Are Lawyers Missing the Boat Again on Foreclosure Defense?

The problem is that while most people think everyone has been bought off, and to a certain extent that is true, the real problem is that the clever plan of securitization is so counter-intuitive that nobody believes the truth that is in plain sight. The reason for fabricated documents is that there were no transactions, so the documents had to be fabricated to fit facially with the requirements of law for administration, collection and enforcement.
To anyone who is not conversant in the language of finance, that seems impossible, unlikely, or just plain wrong. So rather than keeping an open mind about it, they react to such assertions with aggression and incredulity.

I recently received a question from a fairly knowledgeable reader. Why are lawyers dropping the ball on foreclosure defense? His specific question, along with similar questions from other readers is where are the trust lawyers, the securities lawyers, the property lawyers, the civil litigations lawyers, the personal injury lawyers (emotional distress etc), etc.?

Here was my answer with some edits for typos which all of you know I am prone to make and miss on edits.

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The question you posed is the million-dollar question. I think you are correct in your analysis. I have attempted to enlist attorneys who specialize in those areas but I have failed.
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The only explanation that I can give you that has any truth to it is that lawyers, despite their reputation, are easily intimidated, lazy and greedy. I surveyed hundreds of lawyers over a two-year period In 2008–2009.
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The proposition was simple. assuming a client with sufficient financial resources to pay any reasonable fee, were they willing to represent homeowners in distress?
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The fact that the answer was in the negative was frustrating enough. But the reason most often cited was that they would rather represent “the bank.” And when I pointed out that they did not represent any banks nor did they have any prospects for doing so, that’s when they said that it didn’t matter.
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Some did express reservation about the assumption that the client could pay. I pointed it out that if they were not making a monthly payment for housing, they could easily pay. That made no difference. They saw the entire endeavor as futile and unprofitable — but in reality I could tell, like any trial lawyer could detect, that I was dealing with raw unbridled fear.
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So I attacked it with seminars on foreclosure defense that highlighted business strategies in which the lawyer could become rich, and some of the attendees did. Others made a good living.
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But it was based on lowering of expectations. By adopting a hub-and-spoke strategy some lawyers, adopting the business plan that I proposed, began servicing hundreds of homeowners at a time. But like all such practices, their business success depended upon settlement of the cases, which meant modifications. This resulted in adding to the illusion that the servicer had any right to be in the picture.
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My latest plan is that I am working on potential pleadings for a case in Reformation in which the investment banks are literally drafted into the litigation. The Court decides whether the homeowner received consideration for issuing the documents (note and mortgage) that enabled the securitization plan, and whether the homeowner received or should receive adequate or additional consideration that could offset the claim. (There is a lot more to this but for purposes of this article I simply state in brief form).
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I have no doubt that there is an opportunity to achieve immense wealth simply by pursuing the obvious. But it appears that the General Public, law enforcement, the Judiciary, and most lawyers have succumbed to the party line that enables the Investment Bank to sit in the shadows and designate names of irrelevant parties with no stake and the outcome to administer, collect and enforce obligations that were long ago retired through securitization, proof of which is easy to obtain, to wit: is there any company showing the existence of the debt as an asset on their balance sheet and a loss from nonpayment? 
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I definitely know the answer to that question. Current law therefore does not allow the current scheme of securitization to exist nor should it. It depends entirely upon concealment of the most relevant data in any transaction — the terms and conditions under which each party intends to serve the other and the terms and conditions under which each party might profit from the transaction.
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Most of all under the federal and state lending and securities laws (and general laws requiring fair dealing) the identity of the counterparty must be included in order to make the agreement an enforceable contract.
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This concealment allows investment banks to act illegally and against the idea of free markets or capitalism. It prevents both investors and homeowners from bargaining for adequate consideration based upon the true nature of the transaction. 
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The problem is that while most people think everyone has been bought off, and to a certain extent that is true, the real problem is that the clever plan of securitization is so counter-intuitive that nobody believes the truth that is in plain sight. The reason for fabricated documents is that there were no transactions, so the documents had to be fabricated to fit facially with the requirements of law for administration, collection and enforcement.
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To anyone who is not conversant in the language of finance, that seems impossible, unlikely, or just plain wrong. So rather than keeping an open mind about it, they react to such assertions with aggression and incredulity.
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Some lawyers do get it and they win their cases most of the time. Everyone else seems to argue for their own weaknesses (See Steven Covey’s Book) without looking to actual information or data. They insist that the foreclosure cases are both unwinnable and are morally unconscionable if they give the homeowner a free house.
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I insist that there is no debt because the investment bank was never depending upon the economics of a loan to make money. Foreclosures are gravy. They made all their money creating, selling, issuing, trading, and hedging securities. The labelling of the homeowner transaction as a loan was a false representation. The investment bank, who never appeared on any of the paperwork, was the real party in interest and at the end of the day there was no person or company who owned the so-called debt from the homeowner. 
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If that plan had been disclosed — as it was required to be disclosed under both “lending” laws and “securities” laws — both investors and homeowners would have had the opportunity to bargain for more more compensation and better terms — because they would have known they were taking a much larger risk than the one that was actually presented.
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Indeed, investors that were pension or other types of “stable managed funds” would not have been able to invest at all had they known the true nature of the certificate scheme into which they they were investing the futures of workers and companies that had contributed to the fund.
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Such funds, as investors, were critical to the success of the securitization scheme. Investment banks would have been legally required to present additional safeguards to the fund managers such as participation in the trading profits, hedge contracts and insurance contracts in order to make the sale of certificates to stable managed fund investors. 
The same logic holds true for homeowners.
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They were making the largest investments of their lives based upon their reasonable belief that the apprasial was real and the loan was viable — all resposnibilities imposed on the “lender” by law (see TILA).
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Had they known the true incentives and motives and existence of the investment bank they would have understood that this was no loan. It was a service they were performing and an investment — for which they were being paid to issue documents that required them to pay money over time in order to enable the securitization scheme.
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If the true profits of the securitization scheme were disclosed as as required by law, homeowners and originators would have been able to compete for a greater share of the securitization pie or they would have had the opportunity to choose not to do business in such a hazy scheme. 
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Questions to Ask About the Trust and the Trustee

In the final analysis you are looking for evidence of absence of any real events currently presumed as facts in any foreclosure case.

The trustee issue is a jurisdictional issue. If the Plaintiff Trust does not exist, then it has no standing to make or pursue any claims. If the named Trustee is not engaged in the active management of active trust affairs on behalf of the beneficiaries of a trust, then it is not a trustee imbued with the powers to administer assets that have not been conveyed and entrusted to the Trustee.
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If the named beneficiaries have received a promise from the named “Trust” and the beneficiaries have expressly disclaimed any interest in the “underlying” loans, notes, mortgages or debts, then they are not beneficiaries and the entity is not a trust. (That fact pattern describes individual contracts with each investor who purchased a promise to pay executed by someone allegedly on behalf of an entity self proclaimed as a trust. If the named entity does not exist then the party who executed the isntruments may have liability for the promise).
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Since the Trust has not been identified as having been organized and existing under the laws of any jurisdiction, it is entirely appropriate to ask questions about the existence of the trust and its right to do business in the state or the courts. The second jurisdictional issue is subject matter jurisdiction in which the question is whether the trust owns the indebtedness. I frequently deal with these issues in drafting the substance of documents to be filed with the court, subject to opinion of local counsel.
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If prior demands for discovery are clear the appropriate strategy is to force the issue through a motion to compel. Filing an “amended” request fro discovery probably starts the clock all over again. By the time you get to a demand for sanctions for contempt the case could be over. If it is denied she should consider an interlocutory appeal on the issue of whether the record contains assertions or evidence of the existence of the trust. The only prejudice that could exist would be that the trust doesn’t exist and that “they” (actually the lawyers) would be “prejudiced” because they couldn’t foreclose using the trust name.
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There is no doubt in my mind that one or both narratives are true: (1) the trust doesn’t exist and never did and (2) the loan (i.e., the indebtedness) was never purchased by the trust, acting through tis alleged trustee.
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One of the problems here is that it would be wise, although not essential, to notice the named Trustee for deposition duces tecum. That’s often a problem because most homeowners not appear to have anyone competent to conduct the deposition. In a normal deposition, one MUST ask the witness identifying questions like
  1. What’s your name?
  2. Who do you work for?
  3. What is the relationship between your bank and this trust?
  4. Besides the alleged Prospectus and the alleged PSA, what agreements exist wherein the Trustee bank is obligated to do or receive anything from the trust, directly or indirectly. [This one should be broken up into parts].
  5. Under what jurisdiction was the trust organized?
  6. Under what jurisdiction is the trust now existing?
  7. Who is the trust officer for the trust?
  8. In which department(s) are trust matters generally handled in the Trustee Bank?
  9. In which department(s) are trust matters usually handled in the Trustee Bank for this trust?
  10. Has the Trustee bank published any memos or guidelines concerning the administration of securitization trusts?
  11. Assuming that the word “loan” means the indebtedness of the homeowners here in this case, on what date did US Bank as trustee purchase this loan to hold in trust?
  12. Who was the seller of the debt in that transaction?
  13. Was payment for the loan performed through a financial account held in the name of the Trustee for the alleged trust?
  14. How did US Bank as Trustee for the alleged trust perform due diligence to confirm the existence and ownership of the debt?
  15. Who are the beneficiaries of the alleged trust?
  16. Who is the trustor or settlor of the alleged trust?
  17. What is the date and name of the instrument that purports to create the trust?
  18. Describe the current functions of US Bank as trustee of the alleged trust.
  19. Describe the current assets of the alleged trust.
  20. Describe date and content of the last financial report received by US Bank as trustee for the alleged trust.
Most likely opposing counsel will object to the question’s relevancy at the time deposition is taken. But relevancy is not even a question at deposition which is by nature a fishing expedition. Even if opposing counsel was right that the question does not directly relate to proof of a fact asserted at trial, you are still entitled to inquire because it might lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.

Homeowners Sue SPS in Class Action Over Failure to Mitigate

Thousands of cases like this one have pointed out that SPS and other servicers like Ocwen do not consult with any investor, do not evaluate the case for settlement, modification or mitigation. The answer to questions arising from the unwillingness of those companies to comply with law stems from the fact that the  vast majority of their income comes from undisclosed third parties (the TBTF Banks).

TBTF Banks (BofA, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, etc.) do not want settlements or modifications or anything that will make the loan start performing. Subservicers like SPS and Ocwen are used as conduits to other conduits that provides window dressing for claims of compliance or efforts to comply.

Contrary to common sense nobody wants a settlement or modification. The players would rather have the value of the alleged loan reduced to zero or less in the case of foreclosures requiring the bank to maintain the property without any hope of selling it. Common sense says that faced with a value of ZERO versus a value of $200,000, for example, any normal business would select the obvious —- $200,000.

The most extreme cases are where the modification is deemed approved and a new servicer comes in to dishonor it and forecloses, even though the homeowner made the trial payments. Yet Petitions to Enforce the modification agreement are rare; but when they are filed they are usually successful. And in many of those cases the modification is modified for a greater principal reduction than was originally offered.

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Whether or not the class gets certified or settled the suit brings up certain salient points which again give rise to the most common question of all, to wit: “Why is that?”

The answer is hiding in plain sight: None of these parties represent a creditor or owner of the debt . All of them represent undisclosed third parties who are making money hand over fist in the shadow banking market. A completed foreclosure represents the first and only valid legal document in their long train of lies promulgated by piles of fabricated, forged, robo-signed paper. The justice system isn’t always right but it is always final. That is the game the banks are playing.

If SPS or Ocwen actually was set up to help homeowners avoid foreclosure and preserve the value of the loan receivable they would lose virtually all their business. A performing loan would change the makeup of the pools that the players claim to have created. All the re-sales of the same loan would be based upon a loan, even if it existed at one time, that doesn’t exist presently.

So the players NEED that foreclosure not for investors or a trust that doesn’t exist, but for themselves because most of the proceeds of the re-sales of the same loan went the TBTF Banks. They want to preserve their ill-gotten gains rather than do anything that could possibly benefit investors. And the best way they can do that is with an Order or Judgment signed by a duly authorized judge in a court of competent jurisdiction — not with a modification.

Practice Hint: If you see a case that has been ongoing for 8-10 years that is a strong indicator that the investors have received a settlement and no loner have any claim for payment and/or that the “Master Servicer” is continuing to allow payments to investors out of a pool of investor money — i.e., a Ponzi scheme. Those continuing payments have been inappropriately named “servicer advances.” They are not “advances” because it is merely return of investor capital. And since the payments come from an investor pool of cash the payments are not from the servicer since the money came from the same or other investors.

They are called servicer advances because using that name fictitiously allows the “Master Servicer’ (actually the underwriter of the certificates) to claim a “recovery” of “servicer advances.” The recovery is ONLY allowed after sale of the property after a foreclosure where the buyer is a BFP.

So for example if payments to investors attributed to the subject loan are $2,000 per month, 10 years worth of “servicer advances” results in a “recovery claim” of $240,000. Generally that is enough to wipe out any equity. The investors get nothing. The foreclosure was actually for the sole interest and benefit of the banks, not the investors. And the homeowner again finds himself used as a pawn for others to make money over the rotting carcass of what was once his home.

Hence the trial strategy suggested would be drilling down on whether the trust is receiving payment from a “third party,” whether that party has rights of subrogation or is satisfied by some other fee or revenue. If you get anywhere near this issue the bank will fold up like a used tent. They will pay for confidentiality.

The Role of Dynamic Dark Pools in Ponzi Schemes Masquerading as Securitized Loan Pools

The bottom line is that there are no financial transactions in today’s securitization schemes. There is only fabricated paper. If you don’t understand the DDP, you don’t understand “securitization fail,” a term coined by Adam Levitin.

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GO TO LENDINGLIES to order forms and services. Our forensic report is called “TERA“— “Title and Encumbrance Report and Analysis.” I personally review each of them for edits and comments before they are released.

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954-451-1230 or 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult. You will make things a lot easier on us and yourself if you fill out the registration form. It’s free without any obligation. No advertisements, no restrictions.

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I received a short question today to which I gave a long answer. The question is “What happens when an investor decides that he or she wants to cash it in does someone redeem their certificate ?”

Here is my answer:

YES they get paid, most of the time. It is masked as a “trade” on the proprietary trading desk of the CMO Dept. which is completely unregulated and reports nothing. As long as the Ponzi scheme is going strong, the underwriter issues money from the investor pool of money (dynamic dark pool -DDP). It looks like a third party bought the “investment.” If the scheme collapses then the underwriter reports to investors that the market is frozen and there are no buyers.

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There is no redemption because there are no certificates. They are all digital entries on a server. Since the 1998 law deregulated the certificates, reporting is limited or nonexistent. The entries can be changed, erased, altered, amended or modified at will without any regulator or third party knowing. There is no paper trail. Thus the underwriter will say, if they were ever asked, whatever suits them and there is no way for anyone to confirm or rebut that. BUT in discovery, the investors have standing to ask to see the records of such transactions. That is when the underwriter settles for several hundred million or more.
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They discount the settlement based upon “market” values and by settling for pennies on the dollar with small community banks who do not have resources to fight. Thus if they received $2 billion for a particular “securitized pool” that is allocated to a named trust they will instantly make about 10-20 times the normal underwriting fee by merely taking money before or after the money hits the DDP. Money is paid to the investors as long as sales of certificates are robust. Hence the DDP is constantly receiving and disbursing money from many more sources than a fixed group of homeowners or investors.
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It is all about gaps and absences. If a debt was properly securitized, the investor would pay money to the underwriter in exchange for ownership of a certificate. The money would then be subject to fees paid to the underwriter and sellers of the certificates. The balance would be paid into a trust account on which the signatory would be a trust officer of the Trustee bank.
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If a scheme is played, then the money does not go into the trust. It goes to the DDP. From there the money is funneled through conduits to the closing table with the homeowner. By depositing the exact and expected amount of money into the trust account of the closing agent, neither the closing agent nor the homeowner understands that they are being played. They don’t even have enough information to arouse suspicion so that they can ask questions.
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Hence if you combine the proper securitization scheme with the improper one you see that the money is diverted from the so-called plan. This in turn causes the participants to fabricate documents if there is litigation. They MUST fabricate documents because if they produced real documents they would have civil and criminal liability for theft, embezzlement in investor litigation and fraud and perjury in foreclosure litigation.
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It is only by forcing a peek around the multiple layers of curtains fabricated by the players that you can reveal the absence of ownership, authority or even an economic interest — other than the loss of continued revenue from servicing and resales of the same loan through multiple investment vehicles whose value is completely derived from the presumed existence of a party who is the obligee of the debt (owner of the debt, or creditor).
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That party is the DDP — fund that is partially authorized for “reserve” and which the prospectus and trust instrument (PSA) state (1) that the mortgage loan schedule is not the real one and is presented as an example and (2) that the investors acknowledge that they might be paid from their own money from the “reserve.”
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The gap is that the DDP and the reserve are two different accounts. The “reserve” is a pool of money held in trust by, for example, U.S. Bank as trustee for the trust. There is no such account. The DDP is controlled by the underwriter but ownership is intentionally obscured to avoid or evade detection and the liability that would attach if the truth were revealed.
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We win cases not by proving theft from investors but by hammering on the fact that the documents are fabricated, which is true in virtually all cases involving a named trust. We will win a large award if we can show that the intended beneficiaries of the foreclosure were parties other than the obligee on the debt.
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Thus the attorneys, servicers and trustee are protecting their ill-gotten gains and seeking to grab more money and property at the expense of the unnamed investors and homeowners. They are then transforming an expected revenue stream into the illusion of a secured debt owed not to the funding sources but to the intermediaries.
Go to LENDINGLIES for more help.

Message to Homeowners Who Have Won Their Cases — Your Demands are Too Low

SETTLEMENT NEGOTIATIONS: WHEN THE HOMEOWNER WINS IN LITIGATION, in every case the banks pay amazing amounts of money to the homeowner (and their lawyer) in order to get agreement on sweeping the case under the rug. Homeowners and their lawyers must realize that the settlement value of their case may be worth 1000 times the judgment value of the case.

This asymmetry in settlement negotiations escapes most but not all winning homeowners. It gets especially urgent when the banks made the wrong decision and appealed an unfavorable decision only to find that they not only lost one case, but many thousands as a result of that one case.

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The banks will do anything to sweep bad results under the rug. And that includes eliminating adverse appellate opinions and trial court opinions.
This is a common practice by them — to wipe out any trace that the entire mortgage scheme (and therefore the entire foreclosure scheme) was a scam. Their strategy makes sense for them. By offering you incentives they get the opinion wiped from the face of the earth. Hence hundreds of thousands of other homeowners who might have contested foreclosure walk away in defeat.

As Charles Marshall has repeatedly said, the settlement should reflect a compromise between the value perceived by the Plaintiff and the value perceived by the Defendant. In this case, the value to the banks is perceived as global — i.e., the impact it will have on currently contested foreclosures and the impact it will have on people who might not otherwise contest the foreclosure. That is the multiplier.

The leverage for the homeowner is commonly perceived — even by the lawyers — as the value of the case at bar. But the true leverage is based upon the cost to the banks generally if the decision stands and God forbid other decisions cite to it with approval. The entire “securitization” scheme would unravel. Wrapping your mind around the discrepancy is key to maximizing the settlement value.

Your case might only involve a $300k mortgage, but that one mortgage has effectively been sold many times, perhaps dozens of times when you include claims of securitization of derivative products (securitization on securitization). Hence your one mortgage loan, based upon fraudulent practices that violated various deceptive lending statutes, sits at the bottom of a house of cars larger than you can imagine. So, for example, you see $300k in value whereas the opposition sees it as potentially $6 million in direct cost that must somehow be hidden in yet another fraudulent cover-up (“resecuritization”).

But it doesn’t stop there. When you win your case it serves as a beacon for many thousands of homeowners — thus presenting a threat of unraveling the epic scope of fraudulent claims of securitization. This “value” is difficult to estimate, much less compute. But if you use an arbitrary number like 10,000 other homeowners will take the case to heart and litigate on those principles and assume that half of them successfully present the case in court citing your case as authority, the cost would easily be in range of $1 Billion.

The banks will do anything to distract you from the essential truth of what I have said here. And part of their strategy is always to propose a settlement that is so low it undermines the confidence of both the homeowners and their lawyer. Or they will offer a “modification” that makes no real difference in the bogus economics of the loan. It makes the $1 Billion seem like a fantasy but it isn’t.  Of course settlement value is not going to equal the bank’s risk factor ($1 Billion) but it is based on their perception of the likelihood of that risk crashing in on them.

Thus the give and take of negotiations depend upon how hard the homeowner is willing to push. And it must be kept in mind that at some point (far below $1 Billion) the banks would rather take the hurt of whatever your case brings than let it be known that a homeowner with a $300k mortgage became obscenely rich by exposing the fraudulent nature of the entire consumer mortgage and debt market.

Statutory Requirements for Enforcement of Note or Mortgage

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

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So many people sent me this short white paper that I don’t know who to thank or even who wrote it. Any help would be appreciated so I can edit this article and give attribution to the writer.

The only thing that I would caution is that eventually, perhaps sometime soon, the importance of the Assignment and Assumption Agreement will rise in importance as to these enforcement actions based upon a fictitious closing, debt, note and mortgage. The A&A is an agreement between the “originator” and some other “aggregator conduit”.

The A&A essentially calls for violation of TILA by not disclosing the existence of a third party lender. It also allows for compensation and profits arising from the signature of the borrower on the settlement documents without disclosure of who received that compensation or made those profits and how much they were “earning.”

Whether this is ultimately determined to be a table funded loan or simply not a loan contract at all with the borrower remains to be seen. If it is determined to be a table funded loan with an undisclosed third party lender who is not even the aggregator in the A&A then according to regulations Z it is “predatory per se.” If it is predatory per se then how can anyone seek enforcement in equity (i.e. foreclosure)?

And while I am at it, to answer the question of many judges — “what difference does it make where the money came from? — ASK THE BANKS. They nearly always demand to see the bank account from which the down payment is being made and even going beyond that to require the borrower to prove that the money is the money of the borrower. If normal underwriting requires the borrower to produce proof of funding then why isn’t the bank required to prove that they funded the loan — either by origination or acquisition or both?

If a borrower gets the down payment from his Uncle Joe because he is in fact broke, then the Bank under normal underwriting circumstances won’t approve the loan. If a Bank has no financial stake in the alleged “loan” then why should THEY be allowed to enforce it? Isn’t that highly prejudicial to the real creditors? Isn’t the foreclosure judge making it harder for the real creditors to collect by entering judgment for a party who has no risk, no financial stake and no contractual right (or obligations) to represent the real creditor.

And lastly is the wrong assumption about the chronology of these transactions. The mortgage backed securities were “sold forward,” which is to say there was nothing in the Trust when they were sold — and as it turns out in most cases the Trust never got any loans. Further the notes and mortgages were also sold forward in a cloudy arrangement in which the ownership and balance due was at least in doubt if not unknown. You must remember that the banks were not in the business of loaning money — they were in the business of selling mortgage backed securities for empty trusts and then using the money any way they chose.

All that said the following was received by me from several people and I agree with virtually all of it.

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Statutory Requirements For Establishing The Right To Enforce An Instrument

1. Prove status of holder of the instrument. (UCC § 3-301(i)); or

2. Prove status of non-holder in possession of the instrument who has the rights of a holder. (UCC § 3-301(ii)); or

3. Prove status of being entitled to enforce the instrument as a person not in possession of the instrument pursuant to UCC § 3-309 or UCC § 3-418(d). (NOTE is lost, stolen, destroyed).

UCC § 3-309, requirements.

a. Prove possession of the instrument and entitled to enforce it when loss of possession occurred. (UCC § 3-309(a)(1)).

i. If illegality or fraud were involved in the original transaction, it cannot be proved that the person is entitled to enforce the instrument.(See UCC § 3-305. DEFENSES)

b. Prove non-possession of the NOTE is NOT the result of a transfer. (UCC § 3-309(a)(2)).

NOTE: If discovery shows that the instrument was sold by the person claiming the right to enforcement, a transfer occurred, and such person is NOT entitled to enforce the instrument. (See UCC § 3-309(a)(ii)).

c. Prove that the person seeking enforcement cannot reasonably obtain possession of the instrument because the instrument was destroyed, its whereabouts cannot be determined, or it is in the wrongful possession of an unknown person or a person that cannot be found or is not amenable to service of process. (UCC § 3-309(a)(3)).

NOTE: If discovery shows that the instrument was sold by the person claiming the right to enforcement, a transfer occurred, and such person is NOT entitled to enforce the instrument. (See UCC § 3-309(a)(ii)).

d. A person seeking enforcement of an instrument under subsection (a) must prove the terms of the instrument and the person’s right to enforce the instrument. (UCC § 3-309(b)).

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UCC § 3-309 Enforcement Of Lost, Destroyed, Or Stolen Instrument.
(a) A person not in possession of an instrument is entitled to enforce the instrument if

(1) the person seeking to enforce the instrument​
(A) was entitled to enforce the instrument when loss of possession occurred, or
(B) has directly or indirectly acquired ownership of the instrument from a person who was entitled to enforce the instrument when loss of possession occurred; ​
(2) the loss of possession was NOT the result of a transfer by the person or a lawful seizure; and​
(3) the person cannot reasonably obtain possession of the instrument because the instrument was destroyed, its whereabouts cannot be determined, or it is in the wrongful possession of an unknown person or a person that cannot be found or is not amenable to service of process.​

(b) A person seeking enforcement of an instrument under subsection (a) must prove the terms of the instrument and the person’s right to enforce the instrument. If that proof is made, Section 3-308 applies to the case as if the person seeking enforcement had produced the instrument. The court may not enter judgment in favor of the person seeking enforcement unless it finds that the person required to pay the instrument is adequately protected against loss that might occur by reason of a claim by another person to enforce the instrument. Adequate protection may be provided by any reasonable means.

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An instrument is transferred when it is delivered by a person other than its issuer for the purpose of giving to the person receiving delivery the right to enforce the instrument. (UCC § 3-203(a)).

If a transferor purports to transfer less than the entire instrument, negotiation of the instrument does not occur. The transferee obtains no rights under this Article and has only the rights of a partial assignee. (UCC 3-203(d)).

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If the bank, mortgage company, etc., sold the NOTE, they have no right to enforce the NOTE, through foreclosure or court proceeding pursuant to the fact that the UCC bars such claimant from invoking the court’s subject matter jurisdiction of the case.

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Even if the claimant produces the original wet-ink NOTE, there is a defense to the action pursuant to UCC 3-305.

Illegality and false representation (fraud) perpetrated in the transaction.

Did the bankdisclose the SOURCE of the money for the transaction?Did the bank inform the NOTE issuer that the money for the transaction was provided at no cost to the bank?

Did the bank disclose that the NOTE would be sold at the earliest possible convenience, and that such sale and receipt of money from a third party would actually pay off the NOTE? (Satisfaction of Mortgage).​

Many discovery questions to be asked when a claimant initiates foreclosure proceedings.

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Many assume that the bank/broker/lender that begins the process is actually providing the money for making a “loan,” when in fact, the bank/broker/lender is only making an “exchange,“ of notes, at no cost, and then, coercing the issuer of the promissory note into the comprehension that he is receiving a “loan.” The following was stated in A PRIMER ON MONEY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC FINANCE, COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 88th Congress, 2d Session, AUGUST 5, 1964, CHAPTER VIII, HOW THE FEDERAL RESERVE GIVES AWAY PUBLIC FUNDS TO THE PRIVATE BANKS [44-985 O-65-7, p89]

“In the first place, one of the major functions of the private commercial banks is to create money. A large portion of bank profits come from the fact that the banks do create money. And, as we have pointed out, banks create money without cost to themselves, in the process of lending or investing in securities such as Government bonds.”​

In this instance, the transaction was funded by using the prospective property (collateral) and the signer’s promissory note as if the property and the Note already belonged to the bank/broker/lender. [Editor’s note: Those loans NEVER belonged to the Bank who was selling them before they even existed.]

So, if the bank used the promissory NOTE, as money, to create the cash reserve which was then used to validate the bank check issued on the face amount of the promissory NOTE, at no cost to the bank, without NOTICE to the signer of the promissory NOTE, and without fully disclosing these facts and aspects of the transaction, the bank committed a DECEPTIVE PRACTICE, FRAUD.

BAP Panel Raises the Stakes Against Deutsch et al — Secured Status May be Challenged

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ALERT FOR BANKRUPTCY LAWYERS — SECURED STATUS OF ALLEGED CREDITOR IS NOT TO BE ASSUMED

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I have long held and advocated three points:

  1. The filing of false claims in the nonjudicial process of a majority of states should not result in success where the same false claims could never be proven in judicial process. Nonjudicial process was meant as an administrative remedy to foreclosures that were NOT in dispute. Any application of nonjudicial schemes that allows false claims to succeed where they would fail in a judicial action is unconstitutional.
  2. The filing of a bankruptcy petition that shows property to be encumbered by virtue of a deed of trust is admitting a false representation made by a stranger to the transaction. The petition for bankruptcy relief should be filed showing that the property is not encumbered and the adversary or collateral proceeding to nullify the mortgage and the note should accompany each filing where the note and mortgage are subject to claims of securitization or a “new” beneficiary.
  3. The vast majority of decisions against borrowers result from voluntary or involuntary waiver, ignorance and failure to plead or object on the basis of false claims based on false documentation. The issue is not the signature (although that probably is false too); rather it is (a) the actual transaction which is missing and the (b) false documentation of a (i) fictitious transaction and (ii) fictitious transfers of fictitious (and non-fictitious) transactions. The result is often that the homeowner has admitted to the false assertion of being a borrower in relation to the party making the claim, admitting the secured status of the “creditor”, admitting that they are a creditor, admitting that they received a loan from within the chain claimed by the “creditor”, admitting the default, admitting the validity of the note and admitting the validity of the mortgage or deed of trust — thus leaving both the trial and appellate courts with no choice but to rule against the homeowner. Thus procedurally a false claim becomes “true” for purposes of that case.

see 11/24/14 Decision: MEMORANDUM-_-ANTON-ANDREW-RIVERA-DENISE-ANN-RIVERA-Appellants-v.-DEUTSCHE-BANK-NATIONAL-TRUST-COMPANY-Trustee-of-Certificate-Holders-of-the-WAMU-Mortgage-Pass-Through-Certificate-Series-2005-AR6

This decision is breath-taking. What the Panel has done here is fire a warning shot over the bow of the California Supreme Court with respect to the APPLICATION of the non-judicial process. AND it takes dead aim at those who make false claims on false debts in both nonjudicial and judicial process. Amongst the insiders it is well known that your chances on appeal to the BAP are less than 15% whereas an appeal to the District Judge, often ignored as an option, has at least a 50% prospect for success.

So the fact that this decision comes from the BAP Panel which normally rubber stamps decisions of bankruptcy judges is all the more compelling. One word of caution that is not discussed here is the the matter of jurisdiction. I am not so sure the bankruptcy judge had jurisdiction to consider the matters raised in the adversary proceeding. I think there is a possibility that jurisdiction would be present before the District Court Judge, but not the Bankruptcy Judge.

From one of my anonymous sources within a significant government agency I received the following:

This case is going to be a cornucopia of decision material for BK courts nationwide (and others), it directly tackles all the issues regarding standing and assignment (But based on Non-J foreclosure, and this is California of course……) it tackles Glaski and Glaski loses, BUT notes dichotomy on secured creditor status….this case could have been even more , but leave to amend was forfeited by borrower inaction—– it is part huge win, part huge loss as it relates to Glaski, BUT IT IS DIRECTLY APPLICABLE TO CHASE/WAMU CASES……….Note in full case how court refers to transfer of “some of WAMU’s assets”, tacitly inferring that the court WILL NOT second guess what was and was not transferred………… i.e, foreclosing party needs to prove this!!

AFFIRMED- NO SECURED PARTY STATUS FOR BK PROVEN 

Even though Siliga, Jenkins and Debrunner may preclude the

Riveras from attacking DBNTC’s foreclosure proceedings by arguing

that Chase’s assignment of the deed of trust was a nullity in

light of the absence of a valid transfer of the underlying debt,

we know of no law precluding the Riveras from challenging DBNTC’s assertion of secured status for purposes of the Riveras’ bankruptcy case. Nor did the bankruptcy court cite to any such law.

We acknowledge that our analysis promotes the existence of two different sets of legal standards – one applicable in nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings and a markedly different one for use in ascertaining creditors’ rights in bankruptcy cases.

But we did not create these divergent standards. The California legislature and the California courts did. We are not the first to point out the divergence of these standards. See CAL. REAL EST., at § 10:41 (noting that the requirements under California law for an effective assignment of a real-estate-secured obligation may differ depending on whether or not the dispute over the assignment arises in a challenge to nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings).
We must accept the truth of the Riveras’ well-pled
allegations indicating that the Hutchinson endorsement on the
note was a sham and, more generally, that neither DBNTC nor Chase
ever obtained any valid interest in the Riveras’ note or the loan
repayment rights evidenced by that note. We also must
acknowledge that at least part of the Riveras’ adversary
proceeding was devoted to challenging DBNTC’s standing to file
its proof of claim and to challenging DBNTC’s assertion of
secured status for purposes of the Riveras’ bankruptcy case. As
a result of these allegations and acknowledgments, we cannot
reconcile our legal analysis, set forth above, with the
bankruptcy court’s rulings on the Riveras’ second amended
complaint. The bankruptcy court did not distinguish between the
Riveras’ claims for relief that at least in part implicated the
parties’ respective rights in the Riveras’ bankruptcy case from
those claims for relief that only implicated the parties’
respective rights in DBNTC’s nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings.

THEY REJECT GLASKI-

Here, we note that the California Supreme Court recently

granted review from an intermediate appellate court decision
following Jenkins and rejecting Glaski. Yvanova v. New Century
Mortg. Corp., 226 Cal.App.4th 495 (2014), review granted &
opinion de-published, 331 P.3d 1275 (Cal. Aug 27, 2014). Thus,
we eventually will learn how the California Supreme Court views
this issue. Even so, we are tasked with deciding the case before
us, and Ninth Circuit precedent suggests that we should decide
the case now, based on our prediction, rather than wait for the
California Supreme Court to rule. See Hemmings, 285 F.3d at
1203; Lewis v. Telephone Employees Credit Union, 87 F.3d 1537,
1545 (9th Cir. 1996). Because we have no convincing reason to
doubt that the California Supreme Court will follow the weight of
authority among California’s intermediate appellate courts, we
will follow them as well and hold that the Riveras lack standing
to challenge the assignment of their deed of trust based on an
alleged violation of a pooling and servicing agreement to which
they were not a party.

BUT……… THEY DO SUCCEED ON SECURED STATUS

Even though the Riveras’ first claim for relief principally

relies on their allegations regarding the assignment’s violation
of the pooling and servicing agreement, their first claim for
relief also explicitly incorporates their allegations challenging
DBNTC’s proof of claim and disputing the validity of the
Hutchinson endorsement. Those allegations, when combined with
what is set forth in the first claim for relief, are sufficient
on their face to state a claim that DBNTC does not hold a valid
lien against the Riveras’ property because the underlying debt
never was validly transferred to DBNTC. See In re Leisure Time
Sports, Inc., 194 B.R. at 861 (citing Kelly v. Upshaw, 39 Cal.2d
179 (1952) and stating that “a purported assignment of a mortgage
without an assignment of the debt which it secured was a legal
nullity.”).
While the Riveras cannot pursue their first claim for relief
for purposes of directly challenging DBNTC’s pending nonjudicial
foreclosure proceedings, Debrunner, 204 Cal.App.4th at 440-42,
the first claim for relief states a cognizable legal theory to
the extent it is aimed at determining DBNTC’s rights, if any, as
a creditor who has filed a proof of secured claim in the Riveras’
bankruptcy case.

TILA CLAIM UPHELD!—–

Fifth Claim for Relief – for violation of the Federal Truth In Lending Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1641(g)

The Riveras’ TILA Claim alleged, quite simply, that they did
not receive from DBNTC, at the time of Chase’s assignment of the
deed of trust to DBNTC, the notice of change of ownership
required by 15 U.S.C. § 1641(g)(1). That section provides:
In addition to other disclosures required by this
subchapter, not later than 30 days after the date on
which a mortgage loan is sold or otherwise transferred
or assigned to a third party, the creditor that is the
new owner or assignee of the debt shall notify the
borrower in writing of such transfer, including–

(A) the identity, address, telephone number of the new

creditor;

(B) the date of transfer;

 

(C) how to reach an agent or party having authority to

act on behalf of the new creditor;

(D) the location of the place where transfer of

ownership of the debt is recorded; and

(E) any other relevant information regarding the new

creditor.

The bankruptcy court did not explain why it considered this claim as lacking in merit. It refers to the fact that the
Riveras had actual knowledge of the change in ownership within
months of the recordation of the trust deed assignment. But the
bankruptcy court did not explain how or why this actual knowledge
would excuse noncompliance with the requirements of the statute.
Generally, the consumer protections contained in the statute
are liberally interpreted, and creditors must strictly comply
with TILA’s requirements. See McDonald v. Checks–N–Advance, Inc.
(In re Ferrell), 539 F.3d 1186, 1189 (9th Cir. 2008). On its
face, 15 U.S.C. § 1640(a)(2)(A)(iv) imposes upon the assignee of
a deed of trust who violates 15 U.S.C. § 1641(g)(1) statutory
damages of “not less than $400 or greater than $4,000.”
While the Riveras’ TILA claim did not state a plausible
claim for actual damages, it did state a plausible claim for
statutory damages. Consequently, the bankruptcy court erred when
it dismissed the Riveras’ TILA claim.

LAST, THEY GOT REAR ENDED FOR NOT SEEKING LEAVE TO AMEND

Here, however, the Riveras did not argue in either the bankruptcy court or in their opening appeal brief that the court should have granted them leave to amend. Having not raised the issue in either place, we may consider it forfeited. See Golden v. Chicago Title Ins. Co. (In re Choo), 273 B.R. 608, 613 (9th Cir. BAP 2002).

Even if we were to consider the issue, we note that the

bankruptcy court gave the Riveras two chances to amend their
complaint to state viable claims for relief, examined the claims
they presented on three occasions and found them legally
deficient each time. Moreover, the Riveras have not provided us
with all of the record materials that would have permitted us a
full view of the analyses and explanations the bankruptcy court
offered them when it reviewed the Riveras’ original complaint and
their first amended complaint. Under these circumstances, we
will not second-guess the bankruptcy court’s decision to deny
leave to amend. See generally In re Nordeen, 495 B.R. at 489-90
(examining multiple opportunities given to the plaintiffs to
amend their complaint and the bankruptcy court’s efforts to
explain to them the deficiencies in their claims, and ultimately
determining that the court did not abuse its discretion in
denying the plaintiffs leave to amend their second amended
complaint).

SPS and the Chase Servicer Shell Game

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520 405-1688

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Many Judges have expressed their concern about the constant movement of servicers and trustees. They are asking why the servicer keeps changing and why the trustees are changing. And now they are asking for legal argument why the substitution of the only named Plaintiff is not an amendment to the Complaint which must specifically allege facts in support of the claim of the “new Plaintiff.” This is a result of the multifaceted fraudulent scheme where claims of securitization are unfounded and claims of debt are fictitious — in derogation of the rights of both investors on Wall Street and borrowers on main Street.

Taking an example from one case being litigated now, we have a fact pattern where WAMU was the “lender” in the purchase money mortgage. Chase steps in and refinances the loan. Long after these events and long after the “default” was declared by Chase, SPS is said to be the servicer, not Chase. This successor entity is thus the party whose corporate representative is brought to trial to testify. The witness admits to having no direct personal knowledge and has no job other than testifying. The witness has no knowledge nor employment history with Chase, WAMU or the Trust or Trustee (usually US BANK where Chase is involved). The borrower, despite encouragement to take more money on refinancing, elected only to get enough money to make repairs due to storm damage. They received $45,000 in this example.

This is an issue which is slowly dawning on me that could shake things up considerably. Whether we use it or not is a different story.

It might mean that the real loan was only $45k — in total. That would affect the collections on the loan, which could have paid off the actual loan in its entirety, as well as the validity of the declaration of default and the truth of the matters asserted in the judicial complaint or the notice of non-judicial default and notice of sale. Specifically the “reinstatement” figure or “redemption” figure might actually be a negative figure — money due from the parties stating that they are the creditors, which claim they can hardly deny since they are pursuing foreclosure.

LOAN #1 was with WAMU. WAMU according to the FDIC receiver had sold the loans into the secondary market for securitization. This was the purchase money mortgage. So at some point before the refinancing in LOAN#2 the purchase money loan was sold into the secondary market. Thus WAMU only had servicing rights — if the “purchaser” entered into an agreement for WAMU to service the loan. In the case where the loan is subject to securitization, the “purchaser” is a REMIC Trust. But it appears as though few, if any, of the REMIC Trusts ever achieved the status of the owner of the debt, holder in due course, or owner of the mortgage or note. While it is possible to start a lawsuit to collect on the note, that lawsuit can never be resolved in favor of the Plaintiff unless the maker of the note defaults.

LOAN#2 was with Chase. This was supposedly a refinancing. The loan closing documents show that WAMU was paid and WAMU issued the satisfaction of mortgage and did not return the old note cancelled.

WAMU usually retained servicing rights so it would be claimed that WAMU had every right to collect the money and issue the satisfaction. But the servicing rights only existed if LOAN#1 actually made it into a Trust. If not, the loan was NOT subject to the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. If WAMU — or Chase as successor or SPS as successor are actually the servicers, it MUST therefore be by virtue of some other document. That is why we are seeing some rather strange Powers of Attorney and other “enabling” documents appear out of nowhere in which the issues are further confused.

The borrowers received $45k which was for roof repairs from storm damage. So the borrowers did receive  $45k presumably from Chase, but not necessarily as we have already seen, where the originator, even if it was a big bank was using money from an illegally formed pool outside of the REMIC Trust that the investors thought was getting the money from the proceeds of sale of mortgage backed securities.

So the witness probably has absolutely no access to information and therefore no testimony about whether LOAN#1 got paid off. And in fact it is most likely that WAMU was either paid or not depending upon internal agreements with Chase. And the witness can only testify using hearsay about the preceding records of Chase, US Bank and WAMU. Several trial judges have refused to accept such testimony saying directly that the witness and the company represented by the witness are too far removed from the actual transactions to have any credibility as to the authenticity or accuracy of the business records of other entities and that the SPS records are simply an attempt to get around the hearsay rules without exposing the predecessors to direct discovery and questioning where the answers would either be embarrassing or perjury.

If WAMU was paid in the refinancing (proceeds from LOAN#2) the wrong party was paid and the debt still exists unless Chase can show that the real creditor was paid off. It is unlikely they can show that because it probably is not true. Chase was hiding the default status of loans, as we have seen in Matt Taibbi’s story in Rolling Stone. The reason was simple — the more it  looked like these Mortgage backed Securities were performing as expected, the more the investors were inclined to buy more mortgage bonds — and that is where the bulk of the money is for Chase.

By selling loans at 100 cents on the dollar (Par Value) when the true value might only have been 1/10th that amount, the profit was enormous and it all went to Chase (not the investors whose money was used to start the string of transactions in the first place).

The witness will not be able to say that WAMU was definitely paid, and if it was paid, whether the money was paid to the real creditor. This is probably a primary reason why SPS was inserted between Chase and the foreclosure proceedings. It is also why they are attempting to rely on the business records of SPS instead of the business records of Chase.

SPS is usually inserted AFTER all events have occurred relating to the debt, note, mortgage, “default,” and foreclosure. Using a witness from SPS is, on its face, allowing a witness with zero personal knowledge about anything to verify records of other companies whose records the witness has never seen.

This is done to camouflage the actual events — wherein the money from investors was stolen or diverted from its intended target (REMIC Trust) and then used to fund loans in the name of a naked nominee whose interest in the loan was only that of a vendor whose name was being rented to withhold disclosure of the real creditor, the compensation received, and the identity of all the real parties who were getting paid as a result of the “loan origination.”

This is a direct conflict with TILA, requiring that disclosure and Reg Z which states that such a loan is “predatory per se.” If the loan is predatory per se it might be “unclean hands” per se which would mean that the mortgage could never enforced even if the consideration was present.

Foreclosure News in Review

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PRETENDER MENDERS: GOVERNMENT IGNORES THE ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM — DOW HEADED FOR 8,000?

Starting with the Clinton and Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration (see below), the public, the media, the financial analysts, economists and regulators are uniformly ignoring the obvious pointed out originally by Roubini, myself and many others (Simon Johnson, Yves Smith et al). We are pretending the fix the economy, not actually doing it. The fundamental weakness of world economies is that the banks caused a drastic reduction in household wealth through credit cards and mortgages. Credit was used to replace a living wage. That is a going out of business strategy. The economies in Europe are stalling already and our own stock market has started down a slippery path. The prediction in the above-linked article seems more likely than the blitzkrieg of planted articles from pundits for Bank of America, and other banks pushing their common stock as a great investment. The purpose of that blitzkrieg of news is simple — the more people with a vested interest in those banks, the more pressure against real regulation, real enforcement and real correct.

As the facts emerge, there were no actual financial transactions within the chain of documents relied upon by foreclosing parties. That cannot change. So the foreclosures are simply part of a larger fraudulent scheme. If the government regulators and the Federal reserve would tell the truth that they definitely know is the truth, the the mortgages would all be recognized as completely void and the notes would not only be void but subject to civil and potentially criminal charges of fraud. Most importantly it would eliminate foreclosures, for the most part, and allow borrowers to get together with their real (even if reluctant) lenders and settle up with new mortgages., This would restore at least some of house hold wealth and end the policy of making the little guy bear the burden of this gross error in regulation and this gross fraudulent scheme of non-securitization of mortgage debt, student debt, auto loan debt, credit card debt and other consumer debt.

It is ONLY be restoration of a vibrant middle class that our economy and the world economic marketplace can avoid the coming and recurring disaster. This is a matter of justice, not relief. See also Complete absence of mortgage and foreclosures are the largest component of our problems

What happens to restitution and why is the government ignoring the obvious benefits from restitution? NY Times

So a trader no longer needs to be subject to a requirement of restitution because he has already entered into civil agreement to restore creditors who bought bogus mortgage bonds that were issued by REMIC Trusts that were never funded by any cash or any assets. Since the “securitization fail” originated as a fraudulent scheme by the world’s major banks, and restitution is the primary remedy to defrauded victims, it follows that restitution should be the principal focus of enforcement actions, civil suits and criminal prosecutions. Meanwhile some restitution is occurring, just like this case.

The question is, assuming the investors who were in fact the creditors, how are the proceeds of settlement posted in accounting for the recovery of potential losses? If, as is obviously the case, the payments reduce the losses of the investors, then why are those settlements not credited to the books of account of those creditors and why isn’t that a matter subject to discovery of what the “Trust” or “Trust beneficiaries” are showing as “balance due” and what effect does that have on the existence of a default — especially where servicer advances are involved, which appears to be most cases.

The courts are wrong. Those judges that rule that the accounting and posting on the actual creditors’ books and records are irrelevant are succumbing to political and economic pressure (Follow Tom Ice on this issue) instead of calling balls and strikes like they are supposed to do. If third party payments are at least includable in discovery and probably admissible at trial, then the amount that the creditor is allowed to expect would be reduced. In accounting there is nothing more black letter that a reduction in the debt affects both the debtor and the creditor. So a principal reduction would occur by simple application of justice and arithmetic — not some bleeding heart prayer for “relief.”

Why the economy can;t budge — consumers are not participating in greater productivity caused by consumers as workers

Simple facts: our economy is driven by, or was driven by 70% consumer spending. Like it or not that is the case and it is a resilient element of U.S. Economics. Since 1964 workers wages have been essentially stagnant — despite huge gains in productivity that was given ONLY to management and shareholders. I know this is an unpopular position and I have some misgivings about it myself. But the fact remains that when unions were strong EVERYONE was getting paid better and single income households were successful with even some padding in savings account.

By substituting credit for a proper wage commensurate with merit (productivity), the country has moved most of the population in the direction of poverty, burdened by debt that should have been wages and savings.

But the big shock that is not over is the sudden elimination of household wealth and the sudden dominance of the banks in the economy, world politics and our national politics. Proper and appropriate sharing of the losses imposed solely on borrowers in a mean spirited “rocket docket” is not the answer. (see above) The expediting of foreclosures is founded on a completely wrong premise — that the debts, notes and mortgages are, for the most part, valid. They are not valid as to the parties who seek to enforce them for their own benefit at the expense and detriment to both the creditors (investors) and borrowers.

GDP of the United States is now composed of a virtually dead heat between financial “services” and all the rest of real economic activity (making things and doing services). This means that trading paper based upon the other 50% of real economic activity has tripled from 16% to nearly 48%. That means our real economic activity is composed, comparing apples to apples, of about 1/3 false paper. A revision of GDP to 2/3 of current reports would cause a lot of trouble. But it is the truth and it opens the door to making real corrections.

The Basic Premise of the Bailout, TARP, Bond Purchases was Wrong

Now that Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson and others are being forced to testify, it is apparent that they had no idea what they were really doing because they were proceeding on false information (from the banks) and false premises (from the banks). Most revealing is that both Paulson and Bernanke were relying upon Geithner while he was President of the NY Fed. Everyone was essentially asleep at the wheel. Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, admits he was mistaken in believing that while his staff of 100 PhD’s didn’t understand the securitization scheme, market forces would mysteriously cause a correction. Perhaps that would have been painfully true if market forces had been allowed to continue — resulting in the failure of most of the major banks.

The wrong premise was the TBTF assumption — the fall of AIG or the banks would have plunged into a worldwide depression. That would only have been true if government didn’t simply step in, seize bank assets around the world, and provide restitution to the victims — pension funds, homeowners, insurers, guarantors, et al. We already know that size is no guarantee of safety (Lehman, AIG, Bear Stearns et al). There are over 7,000 community banks and credit unions, some with more than $10 billion on deposit, that could easily pick up where bank of America left off before its own crash. Banking is marketing and electronic data processing. All  banks, right down to the smallest bank in America, have access to the exact same IT backbone for transfer of funds, deposits and loans. Iceland showed us the way and we ignored it. They sent the bad bankers to jail and reduced household debt by more than 25%. They quickly recovered from the “failed” banks and things are running quire smoothly.

JDSUPRA.COM: What good is the statute of limitations if it never ends?

A word of caution. In the context of a quiet title action my conclusion is that it should not be available just because the statute of limitations has run on enforcement of the note. But it remains on the public records as a lien. The idea proposed by me, initially, and others later that a quiet title action was the right path is probably wrong. documents in the public records may not be eliminated without showing that they never should have been recorded in the first place. Thus the mortgage or assignment of record remains unless we prove that those documents were void and therefore should not have been recorded.

That said, I hope the Supreme Court of Florida makes the distinction between the context of quiet title, where I agree that it should not easy to eliminate matters in the public record, and the statute of limitations, where parties should not be permitted to bring repeated actions on the same debt, note and mortgage after they have lost. Both positions cause uncertainty in the marketplace — if quiet title becomes easy to allege due to statute of limitations and statute of limitations becomes  harder to raise because despite choosing the acceleration option, and despite existing Florida law and precedent, the court decides that the the foreclosing party is estopped by res judicata, collateral estoppel and the statute of limitations.

JDSUPRA.COM: Association Lien Superior to 1st Mortgage

As I predicted years ago and have repeated from time to time, one strategy that is absent is collaboration between the homeowner and the association whose lien is superior to the 1st Mortgage which can be foreclosed out of existence. This was another area of concentration in my prior practice of law. We provide litigation support to attorneys. We will not make any attempt nor accept direct engagement of associations. But I can show you how to use this to advantage of our law firm, your client’s interests and avoid an empty abandoned dwelling unit.

What a surprise?!? Servicers are steering unsophisticated and emotionally challenged borrowers into foreclosure

by string them along in modifications. This is something many judges are upset about. They don’t like it. More motions to compel mediation (with a real decider) or to enforce a settlement that has already been approved (and then the NEXT servicer says they are not bound by the prior agreement.

Who Are the Creditors?

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Since the distributions are made to the alleged trust beneficiaries by the alleged servicers, it is clear that both the conduct and the documents establish the investors as the creditors. The payments are not made into a trust account and the Trustee is neither the payor of the distributions nor is the Trustee in any way authorized or accountable for the distributions. The trust is merely a temporary conduit with no business purpose other than the purchase or origination of loans. In order to prevent the distributions of principal from being treated as ordinary income to the Trust, the REMIC statute allows the Trust to do its business for a period of 90 days after which business operations are effectively closed.

The business is supposed to be financed through the “IPO” sale of mortgage bonds that also convey an undivided interest in the “business” which is the trust. The business consists of purchasing or originating loans within the 90 day window. 90 days is not a lot of time to acquire $2 billion in loans. So it needs to be set up before the start date which is the filing of the required papers with the IRS and SEC and regulatory authorities. This business is not a licensed bank or lender. It has no source of funds other than the IPO issuance of the bonds. Thus the business consists simply of using the proceeds of the IPO for buying or originating loans. Since the Trust and the investors are protected from poor or illegal lending practices, the Trust never directly originates loans. Otherwise the Trust would appear on the original note and mortgage and disclosure documents.

Yet as I have discussed in recent weeks, the money from the “trust beneficiaries” (actually just investors) WAS used to originate loans despite documents and agreements to the contrary. In those documents the investor money was contractually intended to be used to buy mortgage bonds issued by the REMIC Trust. Since the Trusts are NOT claiming to be holders in due course or the owners of the debt, it may be presumed that the Trusts did NOT purchase the loans. And the only reason for them doing that would be that the Trusts did not have the money to buy loans which in turn means that the broker dealers who “sold” mortgage bonds misdirected the money from investors from the Trust to origination and acquisition of loans that ultimately ended up under the control of the broker dealer (investment bank) instead of the Trust.

The problem is that the banks that were originating or buying loans for the Trust didn’t want the risk of the loans and frankly didn’t have the money to fund the purchase or origination of what turned out to be more than 80 million loans. So they used the investor money directly instead of waiting for it to be processed through the trust.

The distribution payments came from the Servicer directly to the investors and not through the Trust, which is not allowed to conduct business after the 90 day cutoff. It was only a small leap to ignore the trust at the beginning — I.e. During the business period (90 days). On paper they pretended that the Trust was involved in the origination and acquisition of loans. But in fact the Trust entities were completely ignored. This is what Adam Levitin called “securitization fail.” Others call it fraud, pure and simple, and that any further action enforcing the documents that refer to fictitious transactions is an attempt at making the courts an instrument for furthering the fraud and protecting the perpetrator from liability, civil and criminal.

And that brings us to the subject of servicer advances. Several people  have commented that the “servicer” who advanced the funds has a right to recover the amounts advanced. If that is true, they ask, then isn’t the “recovery” of those advances a debit to the creditors (investors)? And doesn’t that mean that the claimed default exists? Why should the borrower get the benefit of those advances when the borrower stops paying?

These are great questions. Here is my explanation for why I keep insisting that the default does not exist.

First let’s look at the actual facts and logistics. The servicer is making distribution payments to the investors despite the fact that the borrower has stopped paying on the alleged loan. So on its face, the investors are not experiencing a default and they are not agreeing to pay back the servicer.

The servicer is empowered by vague wording in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement to stop paying the advances when in its sole discretion it determines that the amounts are not recoverable. But it doesn’t say recoverable from whom. It is clear they have no right of action against the creditor/investors. And they have no right to foreclosure proceeds unless there is a foreclosure sale and liquidation of the property to a third party purchaser for value. This means that in the absence of a foreclosure the creditors are happy because they have been paid and the borrower is happy because he isn’t making payments, but the servicer is “loaning” the payments to the borrower without any contracts, agreements or any documents bearing the signature of the borrower. The upshot is that the foreclosure is then in substance an action by the servicer against the borrower claiming to be secured by a mortgage but which in fact is SUPPOSEDLY owned by the Trust or Trust beneficiaries (depending upon which appellate decision or trial court decision you look at).

But these questions are academic because the investors are not the owners of the loan documents. They are the owners of the debt because their money was used directly, not through the Trust, to acquire the debt, without benefit of acquiring the note and mortgage. This can be seen in the stone wall we all hit when we ask for the documents in discovery that would show that the transaction occurred as stated on the note and mortgage or assignment or endorsement.

Thus the amount received by the investors from the “servicers” was in fact not received under contract, because the parties all ignored the existence of the trust entity. It was a voluntary payment received from an inter-meddler who lacked any power or authorization to service or process the loan, the loan payments, or the distributions to investors except by conduct. Ignoring the Trust entity has its consequences. You cannot pick up one end of the stick without picking up the other.

So the claim of the “servicer” is in actuality an action in equity or at law for recovery AGAINST THE BORROWER WITHOUT DOCUMENTATION OF ANY KIND BEARING THE BORROWER’S SIGNATURE. That is because the loans were originated as table funded loans which are “predatory per se” according to Reg Z. Speaking with any mortgage originator they will eventually either refuse to answer or tell you outright that the purpose of the table funded loan was to conceal from the borrower the parties with whom the borrower was actually doing business.

The only reason the “servicer” is claiming and getting the proceeds from foreclosure sales is that the real creditors and the Trust that issued Bonds (but didn’t get paid for them) is that the investors and the Trust are not informed. And according to the contract (PSA, Prospectus etc.) that they don’t know has been ignored, neither the investors nor the Trust or Trustee is allowed to make inquiry. They basically must take what they get and shut up. But they didn’t shut up when they got an inkling of what happened. They sued for FRAUD, not just breach of contract. And they received huge payoffs in settlements (at least some of them did) which were NOT allocated against the amount due to those investors and therefore did not reduce the amount due from the borrower.

Thus the argument about recovery is wrong because there really is no such claim against the investors. There is the possibility of a claim against the borrower for unjust enrichment or similar action, but that is a separate action that arose when the payment was made and was not subject to any agreement that was signed by the borrower. It is a different claim that is not secured by the mortgage or note, even if the  loan documents were valid.

Lastly I should state why I have put the “servicer”in quotes. They are not the servicer if they derive their “authority” from the PSA. They could only be the “servicer” if the Trust acquired the loans. In that case they PSA would affect the servicing of the actual loan. But if the money did not come from the Trust in any manner, shape or form, then the Trust entity has been ignored. Accordingly they are neither the servicer nor do they have any powers, rights, claims or obligations under the PSA.

But the other reason comes from my sources on Wall Street. The service did not and could not have made the “servicer advances.” Another bit of smoke and mirrors from this whole false securitization scheme. The “servicer advances” were advances made by the broker dealer who “sold” (in a false sale) mortgage bonds. The brokers advanced money to an account in which the servicer had access to make distributions along with a distribution report. The distribution reports clearly disclaim any authenticity of the figures used, the status of the loans, the trust or the portfolio of loans (non-existent) as a whole. More smoke and mirrors. So contrary to popular belief the servicer advances were not made by the servicers except as a conduit.

Think about it. Why would you offer to keep the books on a thousand loans and agree to make payments even if the borrowers didn’t pay? There is no reasonable fee for loan processing or payment processing that would compensate the servicer for making those advances. There is no rational business reason for the advance. The reason they agreed to issue the distribution report along with money that was actually under the control of the broker dealer is that they were being given an opportunity, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, to participate in the liquidation proceeds after foreclosure — but only if the loan actually went into foreclosure, which is why most loan modifications are ignored or fail.

Who had a reason to advance money to the creditors even if there was no payment by the borrower? The broker dealer, who wanted to pacify the investors who thought they owned bonds issued by a REMIC Trust that they thought had paid for and owned the loans as holder in due course on their behalf. But it wasn’t just pacification. It was marketing and sales. As long as investors thought the investments were paying off as expected, they would buy more bonds. In the end that is what all this was about — selling more and more bonds, skimming a chunk out of the money advanced by investors — and then setting up loans that had to fail, and if by some reason they didn’t they made sure that the tranche that reportedly owned the loan also was liable for defaults in toxic waste mortgages “approved” for consumers who had no idea what they were signing.

So how do you prove this happened in one particular loan and one particular trust and one particular servicer etc.? You don’t. You announce your theory of the case and demand discovery in which you have wide latitude in what questions you can ask and what documents you can demand — much wider than what will be allowed as areas of inquiry in trial. It is obvious and compelling that asked for proof of the underlying authority, underlying transaction or anything else that is real, your opposition can’t come up with it. Their case falls apart because they don’t own or control the debt, the loan or any of the loan documents.

The Devil is in the Details — The Mortgage Cannot Be Enforced, Even If the Note Can Be Enforced

Cashmere v Department of Revenue

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Editor’s Introduction: The REAL truth behind securitization of so-called mortgage loans comes out in tax litigation. There a competent Judge who is familiar with the terms of art used in the world of finance makes judgements based upon real evidence and real comprehension of how each part affects another in the “securitization fail” (Adam Levitin) that took us by surprise. In the beginning (2007) I was saying the loans were securitized and the banks were saying there was no securitization and there was no trust.

Within a short period of time (2008) I deduced that there securitization had failed and that no Trust was getting the money from investors who thought they were buying mortgage backed securities and therefore the Trust could never be a holder in due course. I deduced this from the complete absence of claims that they were holders in due course. Whether they initiated foreclosure as servicer, trustee or trust there was no claim of holder in due course. This was peculiar because all the elements of a holder in due course appeared to be present because that is what was required in the securitization documents — at least in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement and prospectus.

If the foreclosing party was a holder in due course they would merely have to show what the securitization required — a purchase in good faith of the loan documents for value without knowledge of any of borrower’s defenses.  This would bar virtually any defense by the borrower and allow them to get a judgment on the note and a foreclosure based upon the auxiliary contract for collateral — the mortgage. But they didn’t allege that for reasons that I have described in recent articles — they could not, as part of their prima facie case, prove that any party in their “chain” had funded or paid any money for the loan.

After analyzing this case, consider the possibility that there is no party in existence who has the power to foreclose. The Trust beneficiaries clearly don’t have that right. The Trust doesn’t either because they didn’t pay anything for it. The Trustee doesn’t have that right because it can only assert the rights of the Trust and Trust beneficiaries. The servicer doesn’t have that right because it derives its authority from the Pooling and Servicing Agreement which does not apply because the loan never made it into the Trust. The originator doesn’t have the right both because they never loaned the money and now disclaim any interest in the mortgage.

Then consider the fact that it is ONLY the investors who have their money at risk but that they failed to get any documentation securing their “involuntary loans.” They might have actions to recover money from the borrower, but those actions are far from secured, and certainly subject to numerous defenses. The investors are barred from enforcing either the note or the mortgage by the terms of the instruments, the terms of the PSA and the rule of law. They are left with an unsecured common law right of action to get what they can from a claim for unjust enrichment or some other type of claim that actually reflects the true facts of the original transaction in which the borrower did receive a loan, but not from anyone represented at the loan closing.

Now we have the Cashmere case. The only assumption that the Court seems to get wrong is that the investors were trust beneficiaries because the court was assuming that the Trust received the proceeds of sale of the bonds. This does not appear to be the case. But the case also explains why the investors wanted to take the position that they were trust beneficiaries in order to get the tax treatment they thought they were getting. So here we have the victims and perpetrators of the fraud taking the same side because of potentially catastrophic results in tax treatment — potentially treating principal payments as ordinary income. That would reduce the return on investment below zero. They lost.

Click to access Cashmere-v-Dept-of-Revenue.pdf

I have changed fonts to emphasize certain portion of the following excerpts from the Case decision:

“Cashmere’s investments merely gave Cashmere the right to receive specific cash flows generated by the assets of the trust at specific times. But if the REMIC trustee failed to pay Cashmere according to the terms of the investment, Cashmere had no right to sell the mortgage loans or the residential property or any other asset of the trust to satisfy this obligation. Cf. Dep’t of Revenue v. Sec. Pac. Bank of Wash. Nat’/ Ass’n, 109 Wn. App. 795, 808, 38 P.3d 354 (2002) (deduction allowed because mortgage companies transferred ownership of loans to taxpayer who could sell the oans in event of default). Cashmere’s only recourse would be to sue the trustee for performance of the obligation or attempt to replace the trustee. The trustee’s successor would then take legal title to the underlying securities or other assets of the related trust. At no time could Cashmere take control of trust assets and reduce them to cash to satisfy a debt obligation. Thus, we hold that under the plain language of the statute, Cashmere’s investments in REMICs are not primarily secured by mortgages or deeds of trust.
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“Cashmere argues that the investments are secure because the trustee is obligated to protect the investors’ interests and the trustee has the right to foreclose. But, this is not always the case. The underlying mortgages back all of the tranches, and a trustee must balance competing interests between investors of different tranches. Thus, a default in one tranche does not automatically give the holders of that tranche a right to force foreclosure. We hold that if the terms of the trust do not give beneficiaries an investment secured by trust assets, the trustee’s fiduciary obligations do not transform the investment into a secured investment.

“In a 1990 determination, DOR explained why interest earned from investments in REMICs does not qualify for the mortgage tax deduction. see Wash. Dep’t of Revenue, Determination No. 90-288, 10 Wash. Tax Dec. 314 (1990). A savings and loan association sought a refund of B&O taxes assessed on interest earned from investments in REMICs. The taxpayer argued that because interest received from investments in pass-through securities is deductible, interest received on REMICs
should be too. DOR rejected the deduction, explaining that with pass-through securities, the issuer holds the mortgages in trust for the investor. In the event of individual default, the issuer, as trustee, will foreclose on the property to satisfy the terms of the loan. In other words, the right to foreclose is directly related to homeowner defaults-in the event of default, the trustee can foreclose and the proceeds from foreclosure flow to investors who have a beneficial ownership interest in the underlying mortgage. Thus, investments in pass-through securities are “primarily secured by” first mortgages.

“By contrast, with REMICs, a trustee’s default may or may not coincide with an individual homeowner default. So, there may be no right of foreclosure in the event a trustee fails to make a payment. And if a trustee can and does foreclose, proceeds from the sale do not necessarily go to the investors. Foreclosure does not affect the trustee’s obligations vis-a-vis the investor. Indeed, the Washington Mutual REMIC here contains a commonly used form of guaranty: “For any month, if the master servicer receives a payment on a mortgage loan that is less than the full scheduled payment or if no payment is received at all, the master servicer will advance its own funds to cover the shortfall.” “The master servicer will not be required to make advances if it determines that those advances will not be recoverable” in the future. At foreclosure or liquidation, any proceeds will go “first to the servicer to pay back any advances it might have made in the past.” Similarly, agency REMICs, like the Fannie Mae REMIC Trust 2000-38, guarantee payments even if mortgage borrowers default, regardless of whether the issuer expects to recover those payments. Moreover, the assets held in a REMIC trust are often MBSs, not mortgages.

“So, if the trustee defaults, the investors may require the trustee to sell the MBS, but the investor cannot compel foreclosure of individual properties. DOR also noted that it has consistently allowed the owners of a qualifying mortgage to claim the deduction in RCW 82.04.4292. But the taxpayer who invests in REMICs does not have any ownership interest in the MBSs placed in trust as collateral, much less any ownership interest in the mortgage themselves. By contrast, a pass-through security represents a beneficial ownership of a fractional undivided interest in a pool of first lien residential mortgage loans. Thus, DOR concluded that while investments in pass-through securities qualify for the tax deduction, investments in REMICs do not. We should defer to DOR’s interpretation because it comports with the plain meaning of the statute.

“Moreover, this case is factually distinct. Borrowers making the payments that eventually end up in Cashmere’s REMIC investments do not pay Cashmere, nor do they borrow money from Cashmere. The borrowers do not owe Cashmere for use of borrowed money, and they do not have any existing contracts with Cashmere. Unlike HomeStreet, Cashmere did not have an ongoing and enforceable relationship with borrowers and security for payments did not rest directly on borrowers’ promises to repay the loans. Indeed, REMIC investors are far removed from the underlying mortgages. Interest received from investments in REMICs is often repackaged several times and no longer resembles payments that homeowners are making on their mortgages.

“We affirm the Court of Appeals and hold that Cashmere’s REMIC investments are not “primarily secured by” first mortgages or deeds of trust on nontransient residential real properties. Cashmere has not shown that REMICs are secured-only that the underlying loans are primarily secured by first mortgages or deeds of trust. Although these investments gave Cashmere the right to receive specific cash flows generated by first mortgage loans, the borrowers on the original loans had no obligation to pay Cashmere. Relatedly, Cashmere has no direct or indirect legal recourse to the underlying mortgages as security for the investment. The mere fact that the trustee may be able to foreclose on behalf of trust beneficiaries does not mean the investment is “primarily secured” by first mortgages or deeds of trust.

Editor’s Note: The one thing that makes this case even more problematic is that it does not appear that the Trust ever paid for the acquisition or origination of loans. THAT implies that the Trust didn’t have the money to do so. Because the business of the trust was the acquisition or origination of loans. If the Trust didn’t have the money, THAT implies the Trust didn’t receive the proceeds of sale from their issuance of MBS. And THAT implies that the investors are not Trust beneficiaries in any substantive sense because even though the bonds were issued in the name of the securities broker as street name nominee (non objecting status) for the benefit of the investors, the bonds were issued in a transaction that was never completed.

Thus the investors become simply involuntary direct lenders through a conduit system to which they never agreed. The broker dealer controls all aspects of the actual money transfers and claims the amounts left over as fees or profits from proprietary trading. And THAT means that there is no valid mortgage because the Trust got an assignment without consideration, the Trustee has no interest in the mortgage and the investors who WERE the original source of funds were never given the protection they thought they were getting when they advanced the money. So the “lenders” (investors) knew nothing about the loan closing and neither did the borrower. The mortgage is not enforceable by the named “originator” because they were not the lender and they did not close as representative of the lenders.

There is no party who can enforce an unenforceable contract, which is what the mortgage is here. And the note is similarly defective — although if the note gets into the hands of a party who DID PAY value in good faith without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses and DID GET DELIVERY and ACCEPT DELIVERY of the loans then the note would be enforceable even if the mortgage is not. The borrower’s remedy would be to sue the people who put him into those loans, not the holder who is suing on the note because the legislature adopted the UCC and Article 3 says the risk of loss falls on the borrower even if there were defenses to the loan. The lack of consideration might be problematic but the likelihood is that the legislative imperative would be followed — allowing the holder in due course to collect from the borrower even in the absence of a loan by the so-called “originator.”

Powers of Attorney — New Documents Magically Appear

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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BONY/Mellon is among those who are attempting to use a Power of Attorney (POA) that they say proves their ownership of the note and mortgage. In No way does it prove ownership. But it almost forces the reader to assume ownership. But it is not entitled to a presumption of any kind. This is a document prepared for use in litigation and in no way is part of normal business records. They should be required to prove every word and every exhibit. The ONLY thing that would prove ownership is proof of payment. If they owned it they would be claiming HDC status. Not only doesn’t it PROVE ownership, it doesn’t even recite or warrant ownership, indemnification etc. It is a crazy document in substance but facially appealing even though it doesn’t really say anything.

The entire POA is hearsay, lacks foundation, and is irrelevant without the proper foundation be laid by the proponent of the document. I do not think it can be introduced as a business records exception since such documents are not normally created in the ordinary course of business especially with such wide sweeping powers that make no sense — unless you recognize that they are dealing with worthless paper that they are trying desperately to make valuable.

They should have given you a copy of the settlement agreement referred to in the POA and they should have identified the original PSA that is referred to in the settlement agreement. Those are the foundation documents because the POA says that the terms used are defined in the PSA, Settlement agreement or both. I want all documents that are incorporated by reference in the POA.

If you have asked whether the Trust ever paid for your loan, I would like to see their answer.

If CWALT, Inc. or CWABS, Inc., or CWMBS, Inc is anywhere in your chain of title or anywhere else mentioned in any alleged origination or transfer of your loan, I assume you asked for those and I would like to see them too.

The PSA requires that the Trust pay for and receive the loan documents by way of the depositor and custodian. The Trustee never takes possession of the loan documents. But more than that it is important to distinguish between the loan documents and the debt. If there is no debt between you and the originator (which means that the originator named on the note and mortgage never advanced you any money for the loan) then note, which is only evidence of the debt and allegedly containing the terms of repayment is only evidence of the debt — which we know does not exist if they never answered your requests for proof of payment, wire transfer or canceled check.

If you have been reading my posts the last couple of weeks you will see what I am talking about.

The POA does not warrant or even recite that YOUR loan or anything resembling control or ownership of YOUR LOAN is or was ever owned by BONY/Mellon or the alleged trust. It is a classic case of misdirection. By executing a long and very important-looking document they want the judge to presume that the recitations are true and that the unrecited assumptions are also true. None of that is correct. The reference to the PSA only shows intent to acquire loans but has no reference or exhibit identifying your loan. And even if there was such a reference or exhibit it would be fabricated and false — there being obvious evidence that they did not pay for it or any other loan.

The evidence that they did not pay consists of a lot of things but once piece of logic is irrefutable — if they were a holder in due course you would be left with no defenses. If they are not a holder in due course then they had no right to collect money from you and you might sue to get your payments back with interest, attorney fees and possibly punitive damages unless they turned over all your money to the real creditors — but that would require them to identify your real creditors (the investors who thought they were buying mortgage bonds but whose money was never given to the Trust but was instead used privately by the securities broker that did the underwriting on the bond offering).

And the main logical point for an assumption is that if they were a holder in due course they would have said so and you would be fighting with an empty gun except for predatory and improper lending practices at the loan closing which cannot be brought against the Trust and must be directed at the mortgage broker and “originator.” They have not alleged they are a holder in course.

The elements of holder in dude course are purchase for value, delivery of the loan documents, in good faith without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses. If they had paid for the loan documents they would have been more than happy to show that they did and then claim holder in due course status. The fact that the documents were not delivered in the manner set forth in the PSA — tot he depositor and custodian — is important but not likely to swing the Judge your way. If they paid they are a holder in due course.

The trust could not possibly be attacked successfully as lacking good faith or knowing the borrower’s defenses, so two out of four elements of HDC they already have. Their claim of delivery might be dubious but is not likely to convince a judge to nullify the mortgage or prevent its enforcement. Delivery will be presumed if they show up with what appears to be the original note and mortgage. So that means 3 out of the four elements of HDC status are satisfied by the Trust. The only remaining question is whether they ever entered into a transaction in which they originated or acquired any loans and whether yours was one of them.

Since they have not alleged HDC status, they are admitting they never paid for it. That means the Trust is admitting there was no payment, which means they were not entitled to delivery or ownership of the note, mortgage, or debt.

So that means they NEVER OWNED THE DEBT OR THE LOAN DOCUMENTS. AS A HOLDER IN COURSE IT WOULD NOT MATTER IF THEY OWNED THE DEBT — THE LOAN DOCUMENTS ARE ENFORCEABLE BY A HOLDER IN DUE COURSE EVEN IF THERE IS NO DEBT. THE RISK OF LOSS TO ANY PERSON WHO SIGNS A NOTE AND MORTGAGE AND ALLOWS IT TO BE TAKEN OUT OF HIS OR HER POSSESSION IS ON THE PARTY WHO TOOK IT AND THE PARTY WHO SIGNED IT — IF THERE WAS NO CONSIDERATION, THE DOCUMENTS ARE ONLY SUCCESSFULLY ENFORCED WHERE AN INNOCENT PARTY PAYS REAL VALUE AND TAKES DELIVERY OF THE NOTE AND MORTGAGE IN GOOD FAITH WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BORROWER’S DEFENSES.

So if they did not allege they are an HDC then they are admitting they don’t own the loan papers and admitting they don’t own the loan. Since the business of the trust was to pay for origination of loans and acquisition of loans there is only one reason they wouldn’t have paid for the loan — to wit: the trust didn’t have the money. There is only one reason the trust would not have the money — they didn’t get the proceeds of the sale of the bonds. If the trust did not get the proceeds of sale of the bonds, then the trust was completely ignored in actual conduct regardless of what the documents say. Which means that the documents are not relevant to the power or authority of the servicer, master servicer, trust, or even the investors as TRUST BENEFICIARIES.

It means that the investors’ money was used directly for fees of multiple people who were not disclosed in your loan closing, and some portion of which was used to fund your loan. THAT MEANS the investors have no claim as trust beneficiaries. Their only claim is as owner of the debt, not the loan documents which were made out in favor of people other than the investors. And that means that there is no basis to claim any power, authority or rights claimed through “Securitization” (dubbed “securitization fail” by Adam Levitin).

This in turn means that the investors are owners of the debt but lack any documentation with which to enforce the debt. That doesn’t mean they can’t enforce the debt, but it does mean they can’t use the loan documents. Once they prove or you admit that you did get the loan and that the money came from them, they are entitled to a money judgment on the debt — but there is no right to foreclose because the deed of trust, like a mortgage, is made out to another party and the investors were never included in the chain of title because the intermediaries were  making money keeping it from the investors. More importantly the “other party” had no risk, made no money advance and was otherwise simply providing an illegal service to disguise a table funded loan that is “predatory per se” as per REG Z.

And THAT is why the originator received no money from successors in most cases — they didn’t ask for any money because the loan had cost them nothing and they received a fee for their services.

Levitin and Yves Smith – TRUST=EMPTY PAPER BAG

Living Lies Narrative Corroborated by Increasing Number of Respected Economists

It has taken over 7 years, but finally my description of the securitization process has taken hold. Levitin calls it “securitization fail.” Yves Smith agrees.

Bottom line: there was no securitization, the trusts were merely empty sham nominees for the investment banks and the “assignments,” transfers, and endorsements of the fabricated paper from illegal closings were worthless, fraudulent and caused incomprehensible damage to everyone except the perpetrators of the crime. They call it “infinite rehypothecation” on Wall Street. That makes it seem infinitely complex. Call it what you want, it was civil and perhaps criminal theft. Courts enforcing this fraudulent worthless paper will be left with egg on their faces as the truth unravels now.

There cannot be a valid foreclosure because there is no valid mortgage. I know. This makes no sense when you approach it from a conventional point of view. But if you watch closely you can see that the “loan closing” was a shell game. Money from a non disclosed third party (the investors) was sent through conduits to hide the origination of the funds for the loan. The closing agent used that money not for the originator of the funds (the investors) but for a sham nominee entity with no rights to the loan — all as specified in the assignment and assumption agreement. The note and and mortgage were a sham. And the reason the foreclosing parties do not allege they are holders in due course, is that they must prove purchase and delivery for value, as set forth in the PSA within the 90 day period during which the Trust could operate. None of the loans made it.

But on Main street it was at its root a combination pyramid scheme and PONZI scheme. All branches of government are complicit in continuing the fraud and allowing these merchants of “death” to continue selling what they call bonds deriving their value from homeowner or student loans. Having made a “deal with the devil” both the Bush and Obama administrations conscripted themselves into the servitude of the banks and actively assisted in the coverup. — Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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John Lindeman in Miami asked me years ago when he first starting out in foreclosure defense, how I would describe the REMIC Trust. My reply was “a holographic image of an empty paper bag.” Using that as the basis of his defense of homeowners, he went on to do very well in foreclosure defense. He did well because he kept asking questions in discovery about the actual transactions, he demanded the PSA, he cornered the opposition into admitting that their authority had to come from the PSA when they didn’t want to admit that. They didn’t want to admit it because they knew the Trust had no ownership interest in the loan and would never have it.

While the narrative regarding “securitization fail” (see Adam Levitin) seems esoteric and even pointless from the homeowner’s point of view, I assure you that it is the direct answer to the alleged complaint that the borrower breached a duty to the foreclosing party. That is because the foreclosing party has no interest in the loan and has no legal authority to even represent the owner of the debt.

And THAT is because the owner of the debt is a group of investors and NOT the REMIC Trust that funded the loan. Thus the Trust, unfunded had no resources to buy or fund the origination of loans. So they didn’t buy it and it wasn’t delivered. Hence they can’t claim Holder in Due Course status because “purchase for value” is one of the elements of the prima facie case for a Holder in Due Course. There was no purchase and there was no transaction. Hence the suing parties could not possibly be authorized to represent the owner of the debt unless they got it from the investors who do own it, not from the Trust that doesn’t own it.

This of course raises many questions about the sudden arrival of “assignments” when the wave of foreclosures began. If you asked for the assignment on any loan that was NOT in foreclosure you couldn’t get it because their fabrication system was not geared to produce it. Why would anyone assign a valuable loan with security to a trust or anyone else without getting paid for it? Only one answer is possible — the party making the assignment was acting out a part and made money in fees pretending to convey an interest the assignor did not have. And so it goes all the way down the chain. The emptiness of the REMIC Trust is merely a mirror reflection of the empty closing with homeowners. The investors and the homeowners were screwed the same way.

BOTTOM LINE: The investors are stuck with ownership of a debt or claim against the borrowers for what was loaned to the borrower (which is only a fraction of the money given to the broker for lending to homeowners). They also have claims against the brokers who took their money and instead of delivering the proceeds of the sale of bonds to the Trust, they used it for their own benefit. Those claims are unsecured and virtually undocumented (except for wire transfer receipts and wire transfer instructions). The closing agent was probably duped the same way as the borrower at the loan closing which was the same as the way the investors were duped in settlement of the IPO of RMBS from the Trust.

In short, neither the note nor the mortgage are valid documents even though they appear facially valid. They are not valid because they are subject to borrower’s defenses. And the main borrower defense is that (a) the originator did not loan them money and (b) all the parties that took payments from the homeowner owe that money back to the homeowner plus interest, attorney fees and perhaps punitive damages. Suing on a fictitious transaction can only be successful if the homeowner defaults (fails to defend) or the suing party is a holder in due course.

Trusts Are Empty Paper Bags — Naked Capitalism

student-loan-debt-home-buying

Just as with homeowner loans, student loans have a series of defenses created by the same chicanery as the false “securitization” of homeowner loans. LivingLies is opening a new division to assist people with student loan problems if they are prepared to fight the enforcement on the merits. Student loan debt, now over $1 Trillion is dragging down housing, and the economy. Call 520-405-1688 and 954-495-9867)

The Banks Are Leveraged: Too Big Not to Fail

When I was working with Brad Keiser (formerly a top executive at Fifth Third Bank), he formulated, based upon my narrative, a way to measure the risk of bank collapse. Using a “leverage” ration he and I were able to accurately define the exact order of the collapse of the investment banks before it happened. In September, 2008 based upon the leverage ratios we published our findings and used them at a seminar in California. The power Point presentation is still available for purchase. (Call 520-405-1688 or 954-495-9867). You can see it yourself. The only thing Brad got wrong was the timing. He said 6 months. It turned out to be 6 weeks.

First on his list was Bear Stearns with leverage at 42:1. With the “shadow banking market” sitting at close to $1 quadrillion (about 17 times the total amount of all money authorized by all governments of the world) it is easy to see how there are 5 major banks that are leveraged in excess of the ratio at Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch et al.

The point of the article that I don’t agree with at all is the presumption that if these banks fail the economy will collapse. There is no reason for it to collapse and the dependence the author cites is an illusion. The fall of these banks will be a psychological shock world wide, and I agree it will obviously happen soon. We have 7,000 community banks and credit unions that use the exact same electronic funds transfer backbone as the major banks. There are multiple regional associations of these institutions who can easily enter into the same agreements with government, giving access at the Fed window and other benefits given to the big 5, and who will purchase the bonds of government to keep federal and state governments running. Credit markets will momentarily freeze but then relax.

Broward County Court Delays Are Actually A PR Program to Assure Investors Buying RMBS

The truth is that the banks don’t want to manage the properties, they don’t need the house and in tens of thousands of cases (probably in the hundreds of thousands since the last report), they simply walk away from the house and let it be foreclosed for non payment of taxes, HOA assessments etc. In some of the largest cities in the nation, tens of thousands of abandoned homes (where the homeowner applied for modification and was denied because the servicer had no intention or authority to give it them) were BULL-DOZED  and the neighborhoods converted into parks.

The banks don’t want the money and they don’t want the house. If you offer them the money they back peddle and use every trick in the book to get to foreclosure. This is clearly not your usual loan situation. Why would anyone not accept payment in full?

What they DO want is a judgment that transfers ownership of the debt from the true owners (the investors) to the banks. This creates the illusion of ratification of prior transactions where the same loan was effectively sold for 100 cents on the dollar not by the investors who made the loan, but by the banks who sold the investors on the illusion that they were buying secured loans, Triple AAA rated, and insured. None of it was true because the intended beneficiary of the paper, the insurance money, the multiple sales, and proceeds of hedge products and guarantees were all pocketed by the banks who had sold worthless bogus mortgage bonds without expending a dime or assuming one cent of risk.

Delaying the prosecution of foreclosures is simply an opportunity to spread out the pain over time and thus keep investors buying these bonds. And they ARE buying the new bonds even though the people they are buying from already defrauded them by NOT delivering the proceeds fro the sale of the bonds to the Trust that issued them.

Why make “bad” loans? Because they make money for the bank especially when they fail

The brokers are back at it, as though they haven’t caused enough damage. The bigger the “risk” on the loan the higher the interest rate to compensate for that risk of loss. The higher interest rates result in less money being loaned out to achieve the dollar return promised to investors who think they are buying RMBS issued by a REMIC Trust. So the investor pays out $100 Million, expects $5 million per year return, and the broker sells them a complex multi-tranche web of worthless paper. In that basket of “loans” (that were never made by the originator) are 10% and higher loans being sold as though they were conventional 5% loans. So the actual loan is $50 Million, with the broker pocketing the difference. It is called a yield spread premium. It is achieved through identity theft of the borrower’s reputation and credit.

Banks don’t want the house or the money. They want the Foreclosure Judgment for “protection”

 

When an assignment of a mortgage is invalid, does it require a foreclosure case to be dismissed?

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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There seems to be confusion about what is necessary to file a foreclosure. To start with the basics, the debt is created when the borrower receives the funds or when the funds are disbursed for the benefit of the borrower. This requires no documentation. The receipt of funds presumptively implies a loan that is a demand loan. The source of funding is the creditor and the borrower is the debtor. The promissory note is EVIDENCE of the debt and contains the terms of repayment. In residential loan transactions it changes the terms from a demand loan to a term loan with periodic payments.

But without the debt, the note is worthless — unless the note gets into the hands of a party who claims status as a holder in due course. In that case the debt doesn’t exist but the liability to pay under the terms of the note can be enforced anyway. In foreclosure litigation based upon paper where there are claims or evidence of securitization, there are virtually all cases in which the “holder” of the note seeks enforcement, it does NOT allege the status of holder in due course. To the contrary, many cases contain an admission that the note doesn’t exist because it was lost or destroyed.

The lender is the party who loans the money to the borrower.  The lender can bring suit against the borrower for failure to pay and receive a money judgment that can be enforced against income or non-exempt property of the borrower by writ of garnishment or attachment. There is no limit to the borrower’s defenses and counterclaims against the lender, assuming they are based on facts that show improper conduct by the lender. The contest does NOT require anything in writing. If the party seeking to enforce the debt wishes to rely on a note as evidence of the debt, their claim about the validity of the note as evidence or as information containing the terms of repayment may be contested by the borrower.

If the note is transferred by endorsement and delivery, the transferee can enforce the note under most circumstances. But the transferee of the note takes the note subject to all defenses of the borrower. So if the borrower says that the loan never happened or denies it in his answer the lender and its successors must prove the loan actually took place. This is true in all cases EXCEPT situations where the transferee purchases the note for value, gets delivery and endorsement, and is acting in good faith without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses (UCC refers to this as a holder in due course). The borrower who signs a note without receiving the consideration of the loan is taking the risk that he or she has created a debt or liability if the eventual transferee claims to be a holder in due course. Further information on the creation and transfer of notes as negotiable paper is contained in Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

Thus the questions about enforceability of the note or recovery on the debt are fairly well settled. The question is what happens in the case where collateral for the loan secures the performance required under the note. This is done with a security instrument which in real property transactions is a mortgage or deed of trust. This is a separate contract between the lender and the borrower. It says that if the borrower does not pay or fails to pay taxes, maintain the property, insure the property etc., the lender may foreclose and the borrower will forfeit the collateral. This suit is an action to enforce the security instrument (mortgage, deed of trust etc.) seeking to foreclose all claims inferior to the rights of the lender established when the mortgage or deed of trust was recorded.

The mortgage is a contract that does not qualify as a negotiable instrument and so is not covered by Article 3 of the UCC. It is covered by Article 9 of the UCC (Secured Transactions). The general rule is that a party who purchases the mortgage instrument for value in good faith and without knowledge of the  borrower’s defenses may enforce the mortgage if the contract is breached by the borrower. This coincides with the requirement that the holder of the mortgage must also be a holder in due course of the note — if the breach consists of failure to pay under the terms of the note. Any party may assign their rights under a contract unless the contract itself says that it is not assignable or assignment is barred by statute or administrative rules.

The “assignment” of the mortgage or deed of trust is generally taken to be an instrument of conveyance. But forfeiture of collateral, particularly one’s home, is considered to be a much more severe remedy against the borrower than a money judgment for economic loss caused by breach of the borrower in making payments on a legitimate debt. So the statute (Article 9, UCC)  requires that the assignment be the result of an actual transaction in which the mortgage is purchased for value. The confusion that erupts here is that no reasonable person would merely purchase a mortgage which is not really an asset deriving its value from a borrower’s promise to pay. That asset is the note.

So if the note is purchased for value, and assuming the purchaser receives delivery and endorsement of the note, as a holder in due course there is no question that the mortgage assignment is valid and enforceable by the assignee. The problems that have emerged is when, if ever, any value was paid to anyone in the “chain” on either the note or the mortgage. If no value was paid then the note might be enforceable subject to borrower’s defenses but the mortgage cannot be enforced. Additional issues emerge where the “proof” (often fabricated robo-signed documents) imply through hearsay that the note was the subject of a transaction at a different time than the date on the assignment. Denial and/or discovery would reveal the fraud upon the Court here — assuming you can persuasively argue that the production of evidence is required.

Another interesting question comes up when you seen the language of endorsement on the mortgage. This might be seen as splitting hairs, but I think it is more than that. To assign a mortgage in form that would ordinarily be accepted in general commerce — and in particular by banks — the assignment would be in the form that recites the ownership of the mortgage and the intention to convey it and on what terms. Instead, many cases show that there is an additional page stapled to the mortgage which contains only the endorsement to a particular party or blank endorsement. The endorsement is not recordable whereas a facially valid assignment is recordable.

The attachment of the last page could mean nothing was conveyed or that it was accidentally done in addition to a proper assignment. But I have seen several cases where the only evidence of assignment was a stamped endorsement, undated, in which there was no assignment. This appears to be designed to confuse the Judge who might be encouraged to apply the rules of transfer of the note to the circumstances of transfer of the mortgage. This smoke and mirrors approach often results in a foreclosure judgment in favor of a party who has paid nothing for the debt, note or mortgage. It leaves the actual lender out in the cold without a note or mortgage which they should have received.

It is these and other factors which have resulted in trial and appellate decisions that appear to be in conflict with each other. Currently in Florida the Supreme Court is deciding whether to issue an opinion on whether the assignment after the lawsuit has begun cures jurisdictional standing. The standing rule in Florida is that if you don’t own the mortgage at the time you declare a default, acceleration and sue, then those actions are essentially void.

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Valid assignment is necessary for the plaintiff to have standing in a foreclosure case. (David E. Peterson, Cracking the Mortgage Assignment Shell Game, The Florida Bar Journal, Volume 85, No. 9, November, 2011, page 18).

In BAC Funding Consortium v. Jean-Jeans and US Bank National Association, the Second District of Florida reversed summary judgment for a foreclosure for bank because there was no evidence that the bank validly held the note and mortgage. BAC Funding Consortium Inc. ISAOA/ATIMA v. Jean-Jacques 28 So.2d, 936.

BAC has been negatively distinguished by two cases:

  • Riggs v. Aurora Loan Services, LLC, 36 So.3d 932, (Fla.App. 4 Dist.,2010) was distinguished from BAC, because in BAC the bank did not file an affidavits that the mortgage was properly assigned; in Riggs they did. The 4th District held that the “company’s possession of original note, indorsed in blank, established company’s status as lawful holder of note, entitled to enforce its terms.” [Editor’s note: The appellate court might have erred here. The enforcement of the note and the enforcement of the mortgage are two different things as described above].
  • Dage v. Deutsche Bank Nat. Trust Co., 95 So.3d 1021, (Fla.App. 2 Dist.,2012) was distinguished from BAC, because in Dage, the homeowners waited two years to challenge the foreclosure judgment on the grounds that the bank lacked standing due to invalid assignment of mortgage. The court held that a lack of standing is merely voidable, not void, and the homeowners had to challenge the ruling in a timely manner. [Editor’s note: Jurisdiction is normally construed as something that cannot be invoked at a later time. It can even be invoked for the first time on appeal.]

In his article, “Cracking the Mortgage Assignment Shell Game,” Peterson in on the side of the banks and plaintiffs in foreclosure cases, but his section “Who Has Standing to Foreclosure the Mortgage?” is full of valuable insights about when a case can be dismissed based on invalid assignment. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’ve copied and pasted the section below:

It should come as no surprise that the holder of the promissory note has standing to maintain a foreclosure action.34 Further, an agent for the holder can sue to foreclose.35 The holder of a collateral assignment has sufficient standing to foreclose.36 [Editor’s note: Here again we see the leap of faith that just because someone might have standing to sue on the note, they automatically have standing to sue on the mortgage, even if no value was paid for either the note or the mortgage].

Failure to file the original promissory note or offer evidence of standing might preclude summary judgment.37 Even when the plaintiff files the original, it might be necessary to offer additional evidence to show that the plaintiff is the holder or has rights as a nonholder. In BAC Funding Consortium, Inc. v. Jean-Jacques, 28 So. 3d 936 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010), for example, the court reversed a summary judgment of foreclosure, saying the plaintiff had not proven it held the note. The written assignment was incomplete and unsigned. The plaintiff filed the original note, which showed an indorsement to another person, but no indorsement to the plaintiff. The court found that was insufficient. Clearly, a party in possession of a note indorsed to another is not a “holder,” but recall that Johns v. Gillian holds that a written assignment is not needed to show standing when the transferee receives delivery of the note. The court’s ruling in BAC Funding Consortium was based on the heavy burden required for summary judgment. The court said the plaintiff did not offer an affidavit or deposition proving it held the note and suggested that “proof of purchase of the debt, or evidence of an effective transfer” might substitute for an assignment.38 [e.s.]

In Jeff-Ray Corp. v. Jacobson, 566 So. 2d 885 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990), the court held that an assignment executed after the filing of the foreclosure case was not sufficient to show the plaintiff had standing at the time the complaint was filed. In WM Specialty Mortgage, LLC v. Salomon, 874 So. 2d 680 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004), however, the court distinguished Jeff-Ray Corp., stating that the execution date of the written assignment was less significant when the plaintiff could show that it acquired the mortgage before filing the foreclosure without a written assignment, as permitted by Johns v. Gilliam.39

When the note is lost, a document trail showing ownership is important. The burden in BAC Funding Consortium might be discharged by an affidavit confirming that the note was sold to the plaintiff prior to foreclosure. Corroboratory evidence of sale documents or payment of consideration is icing on the cake, but probably not needed absent doubt over the plaintiff’s rights. If doubt remains, indemnity can be required if needed to protect the mortgagor.40 [e.s.] 34  Philogene v. ABN AMRO Mortgage Group, Inc., 948 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2006); Fla. Stat. §673.3011(1) (2010).

35                  Juega v. Davidson, 8 So. 3d 488 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 2009); Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. v. Revoredo, 955 So. 2d 33, 34, fn. 2 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 2007) (stating that MERS was holder, but not owner and “We simply don’t think that this makes any difference. See Fla. R.Civ. P. 1.210(a) (action may be prosecuted in name of authorized person without joining party for whose benefit action is brought)”). [Editor’s note: This is an example of judicial ignorance of what is really happening. MERS is a conduit, a naked nominee, whose existence is meaningless, as is its records of transfer or ownership of the the debt, the note or the mortgage]

36                  Laing v. Gainey Builders, Inc., 184 So. 2d 897 (Fla. 5th D.C.A. 1966) (collateral assignee was a holder); Cullison v. Dees, 90 So. 2d 620 (Fla. 1956) (same, except involving validity of payments rather than standing to foreclose).

37                  See Fla. Stat. §673.3091(2) (2010); Servedio v. US Bank Nat. Ass’n, 46 So. 3d 1105 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2010).

38                  BAC Funding Consortium, Inc. v. Jean-Jacques, 28 So. 3d at 938-939 (Fla. 2d D.C.A. 2010). See also Verizzo v. Bank of New York, 28 So. 3d 976 (Fla. 2d D.C.A. 2010) (Bank filed original note, but indorsement was to a different bank). But see Lizio v. McCullom, 36 So. 3d 927 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2010) (possession of note is prima facie evidence of ownership). [Editor’s note: this is the nub of the problems in foreclosure litigation. The law requires purchase for value for ownership, along with other criteria described above. This court’s conclusion places an unfair burden of proof on the borrower. The party with the sole care, custody and control of the actual evidence and information about the transfer or sale of the ndebt, note or mortgage is the Plaintiff. The plaintiff should therefore be required to show the details of the transaction in which the debt, note or mortgage was acquired. To me, that means showing a cancelled check or wire transfer receipt in which the reference was to the loan in dispute. Anything less than that raises questions about whether the loan implied by the note and mortgage ever existed. See my previous articles regarding securitization where the actual loan was actually applied from third party funds. hence the originator, who did not loan any money, was never paid for note or mortgage because consideration from a third party had already passed.]

39                  See also Glynn v. First Union Nat. Bank, 912 So. 2d 357 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2005), rev. den., 933 So. 2d 521 (Fla. 2006) (note transferred before lawsuit, even though assignment was after). [Editor’s note: if the note and mortgage were in fact transfered for actual value (with proof of payment) then a “late” assignment might properly be categorized as a clerical issue rather than a legal one — because the substance of the transaction actually took place long before the assignment was executed and recorded. But the cautionary remark here is that in all probability, nobody who relies upon the “Chain” ever paid anything but fees to their predecessor. Why would they? If the consideration already passed from third party — i.e., pension fund money — why would the originator or any successor be entitled to demand the value of the note and mortgage? The originator in that scenario is neither the lender nor the owner of the debt and therefore should be given no rights under the note and mortgage, where title was diverted from the third party who DID the the loan to the originator who did NOT fund the loan. 40 Fla. Stat. §673.3091(2) (2010); Fla. Stat. §69.061 (2010).-David E. Peterson, “Cracking the Mortgage Assignment Shell Game”, The Florida Bar Journal, Volume 85, No. 9, November, 2011.

I also came across a blog post from another attorney on how to argue Florida assignments of judges. I don’t know how reliable this is, but it does cite several cases, and may be a useful resource to you: http://discoverytactics.wordpress.com/tactics-strategies/how-to-argue-florida-assignments-to-judges/. Someone also posted the content of the above link verbatim in a comment on my blog at http://livinglies.me/foreclosure-defense-forms/people-players-and-resources/state-laws/florida-laws/.

 

A Foreclosure Judgment and Sale is a Forced Assignment Against the Interests of Investors and For the Interests of the Bank Intermediaries

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Successfully hoodwinking a Judge into entering a Judgment of Foreclosure and forcing the sale of a homeowner’s property has the effect of transferring the loss on that loan from the securities broker and its co-venturers to the Pension Fund that gave the money to the securities broker. Up until the moment of the foreclosure, the loss will fall on the securities brokers for damages, refunds etc. Once foreclosure is entered it sets in motion a legal cascade that protects the securities broker from further claims for fraud against the investors, insurers, and guarantors.

The securities broker was thought to be turning over the proceeds to the Trust which issued bonds in an IPO. Instead the securities broker used the money for purposes and in ways that were — according to the pleadings of the investors, the government, guarantors, and insurers — FRAUDULENT. Besides raising the issue of unclean hands, these facts eviscerate the legal enforcement of loan documents that were, according to those same parties, fraudulent, unenforceable and subject to claims for damages and punitive damages from borrowers.

There is a difference between documents that talk about a transaction and the transaction documents themselves. That is the essence of the fraud perpetrated by the banks in most of the foreclosure actions that I have reviewed. The documents that talk about a transaction are referring to a transaction that never existed. Documents that “talk about” a transaction include a note, mortgage, assignment, power of attorney etc. Documents that ARE the transaction documents include the actual evidence of actual payments like a wire transfer or canceled check and the actual evidence of delivery of the loan documents — like Fedex receipts or other form of correspondence showing that the recipient was (a) the right recipient and (b) actually received the documents.

The actual movement of the actual money and actual Transaction Documents has been shrouded in secrecy since this mortgage mess began. It is time to come clean.

THE REAL DEBT: The real debt does NOT arise unless someone gets something from someone else that is legally recognized as “value” or consideration. Upon receipt of that, the recipient now owes a duty to the party who gave that “something” to him or her. In this case, it is simple. If you give money to someone, it is presumed that a debt arises to pay it back — to the person who loaned it to you. What has happened here is that the real debt arose by operation of common law (and in some cases statutory law) when the borrower received the money or the money was used, with his consent, for his benefit. Now he owes the money back. And he owes it to the party whose money was used to fund the loan transaction — not the party on paperwork that “talks about” the transaction.

The implied ratification that is being used in the courts is wrong. The investors not only deny the validity of the loan transactions with homeowners, but they have sued the securities brokers for fraud (not just breach of contract) and they have received considerable sums of money in settlement of their claims. How those settlement effect the balance owed by the debtor is unclear — but it certainly introduces the concept that damages have been mitigated, and the predatory loan practices and appraisal fraud at closing might entitle the borrowers to a piece of those settlements — probably in the form of a credit against the amount owed.

Thus when demand is made to see the actual transaction documents, like a canceled check or wire transfer receipt, the banks fight it tooth and nail. When I represented banks and foreclosures, if the defendant challenged whether or not there was a transaction and if it was properly done, I would immediately submit the affidavits real witnesses with real knowledge of the transaction and absolute proof with a copy of a canceled check, wire transfer receipt or deposit into the borrowers account. The dispute would be over. There would be nothing to litigate.

There is no question in my mind that the banks are afraid of the question of payment and delivery. With increasing frequency, I am advised of confidential settlements where the homeowner’s attorney was relentless in pursuing the truth about the loan, the ownership (of the DEBT, not the “note” which is supposed to be ONLY evidence of the debt) and the balance. The problem is that none of the parties in the “chain” ever paid a dime (except in fees) and none of them ever received delivery of closing documents. This is corroborated by the absence of the Depositor and Custodian in the “chain”.

The plain truth is that the securities broker took money from the investor/lender and instead of of delivering the proceeds to the Trust (I.e, lending the money to the Trust), the securities broker set up an elaborate scheme of loaning the money directly to borrowers. So they diverted money from the Trust to the borrower’s closing table. Then they diverted title to the loan from the investor/lenders to a controlled entity of the securities broker.

The actual lender is left with virtually no proof of the loan. The note and mortgage is been made out in favor of an entity that was never disclosed to the investor and would never have been approved by the investor is the fund manager of the pension fund had been advised of the actual way in which the money of the pension fund had been channeled into mortgage originations and mortgage acquisitions.

Since the prospectus and the pooling and servicing agreement both rule out the right of the investors and the Trustee from inquiring into the status of the loans or the the “portfolio” (which is nonexistent),  it is a perfect storm for moral hazard.  The securities broker is left with unbridled ability to do anything it wants with the money received from the investor without the investor ever knowing what happened.

Hence the focal point for our purposes is the negligence or intentional act of the closing agent in receiving money from one actual lender who was undisclosed and then applying it to closing documents with a pretender lender who was a controlled entity of the securities broker.  So what you have here is an undisclosed lender who is involuntarily lending money directly a homeowner purchase or refinance a home. The trust is ignored  an obviously the terms of the trust are avoided and ignored. The REMIC Trust is unfunded and essentially without a trustee —  and none of the transactions contemplated in the prospectus and pooling and servicing agreement ever occurred.

The final judgment of foreclosure forces the “assignment” into a “trust” that was unfunded, didn’t have a Trustee with any real powers, and didn’t ever get delivery of the closing documents to the Depositor or Custodian. This results in forcing a bad loan into the trust, which presumably enables the broker to force the loss from the bad loans onto the investors. They also lose their REMIC status which means that the Trust is operating outside the 90 day cutoff period. So the Trust now has a taxable event instead of being treated as a conduit like a Subchapter S corporation. This creates double taxation for the investor/lenders.

The forced “purchase” of the REMIC Trust takes place without notice to the investors or the Trust as to the conflict of interest between the Servicers, securities brokers and other co-venturers. The foreclosure is pushed through even when there is a credible offer of modification from the borrower that would allow the investor to recover perhaps as much as 1000% of the amount reported as final proceeds on liquidation of the REO property.

So one of the big questions that goes unanswered as yet, is why are the investor/lenders not given notice and an opportunity to be heard when the real impact of the foreclosure only effects them and does not effect the intermediaries, whose interests are separate and apart from the debt that arose when the borrower received the money from the investor/lender?

The only parties that benefit from a foreclosure sale are the ones actively pursuing the foreclosure who of course receive fees that are disproportional to the effort, but more importantly the securities broker closes the door on potential liability for refunds, repurchases, damages to be paid from fraud claims from investors, guarantors and other parties and even punitive damages arising out of the multiple sales of the same asset to different parties.

If the current servicers were removed, since they have no actual authority anyway (The trust was ignored so the authority arising from the trust must be ignored), foreclosures would virtually end. Nearly all cases would be settled on one set of terms or another, enabling the investors to recover far more money (even though they are legally unsecured) than what the current “intermediaries” are giving them.

If this narrative gets out into the mainstream, the foreclosing parties would be screwed. It would show that they have no right to foreclosure based upon a voidable mortgage securing a void promissory note. I received many calls last week applauding the articles I wrote last week explaining the securitization process — in concept, as it was written and how it operated in the real world ignoring the REMIC Trust entity. This is an attack on any claim the forecloser makes to having the rights to enforce — which can only come from a party who does have the right to enforce.

see http://livinglies.me/2014/09/10/securitization-for-lawyers-conflicts-between-reality-the-documents-and-the-concept/

Securitization for Lawyers: Conflicts between reality, the documents and the concept.

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Editor’s Note: The solution is obvious. Remove the servicers, Trustees and other “collection” entities from the situation. Those entities have been working against investors, lenders, the Trusts, and borrowers from the start. They continue to obstruct settlements and modifications because they have substantial liability for performing loans.

Their best strategy is to create the illusion of defaults even when the creditor has been paid in full.

Our best strategy is to remove them from the mix. And then let the chips fall. Since they ignored the PSA they are not authorized to act anyway.

For those who are religious about free market forces, this should be appealing inasmuch as it lets the marketplace function without being hijacked by players who illegally cornered the marketplace in finance, currency and economic activity. — Neil Garfield, livinglies.me

Continuing with my article THE CONCEPT OF SECURITIZATION, and my subsequent article How Securitization Was Written by Wall Street, we continue now with the reality. What we find is predictable conflict arising out of the intentional ambiguity and vagueness of the securitization documents (Prospectus, Pooling and Servicing Agreement, Assignment and Assumption Agreement etc.). The conclusion I reach is that the Banks gambled on their ability to confuse lender/investors, borrowers, regulators, the rating agencies, the insurers, guarantors, counterparties to credit default swaps, the courts and the gamble has paid off, thus far.

THE ECONOMICS OF TOXIC WASTE MORTGAGE LOANS

It is easy to get lost in the maze of documents and transactional analysis. The simple fact is that the banks wanted to make more risky loans than the less risky loans that always worked but gave them only a sliver of the potential profit they would make if they threw their status and reputations to the wind. If they could cash in on the element of “trust” and that people would rather keep their money in a bank than under their mattress there was literally no end to the amount of money they could make. They could even use their hundred year old brand names to create the illusion that THEY would never do something as stupid as what I am about to show you:

  1. To make things simple assume that a pension fund has $1,000 that the fund manager wishes to invest in a low risk “investment.”
  2. Assume that the fund manager wants a 5% return on investment (ROI)
  3. That means of course that the fund manager expects to get his money back ($1,000) PLUS $50 per year (5% of $1,000 invested).
  4. So the fund manager calls one of his “trusted” brokers and tells the broker what the pension is looking for as a return.
  5. The broker tells the fund manager that there is an investment that qualifies.
  6. The fund manager sends the $1,000 from the pension fund to the broker.
  7. The broker lends 25% or $250 out of the $1,000, or so it seems, for interest at 5%, as demanded by the fund manager. It looks good enough that the fund manager wants to give the broker more money.
  8. The fund manager gets deposits of $50 per year and is quite happy.
  9. Skipping a few steps assume that the pension fund has been happily buying into this “investment” for a while.
  10. But the broker takes the next $1,000 and lends out only $500 at 10%, yielding a rate of return of 10% or $50. Oddly, the dollar return is exactly what the fund manager is expecting — $50 per year for each thousand invested.
  11. But the “investment” is only $500.
  12. So the broker forms a series of companies and has his “proprietary trading desk” execute a transaction in which the $500 loan is sold to the pension fund for $1,000. No money exchanges hands because the broker has already “invested” the money for his own purposes. Neither the pension fund nor the Trust gets anything from the broker-controlled entity that “sold” the loan that in many cases had not even been yet originated!
  13. The pension fund’s money is traveling a road very different than the one portrayed in the Prospectus and the Pooling and Servicing agreement. That pension money was used to originate most of the loans without even the originator knowing it. Unknown to the pension fund the pension money was sued to fund origination and acquisition of loans; this is opposite to the apparent IPO scenario where the Trust issued “mortgage-backed bonds” that the lender/investors thought they were buying. The transaction between the REMIC Trust and the pension fund was never completed. The REMIC Trust is left unfunded and the contract documents for the formation and operation of the REMIC Trust were completely ignored in reality, while the illusion was created that the REMIC Trusts (completely controlled by the broker who “sold” the “bonds”) were operating with the money from the pension fund.
  14. It is the money of the pension fund that appears at closing, having been sent there by the broker. The only lender is the pension fund and the only debt is between the homeowner and the pension fund. But that loan is never documented and that is how the brokers get to claim almost anything. They are quintessential pretender lenders operating through a veil of cloaks and curtains and peculiarly NOT branding the product because they knew it was beyond wrong. It was probably criminal.
  15. This evens things out — the fund manager sees his $1,000 “invested” and the return of $50 per year. So the fund manager is clueless as to what is happening. The fund manager does not realize that the pension fund is the direct creditor of the debtor/homeowner.
  16. Now assume that the “investment” is a bond issued by a trust that will loan money or acquire loans.
  17. That means the “sale” transaction is between the Trust created and controlled by the broker and the company that is created and controlled by the broker to loan the money. This trade occurs at the proprietary trading desk of the broker. It shows up as a sale between the Trust and, for example, Countrywide. Countrywide gets no money and delivers no documents. The Trust pays no money nor receives any documents (note or mortgage). The “depositor” for the Trust is left out of all transactions.
  18. And THAT means the broker can declare a “profit” from his proprietary trading desk of $500 — because he only loaned $500 and the pension fund gave him $1,000. That leaves $500 of uninvested capital that the broker converts to “profit” at the broker’s trading desk.
  19. The broker knows that the $500 loan is priced at 10% interest because there is a substantial likelihood that the borrower will default. The higher the risk, the higher the interest rate. Nobody would question that. This gives the broker a chance to “bet” on the failure of the loans and the consequent failure of “bonds” that derived their value from the nonexistent assets of the Trust. Frequently at “closing” the title and liability insurance names a payee other than the originator — maintaining the distance between the originator and the closing.
  20. Getting insurance and credit default swaps is difficult because of the higher risk. So the broker buys a credit default swap from another Trust he has created where the loans are conventional 5% loans. This is the conventional loan Trust, which is also probably mostly unfunded. The sale of the swap actually means that the conventional loan trust has agreed to buy the toxic loan Trust “assets” (which do not exist) if there are a sufficient number of defaults on loans on the list for that toxic waste Trust.
  21. This means that the Trust “selling” the credit default swap will make up for losses in the toxic waste trust containing loans at interest rates of 10% or higher.
  22. When the Trust with the 10% loans goes up in smoke because the loans fail at predictable rates, the conventional Trust is on the hook to bail out the toxic waste trust.
  23. The bailout virtually bankrupts the conventional trust. Both the toxic waste trust and the conventional trust have been essentially wiped out. But the pension fund continues to receive payments as long as the broker can maintain the illusion — a device created as “servicer advances” so that the pension fund will continue to buy more of these bonds which were sold as loans to the Trust.
  24. This causes a “credit event” which the broker declares and sends to the insurance company that insured the risk on the conventional loan trust. The insurer (AIG, AMBAC etc) pays the loss declared by the broker as “Master Servicer”. This further enhances the illusion that the Trust was funded and that the bonds were in fact sold and issued by the Trust in exchange for the investment by the pension fund.
  25. The losses in the toxic waste trust are covered by the credit default swap with the conventional loan trust, and the losses in the conventional loan trust are covered by insurance.
  26. When the borrower in the toxic waste trust finally stops paying, the broker orders the servicer to declare a default and foreclose. The “default” is declared based upon the provisions of the note executed at the borrower’s loan closing. But the note is evidence of a loan that does not exist — i.e., a loan by the originator to the borrower. And the mortgage therefore exists to provide security for a nonexistent debt based upon legal presumptions regarding the note, which in actuality is worthless and should be re turned to the borrower for destruction.
  27. Meanwhile the pension fund continues to get the $50 per year from the broker. So the fund manager is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the “investment” was a scam that has already blown up.
  28. Eventually the loan in “default” is sold at a foreclosure sale in the name of the broker-controlled Trust.
  29. The proceeds are not sent to the pension fund because that would alert the fund manager of the default. So the property is kept as “REO” property as long as possible. As long as the pension fund is buying bonds, the bank retains the property in REO status and keeps paying the pension fund $50 per year.
  30. CONCLUSION: The broker has created a $500 “profit” from the proprietary trading desk, the pension fund is going to get a loss from a loan that was not what they ordered, and the broker collects the proceeds of the credit default swap and the insurance without accounting to anyone. Altogether, the broker makes around $1500 on a $500 loan in which the broker received $1,000 from the pension fund. This is a general and oversimplified example of what happened in virtually all the REMIC trust financing.
  31. If the broker had put the money into the Trust and made the loans from the trust then the profit of $1500 disappears. Any profit becomes the profit of the Trust and the Trust beneficiaries. And the broker is left accepting only his typical sliver of the pie as a commission. Why accept the miniscule commission when you can claim it all and then some?
  32. When most loans are originated, they are funded by the pension fund without the pension knowing about it. In standard transactional analysis that makes the pension fund the creditor and the borrower the debtor.
  33. But the only way the broker could make his “proprietary trading profits” is by placing the name of a third party on the note and mortgage. This raises the prospect of “moral hazard” where originators claim loans as their own even though the money for the loan came from third parties. The originator thinks the money came from an aggregator. In  that scenario, the aggregator would be getting the money from the Trust but in fact, the aggregator gets no money which stays with the broker. The entire “chain” is an illusion culminating with the illusion that the Trust was an actual real party in interest. But in that case the Trust would be a holder in due course. That is the way it is supposed to be as per the Concept and the Securitization documents. Experience shows that no claims of any holder in due course are ever made.
  34. The broker’s position was protected by (a) the Assignment and Assumption Agreement with the originator and (b) control over the money going into each loan closing and coming out of it.
  35. The Assignment and Assumption Agreement is executed before the loan is originated and governs the transaction without disclosure to the borrower. It is the ONLY real assignment (sort of) in that it is the contract in which actual funds are sent to the closing table — albeit not from the originator.
  36. The originator does not get to touch the money and has no rights to the note and mortgage even if the originator’s name is on it. But to make sure, many loans were made using MERS as nominee which was also bank controlled, thus preventing the originator from “moral hazard” in claiming the loan as its own. The real purpose of MERS was not to sidestep recording fees (a perk of the plan) but rather to make sure originators had no legal or equitable claim to the fake mortgage paper that was executed by the borrower. This might constitute an admission in conduct that neither the note nor the mortgage should have been executed, much less delivered and recorded. This leads to the conclusion that none of the mortgages or notes are in actuality enforceable unless they end up in the hands of a holder in due course.
  37. To further protect the broker from the originator taking delivery of the note and doing something with it, the instructions were to destroy the note signed by the borrower which would be resurrected later through mechanical means as needed. (See Katherine Ann Porter study —2007 — when she was at University of Iowa).
  38. Control over the fictitious note and mortgage was thus secured to the broker.
  39. When and if the loan goes into foreclosure and it is contested, then the false paper is mechanically created and signed and then sent up a chain of companies none of which pays any money for the loan because none of their predecessors had anything to sell. Eventually when a loan goes into foreclosure, the paperwork appears and the assignment to the Trust is then created and executed by robo-signors etc.
  40. The only time an assignment appears is when the loan is sent into foreclosure. I have made hundreds of attempts to get the closing documents and assignments to the Trust where the loans were NOT in “default”. None of the banks had the documents. Creative discovery directed at the records custodian will confirm this basic fact.
  41. Loan are sent into foreclosure because the borrower stopped paying — even though the creditor has continued to receive all expected payments. Hence the real creditor, the pension fund, has not experienced a “Credit event” (i.e., a default). Legally no default exists unless the creditor fails to receive a required payment. In nearly all cases the creditor continued to get paid regardless of whether the payments were made by borrowers on the “faulty” notes and mortgages (see below). So the notice of default is merely the intermediaries covering their tracks as often as possible luring people into the illusion of a default or just declaring it even if the payments are current. And that is why modifications and settlements are kept to a minimum so that the government sees efforts being made to help borrowers when in fact the only real instruction is to foreclose because the $500 loan represents at least $1500 in liability to the broker and its co-venturers.
  42. In court, the broker-controlled foreclosing party asserts ownership over the debt, the note and the mortgage. The loans are “scrubbed” by LPS in Jacksonville or some other company or division (like Chase) so that only one party is selected to claim rights to enforce the false closing documents. Occasionally they still get it wrong and two parties sue for foreclosure each filing the “original” note.  In truth the debt is the property of the pension fund who will receive very little money even after the property is completely liquidated, because each of the participants in this scheme gets fees for the “work” they are doing.
  43. The REMIC Trust is left as an unfunded entity except for loans that are the subject of a final judgment of foreclosure in the name of the Trust, which is why they didn’t name the Trust as Plaintiff until recently when they couldn’t avoid it.
  44. The final judgment ends the potential liability to refund the $1500 in “profits” that the broker “made” because it is proof that the loan failed. Then the broker eventually collects the proceeds of liquidation of the property acquired in foreclosure. If such liquidation is not possible, then the broker abandons the property and it is demolished. (see Detroit, Cleveland and other cities where entire neighborhoods were demolished and parks put in their place).
  45. By adding a healthy scoop of toxic waste loans and nearly toxic waste loans to the mix, the broker makes far more money in fees, profits and commissions than the original principal of the loan. By adding multiple sales to the mix of the same loan or the same bond, they made even more. And each time a foreclosure judgment is entered, and each time a foreclosure sale is said to be completed, the brokers are laughing their heads off because they got away with it.

The gamble has worked very well for the brokers (investment banks) because even now, all these parties are assuming there is at least some truth in what the Banks are saying in Court. They are wrong. Most of the positions taken in court are directly in conflict with the actual facts, the actual transactions and the actual movement of money. These banks continue to profit from the confusion and the inability or unwillingness of all those parties to actually read the documents and then demand proof that the transactions were real.

The press has not done much good either. Take a look at virtually any article written by financial and other types reporters. They get close to the third rail of journalism but they fail or refuse to take it to the next step — a report or declaration that most of the mortgages are fatally defective, incapable of being legally enforced, and leaving the borrowers and lenders with nothing but their own wits to figure out what to do with the debt that was created. Such a paradigm shift would mirror the policy adopted in Iceland where household debt was reduced by more than 25% providing the earliest evidence of a stimulus to a failing economy — producing positive GDP growth and low unemployment far ahead of the gains reported in other economies, including the U.S. The fact remains that the debt is no longer as much as what was loaned, it is not owned by any of the strangers who are enforcing them, and the note and mortgage are fatally defective.

If I am a borrower and I receive a loan of money from one person and then I am tricked into signing a note and mortgage in favor of someone else, there are TWO potential liabilities created — in exchange for ONE loan of money. If the signed paperwork gets into the hands of someone who is a Holder in Due Course, the fact that the borrower was cheated is irrelevant. I will owe the entire loan to both the person who loaned me the money AND the person who paid for the fake paperwork in good faith without knowledge of my defenses. But if the end party with the paperwork does NOT claim Holder in Due Course status, then the borrower has a right to show the loan on THAT PAPERWORK never happened. So then I will owe only the person from whom I received the money — a loan that is undocumented (except for proof of payment) and thus unsecured. Thus borrowers should not be seen as seeking relief; they should be seen as seeking justice — one debt for one loan.

The fact is that the borrower is treated as the party with the burden of proving that no loan actually underlies the paperwork upon which the forecloser is placing reliance. It is unfair to place the burden on the borrower, and within the Judge’s discretion, based upon common law, the Judge has the power to require the foreclosing party to prove the underlying loan if it is merely denied (as opposed to appearing in the affirmative defenses).

Both the closing documents with the lender (pension fund) and the closing documents with the borrower (homeowner) should be considered void, in the nature of a wild deed. Hence there could be no foreclosure and any foreclosure that already happened would be wrongful. In a quiet title action the mortgage on record should be nullified first, and then the homeowner could move on to seeking a declaration of rights from the court in which his title is not impaired by the bogus mortgage based upon a bogus note which is evidence of a loan of money that does not exist.

If I am lender and I give a broker money to deliver to a trust that is the borrower in my transaction and then the broker gives my money to someone else as a loan, the same reasoning applies. The mistake made is calling these lenders “investors”. They are not. They think they are investors and everyone calls them that but they have not invested in any Trust because their money was never delivered to the intended borrower and was instead loaned to borrowers that the lender would never have approved in a manner that was specifically prohibited by the securitization documents (which were routinely ignored).

Like the borrower, the lenders are stuck with documentation for a loan that never happened. The loan was intended (concept and written documents) to be between themselves and a trust. But the REMIC Trust never got the money. The lender (pension fund) is left with an undocumented loan to an actual borrower without a note or mortgage made in favor of the lender or any agent of the lender. Neither the common law nor the securitization documents were followed — delivery of the loan documents simply never happened; nor did payment for those documents (except for exorbitant fees and “profits” declared by the participants in the scheme).

If you look at an article like Trustees Seek $4.5 Billion Settlement with JP Morgan, you see the usual code language. But like the court room, follow-up questions would be appropriate. “Mortgage-bond trustees including U.S. Bank N.A. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. asked a New York state court judge to approve a $4.5 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) over investor claims of faulty home loans.”

US Bank is consolidating its position as the Trustee of multiple REMIC Trusts whose documents name other parties and conditions for replacement of Trustee that prohibit US Bank from becoming the “new Trustee.” This is like a stranger to the transaction in non-judicial states who declares that it the beneficiary without proving it and then names a “substitute trustee” on the deed of trust. This substitution is frequently bogus. But if it goes unchallenged, it becomes the law of that case. The “beneficiary” under the deed of trust is nothing of the kind and the substitution of trustee is just plain wrong.

Bank of New York Mellon is essentially clueless as to what actions are pending in its name and they never produce a witness even when they are the plaintiff in the judicial foreclosure states. The current common practice is to rotate “servicers” such that the witness at a foreclosure trial is a person employed by a servicer who is new to the transaction — long after the loan was claimed to be in default and long after the “assignment” appeared and long after even the foreclosure litigation commenced. There also exists a confused claim because of rotation of Plaintiffs without amendment to the pleadings.  Plaintiffs are rotated as though it were only a name change. At trial there exists an amorphous claim of being the owner of the debt which is more like an implication or presumption.

The broker (investment banks) never claim to be a holder in due course because THAT would require proof of payment, delivery of the documents, good faith and lack of knowledge of the borrower’s defenses. But worse, it would reveal that BONY/Mellon has no records, knowledge, possession or accounts relating to the trust, the pool or any individual loan — except those that have been foreclosed on false pretenses.

JP Morgan has been caught in flat out lies repeatedly as to “ownership” of loans allegedly obtained from Washington Mutual for a price of “ZERO” without any agreement or assignment even claiming that the loans were purchased by Chase. Many of their claims are based upon “loans” originated by non-existent entities like American Broker’s Conduit. We see the same entities or non entities used by Wells Fargo, Bank of America and CitiMortgage with great regularity.

“Faulty home loans” is a phrase frequently used in press releases and press reports. What does that mean? If they were faulty, in what way? If they were faulty how could they be enforceable? This goes back to what I said above. The real loan was never documented.  And what was documented was not a real loan. This enabled the banks to create the illusion of normal paperwork for “standard home loans” as they frequently claim through their attorneys in court. By trick and intentional confusion they often convince a Judge to treat them as though they were holders in due course even without the claim of HDC status thus defeating the borrower before the case ever gets to trial.

So why are they settling for $4.5 Billion on more than $75 Billion in “securitized” “mortgage backed” bonds? Notice that 5 of them won’t settle which is to say they won’t join the party. The rest are willing to continue playing games with these worthless bonds and worthless loan documents. By “settling” for $4.5 Billion, the Trustees are taking about 6 cents on the dollar. They are also pretending that they are the ultimate owners of the bonds and mortgages. And they are pretending that the bonds and mortgages are real, hoping that the courts will continue to treat them as such. Hence they maintain the illusion that securitization of home loans was real.

The real problem can be seen by reference to the shadow banking marketplace, where the nominal value of cash equivalent instruments are now estimated to be around 1 quadrillion dollars — which is around 12-14 times the actual amount of all the government fiat money issued in the current world. Nobody knows if there is any real value in those instruments but current estimates are that they might be worth as much as $27 Trillion which is still more than 1/3 of all government fiat money issued in the current world. Why so much?

The loans and the bonds were all sold multiple times under various disguises. The simple truth is that a final deed issued as a result of an “auction” from a foreclosure seals off much of the liability for returning the money that the banks received when they posed as lenders and sold, insured or hedged their interest in the bonds and mortgages, neither of which could they possibly own and neither of which had any value in the first place. The original debt between the lenders (pension funds etc) and the borrowers (homeowners) remains in place and is continued to be carried on the books of multiple institutions who think they own it.

The practical solution might be a court recognition of the banks as agents of the lenders, and allocating the multiple payments received by the lenders, the banks and all the other intermediaries. This will vastly reduce or even eliminate the debt from the homeowner leaving the defrauded lender/investors to sue the banks not for 6 cents on the dollar but for 100 cents on the dollar. Any other resolution leaves homeowners holding the bag on transactions they could not possibly have understood because the information — that would have alerted them to these issues — was intentionally withheld.

The behavior of the brokers (investment banks) lends considerable support to the defense of unclean hands. Even if they somehow validated or ratified the closing foreclosure procedures they should be left with an unenforceable mortgage and then a note on which they could sue — if they could prove that the loan of money came from someone in their alleged chain of title.

The solution is to recognize the obvious. This will restore household wealth and prevent further gains by the banks who created this mess.

 

 

Giunta Prevails on Wells Fargo Motion to Dismiss — Federal Court

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Patrick Giunta, Esq. the lead litigator for the livinglies team has done it again. He filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo while the trial on a foreclosure was underway. Wells Fargo now faces a loss in the foreclosure where their witness admitted to being unable to explain the chain of ownership, the balance and the reason why Wells Fargo refused to cooperate in the sale of the property that would have paid them in full.

This corroborates my strategy that presumes that the foreclosers don’t want the house or the money. What the banks want is a foreclosure judgment that forces the loan onto an investor who does not even know of the existence of the proceedings. besides it being illegal and unfair, it raises questions of jurisdiction and standing, because the actual source of funds — the investors who in reality own the debt directly — receive no notice of the proceeding — and they think they barred by the terms of the Prospectus and Pooling and Servicing Agreement from even inquiring about the status of the “pool” (which is most likely non-existent except where foreclosure judgments have been entered).

Here Judge Dimitroleas, Federal Judge in the Southern District of Florida, ruled that the Homeowner has rights of action for money damages against dubious claims from “holders”, “servicers” and even “trustees.” Along with other claims, Giunta survived a motion to dismiss the homeowner’s claim for fraudulent misrepresentation — as to the status of the loan, the ownership and the balance.

The fact pattern of this case clearly corroborates the fact that “servicers” are claiming ownership or rights to enforce debts that they don’t own and don’t have any authority to represent the creditor because they are making false claims of securitization. Thus the banks cannot say they actually represent the investors who THOUGHT they were buying mortgage backed securities from a funded trust that was originating and acquiring loans. If they admit the facts in reality they are admitting to committing fraud on the investors, the insurers, the guarantors, and of course the borrowers. The presumption regarding ownership or rights to enforce is directly contrary to the actual facts. And the threshold for rebutting those presumptions is fast falling in Federal and State courts.

Patrick Giunta is located in Broward County Florida.

see Grave – (DE28) – Order on Motion to Dismiss

Maine Moving toward the Truth About the Mortgages, MERS and Foreclosures

submitted by anonymous reader:

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The Maine Supreme Court has been active in the last few months – issuing several decisions that will likely impact foreclosure actions in that state. The decisions covered a full range of foreclosure issues, from whether a lender can establish standing when it holds an assignment of the mortgage from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (“MERS”) to the amount a borrower must pay to cure a default. If you originate and/or service RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE LOANS in this state, you may want to review these recent cases. This alert focuses on the court’s holdings in one of these cases, Bank of America, N.A. v. Greenleaf, — A.3d —-, 2014 WL 2988236 (Me., July 3, 2014) (Review the Maine Supreme Court Opinion.)

Assignment from MERS May Only Transfer Right to Record Mortgage

The Maine Supreme Court’s decision in Greenleaf may require lenders to make some changes before they initiate FORECLOSURE actions in this state in which the mortgage identifies MERS as the nominee for the lender. This case presented some simple basic facts, but the court’s holdings may raise concerns. In 2006, Scott Greenleaf executed a promissory note for $385,000 to RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE Services, Inc. (“RMS”) and signed a mortgage securing the debt. The note was endorsed in blank. The mortgage listed RMS as the lender and MERS as the nominee for the lender.
In 2011, Bank of America, N.A. (“BofA”) initiated FORECLOSURE proceedings against Greenleaf. It was undisputed that Greenleaf had failed to make payments on the loan since 2008. Although some interim drama played out in the FORECLOSURE proceeding, a trial was held in 2013. BofA presented the following documents to the court: the original note, the mortgage, and a document recorded in 2011 reflecting the assignment of the mortgage from MERS to BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP (“BAC”), an entity that subsequently merged with BofA. The court entered a judgment of FORECLOSURE IN favor of BofA and Greenleaf appealed.
Greenleaf alleged, among other things, that BofA lacked standing to seek foreclosure of the property since BofA did not have an interest in both the promissory note and the mortgage securing that note. Since the note was endorsed in blank and BofA had possession of the note, the Maine Supreme Court held that BofA met the first prong of the standing test. However, the court found that BofA failed to establish the second prong of the test, ownership of the mortgage.
The court struggled with the 2011 assignment of the mortgage by MERS to BAC. The court focused on one sentence in the 2006 mortgage that specifically provided that MERS was the mortgagee of record for purposes of recording the mortgage. The court held that this provision of the mortgage only granted MERS the right to record the mortgage as the lender’s nominee. When MERS then assigned its interest to BAC, the court held that it granted BAC only the right that it possessed, the right to record the mortgage as nominee for the lender. When BAC then merged with BofA, BofA only obtained the right that BAC had possessed, the right to record the mortgage as nominee. The court also noted that there was no separate and independent assignment of the mortgage from RMS to MERS, BAC, or BofA. As such, the court held that the record only demonstrated a series of assignments of the right to record the mortgage as nominee. In the absence of evidence that BofA owned the Greenleaf mortgage, the Maine Supreme Court held that BofA lacked standing to seek foreclosure and vacated the lower court’s judgment of foreclosure.
Since similar “right to record” language is included in many mortgage forms, lenders and servicers should pay particular attention to whether they are relying on assignments from MERS before initiating a foreclosure action in this state. Unless a lender holds or can obtain an assignment of the mortgage from the originating lender (and many of this lenders may no longer be in business), a lender may need to explore other options for establishing the second prong of the standing test in Maine. A mortgage assignment by MERS, standing alone, may not be sufficient to prove an assignment of a mortgage.
In response to the Greenleaf decision, many of the title insurers in the state have issued guidance regarding title issues under various scenarios in which MERS had assigned the mortgages. At least one title insurer has indicated that if MERS assigned the mortgage in a pending foreclosure action, an assignment from the original lender to the FORECLOSING mortgagee will be required in order for title to be insured without exception.

No Adjustments to Disclosed Payoff Amount Permitted During Cure Period

The Greenleaf court also defined the amount a borrower can be required to pay to cure a default. The notice of default and right to cure sent to Greenleaf included an itemization of all past due amounts and identified the total amount required to be paid by Greenleaf to cure the default. This total amount included a footnote reference that Greenleaf should “[c]ontact the servicer to obtain an up to date figure for outstanding attorney fees, unpaid taxes and costs before sending payment” and the notice also separately provided that Greenleaf should contact BAC at a prescribed telephone number “to obtain an up to date figure before sending payment.” Similar disclosures are generally included in the right to cure notices provided by many lenders and servicers.
Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 14, § 6111 provides that the contents of the notice of default and right to cure must include, among other things, an itemization of all past due amounts causing the loan to be in default and an itemization of any other charges that must be paid in order to cure the default. Greenleaf argued that the addition of the “call for updated information” references did not meet the statutory requirement that the notice itself must provide an itemization of other charges that must be paid in order to cure the default. The Maine Supreme Court agreed with Greenleaf and held that state law effectively freezes additions to the payoff amount during the cure period.
As such, the amount stated in the notice of default and right to cure is the only amount the borrower can be required to pay to cure the default during the 35 day cure period. Any attorneys’ fees incurred in continuing efforts to recover on the loan and advances made for property taxes or insurance during the cure period – none of these amounts can be added to the amount a borrower may be required to pay to cure the default. The court noted that the incorrect “call for updated information” references in the cure notice were an independent basis on which they could have vacated the lower court’s foreclosure judgment.

Changing Landscape?

Lenders and servicers should work closely with their foreclosure counsel to ensure they can establish standing before initiating a foreclose action in Maine. Lenders and servicers may also want to work with the title insurers to address any title issues that may arise in connection with MERS assignments. With certain changes in their foreclosure practices, lenders and servicers should still be able to prove up ownership of each mortgage sufficient to pass the Greenleaf court’s standing scrutiny. In addition, lenders and servicers should review their cure notice form templates used in this state and any corresponding policies and procedures to ensure that a borrower is never advised or required to pay more than the total amount due as disclosed in the cure notice. The Greenleaf court may have stirred the lobster pot – but lenders and services have options to adapt to the court’s recipes.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Securitization for Lawyers: How it was Written by Wall Street Banks

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Continuing with my article THE CONCEPT OF SECURITIZATION from yesterday, we have been looking at the CONCEPT of Securitization and determined there is nothing theoretically wrong with it. That alone accounts for tens of thousands of defenses” raised in foreclosure actions across the country where borrowers raised the “defense” securitization. No such thing exists. Foreclosure defense is contract defense — i.e., you need to prove that in your case the elements of contract are absent and THAT is why the note or the mortgage cannot be enforced. Keep in mind that it is entirely possible to prove that the mortgage is unenforceable even if the note remains enforceable. But as we have said in a hundred different ways, it does not appear to me that in most cases, the loan contract ever existed, or that the acquisition contract in which the loan was being “purchased” ever occurred. But much of THAT argument is left for tomorrow’s article on Securitization as it was practiced by Wall Street banks.

So we know that the concept of securitization is almost as old as commerce itself. The idea of reducing risk and increasing the opportunity for profits is an essential element of commerce and capitalism. Selling off pieces of a venture to accomplish a reduction of risk on one ship or one oil well or one loan has existed legally and properly for a long time without much problem except when a criminal used the system against us — like Ponzi, Madoff or Drier or others. And broadening the venture to include many ships, oil wells or loans makes sense to further reduce risk and increase the likelihood of a healthy profit through volume.

Syndication of loans has been around as long as banking has existed. Thus agreements to share risk and profit or actually selling “shares” of loans have been around, enabling banks to offer loans to governments, big corporations or even little ones. In the case of residential loans, few syndications are known to have been used. In 1983, syndications called securitizations appeared in residential loans, credit cards, student loans, auto loans and all types of other consumer loans where the issuance of IPO securities representing shares of bundles of debt.

For logistical and legal reasons these securitizations had to be structured to enable the flow of loans into “special purpose vehicles” (SPV) which were simply corporations, partnerships or Trusts that were formed for the sole purpose of taking ownership of loans that were originated or acquired with the money the SPV acquired from an offering of “bonds” or other “shares” representing an undivided fractional share of the entire portfolio of that particular SPV.

The structural documents presented to investors included the Prospectus, Subscription Agreement, and Pooling and Servicing Agreement (PSA). The prospectus is supposed to disclose the use of proceeds and the terms of the payback. Since the offering is in the form of a bond, it is actually a loan from the investor to the Trust, coupled with a fractional ownership interest in the alleged “pool of assets” that is going into the Trust by virtue of the Trustee’s acceptance of the assets. That acceptance executed by the Trustee is in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement, which is an exhibit to the Prospectus. In theory that is proper. The problem is that the assets don’t exist, can’t be put in the trust and the proceeds of sale of the Trust mortgage-backed bonds doesn’t go into the Trust or any account that is under the authority of the Trustee.

The writing of the securitization documents was done by a handful of law firms under the direction of a few individual lawyers, most of whom I have not been able to identify. One of them is located in Chicago. There are some reports that 9 lawyers from a New Jersey law firm resigned rather than participate in the drafting of the documents. The reports include emails from the 9 lawyers saying that they refused to be involved in the writing of a “criminal enterprise.”

I believe the report is true, after reading so many documents that purport to create a securitization scheme. The documents themselves start off with what one would and should expect in the terms and provisions of a Prospectus, Pooling and Servicing Agreement etc. But as you read through them, you see the initial terms and provisions eroded to the point of extinction. What is left is an amalgam of options for the broker dealers selling the mortgage backed bonds.

The options all lead down roads that are absolutely opposite to what any real party in interest would allow or give their consent or agreement. The lenders (investors) would never have agreed to what was allowed in the documents. The rating agencies and insurers and guarantors would never have gone along with the scheme if they had truly understood what was intended. And of course the “borrowers” (homeowners) had no idea that claims of securitization existed as to the origination or intended acquisition their loans. Allan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, said he read the documents and couldn’t understand them. He also said that he had more than 100 PhD’s and lawyers who read them and couldn’t understand them either.

Greenspan believed that “market forces” would correct the ambiguities. That means he believed that people who were actually dealing with these securities as buyers, sellers, rating agencies, insurers and guarantors would reject them if the appropriate safety measures were not adopted. After he left the Federal Reserve he admitted he was wrong. Market forces did not and could not correct the deficiencies and defects in the entire process.

The REAL document is the Assignment and Assumption Agreement that is NOT usually disclosed or attached as an exhibit to the Prospectus. THAT is the agreement that controls everything that happens with the borrower at the time of the alleged “closing.” See me on YouTube to explain the Assignment and Assumption Agreement. Suffice it to say that contrary to the representations made in the sale of the bonds by the broker to the investor, the money from the investor goes into the control of the broker dealer and NOT the REMIC Trust. The Broker Dealer filters some of the money down to closings in the name of “originators” ranging from large (Wells Fargo, Countrywide) to small (First Magnus et al). I’ll tell you why tomorrow or the next day. The originators are essentially renting their names the same as the Trustees of the REMIC Trusts. It looks right but isn’t what it appears. Done properly, the lender on the note and mortgage would be the REMIC Trust or a common aggregator. But if the Banks did it properly they wouldn’t have had such a joyful time in the moral hazard zone.

The PSA turned out to be the primary document creating the Trusts that were creating primarily under the laws of the State of New York because New York and a few other states had a statute that said that any variance from the express terms of the Trust was VOID, not voidable. This gave an added measure of protection to the investors that the SPV would not be used for any purpose other than what was described, and eliminated the need for them to sue the Trustee or the Trust for misuse of their funds. What the investors did not understand was that there were provisions in the enabling documents that allowed the brokers and other intermediaries to ignore the Trust altogether, assert ownership in the name of a broker or broker-controlled entity and trade on both the loans and the bonds.

The Prospectus SHOULD have contained the full list of all loans that were being aggregated into the SPV or Trust. And the Trust instrument (PSA) should have shown that the investors were receiving not only a promise to repay them but also a share ownership in the pool of loans. One of the first signals that Wall Street was running an illegal scheme was that most prospectuses stated that the pool assets were disclosed in an attached spreadsheet, which contained the description of loans that were already in existence and were then accepted by the Trustee of the SPV (REMIC Trust) in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. The problem was that the vast majority of Prospectuses and Pooling and Servicing agreements either omitted the exhibit showing the list of loans or stated outright that the attached list was not the real list and that the loans on the spreadsheet were by example only and not the real loans.

Most of the investors were “stable managed funds.” This is a term of art that applied to retirement, pension and similar type of managed funds that were under strict restrictions about the risk they could take, which is to say, the risk had to be as close to zero as possible. So in order to present a pool that the fund manager of a stable managed fund could invest fund assets the investment had to qualify under the rules and regulations restricting the activities of stable managed funds. The presence of stable managed funds buying the bonds or shares of the Trust also encouraged other types of investors to buy the bonds or shares.

But the number of loans (which were in the thousands) in each bundle made it impractical for the fund managers of stable managed funds to examine the portfolio. For the most part, if they done so they would not found one loan that was actually in existence and obviously would not have done the deal. But they didn’t do it. They left it on trust for the broker dealers to prove the quality of the investment in bonds or shares of the SPV or Trust.

So the broker dealers who were creating the SPVs (Trusts) and selling the bonds or shares, went to the rating agencies which are quasi governmental units that give a score not unlike the credit score given to individuals. Under pressure from the broker dealers, the rating agencies went from quality culture to a profit culture. The broker dealers were offering fees and even premium on fees for evaluation and rating of the bonds or shares they were offering. They HAD to have a rating that the bonds or shares were “investment grade,” which would enable the stable managed funds to buy the bonds or shares. The rating agencies were used because they had been independent sources of evaluation of risk and viability of an investment, especially bonds — even if the bonds were not treated as securities under a 1998 law signed into law by President Clinton at the behest of both republicans and Democrats.

Dozens of people in the rating agencies set off warning bells and red flags stating that these were not investment grade securities and that the entire SPV or Trust would fail because it had to fail.  The broker dealers who were the underwriters on nearly all the business done by the rating agencies used threats, intimidation and the carrot of greater profits to get the ratings they wanted. and responded to threats that the broker would get the rating they wanted from another rating agency and that they would not ever do business with the reluctant rating agency ever again — threatening to effectively put the rating agency out of business. At the rating agencies, the “objectors” were either terminated or reassigned. Reports in the Wal Street Journal show that it was custom and practice for the rating officers to be taken on fishing trips or other perks in order to get the required the ratings that made Wall Street scheme of “securitization” possible.

This threat was also used against real estate appraisers prompting them in 2005 to send a petition to Congress signed by 8,000 appraisers, in which they said that the instructions for appraisal had been changed from a fair market value appraisal to an appraisal that would make each deal work. the appraisers were told that if they didn’t “play ball” they would never be hired again to do another appraisal. Many left the industry, but the remaining ones, succumbed to the pressure and, like the rating agencies, they gave the broker dealers what they wanted. And insurers of the bonds or shares freely issued policies based upon the same premise — the rating from the respected rating agencies. And ultimate this also effected both guarantors of the loans and “guarantors” of the bonds or shares in the Trusts.

So the investors were now presented with an insured investment grade rating from a respected and trusted source. The interest rate return was attractive — i.e., the expected return was higher than any of the current alternatives that were available. Some fund managers still refused to participate and they are the only ones that didn’t lose money in the crisis caused by Wall Street — except for a period of time through the negative impact on the stock market and bond market when all securities became suspect.

In order for there to be a “bundle” of loans that would go into a pool owned by the Trust there had to be an aggregator. The aggregator was typically the CDO Manager (CDO= Collateralized Debt Obligation) or some entity controlled by the broker dealer who was selling the bonds or shares of the SPV or Trust. So regardless of whether the loan was originated with funds from the SPV or was originated by an actual lender who sold the loan to the trust, the debts had to be processed by the aggregator to decide who would own them.

In order to protect the Trust and the investors who became Trust beneficiaries, there was a structure created that made it look like everything was under control for their benefit. The Trust was purchasing the pool within the time period prescribed by the Internal Revenue Code. The IRC allowed the creation of entities that were essentially conduits in real estate mortgages — called Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits (REMICs). It allows for the conduit to be set up and to “do business” for 90 days during which it must acquire whatever assets are being acquired. The REMIC Trust then distributes the profits to the investors. In reality, the investors were getting worthless bonds issued by unfunded trusts for the acquisition of assets that were never purchased (because the trusts didn’t have the money to buy them).

The TRUSTEE of the REMIC Trust would be called a Trustee and should have had the powers and duties of a Trustee. But instead the written provisions not only narrowed the duties and obligations of the Trustee but actual prevented both the Trustee and the beneficiaries from even inquiring about the actual portfolio or the status of any loan or group of loans. The way it was written, the Trustee of the REMIC Trust was in actuality renting its name to appear as Trustee in order to give credence to the offering to investors.

There was also a Depositor whose purpose was to receive, process and store documents from the loan closings — except for the provisions that said, no, the custodian, would store the records. In either case it doesn’t appear that either the Depositor nor the “custodian” ever received the documents. In fact, it appears as though the documents were mostly purposely lost and destroyed, as per the Iowa University study conducted by Katherine Ann Porter in 2007. Like the others, the Depositor was renting its name as though ti was doing something when it was doing nothing.

And there was a servicer described as a Master Servicer who could delegate certain functions to subservicers. And buried in the maze of documents containing hundreds of pages of mind-numbing descriptions and representations, there was a provision that stated the servicer would pay the monthly payment to the investor regardless of whether the borrower made any payment or not. The servicer could stop making those payments if it determined, in its sole discretion, that it was not “recoverable.”

This was the hidden part of the scheme that might be a simple PONZI scheme. The servicers obviously could have no interest in making payments they were not receiving from borrowers. But they did have an interest in continuing payments as long as investors were buying bonds. THAT is because the Master Servicers were the broker dealers, who were selling the bonds or shares. Those same broker dealers designated their own departments as the “underwriter.” So the underwriters wrote into the prospectus the presence of a “reserve” account, the source of funding for which was never made clear. That was intentionally vague because while some of the “servicer advance” money might have come from the investors themselves, most of it came from external “profits” claimed by the broker dealers.

The presence of  servicer advances is problematic for those who are pursuing foreclosures. Besides the fact that they could not possibly own the loan, and that they couldn’t possibly be a proper representative of an owner of the loan or Holder in Due Course, the actual creditor (the group of investors or theoretically the REMIC Trust) never shows a default of any kind even when the servicers or sub-servicers declare a default, send a notice of default, send a notice of acceleration etc. What they are doing is escalating their volunteer payments to the creditor — made for their own reasons — to the status of a holder or even a holder in due course — despite the fact that they never acquired the loan, the debt, the note or the mortgage.

The essential fact here is that the only paperwork that shows actual transfer of money is that which contains a check or wire transfer from investor to the broker dealer — and then from the broker dealer to various entities including the CLOSING AGENT (not the originator) who applied the funds to a closing in which the originator was named as the Lender when they had never advanced any funds, were being paid as a vendor, and would sign anything, just to get another fee. The money received by the borrower or paid on behalf of the borrower was money from the investors, not the Trust.

So the note should have named the investors, not the Trust nor the originator. And the mortgage should have made the investors the mortgagee, not the Trust nor the originator. The actual note and mortgage signed in favor of the originator were both void documents because they failed to identify the parties to the loan contract. Another way of looking at the same thing is to say there was no loan contract because neither the investors nor the borrowers knew or understood what was happening at the closing, neither had an opportunity to accept or reject the loan, and neither got title to the loan nor clear title after the loan. The investors were left with a debt that could be recovered probably as a demand loan, but which was unsecured by any mortgage or security agreement.

To counter that argument these intermediaries are claiming possession of the note and mortgage (a dubious proposal considering the Porter study) and therefore successfully claiming, incorrectly, that the facts don’t matter, and they have the absolute right to prevail in a foreclosure on a home secured by a mortgage that names a non-creditor as mortgagee without disclosure of the true source of funds. By claiming legal presumptions, the foreclosers are in actuality claiming that form should prevail over substance.

Thus the broker-dealers created written instruments that are the opposite of the Concept of Securitization, turning complete transparency into a brick wall. Investor should have been receiving verifiable reports and access into the portfolio of assets, none of which in actuality were ever purchased by the Trust, because the pooling and servicing agreement is devoid of any representation that the loans have been purchased by the Trust or that the Trust paid for the pool of loans. Most of the actual transfers occurred after the cutoff date for REMIC status under the IRC, violating the provisions of the PSA/Trust document that states the transfer must be complete within the 90 day cutoff period. And it appears as though the only documents even attempted to be transferred into the pool are those that are in default or in foreclosure. The vast majority of the other loans are floating in cyberspace where anyone can grab them if they know where to look.

Securitization for Lawyers

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

The CONCEPT of securitization does not contemplate an increase in violations of lending laws passed by States or the Federal government. Far from it. The CONCEPT anticipated a decrease in risk, loss and liability for violations of TILA, RESPA or state deceptive lending laws. The assumption was that the strictly regulated stable managed funds (like pensions), insurers, and guarantors would ADD to the protections to investors as lenders and homeowners as borrowers. That it didn’t work that way is the elephant in the living room. It shows that the concept was not followed, the written instruments reveal a sneaky intent to undermine the concept. The practices of the industry violated everything — the lending laws, investment restrictions, and the securitization documents themselves. — Neil F Garfield, Livinglies.me

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“Securitization” is a word that provokes many emotional reactions ranging from hatred to frustration. Beliefs run the range from the idea that securitization is evil to the idea that it is irrelevant. Taking the “irrelevant” reaction first, I would say that comes from ignorance and frustration. To look at a stack of Documents, each executed with varying formalities, and each being facially valid and then call them all irrelevant is simply burying your head in the sand. On the other hand, calling securitization evil is equivalent to rejecting capitalism. So let’s look at securitization dispassionately.

First of all “securitization” merely refers to a concept that has been in operation for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands of years if you look into the details of commerce and investment. In our recent history it started with “joint stock companies” that financed sailing expeditions for goods and services. Instead of one person or one company taking all the risk that one ship might not come back, or come back with nothing, investors could spread their investment dollars by buying shares in a “joint stock company” that invested their money in multiple sailing ventures. So if some ship came in loaded with goods it would more than offset the ships that sunk, were pirated, or that lost their cargo. Diversifying risk produced more reliable profits and virtually eliminated the possibility of financial ruin because of the tragedies the befell a single cargo ship.

Every stock certificate or corporate or even government bond is the product of securitization. In our capitalist society, securitization is essential to attract investment capital and therefore growth. For investors it is a way of participating in the risk and rewards of companies run by officers and directors who present a believable vision of success. Investors can invest in one company alone, but most, thanks to capitalism and securitization, are able to invest in many companies and many government issued bonds. In all cases, each stock certificate or bond certificate is a “derivative” — i.e., it DERIVES ITS VALUE from the economic value of the company or government that issued that stock certificate or bond certificate.

In other words, securitization is a vehicle for diversification of investment. Instead of one “all or nothing” investment, the investors gets to spread the risk over multiple companies and governments. The investor can do this in one of two ways — either manage his own investments buying and selling stocks and bonds, or investing in one or more managed funds run by professional managers buying and selling stocks and bonds. Securitization of debt has all the elements of diversification and is essential to the free flow of commerce in a capitalistic economy.

Preview Questions:

  • What happens if the money from investors is NOT put in the company or given to the government?
  • What happens if the certificates are NOT delivered back to investors?
  • What happens if the company that issued the stock never existed or were not used as an investment vehicle as promised to investors?
  • What happens to “profits” that are reported by brokers who used investor money in ways never contemplated, expected or accepted by investors?
  • Who is accountable under laws governing the business of the IPO entity (i.e., the REMIC Trust in our context).
  • Who are the victims of misbehavior of intermediaries?
  • Who bears the risk of loss caused by misbehavior of intermediaries?
  • What are the legal questions and issues that arise when the joint stock company is essentially an instrument of fraud? (See Madoff, Drier etc. where the “business” was actually collecting money from lenders and investors which was used to pay prior investors the expected return).

In order to purchase a security deriving its value from mortgage loans, you could diversify by buying fractional shares of specific loans you like (a new and interesting business that is internet driven) or you could go the traditional route — buying fractional shares in multiple companies who are buying loans in bulk. The share certificates you get derive their value from the value of the IPO issuer of the shares (a REMIC Trust, usually). Like any company, the REMIC Trust derives its value from the value of its business. And the REMIC business derives its value from the quality of the loan originations and loan acquisitions. Fulfillment of the perceived value is derived from effective servicing and enforcement of the loans.

All investments in all companies and all government issued bonds or other securities are derivatives simply because they derive their value from something described on the certificate. With a stock certificate, the value is derived from a company whose name appears on the certificate. That tells you which company you invested your money. The number of shares tells you how many shares you get. The indenture to the stock certificate or bond certificate describes the voting rights, rights to  distributions of income, and rights to distribution of the company is sold or liquidated. But this assumes that the company or government entity actually exists and is actually doing business as described in the IPO prospectus and subscription agreement.

The basic element of value and legal rights in such instruments is that there must be a company doing business in the name of the company who is shown on the share certificates — i.e., there must be actual financial transactions by the named parties that produce value for shareholders in the IPO entity, and the holders of certificates must have a right to receive those benefits. The securitization of a company through an IPO that offers securities to investors offer one additional legal fiction that is universally enforced — limited liability. Limited liability refers to the fact that the investment is at risk (if the company or REMIC fails) but the investor can’t lose more than he or she invested.

Translated to securitization of debt, there must be a transaction that is an actual loan of money that is not merely presumed, but which is real. That loan, like a stock certificate, must describe the actual debtor and the actual creditor. An investor does not intentionally buy a share of loans that were purchased from people who did not make any loans or conduct any lending business in which they were the source of lending.

While there are provisions in the law that can make a promissory note payable to anyone who is holding it, there is no allowance for enforcing a non-existent loan except in the event that the purchaser is a “Holder in Due Course.” The HDC can enforce both the note and mortgage because he has satisfied both Article 3 and Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The Pooling and Servicing Agreements of REMIC Trusts require compliance with the UCC, and other state and federal laws regarding originating or acquiring residential mortgage loans.

In short, the PSA requires that the Trust become a Holder in Due Course in order for the Trustee of the Trust to accept the loan as part of the pool owned by the Trust on behalf of the Trust Beneficiaries who have received a “certificate” of fractional ownership in the Trust. Anything less than HDC status is unacceptable. And if you were the investor you would want nothing less. You would want loans that cannot be defended on the basis of violation of lending laws and practices.

The loan, as described in the origination documents, must actually exist. A stock certificate names the company that is doing business. The loan describes the debtor and creditor. Any failure to describe the the debtor or creditor with precision, results in a failure of the loan contract, and the documents emerging from such a “closing” are worthless. If you want to buy a share of IBM you don’t buy a share of Itty Bitty Machines, Inc., which was just recently incorporated with its assets consisting of a desk and a chair. The name on the certificate or other legal document is extremely important.

In loan documents, the only exception to the “value” proposition in the event of the absence of an actual loan is another legal fiction designed to promote the free flow of commerce. It is called “Holder in Due Course.” The loan IS enforceable in the absence of an actual loan between the parties on the loan documents, if a third party innocent purchases the loan documents for value in good faith and without knowledge of the borrower’s defense of failure of consideration (he didn’t get the loan from the creditor named on the note and mortgage).  This is a legislative decision made by virtually all states — if you sign papers, you are taking the risk that your promises will be enforced against you even if your counterpart breached the loan contract from the start. The risk falls on the maker of the note who can sue the loan originator for misusing his signature but cannot bring all potential defenses to enforcement by the Holder in Due Course.

Florida Example:

673.3021 Holder in due course.

(1) Subject to subsection (3) and s. 673.1061(4), the term “holder in due course” means the holder of an instrument if:

(a) The instrument when issued or negotiated to the holder does not bear such apparent evidence of forgery or alteration or is not otherwise so irregular or incomplete as to call into question its authenticity; and
(b) The holder took the instrument:

1. For value;
2. In good faith;
3. Without notice that the instrument is overdue or has been dishonored or that there is an uncured default with respect to payment of another instrument issued as part of the same series;
4. Without notice that the instrument contains an unauthorized signature or has been altered;
5. Without notice of any claim to the instrument described in s. 673.3061; and
6. Without notice that any party has a defense or claim in recoupment described in s. 673.3051(1).
673.3061 Claims to an instrument.A person taking an instrument, other than a person having rights of a holder in due course, is subject to a claim of a property or possessory right in the instrument or its proceeds, including a claim to rescind a negotiation and to recover the instrument or its proceeds. A person having rights of a holder in due course takes free of the claim to the instrument.
This means that Except for HDC status, the maker of the note has a right to reclaim possession of the note or to rescind the transaction against any party who has no rights to claim it is a creditor or has rights to represent a creditor. The absence of a claim of HDC status tells a long story of fraud and intrigue.
673.3051 Defenses and claims in recoupment.

(1) Except as stated in subsection (2), the right to enforce the obligation of a party to pay an instrument is subject to:

(a) A defense of the obligor based on:

1. Infancy of the obligor to the extent it is a defense to a simple contract;
2. Duress, lack of legal capacity, or illegality of the transaction which, under other law, nullifies the obligation of the obligor;
3. Fraud that induced the obligor to sign the instrument with neither knowledge nor reasonable opportunity to learn of its character or its essential terms;
This means that if the “originator” did not loan the money and/or failed to perform underwriting tests for the viability of the loan, and gave the borrower false impressions about the viability of the loan, there is a Florida statutory right of rescission as well as a claim to reclaim the closing documents before they get into the hands of an innocent purchaser for value in good faith with no knowledge of the borrower’s defenses.

 

In the securitization of loans, the object has been to create entities with preferred tax status that are remote from the origination or purchase of the loan transactions. In other words, the REMIC Trusts are intended to be Holders in Due Course. The business of the REMIC Trust is to originate or acquire loans by payment of value, in good faith and without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses. Done correctly, appropriate market forces will apply, risks are reduced for both borrower and lenders, and benefits emerge for both sides of the single transaction between the investors who put up the money and the homeowners who received the benefit of the loan.

It is referred to as a single transaction using doctrines developed in tax law and other commercial cases. Every transaction, when you think about it, is composed of numerous actions, reactions and documents. If we treated each part as a separate transaction with no relationship to the other transactions there would be no connection between even the original lender and the borrower, much less where multiple assignments were involved. In simple terms, the single transaction doctrine basically asks one essential question — if it wasn’t for the investors putting up the money (directly or through an entity that issued an IPO) would the transaction have occurred? And the corollary is but for the borrower, would the investors have been putting up that money?  The answer is obvious in connection with mortgage loans. No business would have been conducted but for the investors advancing money and the homeowners taking it.

So neither “derivative” nor “securitization” is a dirty word. Nor is it some nefarious scheme from people from the dark side — in theory. Every REMIC Trust is the issuer in an initial public offering known as an “IPO” in investment circles. A company can do an IPO on its own where it takes the money and issues the shares or it can go through a broker who solicits investors, takes the money, delivers the money to the REMIC Trust and then delivers the Trust certificates to the investors.

Done properly, there are great benefits to everyone involved — lenders, borrowers, brokers, mortgage brokers, etc. And if “securitization” of mortgage debt had been done as described above, there would not have been a flood of money that increased prices of real property to more than twice the value of the land and buildings. Securitization of debt is meant to provide greater liquidity and lower risk to lenders based upon appropriate underwriting of each loan. Much of the investment came from stable managed funds which are strictly regulated on the risks they are allowed in managing the funds of pensioners, retirement accounts, etc.

By reducing the risk, the cost of the loans could be reduced to borrowers and the profits in creating loans would be higher. If that was what had been written in the securitization plan written by the major brokers on Wall Street, the mortgage crisis could not have happened. And if the actual practices on Wall Street had conformed at least to what they had written, the impact would have been vastly reduced. Instead, in most cases, securitization was used as the sizzle on a steak that did not exist. Investors advanced money, rating companies offered Triple AAA ratings, insurers offered insurance, guarantors guarantees loans and shares in REMIC trusts that had no possibility of achieving any value.

Today’s article was about the way the IPO securitization of residential loans was conceived and should have worked. Tomorrow we will look at the way the REMIC IPO was actually written and how the concept of securitization necessarily included layers of different companies.

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