enforcing the Note against the Houdes, that it was a transferee in possession entitled to the rights of a holder. See 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-1203. Comment 2 following § 3-1203 provides:
If the transferee is not a holder because the transferor did not indorse, the transferee is nevertheless a person entitled to enforce the instrument … if the transferor was a holder at the time of transfer…. Because the transferee is not a holder, there is no presumption … that the transferee, by producing the instrument, is entitled to payment. The instrument, by its terms, is not payable to the transferee and the transferee must account for possession of the unindorsed instrument by proving the transaction through which the transferee acquired it. Proof of a transfer to the transferee by a holder is proof that the transferee has acquired the rights of a holder. At that point the transferee is entitled to the presumption….
(emphasis added). [7] Thus, in order minimally to be entitled to the presumption under Maine law that it could enforce the Note, the FDIC was required (1) to prove a sufficient transfer from a holder (here MNB, to which the Note was made payable by the Houdes) to the FDIC in its present capacity as receiver of NMNB, and (2) to produce the Note at trial.
2. The Evidence At Trial
The FDIC brought this action in its capacity as receiver for NMNB. The NMNB was allegedly a bridge bank set up pursuant to 12 U.S.C. § 1821(n) by the FDIC following the
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failure of MNB. The FDIC produced the Note at trial, and the parties stipulated that the signatures were authentic and that the instrument the FDIC possessed was the original. What remained, therefore, was for the FDIC to establish a proper transfer of the Note to it in its suing capacity (receiver of NMNB) from the Note’s holder, MNB.
The first step in this transfer could rather easily have been established given the provisions of FIRREA. A transfer of all the holder’s (MNB’s) rights in the Note to the FDIC as receiver for MNB could be demonstrated simply by showing that the FDIC became the receiver of MNB. Once a receivership of a failed bank takes place, the transfer of the failed bank’s assets to the FDIC occurs by operation of law–the FDIC as receiver of a failed institution succeeding under federal law to:
(i) all rights, titles, powers, and privileges of the insured depository institution, …
(ii) title to the books, records, and assets of any previous conservator or other legal custodian of such institution.
12 U.S.C. § 1821(d)(2)(A).
The most serious problem in the instant case is what additional proof is needed to prove that enforceable title to the Note was transmitted to the FDIC in its subsequent and present capacity as receiver of the bridge bank, NMNB. Under the Maine negotiable instruments law, there has to be “[p]roof of a transfer to the transferee by a holder” of the Note, establishing “proof that the transferee [i.e., the FDIC as receiver of NMNB] has acquired the rights of a holder [MNB].” 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-1203, Comment 2, supra. As stated above, if the FDIC were suing in the capacity of receiver of MNB, nothing more would be required than a showing of such receivership, coupled with a production of the Note, for the FDIC to become entitled to the presumption that it was entitled to payment. But the FDIC is suing as receiver of a different entity, NMNB. There is no automatic transfer provided by federal law of the assets of the FDIC as receiver of a failed bank to a bridge bank, nor is there an automatic transfer from a bridge bank back to the FDIC upon the termination of the bridge bank. See 12 U.S.C. § 1821(n).
A key question, therefore, is whether the record below properly established the formation of NMNB, the transfer of the Note to NMNB, the demise of NMNB and the appointment of the FDIC as its receiver, and the transfer of the Note from NMNB to the FDIC as receiver of that entity. The FDIC relied on the testimony of its witness, Golden, to show this. Golden testified, among other things, to the FDIC’s receivership of MNB, the creation of NMNB, the subsequent dissolution of NMNB, and the Note’s transfer to the FDIC as NMNB’s receiver. The court, however, struck Golden’s testimony. We agree with the court that Golden, having taken over the Houde file only two weeks before trial and not claiming direct personal knowledge of these events, could not testify to them over objection. See Fed.R.Evid. 602 (“A witness may not testify to a matter unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter.”) Although, as custodian of the Houde file, his testimony might well have been sufficient to authenticate business records, admissible under an exception to the hearsay rule, that may have proved the underlying transactions, see Fed.R.Evid. 803(6), the FDIC did not have any of the underlying documents with it at trial. Nor was the FDIC prepared to offer public records such as might establish the appointment of the FDIC as receiver of MNB and NMNB respectively. See Fed.R.Evid. 803(8), 901(b)(7) (indicating that public records are admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule and generally self-authenticating). Thus, the FDIC was without admissible evidence of its ownership of the Note. The FDIC conceded that it was unprepared at the time to present alternative evidence after Golden’s testimony was struck, although it said it could obtain the relevant evidence if the court would grant a brief continuance. Without such a foundation, the court declined to permit the Note to be received into evidence. Without the Note in evidence, the FDIC felt that it could not
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proceed. [8]
Attempting to justify the lack of admissible foundation evidence, the FDIC now argues that because the Note was never indorsed and never made payable to anyone other than MNB, it plainly could not have been sold to a third party by the FDIC or the bridge bank. But while the absence of an indorsement on the Note strengthens the argument that no one acquired a title superior to that of the FDIC, it does not by itself meet the FDIC’s burden to “account for possession of the unindorsed instrument by proving the transaction through which the transferee acquired it.” 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-1203, Comment 2, supra.
We note that the Houdes, in their Statement of Undisputed Material Facts submitted to the district court in conjunction with their earlier summary judgment motion, conceded that the FDIC was appointed receiver for MNB, that the FDIC created NMNB, that the FDIC appointed itself the receiver of NMNB, and that “[i]t was through these various transactions that the FDIC acquired the Note … at issue in this action.” The Houdes’ subsequent facile recanting of this admission might arguably be the sort of “fast and loose” play which leads a court to impose judicial estoppel. See Patriot Cinemas, Inc. v. General Cinema Corp., 834 F.2d 208, 212 (1st Cir.1987). However, the FDIC made no effort during the trial to offer the Houdes’ Statement in evidence in order to establish its own ownership of the Note, nor did it make an estoppel argument. [9] In a case such as this with well over a hundred docket entries, the district court can scarcely be expected to recall, sua sponte, a fact listed in one document submitted by the Houdes to the court. Moreover, although the FDIC mentions the Houdes’ admission in its appellate brief, it does not make a “judicial estoppel” argument, or indeed any other coordinated argument, as to why the admission should, at this late date, be binding on the Houdes. See United States v. Caraballo-Cruz, 52 F.3d 390, 393 (1st Cir.1995) (stating that “issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived”) (internal quotations omitted). Given the FDIC’s failure to raise the matter in a timely fashion before the district court and to argue the matter on appeal, we regard it as having been waived.
The FDIC also argues that this court should now take judicial notice of the failure of MNB and the taking over of its assets by the FDIC. This point was also not made at trial below, the district court never being asked to take judicial notice of these facts. It is true that the appointment of the FDIC as receiver of MNB was previously announced and relied upon as a matter of fact in two published opinions of this court issued prior to the district court proceeding under review, as well as in several prior opinions of the District of Maine, including opinions issued by the very judge who presided over the present trial. [10] Nonetheless,
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the FDIC’s judicial notice argument fails for several reasons. First, even assuming a court could take judicial notice of the failure of the MNB, no party in this case requested the court to take such action. While the district court might well have taken judicial notice of these well-known facts sua sponte, it was not required to do so unless requested. See Fed.R.Evid. 201(c), (d). Second, even assuming the district court, or this court on appeal, did take judicial notice of the failure of the MNB, the appointment of the FDIC as its receiver, and perhaps even the creation of the bridge bank, these facts would not relieve the FDIC from its burden of showing a transfer of the Note from the bridge bank to the FDIC as receiver for that institution. These are not matters for judicial notice.
We conclude, therefore, with some regret, that there was no error in the district court’s ruling that, on the record as it stood, the FDIC had failed to meet its legal burden. We hold that the record justified the dismissal of the case as matter of law on the narrow but dispositive ground declared by the district court.
3. The Denial of the FDIC’s Requested Continuance
The FDIC argues that even assuming the FDIC as receiver of NMNB failed to make out a prima facie case showing the transactions by which it acquired the Note, the court’s refusal to grant the FDIC a continuance during which it could procure the necessary records and other evidence constituted an abuse of discretion. We review the district court’s refusal to grant a continuance solely for an abuse of discretion. See United States v. Neal, 36 F.3d 1190, 1205 (1st Cir.1994).
Counsel for the FDIC first asked for a two-hour break and then asked, at 10:30 a.m., that the case be continued until the next day. The district judge indicated that he was not willing to recess the case because “[t]his case should have been prepared weeks ago.” In addition, the judge noted that even if he did allow the continuance, any documents or testimony the FDIC produced would not be admissible, over objection, because it would violate the court’s Final Pretrial Order, which required a designation of all exhibits and witnesses and a description of the witnesses’ testimony. The judge stated:
I am not going to continue this case, … to do so means opening the entire case up, probably discharging this jury so that new procedures, pretrial procedures about these documents can be carried out in accordance with the prior order of the court. It would make a complete mockery of the systematic pretrial preparation of cases and the elaborate procedure that the Court has in place to see that these cases are properly tried.
When reviewing a district court’s decision to deny a continuance, broad discretion must be granted and only “unreasonable and arbitrary insistence upon expeditiousness in the face of a justifiable request for delay” will necessitate reversal. United States v. Rodriguez Cortes, 949 F.2d 532, 545 (1st Cir.1991) (citing United States v. Torres, 793 F.2d 436, 440 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 889, 107 S.Ct. 287, 93 L.Ed.2d 262 (1986)); see also Morris v. Slappy, 461 U.S. 1, 11, 103 S.Ct. 1610, 1615, 75 L.Ed.2d 610 (1983). In determining whether a denial of a continuance constitutes an abuse of discretion, the court must consider the particular facts and circumstances of each case. See Torres, 793 F.2d at 440. The court should consider the reasons in support of the request, the amount of time requested, whether the movant has contributed to his predicament, the inconvenience to the court, the witnesses, the jury and the opposing party, and the likelihood of injustice or unfair prejudice attributable to the denial of a continuance. See United States v. Saccoccia, 58 F.3d 754, 770 (1st Cir.1995), cert. denied, — U.S. —-, 116 S.Ct. 1322, 134 L.Ed.2d 474 (1996).
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Page 609
The FDIC argues that the district court’s refusal to grant a continuance led to injustice and unfair prejudice. It contends that the time needed to gather the necessary evidence would not have greatly inconvenienced the court, the jury or the Houdes, and that some of the documents would have been self-authenticating records admissible in court. This may be so, but it overlooks a number of factors pointing in the other direction, among them the presence of the jury and the court’s reasonable expectation that the FDIC would be prepared for trial. The FDIC contends that it was “surprised” that it had to put forth admissible evidence concerning its ownership of the Note. However, we see no reason for the FDIC to have been surprised. The Houdes had challenged the ability of the FDIC to enforce the Note as an affirmative defense in their answer and had later objected to the FDIC’s motion, which the court denied, to preclude them from challenging the FDIC’s standing to enforce the Note. The FDIC was plainly on notice that it was dealing with adversaries who refused to take a relaxed “common sense” approach on these technical but nonetheless requisite preliminaries. Indeed, the FDIC showed that it understood its burden by calling Golden and questioning him on the matters it did. Unfortunately, it seems not to have recognized the hearsay problem inherent in Golden’s testimony, nor to have taken the trouble to have with it the necessary supporting documents.
The court was entitled to expect the FDIC to have special competence in actions such as this. This suit had been commenced ten months earlier and, as said, the FDIC knew the Houdes would challenge its standing to enforce the Note. It was the FDIC’s failure to have prepared its case for trial that led to the request for a continuance. While the court’s action was strict, and we can imagine some judges who would have assessed the situation more charitably to the FDIC, we cannot say that it abused its discretion in not giving the FDIC additional time to remedy its lack of preparation. See, e.g., Rodriguez Cortes, 949 F.2d at 545 (holding that district court did not abuse its discretion in denying motion for continuance in order to obtain witness to testify that time indicated on hotel registration card was incorrect when defendant had been in possession of the time card for six months and had ample time to obtain a witness). Given the costs of trials, especially before juries, and the adverse effects of delay in one case on other litigants seeking trials, judges must be allowed a considerable discretion in these matters. We find no abuse here.
III.
Because we find that the district court properly directed a verdict in favor of the Houdes and acted within its discretion in denying the FDIC’s request for a continuance, we need not reach the issues raised in the Houdes’ cross-appeal.
Affirmed.
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Notes:
[1]The district court ruled from the bench:
There is a complete gap in the evidence between the time the bank [sic] was lawfully in the possession of Maine National Bank and the title to the document was in Maine National Bank, and the time that it ultimately came to rest in the possession of this plaintiff, and there is no formal proof, first of all that Maine National Bank ever went into receivership, if so, what happened with respect to any of the assets of that institution as a result of that, specifically what happened with respect to this note and mortgage. And there is no proof or evidence sufficient to permit a jury to reach a verdict in favor of the plaintiff with respect to what happened to that note, and what has been referred to as its many transitions in ownership among, apparently New Maine National Bank, Fleet Management Corporation, Fleet Bank and RECOLL Management Corporation, and ultimately its transfer back into the possession of FDIC. It is not even clear that the note ever left the possession of the FDIC in the first place, but all of that is completely in doubt.
[2]FIRREA is the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, 103 Stat. 183, codified in various sections of 12 and 18 U.S.C.
[3]The Maine Uniform Commercial Code was amended in 1993, after the execution of the Note but before the execution of the Conditional Agreement and before the institution of the lawsuit in question. The earlier version of the Maine Uniform Commercial Code, Negotiable Instruments, was codified at 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-101, et seq. (repealed in 1993).
Both parties have taken the position in this litigation that the Note is a negotiable instrument (the Houdes in their appellate brief, and the FDIC in motions submitted to the district court), and neither party has argued that the Note is not a negotiable instrument even though, with its variable interest rate, the Note is arguably not a negotiable instrument under the pre-1993 version of the Maine Uniform Commercial Code. See e.g., FSLIC v. Griffin, 935 F.2d 691, 697 n. 3 (5th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1092, 112 S.Ct. 1163, 117 L.Ed.2d 410 (1992); New Conn. Bank & Trust Co., N.A. v. Stadium Management Corp., 132 B.R. 205, 208-09 (D.Mass.1991). In the absence of an applicable statute, the FDIC’s initial burden would be subject to Maine common law. In discerning the common law requirements for the FDIC to show that it is entitled to enforce the variable interest rate Note, we would be inclined to look to the statutory requirements for enforcing negotiable instruments by analogy. As the parties have not argued otherwise and as it is hard to see how the outcome of this case would change in any event, we proceed on the assertion that the Note is a negotiable instrument under Maine law.
[4]The version of the Maine Uniform Commercial Code in effect before 1993 also provided that holders as well as transferees with the rights of holders could enforce a
negotiable instrument. See 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-201, Comment 8 (repealed 1993).
[5]The federal holder in due course doctrine, which provides a buffer for the FDIC against certain defenses, does not give the FDIC the status of a “holder” in the instant situation. This Circuit has held that the federal doctrine is generally not applicable to the FDIC in its receivership capacity. See Capitol Bank & Trust Co. v. 604 Columbus Ave. Realty Trust (In re 604 Columbus Ave. Realty Trust ), 968 F.2d 1332, 1352-53 (1st Cir.1992) (stating that the federal holder in due course doctrine does not apply to the FDIC as receiver except in the case of a purchase and assumption transaction); see also FDIC v. Laguarta, 939 F.2d 1231, 1239 n. 19 (5th Cir.1991) (same). But see Campbell Leasing, Inc. v. FDIC, 901 F.2d 1244, 1249 (5th Cir.1990) (stating that the FDIC may enjoy federal holder in due course status whether acting in its corporate or receivership capacity); Firstsouth, F.A. v. Aqua Constr., Inc., 858 F.2d 441, 443 (8th Cir.1988) (providing FSLIC-Receiver with federal holder in due course status).
We note that the continuing viability of the federal holder in due course doctrine is questionable. A circuit split has arisen as to whether the doctrine is still valid after O’Melveny & Myers, supra. Compare DiVall Insured Income Fund Ltd. Partnership v. Boatmen’s First Nat’l Bank of Kansas City, 69 F.3d 1398, 1402 (8th Cir.1995) and Murphy v. FDIC, 61 F.3d 34, 38 (D.C.Cir.1995) (holding that O’Melveny & Myers leaves no room for common law D’Oench doctrine) with Motorcity of Jacksonville v. Southeast Bank N.A., 83 F.3d 1317, 1327-28 (11th Cir.1996). This court has not yet expressed an opinion as to the effect of O’Melveny & Myers on the doctrine.
In any event, the present case does not present a situation for which the doctrine was created. The federal holder in due course doctrine is designed to protect the FDIC from claims unascertainable from the books of the failed institution, a purpose unrelated to the present.
[6]The term “negotiation” is similarly defined in the pre-1993 statute, 11 M.R.S.A. § 3-202 (repealed in 1993).
[7]The result would not be different under the pre-1993 version of the Maine Uniform Commercial Code which provided:
[T]he transferee without indorsement of an order instrument is not a holder and so is not aided by the presumption that he is entitled to recover on the instrument…. The terms of the obligation do not run to him, and he must account for his possession of the unindorsed paper by proving the transaction through which he acquired it. Proof of a transfer to him by a holder is proof that he has acquired the rights of a holder and that he is entitled to the presumption.
[11]M.R.S.A. § 3-201, Comment 8 (repealed in 1993).
[8]After a lengthy discussion in which the court indicated that there was insufficient evidence of foundation to allow the Note into evidence and that even if the FDIC were to provide additional documentation and witnesses to lay the proper foundation, it would be in violation of the court’s Final Pretrial Order, the court declined to grant a continuance. The following colloquy then took place:
[FDIC’s Counsel]: Then, your Honor, we have no further witnesses.
THE COURT: I take it the Plaintiff rest [sic] at this time?
[FDIC’s Counsel]: Yeah.
THE COURT: Does the defendant rest?
[Houdes’ Counsel]: Defendant rest [sic] on the complaint and moves for directed verdict.
[9]The FDIC did indicate to the court, several hours after the court directed the verdict for the Houdes, that it would file a motion for reconsideration of the verdict because “there were judicial binding admissions” submitted by the Houdes. The district judge indicated that he would not reconsider the decision because the FDIC should have been prepared to argue that point at trial. The FDIC did not submit a motion for reconsideration. Moreover, the FDIC makes no argument on appeal that the district court’s refusal to reconsider was an abuse of discretion.
[10]See, e.g., United States v. Fleet Bank of Maine, 24 F.3d 320, 322 (1st Cir.1994) (reviewing a decision of the district court judge who decided the present case, the Court of Appeals stated: “In January 1991, the Maine National Bank … was declared insolvent and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation … was appointed its receiver.”); Bateman v. FDIC, 970 F.2d 924, 926 (1st Cir.1992) (reviewing a decision of the district court judge who decided the present case, Court of Appeals stated: “[I]n January 1991, the federal Comptroller of the Currency declared the [Maine National] Bank insolvent and appointed the FDIC as receiver.”); Mill Invs. v. Brooks Woolen Co., 797 F.Supp. 49, 50 (D.Me.1992) (acknowledgement of same district court judge that FDIC was appointed receiver of MNB); Cardente v. Fleet Bank of Maine, 796 F.Supp. 603, 606 n. 1 (D.Me.1992) (same).
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To Ian:
Thank you for your response. I did check the Registry of Deeds in my state. Wells Fargo did not have an assignment, if my assignment you literally mean a paper that says assignment. An original mortgage company way back from ten years ago has an assignment page which I think was just this year submitted even though that company had the mortgage 10 years ago, I don’t even know why the registry of deeds accepted an assignment now that actually took place 10 years ago. I know for a fact that Wells Fargo is not listed in my mortgage papers in the registry and there is no assignment doc to them> What to do next?
MaryAnne- google the addresses given on the complaint you were served. The foreclosing entity may be hiding behind the guise of Wells Fargo. The addresses given for each entity on the complaint may just be different addresses for the servicer. Who is listed on the complaint? Have you checked your chain of assignment in your county courthouse? Go to your Dept of State notary division and type in the notaries’ names to see if they were licensed at the time they notarized the docs, or if they are even notaries at all. Everyone on this site will respond to specifics, they are great. These are just some elementary guidelines.
Atty Garfield:
Semantics are most important. I am in Ma and in a dilemma in that an attorney that I found on your website seems unwilling to help me even though originally he promised to do so.
I spoke with a couple of other attorneys this week in Boston to get their help and told them about your website and one of them acted in an openly hostile manner to me and tried to steer me away from questioning Wells Fargo Bank. Perhaps this is not the correct forum to ask you this and I apologize if it is but if it is appropriate, from whom can I get the legal assistance I need in Ma? My sale date is April 7 and the attorney on this website doesn’t even answer my emails and originally promised to take over my case and never called me back. When I called him back, he apologized, saying that he had other pressing concerns and was unable to get back to me even though he originally said he was taking my case. Is there some other attorney who can help me here in Ma? Thanks Maryanne
FLA BK COURT STOPS US BANK N.A. NO STANDING FEB 2010
UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
ORLANDO DIVISION
In re:
JORGE CANELLAS, Case No. 6:09-bk-12240-ABB
Chapter 7
Debtor.
_____________________________/
ORDER
This matter came before the Court on the Motion for Relief from Stay (Doc. No.
22) (“Motion”) filed by U.S. Bank National Association, as Trustee of the Lehman
Brothers Small Balance Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, 2006-3
(“Movant”), and the Objection thereto (Doc. No. 25) filed by the Chapter 7 Trustee Carla P. Musselman (“Trustee”). Hearings were held on November 23, 2009, December 7, 2009, December 21, 2009, and January 4, 2010 at which the Trustee, her counsel, counsel for Movant, and counsel for the Debtor Jorge Canellas (“Debtor”) appeared.
The parties, pursuant to the Court’s directive, filed post-hearing briefs (Doc. Nos. 43, 45, 46, and 47). The Movant’s Motion is due to be denied for the reasons set forth herein. The Court makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law after
reviewing the pleadings and evidence, hearing live proffers and argument, and being
otherwise fully advised in the premises.
Hoffner Avenue Property
The Debtor filed this case on August 21, 2009 (“Petition Date”). He owns commercial property located at 830 Hoffner Avenue, Orlando, Florida 32809
(“Property”) and more particularly described as:
Lot 7, SUNDAY BLOCK, according to the plat thereof, recorded in Plat Book O, Page 27, of the Public Records of Orange County, Florida.
He values the Property at $250,000.00 and listed “Aurora” in Schedule D as holding a
security interest in the Property valued at $0.00 (Doc. No. 1). The security interest is not designated as contingent, unliquidated, or disputed. He did not claim the Property as exempt in Schedule C. The Property constitutes non-exempt property of the estate
pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 541(a).
The Debtor filed an Affidavit (Doc. No. 47) asserting the Property is important to his appraisal business, Appraisers of America, because he operates his business at the Property. The Debtor’s statements regarding his business location and intentions as to
the Property are inconsistent. He set forth in this Statement of Financial Affairs (Doc. No. 1) he operates the business at his home at 2033 Bearing Lane, Kissimmee, Florida 34741. He set forth in his Statement of Intention (Doc. No. 1) he intends to surrender the Property. His Schedule J does not include a monthly expense for the Property.
The Trustee filed a memorandum on October 21, 2009 stating the initial meeting of creditors pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 541 was held and concluded on October 14, 2009, but she has not designated this case as an asset or no asset case. No bar date has
been established for the filing of proofs of claim. No proofs of claim have been filed.
The Debtor received a discharge on December 22, 2009 (Doc. No. 39).
Movant filed the Motion for Relief from Stay on October 19, 2009 seeking relief from the automatic stay of 11 U.S.C. Section 362(a) pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Sections
362(d)(1) and (d)(2) to continue a foreclosure proceeding against the Property which was
pending on the Petition Date. Movant asserts in its Motion:
(i) It is the “owner and holder” of a promissory note and first-priority mortgage on the Property pursuant to an Assignment of Mortgage and Loan Documents.
(ii) The Debtor has failed to pay the monthly mortgage payment of $2,282.90 since May 1, 2009 and the loan balance is approximately $300,662.84, which contains interest charges of $18,232.08, late charges of $570.70, and forced placed insurance
costs of $11,314.24.
(iii) The Property has a value of $178,273.00 based upon the Orange County Property Appraiser’s 2009 assessment.
(iv) Legal title to the Property is vested in the Debtor.
Accompanying Movant’s Motion are:
A. An Affidavit in Support of Motion for Relief from Stay executed in the State of California on October 9, 2009 by Louis Zaffino as a special assets officer at
Aurora Bank FSB, which is Movant’s authorized servicer and services the Debtor’s loan.
The Affidavit sets forth the loan balance and a break-down of the arrearages.
B. A copy of the Promissory Note (“Note”) executed by the Debtor as Borrower on August 1, 2006 for the principal amount of $274,500.00 payable to Lehman
Brothers Bank, FSB as Lender. The Note requires the Debtor to make monthly loan payments of principal and interest of $2,282.90 to Lender from October 1, 2006 for sixty months and thereafter at varying monthly amounts. The interest rate is variable. The
Note designates the loan as Loan Number 00207199.
The Note provides it is secured by the Property described in the Mortgage dated August 1, 2006. It sets forth at page 2: “The terms of this Note . . . shall inure to the benefit of Lender and its successors and assigns. . . .” and it is “governed by federal law
applicable to Lender and, to the extent not preempted by federal law, the laws of the State
of California without regard to its conflicts of law provisions.”
C. A copy of the Mortgage dated August 1, 2006 and executed by the Debtor as Grantor, and his wife Amanda Crim as the joining spouse, in favor Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB as Lender pursuant to which the Debtor granted Lender a first-priority
mortgage in the Property, its rents, and personal property to secure his performance of the
Note obligations. The Mortgage references Loan Number 00207199, the Note, and contains an identical legal description for the Property as contained in the Note.
The Mortgage provides regarding governing law:
With respect to procedural matters related to the perfection and enforcement of Lender’s rights against the Property, this Mortgage will be governed by federal law applicable to Lender and to the extent not
preempted by federal law, the laws of the State of Florida. In all other respects, this Mortgage will be governed by federal law applicable to Lender and, to the extent preempted by federal law, the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflicts of law provisions.
Mortgage at p. 7. It provides regarding successors and assigns: Subject to any limitations stated in this Mortgage on transfer of Grantor’s interest, this Mortgage shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and assigns.
Id. “Lender” is defined as “Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB, its successors and assigns.” Id.
The recordation stamp on page one of the Mortgage reflects it was recorded in the Official Records Book for Orange County, Florida on August 15, 2006 as Instrument 20060534342 at Book 08805, Page 4292.
D. A copy of an Assignment of Mortgage and Loan Documents (“Assignment”) executed on September 28, 2009 by Jack Jacob as the Vice President of
“Aurora Bank FSB f/k/a Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB,” and notarized on September 30, 2009, purporting to assign the Mortgage and underlying loan documents from Aurora Bank FSB, formerly known as Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB, as Assignor, to and in favor
of Movant, as Assignee, “effective as of the 30th day of November, 2006.”
The Assignment references the Mortgage’s Book and Page Numbers and the Property’s common and legal descriptions. The recordation stamp on its first page
reflects it was recorded in the Official Records Book for Orange County, Florida on October 5, 2009 at Book 9944, Page 1038.
Trustee’s Objection
The Trustee opposes Movant’s Motion on the grounds Movant lacks standing to obtain stay relief and it failed to perfect its security interest prior to the Petition Date.
Her opposition is grounded on the contention the Assignment is invalid. She has
presented various legal theories in support of her position:
1.Aurora Bank FSB f/k/a Lehman Brothers Bank did not own the Mortgage and Promissory Note on the date of execution of the Assignment and had no authority to assign them to Movant.
2. By the terms of the two securitized trusts for Lehman Brothers designated 2006-3 registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, no assignment occurred.
3. The Assignment was executed and recorded post-petition and may constitute a violation of the automatic stay pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 362(a)(4).
4. Movant has not established that on the Petition Date it had physical possession of the original Promissory Note properly endorsed in its favor.
5. Lehman Brothers’ ability to enforce the Promissory Note or Mortgage was extinguished in 2006 when it was paid by the Trust for the pool of mortgages which form the Trust’s corpus.
6. Title between the Promissory Note and Mortgage were bifurcated, thereby rendering the Mortgage unenforceable.
The Trustee asserts Movant is an unsecured creditor and she has authority to sell the Property free and clear of encumbrances for the benefit of the estate.
Movant asserts the Note and Mortgage are owned by the Lehman Brothers Small Balance Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, 2006-3, a private securitized trust, and Movant, as the asserted owner and holder of the Note and Mortgage, has
authority to enforce the security interest. Movant presented with its post-hearing brief an Allonge to Promissory Note (“Allonge”) purportedly dated August 1, 2006 and executed by Jennifer Henninger as the Special Assets Administrative Assistant of Aurora Bank FSB directing: Pay to the Order of U.S. Bank National Association, as Trustee (the
‘Trustee’) under the Trust Agreement dated as of October 31, 2006, among Structured Asset Securities Corporation, as Depositor, Lehman
Brothers Bank, FSB, as Servicer, and the Trustee relating to Lehman Brothers Small Balance Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates,
Series 2006-3, without recourse.
Doc. No. 46 (emphasis added).
The Debtor filed an Affidavit (Doc. No. 47) stating he had no prepetition communications with Movant, was not aware Movant had a security interest in the
Property, and, if the Assignment is deemed invalid, desires to purchase the Property from the Trustee.
Analysis
The evidence presented establishes the Property is encumbered by the Mortgage, which secures the Debtor’s performance of the Note. The Mortgage was properly perfected pre-petition through its recordation in the Official Records Book for Orange
County, Florida. The Mortgage and Note have not been bifurcated. The Mortgage has not been satisfied. The Debtor had actual knowledge of the unsatisfied Mortgage and the Trustee, through the recordation of the original Mortgage, had constructive, if not actual,
knowledge of the unsatisfied Mortgage. Kapila v. Atlantic Mortgage and Inv. Corp. (In re Halabi), 184 F.3d 1335, 1339 (11th Cir. 1999).
The purported assignment of the Note and Mortgage to Movant does not affect perfection or constitute a transfer of property of the estate or the Debtor. Id. at 1337.
“[A] subsequent assignment of the mortgagee’s interest – whether recorded or not – does not change the nature of the interest of the mortgagor or someone claiming under him.”
Id. at 1338. Recordation of an assignment post-petition does not constitute a violation of the automatic stay. Id. at 1337; Rogan v. Bank One, N.A. (In re Cook), 457 F.3d 561, 568 (6th Cir. 2006) (affirming the analysis of In re Halabi).
It is uncontroverted the Note has been in default since approximately May 2009 and a balance of approximately $300,662.84 is due and owing. The Debtor, who is a property appraiser, values the Property at $250,000.00 and Movant values the Property at $178,000.00. The Debtor is not making adequate protection payments to Movant. There
is no equity in the Property and it is not necessary to an effective reorganization given this is a Chapter 7 proceeding and the disclosures made by the Debtor regarding the Property in his bankruptcy papers. Grounds exist for relief from the automatic stay
pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Sections 362(d)(1) and (d)(2).
Movant’s Motion, however, is due to be denied because Movant has failed to establish it has standing to seek stay relief. A motion for relief from the automatic stay must be prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest. 11 U.S.C. § 362(d); FED. R. 7
CIV. P. 17(a)(1); FED. R. BANKR. P. 7017. “The real party in interest in relief from stay is whoever is entitled to enforce the obligation sought to be enforced.” In re Jacobson, 402 B.R. 359, 366 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2009). Only the holder of the Note and Mortgage, or
its authorized agent, has standing to bring the Motion. Id. at 367.
Movant asserts in its Motion it is the “owner and holder” of the Note and Mortgage, but has presented no evidence substantiating that assertion. The copies of the Note presented do not contain an endorsement evidencing an assignment of the Note.
The Affidavit executed by Movant’s loan servicer makes no mention of the location of the original Note or who has possession of it. Movant proffered no business records or testimony tracing ownership of the Note and establishing Movant is the present holder of
the Note.
The veracity of the Allonge and Assignment is questionable. The dates contained in the Allonge are chronologically impossible. The Allonge is dated August 1, 2006, but references a trust that came into existence on October 31, 2006. The signature of
Jennifer Henninger is undated and not notarized. The Allonge was not referenced in or filed with Movant’s Motion in October 2009, but was presented three months later as an attachment to its post-hearing brief.
The Assignment was executed and recorded post-petition approximately two weeks prior to Movant’s filing of the Motion for Relief. It was prepared by Jennifer
Henninger, who executed the Allonge, and was recorded by the law firm that is
representing Movant in this proceeding. Jack Jacob’s execution of the Assignment was
notarized by Jennifer Henninger and witnessed by Louis Zaffino, the affiant of Movant’s
Affidavit. It appears the Allonge and the Assignment were created post-petition for the purpose of the relief from stay proceeding. Movant did not establish Jennifer Henninger and Jack Jacob had authority to execute the Allonge and Assignment.
Movant’s submissions are insufficient to establish it is the owner and holder of the Note and Mortgage or is authorized to act for whoever holds these documents. In re Relka, No. 09-20806, 2009 WL 5149262, at *5 (Bankr. D. Wyo. Dec. 22, 2009) (granting
stay relief where movant established possession of note through testimony of witness
who personally retrieved note from movant’s vault); In re Jacobson, 402 B.R. at 370 (denying movant’s stay relief motion due to movant’s failure to establish it was holder of note); In re Hayes, 393 B.R. 259, 270 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2008) (denying movant’s stay relief motion and sustaining debtor’s claim objection due to movant’s failure to establish it was holder of note). Movant has not established it has standing to bring the Motion and the Motion is due to be denied.
Accordingly, it is
ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the Property located at 830 Hoffner Avenue, Orlando, Florida 32809 and more particularly described as:
Lot 7, SUNDAY BLOCK, according to the plat thereof, recorded in Plat Book O, Page 27, of the Public Records of Orange County, Florida is encumbered by the Mortgage executed by the Debtor on August 1, 2006 and recorded in the Official Records Book for Orange County, Florida on August 15, 2006 as
Instrument 20060534342 at Book 08805, Page 4292, which Mortgage constitutes a valid properly perfected lien, and which secures the Promissory Note executed by the Debtor on August 1, 2006 in the principal amount of $274,500.00 and designated as Loan
Number 00207199; and it is further ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the amount of the Mortgage lien encumbering the Property exceeds the Property’s value and there is no equity in the
Property; and it is further ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the Movant’s Motion for
Relief from Stay (Doc. No. 22) is hereby DENIED due to Movant’s failure to establish it
has standing to bring the Motion; and it is further
ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the Trustee, within twenty-one days of the entry of this Order, is hereby directed, pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 704(a) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5009, to file with the Court a Report of No Distribution or to designate this case as an asset case.
Dated this 9th day of February, 2010.
/s/ Arthur B. Briskman
ARTHUR B. BRISKMAN
United States Bankruptcy Judge