BURDEN OF PROOF | Livinglies's Weblog

Who Can Foreclose?

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Neil Garfield

The plain truth of SAP — Securitization in Practice — is that nobody who paid value received ownership of the debt and nobody who received an instrument of ownership of the mortgage paid value.

Thus SAP — securitization in practice — splits payment of value from ownership of the debt which produces an extra legal situation because all US law requires that transfer of a mortgage or beneficial interest under the deed of trust is a legal nullity unless accompanied by a transfer of the debt. All US law requires that transfer of the debt can only be accomplished by payment for the debt.

The bottom line is only a claimant who paid value in exchange for ownership of the debt can satisfy the condition precedent in Article 9 §203 of the UCC as adopted in all US jurisdictions. Everything else is just an attempt at justification or rationalization for how the claimant has satisfied that condition.

Understanding the above explains completely why all documents after the loan closing are fabricated, false, forged, backdated and supported by perjurious testimony. Foreclosure mills are bridging a gap created by investment banks through false statements.

So don’t get lost in the weeds. Most courts and therefore most attorneys get irretrievably confused when the discussion turns to possession, holding or rights to enforce a note. And lawyers fail to object when legal presumptions are applied to situations where possession of the note does NOT imply ownership of the note or the debt.

Note that there is huge difference between standing in the pleading and standing in the proof. In pleading the mere allegation of facts is sufficient to establish standing to proceed. But at trial the claimant is required to actually prove standing, not merely assert it. In practice this means the use of presumptions to arrive at the factual conclusion that the claimant paid for the debt when in fact that never happened.

Point #1: In situations where there is a claim of securitization, there is no case (not ever) in which the claimant (trust, trustee, certificates, certificate holder etc.) is ever alleged to be or ever proven to be the holder in due course (HDC). HDC status means that the claimant can avoid nearly all potential defenses of the borrower. Securitization claimants don’t have this status because they did not purchase the debt for value without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses. Very simple. The object of foreclosure mills is to be treated as HDC without asking for it. The defense narrative is to reveal that HDC status does not apply — not necessarily because they didn’t pay for it but because the foreclosure mill has never asked for HDC status. Thus the court has no business applying HDC rules.

Point #2: The claimant must own the debt as a creditor — i.e., as a party who paid value in exchange for receiving evidence of ownership of the debt. This is the only party who can claim injury from non performance of the obligation and therefore the only party with standing to bring the claim.

Point #3: Standing to seek judgement on a promissory note does not equal standing to foreclose unless the claimant owns the debt. This is the beginning point of where lawyers, judges, borrowers and everyone else gets confused. In the mind of the public debt=note=mortgage. Legally, equitably and morally the debt, note and mortgage are separate and distinct each carrying its own legal rights that are not necessarily consistent. Receipt of money creates a demand debt (liability) unless there is a clear indication of a gift. Execution of a promissory note creates a liability even if there is no debt — hence mere possession or even rights to enforce a note is not necessarily sufficient to establish standing to enforce the debt or mortgage. The mortgage, regardless of what it says, can only be used to secure payment of a debt, the terms of which might be contained in a promissory note. Since foreclosure is a process of forfeiture the rules allowing for foreclosure are much more stringent than the rules of getting a judgment on the liability created by a note. A holder in due course may get judgment on the note, and a judgment of foreclosure on the debt. Nobody else can do so. If they have not paid value in exchange for ownership of the debt, they are not legally allowed to foreclose.

Point #4: In practice claiming possession of the note is treated as claiming title to the debt and thence incidentally a claim as holder in due course. It may not be logical or legal but there it is. So the presumption arises as though the claimant was a holder in due course which effectively destroys any defense — if not challenged. The borrower should deny that the claimant has any right to foreclose because it has not in fact paid value in exchange for ownership of the debt. Any purported transfer of a mortgage is a legal nullity without transfer of the debt also. Then the borrower should simply ask a contention interrogatory as to whether the claimant contends that is has paid value for the debt in exchange for ownership of the debt. And a request for production should ask for evidence of such payment. The refusal to answer or respond is sufficient, after the foreclosure mill has been given several chances to respond, to raise an inference in favor of the borrower. That inference defeats the presumption that the claimant has paid value for the debt in exchange for ownership, which means that any paper transfer of the mortgage is void — unless proven otherwise at trial with evidence instead of presumptions. In actuality, all the borrower is doing is forcing the foreclosure mill to stop using legal presumptions and actually prove their standing, right to collect, ownership and right to enforce the debt. If they had evidence of payment they would do so. But they can’t because nobody who paid value received ownership of the debt and nobody who received an instrument of ownership paid value.

Here are some quotes from a case in Florida that might help:

At trial, a litigation manager for Bayview testified. He was not a records custodian for RCS or for Bayview. He was not familiar with the computer systems that either of the prior servicers, CitiMortgage and RCS, used for compiling information on the loan or how it was inputted into the systems. He had no information as to whether the information on the loans was inputted into the prior servicers’ systems correctly. He could not testify to the truth or accuracy of RCS’s records, just that they were provided to Bayview.

Seffar v. Residential Credit Solutions, Inc., 160 So. 3d 122, 124 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015)

He testified that Bayview was the servicer and holder of the note. He believed that Bayview had acquired the note through a purchase agreement with RCS, but he had not seen the agreement, nor did he have a copy of it. His belief that Bayview was the owner of the note under the purchase agreement was based on “a screen shot of our capital assets systems, which has information in regards to the status of the loan with us.” This screen shot was not produced at trial.

Seffar v. Residential Credit Solutions, Inc., 160 So. 3d 122, 124 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015)

As to the allonge with the blank endorsement from ABN, he did not know when it was executed or whether the signature on it was a “wet ink” signature or a stamp. He did not know whether the allonge was affixed to the note prior to it being filed in the court file. He did not know if the vice president who signed the allonge on ABN’s behalf was in the employ of ABN in November 2009, when Bayview’s records showed that servicing of the loan had been transferred from ABN to Franklin Bank.

Seffar v. Residential Credit Solutions, Inc., 160 So. 3d 122, 124 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015)

we agree that it presented no competent evidence that RCS was the holder of the note at the time it filed suit or that it was a nonholder in possession and entitled to enforce the note. Therefore, Bayview failed to prove standing.

If the note does not name the plaintiff as the payee, the note must bear a special endorsement in favor of the plaintiff or a blank endorsement…. Alternatively, the plaintiff may submit evidence of an assignment from the payee to the plaintiff …

Even in the absence of a valid written assignment, the mere delivery of a note and mortgage, with intention to pass the title, upon a proper consideration, will vest the equitable interest in the person to whom it is so delivered.

Seffar v. Residential Credit Solutions, Inc., 160 So. 3d 122, 125 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015)

“Because a promissory note is a negotiable instrument and because a mortgage provides the security for the repayment of the note, the person having standing to foreclose a note secured by a mortgage may be … a nonholder in possession of the note who has the rights of a holder.” Mazine v. M & I Bank, 67 So.3d 1129, 1130 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011).

A “person entitled to enforce” an instrument is: “(1) [t]he holder of the instrument; (2)[a] nonholder in possession of the instrument who has the rights of a holder; or (3)[a] person not in possession of the instrument who is entitled to enforce the instrument pursuant to s[ection] 673.3091 or s [ection] 673.4181(4).” § 673.3011, Fla. Stat. (2013). A “holder” is defined as “[t]he person in possession of a negotiable instrument that is payable either to bearer or to an identified person that is the person in possession.” § 671.201(21)(a), Fla. Stat. (2013). Thus, to be a holder, the instrument must be payable to the person in possession or indorsed in blank. See§ 671.201(5), Fla. Stat. (2013).

Seffar v. Residential Credit Solutions, Inc., 160 So. 3d 122, 125 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015)

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, jurisdiction, legal standing | 9 Comments »

FDCPA Claims Might Not Be Barred By Statute of Limitations

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Here is a powerful argument that SCOTUS acknowledged: nobody should benefit from their own fraudulent conduct. The FDCPA has a one year statute of limitations. And people have tried to litigate on the premise that the one year should run from the date of discovery not when the violation occurred. The courts have disagreed saying that if Congress wanted it to be the date of discovery it would have said so.

But if the date of discovery was delayed because of additional fraudulent conduct by the defendant then the courts, although always leaning heavily toward the banks, are left in a quandary. And SCOTUS acknowledged that issue and refused to rule directly on it because the consumer failed to preserve the issue on appeal — another example of how rules can lead to failure of you don’t follow them.

The wording of the opinion and the opinion of analysts strongly suggests that if you plead, with specificity, fraudulent representations and conduct that caused the delay your claim is not barred until one year after the discovery of the violation.

Note that his will not help people who discovered or “should have discovered” the violation more than one year before filing suit.

Note also that it is one thing to plead and another to prove. Fraud requires specific pleading and proof regarding detrimental reliance on the fraud and causation of damages. The damage under this part of the case would be that the consumer was unable to ascertain the violation and thus seek a remedy. Just using the word “fraud” is the surest ticket to failure.

see Fossano Article on Mondaq

See Rotkiske v. Klemm Rotkiske v. Klemm, No. 18-328 (U.S. Dec. 10, 2019)

Rotkiske v. Klemm, — S. Ct. — (2019) left open the question of whether a plaintiff can avoid the one-year statute of limitations by establishing that the delay in bringing the claim was the caused by the defendant’s fraudulent conduct. The answer to that question will have to await a case where the plaintiff properly preserves the argument on appeal. On a related note, the case reminds attorneys to ensure that they preserve all of their clients’ arguments at all stages of a case.

FDCPA violations could expose debt collectors to considerable damages and penalties, as well as legal costs and fees.

From the case:

Rotkiske argued for the application of a “discovery rule” to delay the beginning of the limitations period until the date that he knew or should have known of the alleged FDCPA violation. Relying on the statute’s plain language, the District Court rejected Rotkiske’s approach and dismissed the action. The Third Circuit affirmed. Held: Absent the application of an equitable doctrine, §1692k(d)’s statute of limitations begins to run when the alleged FDCPA violation occurs, not when the violation is discovered. Pp. 4-7.

Rotkiske v. Klemm, No. 18-328, at *1 (U.S. Dec. 10, 2019)

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) authorizes private civil actions against debt collectors who engage in certain prohibited practices. 91 Stat. 881, 15 U. S. C. §1692k(a). An action under the FDCPA may be brought “within one year from the date on which the violation occurs.” §1692k(d). This case requires us to determine when the FDCPA’s limitations period begins to run. We hold that, absent the application of an equitable doctrine, the statute of limitations in §1692k(d) begins to run on the date on which the alleged FDCPA violation occurs, not the date on which the violation is discovered.

Rotkiske v. Klemm, No. 18-328, at *3 (U.S. Dec. 10, 2019)

“Rotkiske’s amended complaint alleged that equitable tolling excused his otherwise untimely filing because Klemm purposely served process in a manner that ensured he would not receive service.” Rotkiske v. Klemm, No. 18-328, at *5 (U.S. Dec. 10, 2019)

This Court has noted the existence of decisions applying a discovery rule in “fraud cases” that is distinct from the traditional equitable tolling doctrine. Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. 633, 644 (2010); Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 450 (2013) (referring to the “fraud discovery rule”). And it has repeatedly characterized these decisions as applying an equity-based doctrine. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc., 582 U. S. ___, ___-___ (2017) (slip op., at 10-11); Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez, 572 U. S. 1, 10-11 (2014); Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC v. Simmonds, 566 U. S. 221, 226-227 (2012); Young v. United States, 535 U. S. 43, 49-50 (2002). Rotkiske failed to preserve this issue before the Third Circuit, 890 F. 3d, at 428, and failed to raise this issue in his petition for certiorari. Accordingly, Rotkiske cannot rely on this doctrine to excuse his otherwise untimely filing. (e.s.)

* * *

Rotkiske v. Klemm, No. 18-328, at *9 (U.S. Dec. 10, 2019)

Practice Note: I would suggest that practitioners take a close look at modifications as falling within two different doctrines and maybe more.

First, modification offer from one who is not authorized to make the offer is a violation of the FDCPA. The acceptance and enforcement of payments under a modification agreement might also be a violation of the FDCPA. It is procured under duress. It is a fraudulent misrepresentation designed to induce the borrower to waive defenses, change lenders (without realizing it) and essentially create an entirely new contract that may or may not incorporate the original note or mortgage.

Second, the modification has many earmarks of a new financing subject to disclosures required for the origination of any loan. It makes the “new” claimed servicer the lender or the agent of a lender who is not disclosed and who probably has no claim within the chain of title relied upon by the servicer when it made the offer to modify. AND it might well be that it reflects an actual payment in the case where the loan was securitized after a bona fide loan. AND it has entirely new terms with new principal, new interests and frequently a new term.

That sounds like a refinancing to me. If I am right, then the modification is subject to rescission, to wit: (1) 3 day TILA rescission, (2) 3 year TILA rescission and (3) common law rescission. In addition there are claims under RESPA and FDCPA that would appear to arise anew. The specific disclosures required are contained in Federal lending law (TILA) and state deceptive lending laws. ALl such laws are incorporated into contracts for lending by operation of law. So it is not only fraud it is a violation of statute.

The fraud in such situations is that an interloper falsely poses as a lender or agent of lender. The borrower is in financial emotional distress is induced to enter an agreement that the borrower reasonably believes is for (a) the benefit of the borrower and the (b) creditor who has paid for his debt and owns it — because that is the representation of the servicer who offered it. That is false. The borrower is injured because while seeking settlement or at least communication with the actual party who has paid for and owns his debt he was prevented from doing so and the borrower had no way of knowing that the servicer’s representations were untrue.

As always discovery is key to proving these allegations and without follow up motions to compel and motions for sanctions discovery won’t do you any good. They won’t answer because they can’t answer.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CASES, CORRUPTION, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, Pleading, prima facie case, Servicer | Tagged: FDCPA, statute of limitations | 9 Comments »

PennyMac Laundromat: Is anything real there?

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Neil Garfield

PennyMac appears to be a vehicle of “cleaning” fatal title deficiencies to the debt, note and/or mortgage on loans. It operates on behalf of CitiMortgage and multiple other entities on loans where the selection of a claimant is essentially random.

The basic playbook of the banks is to insert a real business entity with no actual connection or transaction involving payment of value for the debt, note or mortgage and fabricating documents to imply that such transactions exist. My investigation and that of others reveals that PennyMac is one such sham conduit, in order to create documents that give rise to the legal presumptions that are available when a document appears to be facially valid.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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PennyMac is generally used as a vehicle to launder bad title and pursue foreclosures on behalf of entities that have no right, title or interest in the debt, note or mortgage. Generally speaking all of the documents that purport to involve PennyMac and its predecessors are fabricated and false. They are false because they falsely imply the existence of financial transactions in which value was paid for the debt.

All residential home loans are about money and nothing else. The banks seek to distract you and the courts from looking at the money and instead, direct you into looking to documents. If I produced a document that looked facially valid, a judge might accept it as valid and true even though the matter asserted in the document is actually untrue. So for example if I were to produce a “facially valid” document saying I am your father, it wouldn’t be true but it would still be taken as true until you rebut the presumption arising from the “facially valid document.

So the first step is really examining a document to determine whether it is facially valid. There are times, strategies and tactics where it might be wise to direct the court’s attention to this issue by simply filing a motion that disputes the facial validity of a particular pleading oir document and asks for an evidentiary hearing on the subject. Some judges grant such motions because a ruling from such a proceeding might propel the case to an early end.

A facially valid means what is says. If the document recites all the elements required by statute and it is properly signed (and notarized if so required), the document is facially valid and the legal presumptions are available to the proponent of such a document or pleading.

So the court takes as true all assertions on the face of the document. A document is not facially valid if it is impossible to determine what is asserted as factually true.

A reference to an external document that is not attached or even identified frequently results in a dispute over the facial validity of the document which may require an evidentiary hearing on the validity and authenticity of the document. But if the opposing party fails to raise such an objection the document will be accepted as facially valid and then the factual assertions contained or implied by the document will generally be taken as true.

The debt lies at the root of the loan, the servicing, the collection, and the enforcement of the loan. Without the debt, there is no authority. Without the debt the action is not a foreclosure even though the lawyers label it as a foreclosure. The lawsuit or notice of sale is merely a device to generate revenue which is expressly void against public policy and law.

The problem is that the banks developed a scheme by which investors paid for the debt and never received ownership of the debt, note or mortgage. This means that third parties receive borrower payments, insurance payments, bailout payments and proceeds of foreclosure sales — something which is not allowed under current law, nor should it be allowed.

None of these third parties ever turn over such money to the investors who paid for value but did not pay value in exchange for ownership of the debt. As a result, any document implying the transfer of the debt through payment of value is substantively invalid because no such transaction ever occurred in the real world.

There is no reason for a “successor” to pay a “predecessor” if neither of them owned the debt. The only way you get to own a debt is by paying for it with real value which means money. When you ask for a description of such transactions you will be met with a variety of obscure objections whereas if they had it, they would gleefully reveal it. Neither the note nor the mortgage (or deed of trust) can be actually fully separated from the debt because the obligation to make payment on the debt is all that those documents are about.

I’m not saying the debt doesn’t exist. I’m saying based upon review and analysis of documents, there is nobody in the chain of title relied upon by your opposition who has ever participated in a transaction in which value was paid for the debt. Ownership of the debt can only be accomplished, based upon my research, by payment of value for the debt. See Article 9 §203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by all U.S. jurisdictions including your own.

Payment of value for the debt is a condition precedent to enforcement of the debt. This is both common sense and statutory law. If “servicing”, administration, collection or enforcement of the debt is performed on behalf of a claimant that does not own the debt, then the condition precedent is not met. Such actions are illegal and any documents that are created to support such illegal actions are void.

If the “servicer” or holder of a limited power of attorney, as in many cases, is not the legally authorized representative of a party who possesses ownership of the debt (i.e., they paid for it) then their actions are illegal, unauthorized and probably fraudulent. In a foreclosure the court must know (not hope) that the proceeds of the foreclosure sale will go to a party or group of parties who paid value in exchange for ownership of the debt. If the court does not know that, it isn’t a foreclosure, which is a remedy exclusively designed to provide restitution of an unpaid debt.

The issue confronting you is that the documents, at first blush, appear to be facially valid. But the reference to an unidentified unattached external document like a Power of Attorney in lieu of an actual servicing agreement reciting the authority of the parties, makes such documents facially invalid but still subject to proof. Upon proving authority as I have outlined above, the document could be deemed valid, if the proffering party proves the line of succession that starts with an owner of the debt. In virtually all “securitization” cases I don’t think any such line of succession exists.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: Citimortgage, facially valid, Pennymac | 7 Comments »

Navigating LOST COMMUNICATION With “Servicers” Who Are in Reality Merely Steering You Into Foreclosure

Posted on December 26, 2019 by Neil Garfield

The main point is that borrowers must calibrate their thinking. Debtors are not dealing with anyone who wants to collect payments. They are dealing with someone who wants a foreclosure so they can steal the proceeds. The forced sale of the house generates revenue that is distributed to several players involved in the foreclosure effort and several players involved in the REO sale and eviction.

The rest of the money goes to the securities brokerage firm (investment bank) where there is no loan receivable account against which to credit the deposit. In short, while labeled as various vaguely described transactions, the substance of the deposit is that it is revenue even if it is not declared as such for tax purposes.

Against this backdrop a common complaint I receive is that borrowers are in good faith attempting to make payments or send documents requested by the “servicer” only to find that they are unable to do so or that the documents were lost. So they ask me what to do next.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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RULE #1: STOP CALLING THEM “THE BANK.” THEY ARE MOST LIKELY NOT THE BANK — AND THEY DO NOT EVEN QUALIFY AS SERVICERS IN MOST INSTANCES. THINK OF THEM AS SCAM ARTISTS WHO HAVE GAINED YOUR CONFIDENCE (I.E. CON MEN) TO PREVENT YOU FROM INQUIRING ABOUT WHO SHOULD BE RECEIVING YOUR PAYMENTS OR THE PROCEEDS OF A FORECLOSURE SALE.

Technically you are most likely NOT dealing with anyone who qualifies as a creditor nor even a debt collector, who could only be functioning on authority from an actual creditor. So theoretically you would be well within your legal rights to simply not pay money to a party who is not entitled to receive them.

Reality is different from theory. While in past times anyone attempting to collect, process or enforce a debt would be required to disclose everything about their ownership, agency or authority, today virtually everyone presumes that any such party has legal status. Because of that presumption, refusing to make payments as demanded is fraught with the risk that (1) the pretender lender will declare you to be in default and (2) start enforcement proceedings against you based upon fabricated but nonetheless facially valid documentation.

So my usual and primary advice is to refrain from any action or inaction that puts you in a worse position than the one you find yourself. And I always recommend at least consulting with local counsel before deciding on any course of action.

That usually means you make the payments.

The only other alternative is to file a lawsuit in which you ask to deposit the funds in the court registry because you want to make the payments but you don’t believe the party demanding those payments has any actual legal right to do so.

INTERPLEADER: An interesting twist on this type of pleading could be that you file your lawsuit, asking for attorney fees, and name both the servicer demanding payment and the investment bank (securities brokerage firm(s)) that is/are most likely behind the securitization scheme. This would be an interpleader lawsuit that basically says I have this money, it is for a debt I owe, Party A demands it, but I think Party B might be the one to whom it is owed. I have no assurance from Party A that the money would be given to Party B or any other entity that has paid for the debt and is therefore entitled to receive the proceeds of my payments. I don’t care who gets it. I just want to know who to pay.

In a further twist (which could negate your right to receive attorney fees) such an action could also include a count for disgorgement if the court finds that the party demanding payment was not entitled to receive it. That could mean return or deposit of all money ever received by the parties named as respondents in the interpleader action.

Generally, disgorgement is a form of “[r]estitution measured by the defendant’s wrongful gain.” Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment § 51, Comment a, p. 204 (2010) (Restatement (Third)). Disgorgement requires that the defendant give up “those gains … properly attributable to the defendant’s interference with the claimant’s legally protected rights.” Ibid . Beginning in the 1970’s, courts ordered disgorgement in SEC enforcement proceedings in order to “deprive … defendants of their profits in order to remove any monetary reward for violating” securities laws and to “protect the investing public by providing an effective deterrent to future violations.”Texas Gulf,312 F.Supp., at 92.

Kokesh v. Sec. & Exch. Comm’n, 137 S. Ct. 1635, 1640 (2017)

Federal jurisdiction could apply.

Whereas statutory interpleader may be brought in the district where any claimant resides ( 28 U.S.C. § 1397), Rule interpleader based upon diversity of citizenship may be brought only in the district where all plaintiffs or all defendants reside ( 28 U.S.C. § 1391 (a)). And whereas statutory interpleader enables a plaintiff to employ nationwide service of process ( 28 U.S.C. § 2361), service of process under Rule 22 is confined to that provided in Rule 4. See generally 3 Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 22.04.

State Farm Fire Cas. Co. v. Tashire, 386 U.S. 523, 530 n.3 (1967)

In all events any attempts at communication or payment that are frustrated by the party demanding that payment should be documented by U.S. Postal Service, Certified Mail, return receipt requested — because your attempts will be denied. The robowitness or affiant on an affidavit will say there is no record of such attempts. LIke the above, an interim measure would be to pay the money into a trust account administered by an attorney or some other legally recognized escrow agent.

I have seen many judges ask the borrower who relates this story what they did with the money after it was refused. If there answer is that they spent it, the judge often construes that as undermining the credibility of the borrower’s testimony. But if the borrower says it was paid into escrow where it still remains most judges regard that in a light favorable to the borrower and it raises their antagonism toward the lawyers and the servicer who are now presumed to have screwed things up even if they were actually entitled to collect, process or enforce the debt.

PRACTICE NOTE: While actual tender of actual payment certainly bars any legal enforcement action to collect the tendered payment, it does not render the entire lien unenforceable. BUT if the notice of default and end of month statements show an amount due that should have been reduced by the amount of the tendered payment then the notice of default and subsequent notice of sale or lawsuit could be defective. And if the refusal to accept payment was part of a larger scheme to steer the borrower into foreclosure, that i sone building block in a case for illegal, fraudulent and/or wrongful foreclosure.

Beware of the proof requirements against a court bias that the borrower was probably trying to game the system. We all know that it is the other side gaming the system but the court presumes otherwise, partly because it is legally required to do so based upon the facial validity of the documents presented — even if they are fabricated. For that reason I frequently suggest attempts at payment or delivery of documents in person at a branch or regional office, witnesses to such attempts, photos, and even video, where it is legal to do so. Signs posted to the effect that there is video surveillance might suffice as permission to record. Check with local counsel.

In addition, in litigation you can demand copies of recordings made at particular locations and/or times. The response will be they don’t have that recording but if you can get a judge to require them to produce the recordings on either side of the time frame in which the contact occurred, they will likely retreat because the absence of the video or audio recording will speak volumes about their conduct.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case | Tagged: ATTORNEY FEES, damages, disgorgement, interpleader, sending documents to servicer, tender of payment, wrongful foreclosure | 1 Comment »

Defending Foreclosure is Practice Not Theory: Discovery is the Key

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Neil Garfield

I’m not sure why there are people who are calling my approach theoretical. My focus is strictly practical — using the rules of civil procedure to expose the truth of the matter asserted. Specifically, the end result should be and most often is that the opposition either dismisses the claim, or the court bars them from proceeding when the are unable or unwilling to answer interrogatories and requests to produce.

Based upon what some people are writing to me I think that they are either skipping discovery entirely or they are using a shotgun approach in discovery. The questions and requests must be properly worded and directed to the only thing that is in dispute — whether the claimant has suffered any financial injury as a result of the admitted nonpayment on an admittedly existing loan.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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If you think the approach is theoretical you are misapprehending the simple strategy that I propose. The issue is not complicated: does the claimant have a right to foreclose because they are seeking restitution of an unpaid debt owed to the claimant? If the answer is no, which is usually the case in loans subject to claims of securitization, then the reason is that the claimant doesn’t own the debt. The rest of the allegations are true — the existence of a loan, the nonpayment etc.

The theory behind the approach is complex but that is not something that homeowners can or should try to prove. It is merely an anchor for the strategy so the lawyer does not lose his or her way.

Documents will all say things that would lead to the opposite conclusions. But the actual facts are opposite. It is the burden of the homeowner in foreclosure to ask questions and demand production of documents that support the claim that the debt is owed to the claimant because the claimant owns the debt and has suffered injury from nonpayment (default).

Once the homeowner establishes that the opposition is unwilling or unable to respond to those questions and demands, the legal presumptions arising from what the documents state can be and usually are undermined — even raising the inference or presumption that the claim is false.

But even if the inference or presumption in favor of the homeowner is not raised, the opposition can be prevented from introducing any evidence of ownership of the debt because they failed to answer discovery, failed to obey court orders requiring their answer and then were in contempt of court. Judges are very willing to impose sanctions on pleading and even sanctions preventing the claimant form introducing evidence intended to support the claim.

So my approach is far from theoretical. It is practical and understandable if you understand the rules of civil procedure.

PRACTICE NOTE: For any of this to work, you must do the work. File discovery, file motion to compel, file motion for sanctions and file motion in limine. In a case that is entirely about the debt most judges (not all) will have no problem with requiring answers to discovery directed at information about the debt.

The confusion in the courts and in people’s minds occurs when they assume that the proceedings are actually a foreclosure simply because the claimant says so. It is not a foreclosure unless the action is for restitution of an unpaid debt. I use the word restitution because foreclosure is an action in a court of equity.

And there are thousands of cases finding ways to bend the law in favor of claimants who say they are foreclosing because they are focusing on (a) the documents which are mostly fabricated and (b) more importantly, an assumption that is unfounded and untrue. The biggest problem is the belief of attorneys and their clients that the action is actually a foreclosure. It isn’t.

So you get cases that say that even if things are “irregular”, they will affirm the decision because in the end end there is no real foul and no real harm. It is the burden of the homeowner to disabuse them of this notion at least in part and make them face the fact that there is no evidence to support any claim on behalf of the claimant or any party that is mysteriously represented by the claimant.

You will always get this result when you focus on the documents instead of the facts. The underlying assumption in all of these cases is that the case is a foreclosure — which means that it is an action for restitution of an unpaid debt. If that is true then the court is justified in bending rules in favor of the claimant because ultimately the proceeds of the foreclosure sale will go to pay off the debt.

That is why it is essential that the homeowner attack the ownership of the debt. Because if the claimant doesn’t own it then the action is not for restitution of an unpaid debt. A debt is not owned without paying for it. But despite law to the contrary, the courts make an additional presumption that even if the claimant is not “technically” entitled to foreclose, the money from the forced sale of the property will still go to some party or parties that have paid value for the debt and are injured by nonpayment. This assumption is without any foundation of facts and is in fact erroneous.

The money is going into the pocket of those players involved in the “foreclosure” and they receive it as revenue. However the revenue part of the scheme while implied should probably not be part of the defense narrative because it sounds like conspiracy theory and lacks “credibility” even though it is true.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, foreclosure | 2 Comments »

Investors Were Not Injured By Non Payment from Homeowners. They Were Injured by Non Payment from Investment Banks

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Neil Garfield

The trap door is thinking that investors were hurt by borrowers failing to make payments when in fact they were injured by brokerage companies not paying them regardless of how much money was being received and created. This trap door inevitably leads one into thinking that the money proceeds from a forced sale of property in foreclosure are being paid to investors. That is just not true.

=====================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

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Exchange between me and fairly knowledgeable client:

Client: “But if investors put up the money then they would be the injured party if borrowers don’t pay, or at least if things were normal.”

From me:

Incorrect. Investors were injured by the failure of brokerage firms to make payments to them that were purely optional. Investors were not injured by failure of borrowers to pay their mortgage payments as defined in the promissory note.

At the option of the investment bank, the investors who paid value for the certificates issued by the investment bank, continue to receive payments. Those payments come from a reserve pool of money funded entirely by the investors initial purchase of certificates (but they are labeled “Servicer advances”).

You are falling through the trap door that the banks and their lawyers have created. Investors did not put up money to purchase your loan or acquire it or originate your loan. They had no legal part in that unless a judge were to enter an order stating that while the form of the transaction says they had nothing to do with your loan, the investors were nonetheless substantively the “lenders.” The banks and the investors would argue against that since it would make investors liable for lending and servicing violations.

You are presuming something that the banks want you to presume. The truth is that the investors were told that they would be paid by the brokerage firm that set up the plan of what they called “securitization.”

The promise received by investors was from the brokerage firm not the borrower. The money on deposit with the brokerage firm was used to originate or acquire loans as a cost of doing business, to wit: the business of issuing and trading in derivative securities to which neither the investors nor “borrowers” were parties and therefore received no compensation despite the fact that without them none of those trades could have taken place.

The promise (certificate or mortgage bond) was issued in the name of a “trust” that at best was inchoate” under law (i.e., “sleeping”). The trust name was merely a business name under which the brokerage firm was doing business. The promise was not secured by any interest in the debt, note or mortgage on any loan. In fact, at the time of investment there were no loans in any portfolio that were the subject of the investment. There was a promise to aggregate such a portfolio and the list of loans attached to the prospectus is subject to the disclaimer that it is not the real list but rather an example of the kind of data the investors will see when the offering of certificates is complete.

The certificates themselves do not convey and right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage on any loan. The investors merely hold an unsecured promise to pay where the promissor is the brokerage firm (Investment bank) and the amount of payments to be received by investors are indexed on the data for an aggregate of loans; but such payments are entirely dependent upon the sole discretion of the investment bank (Brokerage firm) and the performance of the index — i.e., the performance of borrowers.

Investors thus receive money as long as the investment bank wants them to receive money regardless of actual performance of loans. The non performance of borrowers represents an excuse for the investment bank to stop paying the entire amount of their promise, if the managers of the investment bank so choose.

But since the investment bank (brokerage firm) was using money deposited on account the net result is that the investors paid value for the origination or acquisition of the debt but never got to own it under current law.

And the investment bank briefly became the “owner” of the debt without having actually paid for it, and then created a “sale” at its trading desk in which the loans were “sold” to the “trust” at an enormous premium (second tier yield spread premium) from the amount that was actually loaned to borrowers at much higher interest rates than the amount demanded by the investors.

Bottom Line: Under current law in all jurisdictions nobody qualifies as the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it because those two functions were split by the investment bank.

The value was paid by investors who did not receive ownership of the debt. The ownership of the debt as in the hands of the brokerage firm that started the securitization scheme and then transferred to itself using the name of the fictional trust. Hence the brokerage firm, directly or indirectly continued to “own” the debt without having actually paid for it. This is legally impossible under current law.

Under current law, nobody can claim to own or enforce a debt without having paid value for it. A transfer of rights to a mortgage is a legal nullity unless there is a concurrent payment of value for the debt. The only possible claimant in a court of equity is the investment bank, but they continue to hide behind multiple layers of sham conduits who actually have no contractual or other relationship with the investment bank. All such “securitized” loans are therefore orphans under current law where the debt, note and mortgage cannot be legally enforced.

The only way they have been enforced has the acceptance by the courts of erroneous presumptions that effectively reconstitute the debt, note and mortgage out of the prior transactions that split it all up. This produced the opportunity for profits that were far in excess of the loan itself which was viewed by the investment bank as simply a cost of doing business rather than an actual loan. Besides violating current law under the Uniform Commercial Code it also violates public policy as explicitly enunciated under the Federal Truth in Lending Act and public policy stated in various state laws prohibiting deceptive lending and servicing practices.

Those excessive profits should, in my opinion, be the subject of reallocation that includes the investors and borrowers without whom those profits could not exist. These are the actions for disgorgement and recoupment to which I have referred elsewhere on this blog. But in order to have real teeth I believe it is necessary to join the investment banks who had a role in the claimed “securitization.”

In affirmative defenses you can name a third party but you must express the defense as something for which the actual named claimant is vicariously accountable. Otherwise you need to file a counterclaim, the downside of which is that many such claims are barred by the statute of limitations whereas affirmative defenses are not usually subject to the statute of limitations.

The reason you can’t get a straight answer to discovery is that ownership and payment have been split between two entirely different parties. Yet current law demands that the enforcing party be (a) the owner of the debt, note and mortgage and (b) the party who paid value for the loan. In most situations involving claims of securitization that requirement cannot and is not meant to be fulfilled.

Clearly changes in the law are required to allow for securitizations as practiced. But in order to do that the laws regarding disclosures to investors and borrowers must get far more specific and rigorous so that freer market forces can apply. With transparency market corrections for excessive or even unconscionable transactions are possible — allowing both borrowers and investors to bargain for a share of the bounty created by securitization arising from the investment of investors and borrowers.

Current law supports disgorgement of such profits because they were not disclosed. But current law fails to identify such “trading profits” as arising from the the actual transaction with investors, on one hand, and the borrowers on the other hand. This might be accomplished in the courts.

But a far better alternative is to level the playing field with clearly worded statutes that prevent what had been merely intermediaries from draining of money and other value from the only two real parties in interest as defined by both the single transaction doctrine and the step transaction doctrine.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, jurisdiction, legal standing, MBS TRUSTEE, Pleading, Presumptions, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | 7 Comments »

Post Judgment Assignments Continue to Baffle Homeowners and Foreclosure Defense Lawyers

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Charles Koppa in San Diego was the first person to point out to me that the activities after even a nonjudicial sale told the real story about the what was going on. That was back in 2008. Lately I have been getting questions relating to post-sale or post judgment activities.

There is a doctrine that says that upon judgment in a judicial state or upon sale in a nonjudicial state, the mortgage or deed of trust is merged into the judgment or sale respectively.

The most recent questions I have received suggest that perhaps the debt, note and mortgage or deed of trust is extinguished by the judgment or sale. They are not. Merger is different from invalidation or extinguishment. And vacating a judgment or sale merely restores the parties back to where they were before the judgment or sale.

But sloppy orders from the bench sometimes creates doubt or uncertainty as to the rights and duties of the parties.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Here is the answer to a recent question posed by a reader:

The law does not prevent someone from executing an assignment of mortgage. The question is whether such an assignment has any effect, and if so, what is that effect?

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This question appears to be coming up with increasing frequency and I am ignorant of the reasons why this is suddenly rearing its head.

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First I will say that any attempt to position yourself such that the judgment eliminated the note and mortgage and therefore you are exempt from writ of possession or liability on the debt is a false position and would undermine your credibility in court, in my opinion. If the Judgment is vacated it merely returns the parties to the position they were in before the judgment was entered. Neither the mortgage nor note nor debt have been extinguished in such circumstances.

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Second the entry of a final judgment of foreclosure has the effect of replacing the rights under the mortgage and note with rights arising from entry of the final judgment. In plain language this means that once Judgment is entered, the forced sale of the property may be scheduled and conducted and a new deed upon such sale has the effect of transferring title from the homeowner to the successful bidder at auction.

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The successful bidder can be and often is the party named as the claimant in the foreclosure action. Instead of bidding with cash, the bid is normally a “credit bid” which means that the claimant in the successful foreclosure case uses the money award in the final judgment in place of cash.

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Many different legal presumptions arise from each step of the foreclosure process.

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There can be an “assignment” after foreclosure judgment has been entered but it is not technically an assignment of mortgage which is generally treated as merged into the final judgment of foreclosure. A document that purports to be an assignment of mortgage post-judgment would probably be ineffective to assign the mortgage which no longer legally exists, even though it remains in the title record. It would also be ineffective to assign the debt unless a court chose to treat the assignment as an assignment of rights under the final judgment of foreclosure.

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The law does not prevent someone from executing an assignment of rights under the final judgment. But like all documents it must be both facially and actually valid. If it is facially valid then it is the burden of the homeowner to show that it actually had no validity. It has no validity if there was no completion of the transaction as required by law. By “the transaction” I mean the transaction implied by the assignment. No reasonable person would give up rights to a mortgage worth hundreds of thousands of dollars without payment.

*

As with most documents arising from claims of “securitized” loans there is no actual transaction in which money exchanged hands because the original consideration came from a third party outside of the entire chain of title. This the only party entitled to receive payment, under current law, would be the last party to pay value.

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While I am not aware of any specific case law that deals with assignment of bidding rights or any other post judgment assignments, it seems likely that such an assignment would be required to meet the same test as an assignment of mortgage, to wit: that the assignment is a legal nullity (i.e., it never happened, it has no legal effect) unless there was a concurrent financial transaction in which value was paid for the debt.

This is definitely the requirement under current law in all U.S. jurisdictions. While the courts have twisted their interpretations beyond all recognition to make it seem like the requirement of payment of value has been satisfied, this can only be done through legal presumptions.

And the legal presumptions can be rebutted.

The key strategy for revealing the falsity of the presumption is discovery where the homeowner borrower asks the simple questions about the dates and parties to transaction in which value was paid for the debt, note or mortgage.

Generally speaking you will never see answer to such questions because if they did answer they would be admitting that nobody in the chain of title ever paid value as required by law. And generally speaking there are very few occasions where the court won’t order them to answer it. And generally speaking there are very few occasions where they don’t violate the court order which opens the door to inferences and presumptions in favor of the homeowner’s defensive position.

Answering the Shell Game

Posted on November 29, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Most of the questions I get come from lawyers and homeowners who are totally confused by the array of names of companies that appear, disappeared and replaced by lawyers operating under instructions from command central — a group of lawyers who oversee the foreclosures of loans claimed to be securitized. They are the ones who give the orders to “servicers” and “foreclosure mills.”

The goal is to force the sale of homes and obtain the proceeds of sale for the benefit and account of a stockbroker who initiated a scheme of “securitization.”

Everything that happens in correspondence, statements and enforcement actions is specifically designed to make lawyers, homeowners and judges think that is not the case. Everything is designed to create the false impression that the parties involved have every legal right to originate, process and enforce residential loans when in fact no such authority exists.

The foreclosure process is just one step in many that results in unconscionable profits, fees and commissions distributed to a multitude of players whose livelihood depends upon successfully duping the courts into allowing foreclosure despite the fact that the money from the forced sale will never be paid to the investors who paid for the debt.

One such question came in from a reader regarding BONY Mellon as trustee of a supposedly REMIC trust. As with all things in the era of securitization fail (see Adam Levitin) even that is false. An entity that does not serve as a pass through vehicle for payment of principal and interest on residential loans is not a Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit — so it isn’t a REMIC. A name that includes the word “trust” in it without a trust agreement in which something is entrusted to the “trustee” is not a trust.

So BONY Mellon is simply renting its name out for use by stockbrokers who call themselves “investment banks” in order to create the illusion of an institutional loan when nothing could be further from the truth. With only a few exceptions the same statement applies to all entities named as “trustees” of “REMIC” “trusts”.

=====================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Here is my reply to the reader:

They are playing a shell game and that is what you should say:

None of the BONY Mellon entities ever owned or paid for the debt, note or mortgage.

None of the BONY Mellon entities ever served as trustee for the benefit of certificate holders

None of the certificate holders ever received a conveyance of ownership in the debt, note or mortgage. The assignment is always void (see below).

None of the certificate holders hold any equitable interest in the debt, note or mortgage because they expressly waived any such interest.

None of the BONY Mellon entities ever received your loan to hold in trust for anyone.

The assignment of bare naked title without the debt is a legal nullity. The trust agreement says that BONY holds bare naked legal title for the investment bank, but it does not have legal title because the debt was not also transferred.

The appearance and disappearance of technical legal entities occurs for the sole purpose of creating the illusion of business transactions that never occurred.

None of the BONY Mellon entities will ever receive the proceeds of a forced sale of property in this case.

None of the BONY Mellon entities have ever received the proceeds of forced sale of any property related to the subject “trust” or trust name.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, Investor, originator, sham transactions, TRUST BENEFICIARIES | Tagged: Bank of America, BoNY-MELLON, certificate holders, HSBC, investors, shell game, U.S. Bank | 1 Comment »

Foreclosure Defense: To BKR or not to BKR, here are the issues in Bankruptcy

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Neil Garfield

The bottom line is that Chapter 7, 11, or 13 bankruptcy can be effective tolls in defending against unlawful foreclosures, but hey are not magic bullets. Like all legal procedures attempting to navigate them without a licensed legal professional who is a known quantity in Bankruptcy Court, is at the very least hazardous.

=====================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

I have a client in the service of our country for whom I am rendering services with minimal charges. He asks me now about filing a bankruptcy petition. LIke all litigation strategies contesting unlawful foreclosures, success really depends upon either a successful discovery strategy, a successful cross examination of the robo witness, or both. Here is what I wrote to him:

First I need to coordinate with your BKR attorney. Make absolutely certain that you put nothing on any of your schedules that could be construed as admitting that there is a valid secured lien in favor of anyone. Second, you might not need to file a lawsuit, because they will probably file a proof of claim — and you can object to the proof of claim. We often trip them up exactly there. If they don’t file a proof of claim (theoretically they are are not required to do so if they claim to be a secured creditor) you can file one for them in which you state that nothing is owed and there is no lien in favor of the named creditor.

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But if your schedules are done correctly (contrary to virtually all software used by BKR attorneys) they will be forced to file a proof of claim, because you will be listing the house as an asset that is collateral for a loan, if it still exists, that may be owned by John Doe.

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They might also file a motion to lift stay (MLS). That gets tricky because the threshold on such a motion is whether there is ANY color of a claim that could be pursued in the state courts or by nonjudicial foreclosure and subsequent possession. Assuming we are right that the current claimant has no claim, the lawyers and/or servicers will produce fake documents that are facially valid, even though they are totally fake.

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In most instances the facially valid documents are taken as sufficient color of title or claim such that the stay is lifted. While this is often treated by both attorneys and judges as a judgment on the merits, it is not. It is merely a determination by the bankruptcy court that in the interest of judicial economy and the bankruptcy estate, the matter should be resolved under state law, rather than Federal bankruptcy law.

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Depending upon how the wind is blowing, you can file a lawsuit. You can do this in one of three ways: (1) an adversary lawsuit in the bankruptcy court seeking declaratory, injunctive or supplemental relief, (2) a collateral action in state court or (3) a collateral action in Federal court.

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The key to any of this is getting discovery. First you serve interrogatories, requests to produce and requests for admissions directed at who owns the debt by reason of having paid for it. The added implied component is that they paid a party who owned the debt by reason of having paid for it. And the further implied element is that the claimant paid value for THE debt not just any debt, such as that arising solely from the note itself which may or may not be evidence of the debt.

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Then you file a motion to compel if they don’t answer or object. That is standard fare for the foreclosure mills. If they do have a confirmable money trail you are most likely going to lose, so if you get to that point, I think it would be wise to settle. While there have been some judges who simply won’t give anything to homeowners and who think that all homeowners in foreclosure are deadbeats, my experience is that the overwhelming majority of judges will grant an order to compel answers to the discovery propounded to the claimant.

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The big mistake made by pro se litigants is that they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to file a motion to compel and then failing to file a motion for sanction seeking to strike the pleadings and enter judgment for the homeowner. the plain simple fact is that in most cases the entire foreclosure case rests upon a paper trail that diverges from the money trail. If you are successful, at a minimum, you will be undermining the prima facie case that the claimant is pursuing foreclosure for restitution of an unpaid debt owed to the claimant — and you will win at least 65% of the time (based upon my experience).

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The reason for the high percentage of cases in which the foreclosure mills lose the case is simply that they don’t have a real client, a real claim or a real claimant. Their entire case is completely dependent upon presumptions arising from the facially validity of fake documents.

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As I have seen repeatedly, possession of the note is by the law firm and the law firm is naming a claimant as client with whom they have had no contact nor any retainer agreement. It is all based upon plausible deniability of everything blows up. And the lawyers under current construction of litigation privilege seem to have total immunity for pushing a revenue scheme that includes the law firm.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, jurisdiction, legal standing, Pleading, prima facie case | 4 Comments »

To Appeal or Not To Appeal — What was the Question?

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Making a mistake is not appealable unto itself. You must show that the error caused an improper decision. And by “improper” I mean that there is no way under existing law that the decision was based upon the law or, if you wish to pursue a still higher standard of review, that the law as applied violates constitutional protections.

=====================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

So the judge is quite certain that she has no sympathy for your position. Nonetheless, if you plan to appeal, and the rules of Court permit it, it may be to your advantage to file a motion for rehearing which focuses in on one or two points that could be right for appeal. This focuses the attention of the clerk for the appellate judge who orders the case to be put in one pile (affirmed) or another (review). That one decision — usually made by a clerk — either gives air to your appeal or kills it.

Remember that an appeal is solely directed at the question of whether or not there was any basis upon which the trial court could have entered the final judgement. it is not a retrial of the case. It is an entirely different inquiry looking for “fundamental error.” As long as the court record has anything in it that supports the ultimate decision it is extremely likely that the judgement, even if disliked, will be affirmed.

FAST FACTS: 1 in 6 appeals are successful to any degree. Of those more than half are in criminal cases where the stakes are perceived as much higher than civil cases. That means that less than 1 in 12 civil appeals will accomplish anything. And of the ones that accomplish something only a fraction are actually reversed with judgment for the losing side in the trial court.

The fact that nobody else would have decided the case that way is not a basis for appeal. Bias is not a basis for appeal either unless the record clearly shows that the judge had a direct interest in the outcome of the case.

An appeal is about whether anyone sitting as Judge could have decided the case as written in the findings of fact and law. That is different from the case at the trial level, which is about who should win. Appeals are about who could win. If the party who won at trial is party who could win under existing law, the decision will almost always be affirmed.

The question in your case is whether or not the trial court appropriately applied legal presumptions to arrive at the conclusion that the plaintiff actually owns the loan, and was therefore an injured party, and was therefore entitled to foreclosure. The first such question focuses on whether there were any legal presumptions to be applied, and if so, for whose benefit they should be applied.

The presence of facially valid documents definitely triggers the court discretion on whether to apply legal presumptions of fact. So the remaining questions relate to whether or not there are fatal inconsistencies in the facially valid documents or whether evidence is in the court record that requires rejection of the legal presumption of fact. A rejection of the legal presumption of fact means that the party relying on such presumptions must actually introduce evidence of the facts that had previously been presumed.

If argued well in trial court, the judge can be educated as to the effect of legal presumptions and might slow the inevitable outcome once the presumptions are applied.

As Dean Wigmore has explained, ” the peculiar effect of a presumption “of law” (that is, the real presumption) is merely to invoke a rule of compelling the (trier of Fact) to reach a conclusion in the absence of evidence to the contrary from the opponent. If the opponent offer evidence to the contrary (sufficient to satisfy the judge’s requirement of some evidence), the presumption disappears as a rule of law, and the case is in the (factfinder’s) hands free from any rule.” As more poetically the explanation has been put, “(p)resumtions… may be looked on as the bats of the law, flitting in the twilight, but disappearing in the sunshine of actual facts.”

In the absence of either legally permissible presumptions or real evidence, the plaintiff fails on the proof, to wit: it fails to satisfy the requirements for a prima facie case.

So the question here needs to focus on the Essential Elements of the Prima facie case. And the essential element above all others is whether the case has produced a judgement that will be used to satisfy a just debt owed to a party who paid value for it.

While there are plenty of good strong legal and logical arguments to challenge the existence of the debt, I know of no instance In which court has been the least bit receptive to that narrative. It leaves open the unanswered question about what happened to the debt and does that absolve the borrower of all liability to pay anything.

You don’t need to prove where the money is going. You only need to raise sufficient questions about the evidence such that the legal presumptions should have been discarded.

In your case, with the legal presumptions discarded, the Plaintiff would have had to introduce credible evidence that it was the owner of the debt in order to establish ownership of the mortgage, which in turn is needed to prove authority to foreclose. The Plaintiff is allowed to rely completely on legal presumptions if the case is based on facially valid documents — although a complete absence of actual evidence is frequently the excuse for an appellate court to question and then reverse the trial court’s decision.

In your case the reliance on legal presumptions has led to an attenuated conclusion of fact that could be challenged on appeal. As per the Court’s finding of fact, the mortgage was transferred several times. At one point it was transferred to U.S. Bank as trustee for a trust and then, after that transferred to Bank of America.

An instrument purporting to transfer a mortgage without a contemporaneous transfer of the debt is a legal nullity in all U.S. jurisdictions. The transfer of a debt occurs ONLY upon satisfaction of one condition — that value has been paid by the transferee to the transferor who had in turn paid value for the debt. That is universally true. It requires proof of payment OR it requires sufficient evidence to raise the presumption that payment was made.

In your case the Judge has expressly ruled that value was paid. Since there was no evidence of any proof of payment there can only be one possible explanation for such a finding — i.e., that the court was relying upon presumptions of fact arising from facially valid documents.

Transfer of the debt is presumed when the original note is transferred because it is presumed that the original note is evidence of the debt and should be accorded the effect of title to the debt. Since promissory notes are cash-equivalent instruments, there is no rational reason why a note would be transferred without payment; hence payment is presumed.

This presumption is defeated only if the court record demonstrates that there either was no financial transaction in which the debt was acquired or where the record raises sufficient questions such that the presumption should not have been applied. This is exactly where the courts frequently commit error but not necessarily reversible error.

In most loans that were ever subject to claims of securitization, the origination of the loan took place between an “originator” and the borrower, not the actual lender and the borrower. In plain language that means that the since the originator had never paid any value for the debt, they never owned it and therefore the mortgage naming the originator was void, which in turn means that any assignments of the void mortgage were also void.

This precisely why the Truth in Lending Act says that table funded (third party funded) loans are against public policy. But the Truth in Lending Act does not expressly state that such loans are void, meaning that acting in a representative capacity at a loan closing without the knowledge of the borrower is frowned upon but not explicitly outlawed.

So we must accept the idea that somehow the mortgage is valid but that does not address the question of who can enforce it or transfer it. The answer to that question in all jurisdictions is that it is only the party who has suffered a financial injury resulting from nonpayment. That is both a constitutional and statutory requirement.

In order to suffer financial injury from non payment you must have paid value for the loan. Payment of value is established upon proof of payment or a presumption that such payment was made.

The problem in your case is that the Judge presumed that such payment was made not just because she thinks she was allowed to do so, but because she actually believes it. She is assuming that even if there were “technical” irregularities or mistakes, that the foreclosure will result in payment to the party (ies) who paid value for the debt. And the problem with that, as we all know or at least suspect, is that she is wrong.

The money will go to players who were angling for revenue and the parties who actually advanced the money for the origination or acquisition of the loan are long gone. They won’t see one cent from the sale of the home.

The problem for you is therefore whether the judge was rightfully exercising her authority, jurisdiction and discretion to use legal presumptions in lieu of legal proof by proof of payment. You can’t introduce new evidence on appeal. So you must rely entirely upon what is in the court record or absent from it. And it is not enough to be correct; you must be convincing to a panel of judges who at best don’t care whether you win or lose.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, jurisdiction, legal standing, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, sham transactions, standing | 1 Comment »

Dancing with ghosts. The banks have no shame in contradicting themselves

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Neil Garfield

The bottom line is that foreclosures are all about collecting on unpaid debt. The only party who can initiate foreclosure proceedings that will force the sale of title to the home and then forcibly dispossess the homeowner is a party who owns the debt, is injured by nonpayment and who receives the proceeds of foreclosure as restitution for an unpaid debt.

In a pending case the attorneys for the “bank” argue that ownership of the debt is irrelevant.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Article 9, §203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by the statutes of the State of Hawaii simply says that a condition precedent to enforcement of as security instrument is payment for the debt. Opposing counsel has proposed a daring, inventive argument to avoid producing evidence of something that he should be anxious to demonstrate: this his client is an injured party seeking restitution. Instead opposing counsel has advanced argument intended to divert the court’s attention into Dickensian (see Bleak House, Charles Dickens, serially published March 1852-September 1853 ) meandering in which the point of the proceeding is totally lost on lawyers who no longer remember the reason the matter is in court.

The statute merely states as matter of law what is already axiomatic: in order to bring a case to court the claimant must be an injured party and present an actual controversy wherein some act of the accused has produced such injury. Opposing counsel doesn’t like that apparently because he does not represent an injured party and yet still seeks the remedy which thus will result in the generation of unaccountable revenue to a party simple because they asked for it.

In the case at bar the defendant has been sued in foreclosure, presumably for restitution of an unpaid debt. She asks in discovery whether the Plaintiff is actually the party who has suffered an injury by way of asking for evidence of who paid for the debt and when that occurred. In another decade counsel for the foreclosing party would have happily obliged, thus removing any likelihood of failure of the action. But here, counsel resists, saying that such a request is not warranted since the action is not dependent upon on ownership of the debt. It seems to be the argument that the mere possible existence of the debt is sufficient for anyone to enforce it.

Opposing counsel is essentially objecting as a substitute for filing a motion to dismiss or summary judgment. Despite the convoluted and erroneous arguments proposed by opposing counsel, the fact remains that discovery is allowed on any subject that could lead to the discovery (hence the name “discovery”) of admissible evidence. Since foreclosure is by definition a remedy for the recovery of debt, it is impossible to fathom an argument against requiring the suing party to answer questions about that debt. Yet that is exactly what opposing counsel seeks to do with smoke and mirrors. Defendant is entitled to an order requiring a good faith factual answer because there is no basis to deny her request or sustain any bojection of opposing counsel.

While it therefore is not necessary entertain the “merits” of the supercilious argument advanced by opposing counsel, the following is submitted in an abundance of caution.

Thus the first erroneous element of the argument of opposing counsel is that it ignores a simple fact, to wit: the note is one contract and the mortgage is another separate contract. Opposing counsel is seeking to mislead the court into ignoring the mortgage contract and laws concerning conditions precedent and standing to enforce the mortgage contract which is a security instrument, despite arguments to the contrary offered up by opposing counsel. If a mortgage is not a security instrument then it will come as unwelcome news to the holders of tens of millions of mortgages on real property.

In practice there are some presumptions that arise from possession and rights to enforce the promissory note in residential mortgage transactions; but those presumptions can be rebutted when, for example, the presumption of ownership of the loan is rebutted by evidence or inference or legal presumption — i.e., a showing that the claimant is neither the owner of the debt nor representing any owner of the debt who paid for it — or by undermining the use of the legal presumptions arising from their claims of possession, ownership or rights to enforce the promissory note. Those legal presumptions are those that allow a court tor reasonably conclude that the claimant is the owner of the debt and therefore would be receiving restitution for an unpaid debt to satisfy an unpaid debt due to the claimant.

Opposing counsel seeks to remove the very purpose of such legal presumptions, arguing instead that ownership of the debt is irrelevant and that anyone can initiate proceedings to forcibly divest title and peaceful possession from a homeowner merely by showing possession of the promissory note — thus wholly ignoring the conditions precedent to enforcement of the mortgage. The question of whether the proceeds of a foreclosure sale would go to pay anyone who had suffered actual economic loss from nonpayment is thus rendered irrelevant. Opposing counsel wishes this court to divert from current laws of enforcement of mortgages to new “interpretations” that only require certain conditions that allow for enforcement of the promissory note in residential mortgage transactions while ignoring any laws regarding the actual mortgage.

The fundamental flaw in their argument is that if they were right, then a few other things would also be true. The motive is clear — to provide a legal theory in which ownership of the debt is completely divorced from enforcement of the mortgage. This opens the door to moral hazard and outrage. Foreclosure, which is enforcement of a security instrument, is widely considered to be the most severe penalty under civil law — the equivalent of capital punishment in criminal law. It results in the loss of homestead property. Opposing counsel would have this court believe that no statutory law controls the conditions precedent to initiating a foreclosure proceeding. Such an offering is both absurd and dangerous.

First, the result of their intentionally misleading argument would be that there is no provision in the entire Uniform Commercial Code governing the conditions in which a mortgage could be enforced. This argument, wholly specious, produces the anomalous result of having no statutory authority setting forth standards for foreclosure and leaving it entirely to interpretation of contract law. If this were true, then foreclosure law would be entirely common law doctrine and would lead to wildly inconsistent results.

This is not the case. Foreclosure law is consistent in all U.S. jurisdictions precisely because the standards are the same, to wit: only the owner of the debt can authorize initiation of foreclosure proceedings because only the owner of the debt is an injured party arising from nonpayment. Opposing counsel is attempting to alter this paradigm and enable virtually anyone with the right information to bring a foreclosure action, pocket the proceeds, and divest the homeowner of ownership and peaceful enjoyment of their home. Foreclosure is not and should not be an opportunity for entrepreneurs to generate revenue. Foreclosure is intended, by statute, to be strictly limited to a remedy (restitution) for an unpaid debt. Opposing counsel seeks to expand the remedy of foreclosure from restitution for an unpaid debt to the owner for the debt to a whole new concept — generation of revenue without regard to the owner of the debt.

Second, their argument is disingenuous. They are trying to get the court the court to assume that there is no UCC provision under Article 9 for enforcement of a security instrument against the owner of real property while at the same time they seek to use the UCC provisions under Article 3 to support legal presumptions that they are in fact owners of the debt and authorized to enforce not only the promissory note, which is governed by Article 3 but the mortgage which they say is not governed by anything. Thus they invoke the UCC for their purpose of invoking foreclosure procedure while at the same time they deny the application of the UCC to the actual enforcement of the mortgage.

Hence they seek to shift the focus from enforcement of the mortgage to enforcement of the note. In other words they want it both ways, to wit: they want the legal presumptions under Article 3 which removes any obligation to prove payment for the debt payment with evidence but they want to remove any possibility of rebutting those presumptions as being irrelevant, because now under their theory they don’t need to be or represent anyone who owns the debt by virtue of having paid for it.

Thus anyone who claims to possess the note and have the status of someone who could enforce it would also automatically be conclusively presumed to be able to enforce the mortgage. According to the argument proposed by opposing counsel, the note should be converted from being considered evidence of the debt to actually being the debt and the facts be damned. If someone else paid for the debt, they are automatically excluded from the foreclosure process — which means that the one party who actually might have suffered from nonpayment by the borrower gets none of the proceeds.

Hence the basic premise behind the argument of opposing counsel is to undermine existing law and replace it with a haphazard set of possible interpretations.

Next look at their convoluted attempt to state that Article 9 does not cover real estate transactions.

First, looking at the simple wording of Article 9, §203 UCC, if there was meant to be an exclusion or exemption, it would be there. No such exclusion or exemption exists. The argument of opposing counsel consists entirely of twisting other provisions of UCC, as adopted by the laws of the State of Hawaii, to mean that the law does not mean what it says when it relates to a residential mortgage. Without ambiguity, the court has no power to “interpret” the statute to mean something other than what is says. Yet opposing counsel seeks to have this court interpret the statute as being irrelevant thus rendering moot the entire concept of a present controversy, legal standing, and public policy.

The rest of opposing counsel’s arguments are rebuffed, rebutted and rejected by his own quotation from Article 9 §308 UCC which states as follows:

“(e) [Lien securing right to payment.]

Perfection of a security interest in a right to payment or performance also perfects a security interest in a security interest, mortgage, or other lien on personal or real property securing the right.”

In plain language, the statute defining perfection of as security instrument includes the word “mortgage,” which is defined in Article 9 § 102 as “(55) “Mortgage” means a consensual interest in real property, including fixtures, which secures payment or performance of an obligation. “Security Instrument” is defined in Article 9 § 102 as “(74) “Security agreement” means an agreement that creates or provides for a security interest” and “secured Party is defined in Article 9 §102 as

“(73) “Secured party” means:

(A) a person in whose favor a security interest is created or provided for under a security agreement, whether or not any obligation to be secured is outstanding;

(B) a person that holds an agricultural lien;

(D) a person to which accounts, chattel paper, payment intangibles, or promissory notes have been sold;

(E) a trustee, indenture trustee, agent, collateral agent, or other representative in whose favor a security interest or agricultural lien is created or provided for; or

(F) a person that holds a security interest arising under Section 2-401, 2-505, 2-711(3), 2A-508(5), 4-210, or 5-118.”

Opposing counsel attempt to thread the needle by pointing to only one of six possible situations in which the rights arise of a “Secured Party.” A mortgage clearly qualifies as a security interest, as banks and attorneys for banks have argued for centuries. Their position on this issue has been constant and it has been codified into state law that is consistent throughout all U.S. jurisdictions. They have always been right, until they said they were not right.

For all of the above reasons the objections of plaintiff should be overruled, the Plaintiff should be directly ordered to answer the queries of the Defendant and failing that, the Defendant is entitled sanctions and the legal presumption that the Plaintiff is not an owner the debt, not a secured party, has not paid value for the debt, and this does not qualify as an injured party.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Eviction, evidence, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, Pleading, prima facie case, standing, Unlawful Detainer | Tagged: UCC 9-102, UCC 9-203, UCC 9-308 | 6 Comments »

The danger of submitting a hardship letter. See a lawyer!!!

Posted on November 11, 2019 by Neil Garfield

It is strongly advised by most attorneys that when submitting any statement or reply to any company posing as a mortgage servicer or lender that where it is appropropriate to do so you should state that you are making the statement for purposes of compromise and settlement only and not for use in court, trial or any other legal proceeding.

Otherwise what you say can and no doubt will be used against you in a court of law as admissions against interest which tend to be given great weight in any contested proceeding or trial.

Don’t admit, acknowledge or assume anything unless you absolutely know something is a fact. Even then, admitting it or acknowledging it without protecting yourself could lead to your statement being used against you.

For example, “Yes I stopped paying because ….”. Yes you were paying and yes you stopped BUT….

Such a statement implies that the receiving party was entitled to collect money from you in the first place. Do you really know this to be a fact? Are an expert is the securitization of debt or the sale of loans into the secondary market? Aren’t you relying on representations made to you by the same party who is demanding payment?

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Submitting a hardship statement will almost certainly lead you to make damaging admissions. It’s like unprotected sex — a lot of things could go wrong. The only way to protect yourself against that is by either not submitting anything or by submitting a statement under cover of “for Settlement and Compromise Only.”

In addition, it is highly unlikely that your hardship statement will result in any remedy or relief since the great majority of such requests are denied — by parties who had no right to even receive them, much less process them, in the first place. Statements like “investor rejected” are pure fabrications, lies. No investor is ever contacted nor do they care because they are not counting on your payment. Investors are counting on the promise of a stockbroker (investment bank) to make the payments, which they continue to receive even if you stop paying.

Stop thinking you know what is going on. Stop believing anything that is said or written to you. By suspending your belief you are far more likely to gain traction than by admitting that anyone has a right to collect, process or enforce any loans. they probably don’t have any financial interest nor any rights. But they will say otherwise because if they are successful whatever they get will be used as revenue and not to pay down your debt.

Any modification or other agreement to which you affix your signature will undoubtedly contain representations or implied representations that are false. Thus when you sign the agreement and acknowledge its contents you are admitting that the representations are true even though they are false.

So for example if you execute an agreement with Ocwen you are either directly or indirectly agreeing that it is Ocwen Loan Servicing with whom you are doing business despite the fact that they are not a lender and never paid a dime for your loan. Your signature is at least a tacit admission that either Ocwen will be treated as a lender or as an authorized representative of the owner of the debt who paid value for your debt. In fact, most of the time they have no such ownership or authorization.

The solicitation of a hardship statement is a ruse. It gets you to say you made payments, admit that you owe them, admit that the payments are owed to the company receiving the hardship statement, admit that you are in breach, admit that you are in default, admitting that the receiving company has the authority to grant or deny or loan modification request. In most cases none of those things are true. But they become true if you admit them.

But one of the objectives of laws and courts who enforce them is to create finality to any issue that comes up. Once you admit something you can’t say it isn’t so unless you give a really good explanation about why you admitted a fact that was in error and how that admission is somehow the fault of your adversary.

You probably will need to deliver a persuasive argument that shows how reversing your prior error will not impede justice. But it will impede justice because you’re forcing the courts to revisit an issue that was legally settled when you made your admissions.

Also a hardship statement will often concede that you can’t pay. That alone may be reason to deny your request for modification or any other relief. It is all a scam.

Filed under: BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, evidence, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, prima facie case, Servicer | Tagged: admissions against interest, assumptions, for settlement and compromise only, hardship letter, Ocwen, TRUTH | 3 Comments »

While We Were Sleeping: Remote Online Notarization is Becoming a Reality in Florida effective 1/1/2020

Posted on October 23, 2019 by Neil Garfield

see https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/danger-will-robinson-the-new-frontier-of-remote-online-notarization-and-electronic-wills/

I knew this was planned. But frankly I didn’t pay close attention. When the initial plans for electronic signatures were announced 10 years ago, we collectively convinced President Obama that the law as written made it too easy to fabricate documents and then have them be declared facially valid — thus raising legal presumptions about the document and its contents.

Under the new law in Florida and I presume in other states, notarization of documents for recording in county records can be accomplished electronically. The banks have lobbied hard for this and have done a lot of PR to pave the way for this law as reflecting “progress.”

The problem is that this greases the slippery slope on which the banks unleash a torrent of fabricated documents creating legal presumptions of fictitious facts — leaving homeowners to defend nonsensical allegations without the benefit of requiring the claimant to prove actual facts for its prima facie case.

Dean Wigmore — the man whose name is equated with the law of evidence — said that legal presumptions were like bats that fly around and then disappear in the light of actual facts. For nearly 20 years homeowners have been fighting bats in the belfry.

Those that persisted and had the money to contest illegal foreclosures mostly won simply because the legal presumptions were rebutted, leaving the foreclosure mill with no actual facts to present because there were not actual facts that favored their position. None of the foreclosures in which a supposedly REMIC trust was involved ever involved any party who had paid value for the debt as required by state statutes adopting Article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code making it a condition precedent to filing a foreclosure.

The assumption or presumption has always been that the named Plaintiff existed, and that it must have paid value for the debt. But they never did.

Most homeowners (96%+) were required to walk away because they lacked the resources of time, money and energy to contest the forced sale of their homestead by actors in a fraudulent scheme for revenue instead of any actor would could obtain restitution of an unpaid debt through a real foreclosure.

The simple answer is that the investors were the only ones who paid value but they never got title to the debt, note, or mortgage. This created a vacuum in which the investment bank pretended to own the debt and then act through surrogates to claim foreclosure without turning over the proceeds of foreclosure to the investors. It was a plain fraudulent revenue scheme.

The Florida legislature has now made it far easier for the banks to continue making money on actions that are simply labelled as foreclosures. This act enables the foreclosure mills and document fabricators to not only speed up the notarization process but also create a gap in accountability for errors, omissions and fraudulent content. It’s all happening online.

Judges are going to be required to treat notarization as presumptively valid when in fact the notary was a robo notary and the online process is fully automated behind the scenes. Thus the Florida legislature has continued and expedited the current process by which investment banks, acting through conduits or surrogates, sell the house, take the money and run. Not a penny is returned to investors who bought “certificates”.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, forensic investigation, legal standing, Mortgage, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, STATUTES | 8 Comments »

Update on MERS

Posted on October 16, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Just assume that everything is a fiction and none of it is real. Then set out to create the inference against the use of key legal presumptions necessary for the foreclosure mill to establish a prima facie case. Those presumptions lead to conclusions that are contrary to facts in the real world.

The answer is always the same. MERS is a data storage company that has no ownership of the data, or any documents that contain references to data, events, payments, assets or liabilities. The MERS database in intentionally unsecured — anyone can get access with a login and password which are easy to obtain.

The first reason for the looseness of data entry, maintenance and reporting is that the only real purpose for MERS is foreclosure. It is not used by anyone for any other purpose. The second reason for the looseness of data handling is that even its members and users know that it is not admissible in court. As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to foreclose using data from MERS.

=====================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

MERS. it is merely a naked nominee. In some states it is banned. The holder of a mortgage or the holder of a beneficial interest in a deed of trust is required to be the owner of the debt, which is somebody who has paid value for the debt. Check state law.

But the assignment from MERS has more problems than that. MERS is basically an agent. The principal is defined as the party who has been labeled as the “lender.”

The designation of MERS usually includes “its successors and assigns.”

That is the place where the Foreclosure Mills and the banks try to stuff in third parties who have no connection with the loan. Since MERS is merely a naked nominee, the only party that could issue instructions to MERS is the “lender” or its successors and assigns.

Why would they do that? Revenue! The foreclosure process in most instances is a revenue scheme and has no relation to any plan, scheme or process by which the result is restitution for an unpaid debt.

In most cases, by the time the foreclosure process is started, the “lender” is dead and nobody has acquired its assets, liabilities or business. There is no successor. So there have been many cases in which a judge has decided that a document supposedly executed on behalf of MERS by someone on behalf of a company that is labeled as “attorney in fact” is void in the absence of foundation testimony or documents showing that the interest of the “lender” has actually been transferred by way of payment to a transferee.

MERS is not a servicer and MERS is not the owner of the debt. It has bare naked legal title to mortgages.

There are no successors in interest or assigns with respect to either MERS or the “lender.” Since MERS does not possess and even disclaims any financial interest in the debt, note or mortgage, it may not execute any document of transfer except on behalf of the “lender” on the mortgage deed or deed of trust, or on behalf of a genuine successor to the “lender,” the document signed on behalf of MERS must be void, and not voidable.

This is where many attorneys and pro se litigants miss the mark. they fail to parse the words and thus fail to recognize the Achilles heel in any chain of title which is dependent upon the transfer of any interest in any mortgage by or on behalf of MERS.

The label of “authorized signer” is a lie on many levels. The signer has no corporate resolution from the Board of Directors, appointment by an actual officer with administrative duties at MERS, nor any employment by MERSas employee or as independent contractor. The person who signs is not paid by MERS.

The person who signs is the employee of one of three entities — (a) the foreclosure mill (see David Stern), (b) the party claiming to be an authorized servicer of an entity who also does not own the debt or (c) an outside vendor who specializes in fabricating documents to “clear up” (read that as falsify) the title chain.

In most cases there is no power of attorney executed by any employee, officer or director of MERS. But even in the rare instances where such a document has actually been properly executed and dated, the Power of Attorney cannot create any right, title or interest to any debt, note or mortgage.

You need to keep their feet to the fire. If you don’t successfully attack such issues the presumption will prevail — i.e., that the chain of title is perfect. If you do attack those issues the presumptions fail and in addition to MERS being naked so is the foreclosure mill and the claimed labeled servicer.

As always you will do well if you presume the entire foreclosure is a fake process in which the foreclosure process is weaponized to obtain revenue instead of restitution for an unpaid debt. Just assume that everything is a fiction and none of it is real. Then set out to create the inference against the use of key legal presumptions necessary for the foreclosure mill to establish a prima facie case. Those presumptions lead to conclusions that are contrary to facts in the real world.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, Mortgage, Motions, Pleading, prima facie case, sham transactions, STATUTES | Tagged: money, note, restitution, title, transfer, TRUTH, unpaid debt | 9 Comments »

Patrick Giunta Esq. Scores Another Homeowner Win in South Florida v US Bank Trustee LSF9 Master Participation Trust: William Paatalo, Expert Testifies

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Foreclosure volume has declined but that doesn’t reduce the number of cases that are deficient and even fraudulent.

As more senior Judges have more time to review the evidence, the legal presumptions sought by foreclosure mills and come to conclusions about the facts, they are increasingly suspicious about the claimant, the claim and the failure of proof of real facts.

Kudos again to trial lawyer Patrick Giunta, Esq. with offices in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Trial was held on October 7, 2019. This is the third time we have covered a win by Giunta.

Final Judgment for Defendant Case #50-2017-CA-012236, 10/8/19

Circuit Court West Palm Beach, Florida

ORDERED AND ADJUDGED AS FOLLOWS:

Plaintiff failed to prove it had standing to enforce the note.

On Count I, Mortgage Foreclosure, and Count II Re-establishment of Lost Note, Plaintiff US Bank as Trustee for the LSF9 Master Participation Trust take nothing by this action and the Defendants …. shall go hence without day.

Game set and match. The Judge here obviously sought to prevent the foreclosure mill from bringing another action.

Some judges upon finding that standing was lacking follow precedent and dismiss without prejudice enabling the foreclosure mill to try again. But more judges are taking great pains to examine the evidence and are coming to the legal conclusion that the Plaintiff’s proof failed.

Upon a factual finding of failure to prove a prima facie case, the court then enters Final Judgment, which for all purposes between that claimant and that borrower is a final determination on the merits. Any future attempts to foreclose by US Bank or the LSF9 Master Participation Trust are barred by res judicata, collateral estoppel and the Rooker Feldman Doctrine if it applies.

If any attempt is made to bring another foreclosure action in the name of another entity, trust, LLC or corporation, they would also likely be barred without pleading and proving real facts that show that the Plaintiff is the owner of the debt and paid value for it and the previous parties had executed assignments and other documents without any right, justification or excuse and without notice to the new claimant. That isn’t going to happen.

Giunta doesn’t take a lot of these cases but when he is engaged he tends to win. He understands securitization and relates it back to the failure to prove a prima facie case. He avoids trying to prove or even accepting the burden of proving who actually paid value for the debt, if anyone.

He employed Bill Paatalo in this case whose testimony underscored the deficiencies in the allegations, the documents, and the proof. Paatalo appeared as an expert fact witness.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, legal standing, Pleading, prima facie case, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: investigator bill paatalo, Patrick Giunta | 9 Comments »

Frustrated with Your Lawyer’s Attitude?

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Neil Garfield

PRESUMPTIONS VERSUS FACTS

The bottom line is that lawyers want to do the best possible job for their client and get the best possible result. They like winning. But sometimes they must protect clients against themselves. It’s true there are lazy lawyers out there who take money and don’t do the work. But most of them want to win because their livelihood depends upon a good reputation in the courtroom which includes respect as a winner.

There is a huge difference between what is written in statutes and case decisions and how and when they are applied. The fact that a court fails to apply the law that you think or even know should have been applied is not a failure of the lawyer so much as it is a failure of the courts to escape their bias. The simple fact is that I agree that most foreclosure cases should be decided in favor of the borrower but getting a court to agree is a daunting challenge to the skills of the lawyer representing a client who is largely seen as food for the system.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

So in a recent email exchange here is what I said some things about legal presumptions. I should have added the following:

Another legal presumption or factual assumption employed by the courts and often overlooked by foreclosure defense lawyers arises from the naming of the alleged claimant. A typical naming convention used by lawyers for the “claimant” is “ABC Bank, as trustee for the certificate holders of the DEF, Inc. Trust pass through certificates series XYZ-YY-Z.

Several things are happening here.

The case is being styled with the name of a bank creating a misleading impression that the bank has any involvement with the foreclosure.
The reference to the bank as trustee is never supported by any assertion or allegation that it is indeed a trustee and under what trust agreement. The court erroneously presumes that the bank is a trustee for a valid trust who owns the claim.
The reference to the certificate holders makes the certificate holders the claimant. But the pleading does not state the nature of the claim possessed by the certificate holders nor does it identify the certificate holder. In fact, the certificate holders have no right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage and are due nothing from the borrower. The court erroneously presumes that the reference to certificate holders is just a long way of referencing the trust.
The reference to the corporation creates ambiguity as to the name of the trust or the party whom the lawyers are saying is represented in the foreclosure proceedings. The court presumes that the naming of the corporation is irrelevant.
The reference to the certificate series falsely implies the certificates convey an interest in the subject debt, note or mortgage. By erroneously presuming this to be a fact the court is not only wrong factually but it is also accepting a presumption that i factually in conflict with the presumption that the claimant is a trust.

Here is what I wrote to the client:

I have no doubt that existing law, if properly applied, would be on your side. The problem is that the courts are bending over backwards to find false presumptions that create the illusion of applying existing law.

For example, the only claimant that can bring a foreclosure action as one who owns the debt and who has paid for it. Article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by state statute.

But the banks have convinced many courts that they comply with that statute. The way they do it is through the use of legal presumptions leading to false conclusions of fact.

So even though the named claimant has not paid value for the debt and doesn’t own the debt the courts end up concluding that the claimant does own the debt and has paid value for it. This is done through a circuitous application of legal presumptions.

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By merely alleging that they have possession of the original note, it raises the assumption or presumption that they have the original note. This is probably false because most notes were destroyed and the banks were relying upon images.

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By arriving at the conclusion of fact that the claimant is in possession of the original note (even though it is only a representative of the claimant that asserts possession) the courts then apply a legal presumption that the possessor of the original note has the authority to enforce it. There may be circumstances under which that is true, but that doesn’t mean that have the authority to enforce the mortgage.

*

By arriving at the conclusion that the claimant has the authority to enforce the note and has possession of the note, courts then take the leap that the claimant owns the note because they have alleged it. This is improper but it is nevertheless done because the court is looking for ways to justify a decision for the claimant.

*

By arriving at the conclusion that the claimant owns the note, and is not acting in a representative capacity (which is barred by Article 9 § 203 is of the Uniform Commercial Code) the court applies a legal presumption that the claimant has paid for the note (why else would they own it?). [NOTE: Many times the lawyers will say that the claimant is the holder of the note without saying that the claimant is the owner of the note. In such cases it could be argued that they are admitting to not owning the note but are merely claiming the right to enforce the note; by doing that they are admitting to not having paid value for the debt thus undermining their compliance with Article 9 §203 UCC as adopted by state statute. Hence while they might be able to enforce the note they cannot enforce the mortgage. The courts often erroneously presume that enforcement of the note (Article 3 UCC) is the same as enforcement of the mortgage (Article 9 UCC) — which should be addressed early and frequently by the defender of foreclosures.]

*

By arriving at the conclusion that the claimant has paid for the note, the court applies a legal presumption that this is equivalent to payment of value for the debt. In this case the note is treated as a title document for the debt. This would only be true if the original payee on the note was also the source of funds for the debt.( In most cases the source of funding for the debt is an investment bank acting on its own behalf. But the investment bank never appears in the title chain nor as claimant in foreclosure).

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Without the above assumptions and presumptions the claimant could never win at trial. The simple reason for that is that there’s never been a transaction in which the claimant paid value for the debt. It is only through the use of commonplace assumptions and legal presumptions that the court can arrive at the conclusion that the statutory condition precedent to initiating foreclosure has been satisfied.

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In truth neither the court nor most lawyers actually go through the process of analysis that I have described above. If they did they would find multiple instances in which the presumptions should not be applied to a contested fact.

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But the truth is that there is a bias to preserve the sanctity of contract and a belief that if the claimant is not allowed to succeed in foreclosure, the homeowner will receive a windfall benefit through the application of technical legal Doctrine.

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The truth is that the court is granting Revenue to a fake party with a fake claim. The court is not preserving contract, since the contract has already been destroyed through securitization. There was no contract for revenue. There was only a contract for debt.

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And while the borrower might appear to be getting a windfall, the success of the borrower merely reflects the larger implied contract that included securitization and should have included payment to the borrower for use of the borrower’s name reputation and collateral. The windfall already occurred when the Investment Bank sold the parts of the debt for 12 times the amount of the actual debt.

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So I mention all of this because I think it applies to your case. However you have an attorney and I don’t believe that a telephone conference with me is necessary or even appropriate. There is nothing in this email that your lawyer does not fully understand.

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But the practice of law involves much more than written statutes or case decisions. The practical realities are that the courts are not inclined to give borrowers relief despite the fact that they are clearly entitled to it by any objective standard. The trial lawyer or appellate lawyer must make practical decisions on tactics and strategy based upon knowledge of local practice and the specific judges that will hear evidence or argument.

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I understand your frustration. The situation seems clear to you and objectively speaking it is clear. but it has always been a daunting challenge to get the courts to agree. If your attorney wants a telephone conference with me, she can call me. But my knowledge of your attorney is that she has full command of the procedural options to oppose eviction or do anything else that might assist you. The only reason she might resist doing so is her belief that the action would be futile or potentially even result in adverse consequences to you.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Pleading, prima facie case | Tagged: legal presumptions | 9 Comments »

Rescission and Burden of Proof

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Neil Garfield

There are winners and losers in every courtroom. When dealing with TILA Rescission under 15 USC §1635 you must go the extra mile in not merely showing the court why you should win, but also revealing that the opposition is not actually losing anything. The same logic applies to every foreclosure where securitization is either obvious or lurking in the background.

The bottom line is that no payment of value has ever been paid or retained as a financial interest in the debt by the named claimant nor anyone in privity with the named claimant. Once you can show the court the possibility or probability that the foreclosure is simply a ruse to generate revenue then it is easier for the court to side with you. Once you show the court that your opposition refuses to disclose simple basic questions about ownership of the debt then you have the upper hand. Use it or lose it.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Another analysis just completed for a client: The situation is that the homeowner sent a notice of rescission under the TILA REscission Statute 15 U.S.C. §1635 within days of having “consummated” the loan agreement. By statute that notice of rescission canceled the loan agreement and substituted in place of the loan agreement a statutory scheme for repayment of the debt which is NOT void. The notice of rescission only voids the written note and mortgage, it does not void the debt. The free house argument is pure myth.

The client goes on to ask how we can prove when the transactions occurred and who were the parties to those transactions and when they occurred. The answer is that you will never prove that. But you can raise an inference that the claimant is not the owner of the debt who has paid and retains value in the debt such that a successful foreclosure will not be used for restitution of an unpaid debt.

By undermining the presumptions arising from possession of facially valid and recorded documents you eliminate the ability of your opposition to use legal presumptions and thus require them to prove their case without those presumptions. The simple truth is that generally speaking they can never prove a case without legal presumptions. Once the presumptions are gone there is no case.

Here is my response:

It sounds like you are on solid ground. But as you probably know trial judges and even appellate judges and justices bend over backwards to either ignore or rule against the notice of rescission and its effect. For a long time, the bench has rebelled against the Truth in Lending Act generally. They rebelled against TILA rescission viscerally. Despite the unanimous SCOTUS decision in Jesinoski both the trial and lower appellate courts are unanimous in opposition to following the dictates of the statute and following the rule of law enunciated by SCOTUS.

You must be extremely aggressive and confrontative in standing your ground.

*

As for the “free house” argument the answer is simple. There is no free house. unless you are seeking to quiet title, which I think is an unproductive strategy if you not on solid ground with TILA Rescission. You are only seeking to eliminate the current people from attempting to enforce the mortgage, collect on the note or enforce the note. The last point might be your weakest point (without rescission). Enforcement of the note under Article 3 of The Uniform Commercial Code is much more liberal the enforcement of the security instrument under Article 9.

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It is actually possible that they could get a judgement on the note for monetary damages but not a judgment on the mortgage (without rescission in play). They can only get a judgment on the mortgage if the claimant has paid value for the debt. of course all of this should be irrelevant in view of the rescission which completely nullifies the note and mortgage.

Education of the court is extremely important. There is no free house in rescission. The obligation to repay remains the same. That obligation is not secured by the mortgage which has been rendered void nor is it payable pursuant to the terms of the promissory note which was also rendered void by the rescission. the obligation under contract (loan agreement)is simply replaced buy a statutory obligation to repay the debt.

They had ample opportunity to comply with the statute and get repaid. They didn’t. That is no fault of the homeowner.

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If they want repayment of the debt they might be able to still get it. If they produce a claimant who has paid value for the debt and had no notice of the rescission and who regarded your current claimants as unlawful intervenors, the same as you, then it is possible but the court might allow the actual owner of the debt to comply with the statute and seek repayment of the debt.

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At least that is what you will argue. You probably know that no such person exists. The ownership of the debt has been split from the party who paid value for it. So they probably don’t have anyone who qualifies.

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As for your last question about discovering the actual dates on which the debt was purchased pursuant to Article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code, as a condition precedent to enforcement of the security instrument (mortgage or deed of trust), the answer is that neither the debt nor the note were ever purchased for value. The whole point is that they’re saying that these transactions occurred when in fact they did not.

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The only transaction that actually took place in which money exchanged hands is the one in which the certificates were sold to the investors. It might be successfully argued that the Investment Bank had paid the value for the debt so that is another possibility. If that argument succeeds then for a brief moment in time the Investment Bank was both the owner of the debt and the party who had paid value for it. But then it subsequently sold all attributes of the debt to the investors. the investors did not acquire any right title or interest directly in the subject debt, note or mortgage the only correct legal analysis would be that the Investment Bank retained bare naked title to the debt but had divested itself of any Financial interest in the debt. That divestiture generally occurred within 30 days from the date of funding the origination or acquisition of the loan.

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So if you are looking for the dates of transactions in which money exchanged hands in exchange for ownership of the note you are not going to find them. but strategically you want to engage in exactly that investigation as you have indicated. there’s no need to hire a private investigator who will never have access to the money Trail starting with the investors in the Investment Bank. So your investigation would be limited to aggressive discovery. Your goal in discovery is to reveal the fact that they refuse to answer basic questions about the identity of the party who currently owns the debt by reason of having paid for it as required by article 9 section 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by state statute.

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This requires properly worded Discovery demands and aggressive efforts to compel Discovery, followed by motions for sanctions and probably a motion in limine.

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Since you have a notice of rescission within the 3-year time period, what you are actually revealing is that your opposition has no legal standing. Their claims to have legal standing are entirely dependent upon the loan agreement which has been cancelled by your notice of rescission. Unless they can now also state that they are the owners of the debt by reason of having paid for it, they are not a creditor or a lender. therefore they have no legal standing to challenge legal sufficiency of the notice of rescission nor any standing to seek collection on the debt. And they certainly have no legal standing to enforce the note and mortgage which have been rendered void according to 15 USC 1635.

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Their problem now is that their only claim now arises from the TILA rescission statute — and all such claims are barred by the statute of limitations on claims arising from the Truth in Lending Act. That time has long since expired.

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It appears that no judge is going to like this argument even if it is completely logical and valid according to all generally accepted standards for legal analysis.

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So you’re going to have to address the elephant in the living room. The fact remains that if you are successful, as you should be, you will end up with a windfall gain. The judge knows that and denying it will only undermine your credibility. The Counterpoint is that if your opposition does not own the debt by virtue of having paid for it pursuant to the requirements of statute then their attempt at foreclosure is really an attempt to generate Revenue. If the Foreclosure is not going to provide money for restitution of an unpaid debt it can’t be anything else other than Revenue.

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In order to drill that point home you are going to need to argue, contrary to the judge’s bias, that not only is the current claimant not the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it, but that the current claimant is not an authorized representative of any party who paid for the debt by reason of having paid for it and that the proceeds of foreclosure, if allowed, will never be used to pay down the debt. Again the only way you’re going to accomplish this is through very aggressive Discovery and motions.

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Don’t attempt to prove the dates of transactions, the data for which is within the sole care custody and control of your opposition, and can be easily manipulated, if you only focus only on the paperwork.

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Don’t accept that burden of proof. The only way your opposition has gotten this far is because of legal presumptions arising from that claimed possession of the original note. you need to research those legal presumptions. Generally speaking the legal presumption of fact must include the conclusion that the claimant is the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it. Possession of the note is considered the same as title to the debt, The presumption arises therefore that possession of the note is ownership of the debt and the further presumption is that ownership of the debt is not likely to have been transferred without payment of value.

Legal presumptions are subject to rebuttal. the way to rebut the presumption is not by proving a particular fact but raising an inference that destroys the presumption. And the way to do that is by asking questions about payment to value for the debt (not just a note on mortgage) and pointing to the refusal of your opposition to give you an answer and to produce documents corroborating their answer.

After the appropriate motions, you will be able to legally require an inference that they are not the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it and that they don’t represent anyone who does own the debt by reason of having paid for it. Once the presumption is rebutted, the burden of proof falls back onto your opposition. and because they violated the rules of discovery, your motion should demand that they be prohibited from introducing evidence to the contrary of your inference that they don’t own the debt by reason of having paid for it and they don’t represent anyone who owns the debt and who paid for it.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure, forensic investigation, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Motions, prima facie case, quiet title, sham transactions, TILA, TILA rescission, Title, trial strategy | 9 Comments »

Don’t Admit Anything About the Servicers Either — It’s All a Lie

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Want to know why this site is called LivingLies? Read on

Homeowners often challenged the authority of the named claimant while skipping over the actual party who is supporting the claim — the alleged servicer.

You might also want to challenge or at least question their authority to be a servicer. The fact that someone appointed them to be a servicer does not make them a servicer.

Calling themselves a “servicer” does not constitute authority to administer or even meddle in your loan account. As you will see below the entire purpose of subservicers is to create the illusion of a “Business records” exception to the hearsay rule without which the loan could not be enforced. The truth here is stranger than fiction. But it opens the door to understanding how to engage the enemy in trial combat.

That “payment history” is inadmissible hearsay because it was not created by the actual owner of the record at or near the time of a transaction and the actual input of data is neither secure mor even known as to author or source. Likewise escrow and insurance payment functions are not authorized unless the party is an actual servicer. The fact that a homeowner reasonably believed and relied upon representations of servicing authority is a basis for disgorgement — not an admission that the party collecting money or imposing fees and insurance premiums was authorized to do so.

PRACTICE NOTE: However, in order to do this effectively you must be very aggressive in the discovery stage of litigation. (1) ASK QUESTIONS, (2) MOVE TO COMPEL, (3) MOVE FOR SANCTIONS, (4) RENEW MOTION FOR SANCTIONS, (5) MOTION IN LIMINE AND (6) TIMELY OBJECTION AT TRIAL.

=======================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

To be a “servicer” the company must received the appointment to administer the loan account from someone who is authorized to make the appointment. A power of attorney is only sufficient if the grantor is the owner of the debt — or had been given authority to make such appointment from the owner of the debt.

A person who is authorized to make the appointment is either the owner of the debt by virtue of having paid for the debt or an authorized representative of the owner of the debt by virtue of having paid for the debt. This is a key point that is frequently overlooked. By accepting the entity as a servicer, you are impliedly admitting that they have authorization and that a true creditor is in the chain upon which your opposition is placing reliance. In short, you are admitting to a false statement of facts that will undermine your defense narrative.

If the servicer is really authorized to act as such then your attempt to defeat foreclosure most likely fails because the case is about a real debt owed to a real owner of the debt.

The fact that they allege that they maintain records may be a true or false representation. But whether it is true or false, it does not mean that they had authorization to maintain those records or to take any other action in connection with the administration of the loan. Of course we know now that any such records are composed of both accurate and fabricated data.

We also know that the data is kept in a central repository much the same as MERS is used as a central repository for title.

The representations in your case about and intensive audit and boarding process most likely consist of fabricated documents and perjury. There was no audit and there was no boarding process. The data in most cases, and this probably applies to your case, was originated and maintained and manipulated at Black Knight formerly known as Lender Processing Systems.

Contrary to the requirements of law, the central repository does not ever handle any money or payments or disbursements and therefore does not create “business records” that could be used as an exception to the hearsay rule. The same thing applies MERS. These central repositories of data do not have any actual role in real life in connection with any financial transaction. Their purpose is the fabrication of data to support various purposes of their members.

All of this is very counterintuitive and difficult to wrap one’s mind around. but there is a reason for all of this subterfuge.

From a legal, accounting and finance perspective the debt was actually destroyed in the process of securitization. This was an intentional act to avoid potential risk of laws and liability. But for purposes of enforcement, the banks had to maintain the illusion of the existence of the debt. Since they had already destroyed the debt they had to fabricate evidence of its existence. This was done by the fabrication of documents, recording false utterances in title records, perjury in court and disingenuous argument in court.

The banks had to maintain the illusion of the existence of the debt because that is what is required under our current system of statutory laws. In all 50 states and U.S. territories, along with centuries of common law, it is a condition precedent to the enforcement of a foreclosure that the party claiming the remedy of foreclosure must be the owner of the debt by reason of having paid value for it.

The logic behind that is irrefutable. Foreclosure is an equitable remedy for restitution of an unpaid debt. It is the most severe remedy under civil law. Therefore, unlike a promissory note which only results in the rendition of a judgment for money damages, the Foreclosure must be for the sole purpose of paying down the debt. No exceptions.

The problem we constantly face in the courtroom is that there is an assumption that there is a party present in the courtroom who is seeking restitution for an unpaid debt, when in fact that party, along with others, is seeking revenue on its own behalf and on behalf of other participants.

The problem we face in court is that we must overcome the presumption that there was an actual legal claim on behalf of an actual legal claimant. Anything else must be viewed through the prism of skepticism about a borrower attempting to escape a debt. The nuance here is that the end result might indeed be let the borrower escapes the debt. But that is not because of anything that the borrower has done. In fact, the end result could be a remedy devised in court or by Statute in which the debt is reconstituted for purposes of enforcement, but for the benefit of the only parties who actually advance money and connection with that debt.

More importantly is that nonpayment of the debt does not directly result in any financial loss to any party. The loss is really the loss of an expectation of further profit after having generated revenue equal to 12 times the principal amount of the loan.

While there are many people who would argue to the contrary, they are arguing against faithful execution of our existing laws. There simply is no logic, common sense or legal analysis that supports using foreclosure processes as a means to obtain Revenue at the expense of both the borrower and the investor. And despite all appearances to the contrary, carefully created by the banks, that is exactly what is happening.

When the day comes that is finally recognized and accepted the paradigm shift will be historic.

Quietly it is already occurring. More and more state legislatures have been passing title reset laws similar to the Murphy Act in Florida (from the 1930’s) when title was completely screwed up by similar unlawful schemes.

Depending on the state your property is located in, the legislature has most likely already adopted a statute that says that any changes sought in title are barred if you bring a claim after 1 year (Florida), 5 years (California) or otherwise.

In other words the legislatures driven by bank interests who control voting in both Republican and Democratic caucuses, have accepted the premise that fabricated instruments containing false utterances have been used to change title, voluntarily and involuntarily, and are saying that even though nobody had a right to take title away from millions of homeowners, the illegal title change stands and the only thing you have left is an action for monetary damages which in turn is or may be barred by the statute of limitations.

And that is how the banks committed the largest economic crime against society in human history and that is how they are getting away with it, one law at a time. It’s not too late to save some people, but for the tens of millions of displaced persons, their injury remains and their remedy is unknown or forgotten.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, Investor, Mortgage, Motions, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, STATUTES, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy | Tagged: audit, boarding, business records exception, payment history, servicers, TRUTH | 12 Comments »

Jurisdictional Defense —- Certificate Holders vs Trust

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Litigators often miss the point that the foreclosure is brought on behalf of certificate holders who have no right, title or interest in the debt, note or mortgage — and there is no assertion, allegation or exhibit that says otherwise.

=======================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

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Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Here is an excerpt from one of my recent drafts on this subject:

LACK OF SUBJECT MATTER JURISDICTION: the complaint attempts to state a cause of action on behalf of the certificate holders of an apparent trust, although the trust is not identified as to the jurisdiction in which it was created or the jurisdiction in which it operates.

Even assuming that such a trust exists and that it issued certificates, there is no allegation or attachment of an exhibit demonstrating that the certificates contain a conveyance enabling the holder of the certificate to enforce the alleged debt, note or mortgage upon which the complaint relies. In fact, independent investigation shows the exact opposite.

Nor is there any allegation that any money is due to the certificate holders or any allegation that the certificate holders possess the promissory note or have the right to enforce either the promissory note or the mortgage. Even if the indenture for the certificates were produced before this court, it would only show a contract for payment from a party other than the homeowner in this action. Accordingly, no justiciable controversy has been presented to the court. In the absence of an amendment curing the above defects, the complaint must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

STANDING:

As to Bank of New York Mellon there is no allegation or attachment to the complaint that alleges or demonstrates an agency relationship between Bank of New York Mellon and the certificate holders, on whose behalf the complaint is allegedly filed. If Bank of New York Mellon is the trustee of an existing trust and the trust is alleged to own the debt note and mortgage along with the rights to enforce, then the agency or representative capacity of Bank of New York Mellon is with the trust, and not with the certificate holders. Based upon the allegations of the complaint and independent research defendant asserts that there is no representative capacity between Bank of New York Mellon and the certificate holders.
As to the alleged trust which has not been properly identified there is no allegation that the action is brought on behalf of the trust; but the implied allegation is that the trust is the plaintiff. The complaint states that the action is brought on behalf of the certificate holders who merely hold securities or instruments apparently issued in the name of the alleged trust. There is no allegation or exhibit attached to the complaint that would support any implication that Bank of New York Mellon possesses a power of attorney for the certificate holders or the trust. In fact, in litigation between Bank of New York Mellon and investors who have purchased such certificates, Bank of New York Mellon has denied any duty owed to the certificate holders.
As to the certificate holders, there is no allegation or exhibit demonstrating that the certificate holders have any right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage nor any right to enforce the debt, note or mortgage. Based upon independent research, the certificate holders do not possess any right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage nor any right to enforce. In fact, in Tax Court litigation the certificate holders are deemed to be holding an unsecured obligation, to wit: a promise to pay issued in the name of a trust which may simply be the fictitious name of an investment bank. There is no contractual relationship between the defendant and the certificate holders. Further, no such relationship has been alleged or implied by the complaint or anything contained in the attachments to the complaint.
As to the certificate holders, they are neither named nor identified. Yet the complaint states that the lawsuit is based upon a claim for restitution to the certificate holders. The reference to the trust may be identification of the certificates but not the certificate holders. In fact, based upon independent investigation, the holders of such certificates never received any payments from the borrower nor from any servicer who collected payments from the borrower nor from the proceeds of any foreclosure. In the case at bar. the complaint is framed to obscure the fact that the forced sale of the property will not be used to satisfy the debt, note or mortgage in whole or in part.
As to any of the parties listed in the complaint as being a plaintiff or part of the plaintiff there is no allegation or exhibit demonstrating that any of them paid value for the debt, or received a conveyance of an interest in the debt, note or mortgage from a party who has paid value for the debt as required by article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by state law, which states that a condition precedent to the enforcement of a mortgage is the payment of value for the debt. Hence regardless of who is identified as being the actual plaintiff none of the parties listed can demonstrate financial injury arising from nonpayment or any other act by the defendant.
In the absence of any amendment to cure the above defects, the entire complaint and exhibits must be dismissed with prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and lack of a plaintiff who has legal standing to bring a claim against the defendant.

The only thing I would add to the existing second affirmative defense is the affirmative statement that based upon independent investigation, such signatures were neither authorized nor proper, to wit: they consist of forgeries or the product of robosigned in which the signature of a person is affixed without knowledge of the contents of the instrument to which it is affixed.

In my opinion, the specificity that I have employed in the above comments not only provides a basis for dismissal, but also the foundation to support Discovery requests that might otherwise be denied, to wit: who, if anyone, ever paid money for the debt?

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Pleading, prima facie case, sham transactions, standing, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy | Tagged: Bank of New York Mellon, certificate holder, CERTIFICATES, HOLDER, Power of Attorney, subject matter jurisdiction, trust | 5 Comments »

Consent Order Contains Admission of False Affidavits and False Chains of Title

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Neil Garfield

A lot of student loan debt ends up being claimed by “Trusts” that are exactly like REMIC trusts except they are not about residential mortgages. And as I have previously pointed out on these pages, the enforcement of those debts has gone through the same process of removing the risk of loss from those who made the loan and the creation of a scheme where it is perhaps impossible to find or identify any creditor who owns the debt by reason of having paid for it (as opposed to “owning the debt” by reason of having the promissory note or a copy of it).

As a side note, to the extent that debtors are prevented from discharging such debt because of government guarantees, I argue that such exclusion is inapplicable. Students should be able to discharge most student debt in bankruptcy. The risk has already been eliminated if the loans are subject to claims in securitization. The purpose of the guarantee has thus been eliminated.

=======================================

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

Hat tip to summer chic

In this case, the CFPB filed suit essentially asserting its own administrative findings that mirror the defenses of homeowners in foreclosure, to wit: that the affidavits filed are false, and they are falsely signed and notarized, containing false information about title to the loan and false information about the business records.

What is interesting about this case is that the parties are submitting a consent order which includes as those findings of the court in paragraph 4 of the proposed consent order which states as follows:

See https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201709_cfpb_national-collegiate-student-loan-trusts_proposed-consent-judgment.pdf

4. Since at least November 1, 2012, in order to collect on defaulted private student loans, Defendants’ Servicers filed Collections Lawsuits on behalf of Defendants in state courts across the country. In support of these lawsuits, Subservicers on behalf of Defendants executed and filed affidavits that falsely claimed personal knowledge of the account records and the consumer’s debt, and in many cases, personal knowledge of the chain of assignments establishing ownership of the loans.In addition, Defendants’ Servicers on behalf of Defendants filed more than 2,000 debt collections lawsuits without the documentation necessary to prove Trust ownership of the loans or on debt that was time-barred. Finally, notaries for Defendants’ Servicers notarized over 25,000 affidavits even though they did not witness the affiants’ signatures.[e.s.]

PRACTICE NOTE: HOW TO USE THIS INFORMATION. Sometimes I erroneously assume that people know what to do with this type of information. So let’s be clear.

This information means that servicers, subservicers and lawyers claims regarding chain of title, business records, and their use of affidavits or even testimony is not entitled to the same presumption of credibility that might otherwise apply.
That means that the presumptions on the use of business records are not entitled to a presumption of credibility and that additional foundation testimony must be offered in order to assure the court that what is contained in the document is authorized, properly signed, properly notarized and most importantly accurate.
The entire case against debtors in these situations is entirely dependent upon the use of legal presumptions that can be rebutted. Rebuttal of presumptions takes place under two general categories.
The first is that that the presumed fact can be shown to be untrue.
The second ius that the process of presumption should not apply because the proponent of the document clearly has a stake in the outcome of litigation and has a history of falsifying such documents.
Once you rebut the presumption, the case against the debot (homeowner, student) is gone.
The opposition has no evidence of proof of payment for the debt, and this has no foundation for claiming authority of the servicer, trustee or even the lawyer.
Such authority must come from the owner of a debt who has paid value for it.

Dan Edstrom senior forensic loan examiner writes the following:

This is similar to what is in the foreclosure review consent orders (from US Bank Consent Order dated April 13, 2011):

(2) In connection with certain foreclosures of loans in its residential mortgage servicing portfolio, the Bank:

(a) filed or caused to be filed in state and federal courts affidavits executed by its employees making various assertions, such as the amount of the principal and interest due or the fees and expenses chargeable to the borrower, in which the affiant represented that the assertions in the affidavit were made based on personal knowledge or based on a review by the affiant of the relevant books and records, when, in many cases, they were not based on such personal knowledge or review of the relevant books and records;

(b) filed or caused to be filed in state and federal courts, or in local land records offices, numerous affidavits that were not properly notarized, including those not signed or affirmed in the presence of a notary;

(c) failed to devote to its foreclosure processes adequate oversight, internal controls, policies, and procedures, compliance risk management, internal audit, third party management, and training; and

(d) failed to sufficiently oversee outside counsel and other third-party providers handling foreclosure-related services.

(3) By reason of the conduct set forth above, the Bank engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practices.

And what about this quote from the student loan consent order:

In addition, Defendants’ Servicers on behalf of Defendants filed more than 2,000 debt collections lawsuits without the documentation necessary to prove Trust ownership of the loans or on debt that was time-barred.

So wait a minute. They allege the debt cannot be discharged in BKR, but (alleged) student loan debt that hasn’t been paid on in years – isn’t it time barred? How does collection action work after decades where they took affirmative debt collection steps after the debt was time barred? In the instance I am thinking about, a dentist was BARRED from taking patients with some type of federally covered insurance and this forced them out of their occupation. The student loan debt hadn’t been paid in 2 or 3 decades (in California).

So in a related case (time-barred debt) in BKR in CA, a debtor filed a lawsuit against a creditor for filing a proof of claim on a time-barred debt. He lost, the court ruled that if the proof of claim was not objected to (with the relevant objection being that the debt was time-barred), the debtor waived the affirmative defense.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, forensic investigation, forgery, legal standing, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: business records, false affidavits, false business records, false chains of title, servicers, student loan, TRUSTS | 11 Comments »

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER. ========================

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER. ========================

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER. ========================

Spread the word

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

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I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER. ========================

Spread the word

Like this:

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER. ========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================