“Black Knight”: Banks Are Peddling A False National Narrative of Declining Foreclosures

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Neil Garfield

I’m busy today so I can’t publish my usual long analytical article. But one thing that is constantly staring at me is the fact that the national press and news releases are in basic conflict with local media. And the fact that local media is going out of business isn’t helping.

Black Knight is a company whose size and reputation is entirely based upon preparation, presentation, and use of false documents and information that were forged, robosigned, and back-dated. Those were the days when it was called Lenders Processing Services in which DOCX was used to produce the false documents. Lorraine Browne, President of DOCX took one for the team and was the only person in the entire 2008 crash who went to jail. Neither DOCX nor other divisions of Lender Processing Systems were ever retired.

In fact, Black Knight is now expanded in some sense because it operates as the front for lockbox and electronic payments made in the name of companies claiming to be servicers. Concealed from homeowners is the fact that those payments are never actually received by the company claiming to be a servicer nor disbursed by that company to anyone claiming to be a creditor.

It is all a ruse. There is no creditor because there is no loan account receivable (LAR). There is no loan account receivable because the investment banks are selling what would have been the LAR multiple times without crediting any LAR — hence, no claim, no creditor. But because all of that is confusing, consumers continue to pay on nonexistent accounts that do not in fact exist and were never intended to be maintained. They pay and they are victims of “enforcement” because of a false national narrative about securitization.

Here is the simple truth: there is no securitization of debt. And all claims regarding eh existence of the LAR. and authority to enforce, administer to collect money for the LAR are false. That is not an opinion. It is a fact under current law that nobody can legally collect on a debt that does not exist — even if the named debtor believes the false claim that the LAR exists.

The “Payment History” is almost always accepted as a substitute for a copy of the actual loan account receivable —which until the last 25 years has ALWAYS been a basic staple of anyone who wanted to get a foreclosure judgment or sale — even if it was uncontested. If you didn’t produce that, along with an affidavit or testimony from an officer of the actual creditor or lender, you could not get the judgment or the sale. I personally witnessed myself and many other lawyers going to court with part of the foreclosure file missing and being told that the motion for summary judgment was denied — without any appearance or opposition from the homeowner. (I didn’t always represent the consumer).

But is the consortium of financial technology companies (FINTECH) including Black Knight that produces a report that is labeled as a “Payment History” because it is the FINTECH companies working for the investment banks that process that data. The report is pure hearsay that is not admissible in court but because homeowners and lawyers fail to test the report, they fail to reveal the fact that the “servicer” never was party to any transaction that it would then enter as data on its own bank accounts, accounting ledgers and books of record. None of that happened.

So the report is admitted as an exception to the hearsay rule thus allowing companies like Black Knight to carry water for the investment banks who want to collect money from payments of homeowners or on the sale of their homes so they can pay out bonuses without any attempt to account for the proceeds as a reduction in any loan account.

So it is in that position that Black Knight became a central repository of data about any transactions that are falsely defined in the national narrative as mortgage loans. That data is at best questionable and obviously false when tested in litigation. And because Black Knight functions almost exclusively at the behest and is subject to the influence and control of investment banks who are book-running securitization schemes, it reports what they tell Black Knight to report.

So you get articles like this:

https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news/black-knight-foreclosure-activity-nears-pre-pandemic-low

But lawyers like myself have our phones ringing off the hook now that foreclosures are spiking. And local media outlets that are still in existence, are accurately reporting the sharp spikes in new foreclosures, new evictions, and declarations of default. Both political parties are idiots, believing that foreclosure is no longer an issue. Tell that to the people who are losing their homes to fake creditors who are merely seeking profit. It’s another case of politicians being completely out of touch with realities of events on the ground — because they are listening to sources of information that come ONLY from Wall Street.

To its credit, the Biden Administration is attempting through the new legislation to preserve local media which tends to report facts and actual events rather than the current trend in national media to posit possibilities and then spend all their time analyzing what those possibilities might mean if they ever happened. Most investigative journalism is dead, which is why things have gone so wrong in this country.

Fact check: current events are not talking heads in boxes on TV. They’re real things happening to real people. That is “news.” The rest is pure speculation for purposes of producing revenues from the entertainment value of that speculation. It is now the national pastime to accept such speculation as news. It isn’t.

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 74, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business, accounting and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
  • But challenging the “servicers” and other claimants before they seek enforcement can delay action by them for as much as 12 years or more.
  • Yes you DO need a lawyer.
  • If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.
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Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure mill, forgery, hearsay, investment banking, legal standing, Presumptions, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions | 2 Comments »

Tonight! Neil Garfield makes it simple: Lying for Dollars: How to Apply Your Understanding of Securitization Claims to Win

Posted on April 8, 2021 by Neil Garfield

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“Your Honor, this is a standard foreclosure.” That is the first lie told in court as lawyers, and companies claiming to be servicers, lenders, or trustees continue to play their game of lying for dollars.

It’s obvious I have not simplified the explanation enough because both lawyers and homeowners still mostly don’t understand what I am talking about. That means they can’t use it effectively, as I have, and that means the judge won’t have any idea what you are talking about.

You can prove that the documents used by your opposition can’t be trusted. More importantly, you can prove that the lawyers opposing you cannot be trusted. And that means the opposition must prove their case by reference in well-founded relevant testimony from competent witnesses as to the actual transaction, proof of payment, etc. And they can’t do that.

That is how I win. And that is how homeowners across the country have won. And that is how all homeowners are faced with false claims of securitization or false claims of ownership where there is MERS or other signs of claimed securitization in the background.

So let me take a stab at another type of explanation of what happened. I concede that it is difficult for anyone to comprehend including Wall Street investment bankers. This will be the show tonight — my attempt at simplifying the explanation of why homeowners should win every time.

This will be an oversimplification. It is an example of the progression of events that occur when a legitimate loan is claimed to be subject to what is called securitization.

You must be tenacious, persistent, and unrelenting to the point where you can clearly demonstrate that the opposition is not complying with either court rules or court orders. That is when you have them in your sights and can shoot down their claim.

Filed under: burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, Investor, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, TRIAL OBJECTIONS | 1 Comment »

Processing Fees are more than illegal — by adding them to balance due, the default letter is defective.

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Neil Garfield

This is simple logic. If illegal processing fees were greedily added to the “loan accounts” falsely asserted to exist, then the amount demanded from “borrowers” was incorrect. That would make the statements sent to borrowers part of a fraudulent scheme through US Mails which would be mail fraud. And it would make the notices of delinquency and notice of default and notices of default defective and perhaps fatally defective because they were seeking to enforce an amount not due. And it would make foreclosure judgments and sales based upon such demands potentially voidable.

see https://spotonflorida.com/southeast-florida/1835819/ocwen-phh-corp-pay-125-million-settlement.html

CLICK HERE ORDER ADMINISTRATIVE STRATEGY, ANALYSIS AND NARRATIVE. This could be all you need to preserve your objections and defenses to administration, collection or enforcement of your obligation.

You know Ocwen. It’s that company that stays in business by the largess of large financial institutions that buy its stock on the open market. Investment bankers use the Company to shield themselves and their own company from potentially trillions of dollars in liability — and possibly prison. It is the company that pretends to be the “servicer” of your loan — which you readily accept because (a) someone needs to do it and (b) nobody else is saying they are “servicing” your loan.

But in reality it is not your servicer because of some technical problems – like the absence of a loan account and the absence of anyone who claims to own your loan account. Only such a company that owned your debt could give authority to a third party to administer, collect or enforce your debt or loan account. Ocwen never received that authority from anyone because in most cases (nearly all) no such creditor exists. (see previous blog articles as to how this highly counterintuitive result is created and exploited by investment banks).

And there is another sticky problem because Ocwen doesn’t actually “service” your loan payments — Black Knight does that, hidden behind the curtains that Goldman Sachs calls “layering” or laddering.” So in the musical chairs presentation of servicers, for enforcement, and Ocwen is designated by Black Knight to come forward as “servicer”, it does so as a witness once removed from the actual entity that collected payments on behalf of a loan account that doesn’t exist.

In plain language the entire process of “boarding” is a charade. The prior company that was designated as “servicer” is simply dropped from the letterhead of notices and statements generated by Black Knight, and Ocwen’s name is inserted instead. “Boarding” comprises a new login name and password to the Black Knight systems.

Ocwen/PHH (after merger) have never made a profit and never will. It is a publicly traded business entity that is waiting to be thrown under the bus. When the s–t hits the fan, and it becomes widely known and accepted that there are no loan accounts and there is nothing to administer, collect or enforce, the plan is to have Ocwen, and companies like Ocwen to take the heat, leaving the investment banks free from blame or liability for civil or criminal infractions. At least that is the plan. But if the government ever breaks free of the control by Wall Street — and clawback of money siphoned from our economy becomes a priority —then it won’t be difficult to pierce through the corporate veils of Ocwen like companies to seize assets held here and abroad.

So it should come as no surprise that such people would add on such things as “processing” or “convenience” fees when there is no processing and there is no convenience. Ocwen has now agreed to pay money because it received a slap on the wrist. But like the hundreds of preceding settlements, nobody is asking about the effect of the illegal practices on the presumed loan accounts, even if they existed.

This is simple logic. If illegal processing fees were greedily added to the “loan accounts” falsely asserted to exist, then the amount demanded from “borrowers” was incorrect. That would make the statements sent to borrowers part of a fraudulent scheme through US Mails which would be mail fraud. And it would make the notices of delinquency and notice of default and notices of default defective and perhaps fatally defective because they were seeking to enforce an amount not due. And it would make foreclosure judgments and sales based upon such demands potentially voidable.

But nobody talks about that because it is the unstated sub silentio policy to uphold the securitization infrastructure that does not exist, to wit: no loan was sold and no loan was securitized. That is impossible because for securitization to be real the loan must be sold to investors. There was never any such sale.

*Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.*

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*FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.

  • But challenging the “servicers” and other claimants before they seek enforcement can delay action by them for as much as 12 years or more. 
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*Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forgery, investment banking, Investor, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

How to ask the right questions in discovery

Posted on August 12, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Discovery is part law, part art, and part intuition. The lawyer must generate questions that can be used, by themselves, to bring certain issues in front of the judge either because the opponent answered the questions or because they didn’t answer.

If your point is that your opponent doesn’t own the claim even though they either said or implied that they do own it, then you need to do some investigation first so you can ask the right questions in the right way. If your point is that there are two agreements, one for loan and the other for securitization, the same thing applies. Either way you face an uphill climb as you attempt to persuade a judge who is not an investment banker and doesn’t understands securitization but still thinks he or she understands residential homeowner transactions.

So continuing with our example, you want to show the judge that despite the requirements for legal standing your opponent does not have standing. In order to have standing the claimant must have an injury. Financial injury qualifies and that is what the banks are relying upon when they try to foreclose.

How does one have financial injury? Actual financial damages occur when one actually loses money or permanent value of some property — tangible, intangible, real or personal property all qualify.

By “actual” that means you can count the money that was lost as a direct and proximate result of the action or inaction of the defendant or, in this case, the homeowner.

If the homeowner doesn’t make a payment that had been expected, then several things occur in the law that makes this fairly simple proposition complex.

  1. Does the homeowner owe any money to the party to whom payment was previously being made? If not, then the complaining party had no right to declare, much less enforce the claim of default. The subheading here is counterintuitive — does the debt exist as  an asset owned by any entity, including the claimant? Assuming that the answer to these questions is in the affirmative is an assumption that compromises the entire defense of a foreclosure case. Assuming the answer is no, then discovery will be on the right track.
  2. BUT having previously made payments to the complaining party, the homeowner has been acting against his/her own interest and that is often treated as an implied admission that payment was previously made because the homeowner thought it was due. To take a contrary position now is contradictory and diminishes the credibility of the homeowner who later says that the money is not due.
  3. Was there an agreement under which the homeowner agreed to make the payment? Not so fast. This is more complicated than anything you can imagine because there is no agreement, no matter what was signed or what was even done, unless the agreement is enforceable. In the eyes of the law an unenforceable agreement is no agreement — a legal nullity. And there are very precise elements of a legally enforceable agreement, each of which must be present. this isn’t horseshoes — close is not enough.
  4. Is the claimant a party to the agreement? In the context of loans this is easy if there really was an original lender and a borrower. In the context of securitization, this condition can only be satisfied by the claimant if it purchased the underlying debt for value in exchange for a conveyance of the ownership of the debt. In today’s foreclosures this element is the focal point for most litigation. The claimant always has a conveyance, but never produces any proof of payment for the debt. That makes the conveyance (assignment of mortgage or indorsement of note) void even if it was executed and recorded. It is regarded in all jurisdictions as a legal nullity. If the conveyance was void then the claimant is not a party to the agreement. Litigation is between the bank forces using legal presumptions arising from the apparent facial validity of the conveyance and the actual facts which are absent showing that value was paid for the debt in exchange for the conveyance.
  5. Was there mutual consideration? If not, there is no agreement. In the context of loans this means that the original agreement produced mutuality. In other words, the party that is disclosed as “lender”, pursuant to the provisions of the Truth in lending Act, gave money to the borrower and the borrower took it, in exchange for a promise to repay the money to that party. At least 65% of all loans from the year 2000 to the present were not originated by the party named as “lender” in the “agreement” (note and mortgage). They are table funded loans against public policy. But they are often enforced under the belief that the originator was in privity (agreement) with the source of funds. In the context of securitization, which covers around 95% of all such loans, there was no privity because the source of funds did not want to liable for lending violations (inflated appraisals, nonviable loans etc). The issue is complicated by the fact that the borrower did receive consideration and did make the promise to pay the originator — but neither the note nor the mortgage were supported by consideration from the originator. Any “purchase” from the originator was therefore void, and any conveyance of the mortgage or note from the originator was void unless the grantee had already paid for the underlying debt. In virtually all cases in which securitization claims are present, the grantee has never paid for the debt, nor has it ever possessed the resources to purchase the debt. It is a
    “bankruptcy remote vehicle” which is to say that it is there in name only and possible not even as a legal entity. If you can show that fact or show that the other side refuses to answer properly worded questions about the status and ownership of the debt, then you can raise the inference that the claimant doesn’t possess a claim and therefore lacks standing.

So the questions that should be constructed and posed should center on the following guidelines, for purposes of this illustration:

  1. In which bank account were prior payments received and who controlled that bank account.
  2. On what general ledger of what company is the claimed debt appearing as an asset receivable of that company?
  3. What was the asset account from which the claimant entered a debit to pay for ownership of the debt?
  4. Does the named claimant as beneficiary or Plaintiff own the claimed debt as a result of a transaction on a certain date in which it paid value for the debt to a grantor who owned the debt in exchange for an conveyance of ownership of the debt?
  5. To whom did the servicer forward payments received from the borrower/homeowner?
  6. What person or entity did not receive money as a result of the claimed default?
  7. What is the date on which the named claimant received ownership of the underlying debt?
  8. On what dates has the named claimant issued any payments to third parties whose contractual rights to such payments were in any way related to payments received from the borrower/homeowner?
  9. What is the name and contact information of the officer(s) or employee(s) of the named claimant who is in charge of accounting and finance for the named claimant?
  10. What is the name and contact information of the officer or employee of the named claimant who is the custodian of records relating to the underlying debt, payments received and payments disbursed that were in any way related to the underlying debt, payments made by the borrower/homeowner, or payments received by third parties (possibly investors).
  11. Describe source and the amount of the remuneration and compensation received by the named claimant in connection with the creation, administration, collection or enforcement of the subject underlying debt, note and mortgage.
  12. Describe dates and names of the lockbox contract(s) maintained with third parties for the collection of borrower/homeowner payments relating to the subject loan.
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Don’t use the above as the actual wording of your interrogatories, request for production or request for admission although some cutting and pasting could be used. Check with local counsel before you attempt to enter the legal process of discovery, motions to compel, motions for sanctions and motions in limine.
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This article is not a complete treatise on discovery in foreclosure actions. It is not a substitute for seeking advice from an attorney licensed in the jurisdiction in which your property is located.
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KEEP IN MIND THAT THEY WILL NEVER ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS. DON’T EXPECT ANSWERS. EXPECT THE ABSENCE OF ANSWERS. THEN USE THEIR REFUSAL TO ANSWER AS THE BASIS FOR RAISING INFERENCES AND PRESUMPTIONS AGAINST THEM.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Filed under: boarding process, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, Investor, Mortgage, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, Unlawful Detainer | 5 Comments »

Who is PennyMac and Why Was It Needed by Wall Street Banks?

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Neil Garfield

I received an email from one of my most prolific contributors that I am republishing here because virtually everything in it is entirely correct. I especially approve of her point about the fact that servicer advances are funded from proceeds of public offerings of stock that were all purchased by the Wall Street banks who did the underwriting.  Substance over form: the banks were giving PennyMac the money to make servicer advances. The banks were using the investor sourced money supply to buy the fake stock offering. None of it was real.

The end result is that all roads lead back to one thing, to wit: all of the money trail and all of the paper trails lead back to a handful of Wall Street banks who had “successfully” created a void between the real parties in interest — investors and homeowners — and the found a way to create the illusion of filling the void that cut out the financial interests of those real parties in interest. 

The banks were only intermediaries. They successfully posed as the real parties in interest when they were trading and issuing derivatives. But at the other end of the stick they maintained their position as intermediaries who had no interest in the debt and therefore could not be defined as lenders subject to the obligations and restrictions imposed by statutory and common law governing lending, consumer practices, servicing or anything else.

All of the fabricated documents that ensued were designed to cover up the fact that there was no person or entity that owned the underlying debt of any homeowner. Hence nobody could claim financial injury — a basic requirement for getting into court or making any claim.

who is PennyMac (PM) and why are they needed.
I think we need to look back at the PM history to answer this question.
PennyMac is a renamed Countrywide Financial which now operates at least 4 (four) known to me organizations.
1. PennyMac (one of most criminal, with Kurland and Spector)
2. Caliber Home Loan Inc, a middle-level intermediary, operated by Chris Mozilo who pass money from table pools to homebuyers via Black Knight (originator)  and smaller “Lenders”
3. BAC Home Loans
4. LandSafe Appraisal (purchased by CoreLogic) . In 2014 BOA sold a very similarly named system, LoanSafe to VA which is now handles all appraisals; plus CoreLogic gradually purchased most smaller appraisal companies*
Why Bank of America needed PennyMac to appear as a Large Lender and a Biggest servicer?
For the same reason why Countrywide needed American’s Wholesale Lender; and Fidelity National needed two (2) DocX,LLC and LPS – to create an additional corporate curtain to cover for the real parties.
Plus to use PennyMac and other “Servicers” as recipients for new bailouts.
If you take a closer look at PennyMac’s finances, here are nothing even close to $368+ billions worth of mortgages financed and 2 million homes serviced by PennyMac.
Moreover, if you see their Prospectuses, you will find out that the underwriters of PM securities (issued by PennyMac) are the same Stockbrokers who purchased PM’s securities, leaving about $29 million in fees to Penny Mac. I doubt is BOA or GS actually “purchased” anything from PM under this “offering” which they issued under glimpse of PennyMac.
But according to the legend, PennyMac now has to pay pay “servers’ advances” to “investors” for four months from their “own funds” until GSE’s (who sold their bonds to Fed. R. in advance) who cover these MBS, will step in and pick up the payments on “behalf of taxpayers  – while  GSE cannot even identify any Trusts where mortgages were pooled.
These GSE SOLD their unsecured bonds to Federal Reserve who buy about $30 Billion per WEEK from GSE beginning March 2020 to present time. Note that no Trusts were involved in these sales and no one homeowner was informed about the cage of ownership of their “debt”
I don’t know which “Servicers’ advances” and to whom PennyMac “pays” now, when the ownership of the “MBS” bonds was passed to Federal Reserve. At least Federal Reserve keeps it secret.
Apparently Kurland and know all risks involved and decided to steal some data from BK to create more money for themselves.
On May 2, 2019 they sent me a letter that “servicing” was transferred to them – but not mentioned by whom.
On May 3, 2019 PM sent a letter to BK informing them that PM is not going to extend their contract.
soon after Black Knight claimed that they “noticed some irregularities of use” their system by PM – apparently after I brought it to their attention. This is why no assignments were recorded reflecting the “sale” of my loan to PennyMac who cannot identify the Seller.
Since Oct. 31st  BK terminated PM as a client .
In Complaint  filed by PM against BK, they insist that the owner/investor is Ginnie Mae (who sold their MBS to Federal Reserve) – but continue to lie to me and DIFS that PennyMac is “owner/investor” in my loan.
The bottom line, as Neil said – these “servicers” and “lenders” are nothing. They are thin-capitalized clowns for hire and nobody sold any loans to GSEs because loans were destroyed at the beginning to create “manipulated data” in Black Knight system which Big Banks  sold as unsecured derivatives which GSE either sell to Federal Reserve or obtain payments from Stockbrokers directly, like FHFA v. Goldman Sachs
“GSE’s ownership” is the same myth to force people paying a long-time non existing “debt”.
So-called “universal income” proposed by Democrats is a camouflaged attempt to make Big Banks  pay royalties from trades to people .
Of course the Government cannot disclose the Truth since it will reveal that during last 40 years they allowed Stockbrokers to destroy property Titles to virtually ALL homes in America; plus create a slavery never existed before, where a small group of people enjoy tax-free profits from free servitude provided to them by the rest of the Country – plus income from stolen homes.
*Lagow worked at LandSafe, Inc., an appraisal company owned by Countrywide Financial and ultimately acquired by Bank of America, from 2004-2008. According to his unsealed complaint, Mr. Lagow observed widespread disregard for laws that regulate Federal Housing Administration (FHA) underwriting and home appraisals.

Specifically, he claimed that Countrywide conspired with LandSafe and homebuilder KB Homes to inflate the appraised value of homes, boosting the size of the lending giant’s loans to homebuyers. In order to accomplish this, the lending giant allegedly used a number of strong-arm tactics to pressure appraisers to report favorable home values.
Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, TILA, TRIAL OBJECTIONS | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

How did Wall Street make all that money on “securitization.”

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Servicers did not make any advances. They never did and they never will. They said they did but they didn’t. If you read the prospectus carefully you will see that the money from investors is divided into three parts.

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The first part is the purchase of a certificate that promises payments to the investor based upon a formula that is independent of any homeowner debt, note or mortgage. It does not commit the Investment Bank to using the funds in any particular way. But the payments are partially indexed on the performance of an arbitrarily chosen group of loans that are not owned by anyone.
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The second part is the establishment of a pool of funds controlled by the Investment Bank which also does not have any restrictions as to its use. The prospectus reveals that investors may be receiving payments out of the pool of funds, which obviously comes from their own money. This is the source of what is labeled as servicer advances.
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By labeling these payments as servicer advances, and by providing that servicer advances will be paid to the master servicer (i.e., the Investment Bank) the so-called securitization scheme creates another Profit Center.
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Investment Banks can claim return of servicer advances that they never advanced. By doing that they not only create the profit Center but they also able to claim that it was not Revenue for tax purposes.  A lot of the bookkeeping, financial reporting and tax reporting is based on this strategy.
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In my opinion it is not legal. But I am certain that it is not legal from the perspective of the homeowner, who gets no credit for any payments or profits made in the scheme because nobody maintains an account in which the homeowners debt is claimed as an asset; this results in literally no place to credit the homeowners debt for incoming payments and profits that actually offset any potential liability of the homeowner.
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The third part exists by implication. The normal agreement (prospectus) would provide for a specific use of proceeds from the proceeds of an offering of any Securities or certificates for mortgage bonds. This is absent.
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The reason that it is absent is because the balance of the funds are pure profit to the Investment Bank. this is because of the second tier of a yield spread premium that is not widely understood in legal circles because in legal circles they mostly have no experience or knowledge of Finance. I do. As a former investment banker who actually practiced literally on Wall Street I understand exactly how this happened.
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The investment bank has complete discretion as to what to do with the money that investors have paid them — something that never exists in the offering of securities to investors but does exist in so-called securitization plans. This is the holy grail for investment banks — issuing securities in the name of nonexistent entities. Instead of getting their normal fee of at most 15% of the proceeds, they get it all. 100%.
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They issue certificates in the name of a trust that does not exist. The actual Trust Agreement (NOT THE PSA) corroborates this by stating that the trustee has only one function: to hold legal title to loan documents. The beneficiary is the Investment Bank.
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And of course the role of a trustor or settlor is completely absent because there is nobody who has paid value in exchange for receiving a convenience of ownership of the underlying debt of any homeowner. *
So the Investment Bank, to simplify for this article, is promising to pay the investor at a rate which appears to the investor to be in excess of market rate but is far below the amount charged to homeowners. This strategy enables the Investment Bank to profit on several different levels.
  • first, the yield spread premium is the difference between the amount of money that needs to be paid to homeowners for issuance of what is labeled as loan documents, versus the amount of money the investment bank received from investors.
    • So if an investor paid $1,000 expecting a 5% return, the investor was expecting $50 per year.
    • But the Investment Bank funded a loan at 7.5%.
    • This means that in order to satisfy what they had to pay to the $1,000 investor they only needed to to pay the homeowner around $666 leaving a $334 pure untaxed profit.
    • Right there for every $1 they paid the owner the investment bank received $0.50.
    • In addition, by placing themselves in the position of Master servicer, they were the ultimate recipient of payments received from homeowners which in many cases exceeded any planned payments to investors.
    • NOTE THAT THIS IS WHY SUBSERVICERS LIKE OCWEN ET AL REFUSE TO TELL YOU WHERE PAYMENTS FROM HOMEOWNERS ARE SENT. FIRST THEY DON’T ACTUALLY RECEIVE THE MONEY AND SECOND THE MONEY IS NOT BEING SENT TO THE CLAIMANT IN FORECLOSURE, CORROBORATING THE DEFENSE NARRATIVE THAT THE NAMED PLAINTIFF OR BENEFICIARY IS NOT THE PROPER CLAIMANT NOR DOES IT POSSESS ANY CLAIM AGAINST THE HOMEOWNER.
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The fourth aspect is that under current systems and processes that are generally accepted on Wall Street, most Investments are held in street name. Investors do not receive any written document like a stock certificate or a bond when they buy it. Holding a security in street name means that for all practical purposes the Securities firm owns it for the benefit of an investor. THE ONLY EVIDENCE OF OWNERSHIP THE INVESTOR GETS IS A STATEMENT FROM THE SECURITIES FIRM IN WHOSE NAME THE SECURITY IS REGISTERED.
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And while it is true that the law says that an investor is the beneficiary of an arrangement wherein the securities firm holds title in trust for the investor, there’s nothing to stop the Securities firm from trading on the existence of the certificate as if it were their own. This Is how they are able to obtain insurance contracts and hedge contracts that are payable to the investment bank rather than the investors who put up the money.

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Note that this sleight of hand maneuver lies at the center of what is falsely labelled as the securitization of residential mortgage debt. The designation of a competing bank to serve as trustee of a nonexistent trust gives the scheme an institutional appearance, which in turn causes lawyers and judges, who know nothing of finance, to assume that they are dealing with an institution versus a lowly homeowner.
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They further assume that XYZ law firm represents U.S. Bank as trustee blah blah blah. But U.S. Bank has no retainer agreement with XYZ law firm and never heard of them. U.S. bank neither directs the lawyers nor will it allow its name to be used on any settlement or modification agreement that in the ordinary course of business would be legally signed by U.S. Bank. Any insistence that U.S. Bank sign, even though it is named as beneficiary or Plaintiff, is simply a deal killer.
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And don’t forget that U.S. Bank is not a trustee. That is another label used to misdirect homeowners, lawyers and judges. A trustee is someone who actively manages the active affairs of trust property. there is no trust property. There is no trust business. ANd the party named as “trustee” doesn’t even have the power to inquire as to any matter that might be called the business, assets, liabilities, income or expenses of the so-called trust.
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By naming U.S. Bank as the legal title owner for the benefit of the investment bank they are saying nothing. U.S. Bank did not receive legal title to anything. In order to get legal title it had to be the recipient of a conveyance. That is where the banks want the court to stop. But the conveyance, under all current law going back centuries can ONLY be issued by one who possesses rights to the asset conveyed to the trustee to hold in trust for the beneficiary of the trust.
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Note also that investors are not and never have been beneficiaries and that claims or arguments or implications that they are somehow, as creditors, represented by a nonexistent trust or nonexistent trustee are preposterous.
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In fact, there is no claimant, the foreclosure mill has no client that is in litigation and the named Plaintiff usually does not exist.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, hearsay, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, MBS TRUSTEE, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Pleading, Servicer, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | 4 Comments »

It’s time to reassess the role of investment banks, originators, servicers and other players claiming “securitization” before the next foreclosure tidal wave.

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Neil Garfield
Since foreclosures are about to start another meteoric rise, this would be a good time to write a new article on what went wrong the last time, what is going on now, and what is still likely to go wrong this time.
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I know that some of the rantings on the internet seem like the spillage of conspiracy theorists and some of them are just that. But overall they are right.
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The bottom line is that back in 1993, investment banks latched onto a scheme that had been partially developed by Michael Milken, who went to prison. The new scheme was patently illegal, which made it one step over the line that Milken actually didn’t cross. His junk bonds were perfectly legal. Drexel Burnham disclosed the real risks. But Michael had bigger plans. The plan was to raise the perception of junk bonds to investment grade.
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But then he went to jail. But upon release he was immediately paid $50 million and then hundreds of millions more to help devise the scheme. His actual role is subject to conjecture.
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The goal was to tap the largest market for debt in the world — home lending. It required all the major investment banks (Citi, Goldman, JPM, Credit Suisse) to “cooperate” (i.e., conspire).
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They had to each support the “securitization” schemes of each other, entice other lesser investment banks into playing (Lehman, Bear Stearns) and then influence or buy off fund managers (pension funds) to purchase the junk bonds they were issuing as “Certificates.”
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It as the “holy grail” of investment banking. Issuing trash securities as though it was for a third party issuer when in fact the issuer was the investment bank itself.
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To justify the purchases by stable managed funds, the investment banks paid off and coerced the insurers into issuing insurance contracts and the rating agencies to issue highest quality ratings based upon false assumptions about diversification of risk. The error is simple: diversification is irrelevant if the entire group of loans is (a) not owned and (b) tainted by bad underwriting.
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And the insurance contracts were payable not to the investors nor even for their benefit but rather for the profit of the investment bank who purchased it. The contracts were based upon index performance not actual losses.
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The same is true for the bailouts that occurred. No losses were paid off because the parties receiving the benefits of insurance or bailout had no loss. See the evolution of the definition of TARP from something covering loan losses, to something covering losses on certificates issued by investment banks, to an undefined toxic asset category.
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The now infamous AIG bailout was primarily for the benefit of Goldman Sachs. Having installed their former CEO as US Treasury Secretary, a very reluctant President Bush was convinced to bailout AIG on the false premise that the financial markets would collapse if he didn’t. But the proceeds went to Goldman Sachs as pure profit.
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AIG took the money to pay off Goldman for its bet that the certificates would decline in value. The decline in value was based upon a contractual provision that gave Goldman the sole right in its sole discretion to declare the event. The money covered no losses because Goldman had no losses. It was pure profit. And when the money was received (around $50 billion from the bailout, bonuses, parties and lavish spending ensued.
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Meanwhile the only two real parties to the scheme — investors and homeowners — were left out in the cold.
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At the end of each securitization cycle, the goal was to avoid liability for violations of lending and securities laws. Avoiding lending laws was easy. They used sham entities to act as “originators” who served for a fee and who appeared on the note and mortgage as a lender.
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Avoiding violations of securities was also easy. they disclosed enough to be able to say they told investors what they were doing, the investors were sophisticated and should have been able to ascertain the risks, and through leveraging the typical herd mentality on Wall Street they created a stampede in all securities brokerage firms to buy and sell the certificates. The world was hooked on a financial weapon of mass destruction.
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Eliminating the liability of a lender in form and substance meant that the role of creditor or lender had to be eliminated. That was accomplished by actually eliminating the homeowner’s debt without notice to the homeowner. Hence the “boarding process” asserted in court is fake. There can be no boarding of a debt that does not exist and a history of payments on the nonexistent debt is irrelevant.
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Each party other than the investor got paid in full. But the homeowner never received any notice of reduction due to receipt of payment because nobody maintained an accounting entry on any books of record that showed that the debt was owed or owned.
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The debt could not be owned without a corresponding entry that showed value being paid for the debt. No such transaction had never occurred since the only actual value was paid by investors, who didn’t own the debt.
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The investor never purchased any debt, note or mortgage. At the end of the day there was no person or entity that legally owned any debt, note or mortgage and therefore no lender or lender successor who could be liable for violations of Federal and State lending laws.
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The scheme then required foreclosure on debts that had already been fully paid several times over. To do this the investment banks had to again resort to using sham entities who would fake their roles using fabricated, false, forged and backdated instruments literally manufactured out of thin air. Despite numerous settlements in all US jurisdictions for such practices, they continue unabated.
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And the proceeds of foreclosure are ultimately received by the investment banks who pay out lavish compensation for the players who contributed to the foreclosure process. *
Since no loss is covered or paid or recorded on any books of account, the money is literally free money in which for tax purposes, is falsely reported as payment on loans. So the foreclosure proceeds are pure profit which is untaxed, at least up until this point in time. Investors never see a penny and homeowners are never the wiser that their debt does not exist anywhere.
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In order to accomplish all this the banks needed to coordinate their activities. enter Black Knight who is literally a  successor to DOCX, which was acquired by Lender Processing Systems (LPS). Lorraine Browne took one for the team when she became the only person in the scheme to go to jail for fabrication of documents.
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Somehow the courts continue to apply presumptions that are supposed to only raise from inherent credibility of documents that are patently false. This results in foreclosure on the erroneous assumption that even if the paperwork is somehow false or even fabricated the proceeds will find their way to the investors. That presumption is wrong.
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Black Knight is the hub in which all things are centralized to prevent foreclosure of the same homeowner transaction by more than one entity — something that would expose the false nature of all of the foreclosures.
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By getting a foreclosure judgment the investment banks succeeded in getting a legal stamp of approval on everything that had transpired before the foreclosure was initiated and the grounds on which they could report the proceeds as return of loan. Basically all fabricated false documentation emanates by or at the direction of Black Knight.
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Judges of all stripes have always been curious about the muscle chairs strategy of presenting several servicers, plaintiffs and other parties. Maybe this time, with a little help from the press, they might be open to considering the fact that the investment banks are not saving the economy, they are stealing from investors and homeowners alike. And if they start asking for fake bailouts again they are stealing from the government and taxpayers. 

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New foreclosure rocket dockets will emerge unless these practices are controlled or stopped. If the claimant is not the owner of the debt, present, existing, black letter law, does not allow foreclosure. In fact, enforcement of the note or separately, the debt, is not allowed unless the right to enforce comes from the owner of the debt. The law is clear, unless someone pays value, they can’t own the debt. Assignments of mortgage without the debt are a legal nullity.
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To “save” the economy the only legal option available is to reassess the homeowner transaction using the equitable powers of the court. It might be true that the homeowner obligation can be enforced after such a reassessment — but only after the facts are all exposed and all stakeholders are brought to the table.
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This would require that the court hear a properly filed pleading requesting equitable reformation of the contract to allow for maintaining the homeowner obligation because without that, the entire securitization infrastructure is in danger of collapse — even though nobody in the securitization infrastructure actually ever owns the debt or suffers a loss from nonpayment.
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To make the homeowner obligation enforceable the court must allow a designee or nominee to pose as creditor. Further the court must adopt procedures that allow a party to act as the designator, even though neither the designee nor the designator own the debt and will suffer no loss from any payment or nonpayment by a homeowner. The current practice of allowing such designees to reap such rewards is  not legally sustainable and probably unjust and unfair.
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The legal analysis requires a beginning point of analysis the contracting intent of the contracting parties. And that in turn requires an analysis of the identity of the contracting parties.
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That analysis results in an indisputable truth: taken separately there was no meeting of the minds — because the homeowner wanted a loan and the investment bank , acting through the originator, wanted the issuance of securities — the note and mortgage — without anyone assuming the substantive role of a lender.
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But taken together a contract can be fashioned in which the homeowner transaction can be treated as a loan contract and the absence of any creditor can be adjusted to insert a designee or creditor who can enforce. but ti do that, the entire contract must be taken into consideration.
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If the homeowner was seeking an actual loan under lending laws but didn’t get it, what is the consideration for entering into a deal that was so profitable for the other contracting parties, whether they were stated or concealed?
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If the answer is nothing, then the court must determine the proper amount of consideration that the homeowner should have received for being drafted into a risky securities scheme — a scheme in which his rights as a consumer, borrower or customer were virtually eviscerated by the substance of the deal.
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The only other legal option is common law rescission. That will result in dismantling the entire securitization scheme.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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*
FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: Bailout, boarding process, burden of pleading, CDO, common law rescission, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Does the REMIC Trust Exist?

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Neil Garfield

In all jurisdictions, even if the trust has some assets, and therefore legal existence as a legal person, if the asset in question has not been entrusted to the trustee on behalf of beneficiaries, the existence of the trust is completely irrelevant. And all claims arising from the supposed existence of the trust are also irrelevant and lack Foundation.

I agree that the existence of the Trust might be a subject for debate.

However, the fact that a trust exists on paper does not mean that it exists relative to any loan or debt or note or mortgage.

In fact, the fact that it exists on paper does not mean that it exists at all in many states.

In those jurisdictions in which a trust is drafted on paper and recognized as a business entity, the trust is considered inchoate, which means sleeping. The failure to recognize this fact has led to the failure of many family trusts and the payment of high taxes.

In all jurisdictions a trust that does not have any assets, liabilities, income, expenses or business is not treated as a legal entity.

In all jurisdictions, even if the trust has some assets, and therefore legal existence as a legal person, if the asset in question has not been entrusted to the trustee on behalf of beneficiaries, the existence of the trust is completely irrelevant. And all claims arising from the supposed existence of the trust are also irrelevant and lack Foundation.

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An asset cannot be entrusted to the trust or trustee unless title to the asset has been conveyed to the trustee to hold in trust according to the terms of the trust agreement. And there can be no conveyance from someone who doesn’t own the asset. The only way you get to own a debt is payment of consideration to someone who paid consideration for the asset. That is the law and it is not up for debate.
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It is the payment of consideration that determines ownership of an asset or debt or note or mortgage. 
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Note that the PSA  often cited as the trust agreement often is not the trust agreement and that even if it says it is the trust agreement there is another instrument in which the named trustee acknowledges that its purpose is to receive bare legal title to security instruments and notes on behalf of the investment bank who often also serves as Master servicer. I have never seen such a conveyance to the trust or trustee from anyone who owned the debt note or mortgage.
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And without conveying the debt, there can be no conveyance of the mortgage. therefore all assignments (without a concurrent sale and purchase of the debt from someone who owned it) avoid.
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But if you don’t raise this issue you might waive it. and by waiving it you are giving a windfall to the participants in a business venture that has the title of a foreclosure action. That business venture os for profit and has nothing to do with recovering losses from an unpaid loan or debt.

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This is important because when the Foreclosure Mills pursue foreclosure they have only one witness. The witness is a robo witness who is employed as an employee or independent contractor of a self-proclaimed servicer. the witness provides testimony that the records introduced by the servicer are the records for the trust.
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This testimony is either direct testimony or it raises the inference or presumption that the records are the records of the trust, because the servicer is supposedly working for the trust. But if the trust has nothing to do with the “loan,” then the servicer is working for an entity that has no legal relationship with the debt note or mortgage.
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That is the point at which the defense and raised a motion to strike, once it has been established that this fact pattern is the only one before the court. Assuming defense Counsel has raised the appropriate objections along the way, the record submitted by the self-proclaimed servicer should be stricken from the record as not being the records of a creditor. The case collapses because no evidence is legally before the court.
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Even if the servicer was actually collecting payments or actually doing anything, which is clearly debatable since most of these activities are probably actually conducted by Black Knight, the appearance of the servicer would not be the appearance of the Creditor, who is therefore not the named claimant or plaintiff.
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The servicer becomes a witness at best and not a very credible one. If discovery has been conducted properly, the defense can clearly raise the inference that the servicer has an interest in the outcome of the litigation. This means that the attempt to get the servicer’s records into evidence as an exception to the hearsay rule can be defeated. This is especially true if the servicer is not actually processing any business transactions. This dovetails with the evidence that the lockbox system is actually controlled by Black Knight.
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And THAT is important because it undercuts the claim of a “boarding process” which in most cases has never existed. It is only through the fictitious boarding process that the records of prior self–proclaimed servicers are able to come into evidence. The truth is that all of those records are mere projections and estimates and the foreclosure mills depend upon the failure of the homeowner and their counsel to actually compute whether the records are even true.
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One last comment is that one of the big failures in foreclosure defense is the failure to question who is receiving payments from the self-proclaimed servicer. An inquiry into this subject would reveal that the servicer is not receiving any payments and is not making any payments to anyone else. This would undercut the foundation for the inference or presumption that the self-proclaimed servicer is actually performing servicer functions.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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In the meanwhile you can order any of the following:
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR PLUS or BASIC includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT)
*
FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forgery, jurisdiction, legal standing, McCain, Motions, Presumptions, prima facie case, Servicer, TRIAL OBJECTIONS, trial strategy, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: , , , , | 6 Comments »

How to Use the Business Records Exception to Hearsay Rule to Keep Out “Servicer” Records in Foreclosure Cases

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Neil Garfield
Fundamentally you must understand that the investment banks want you and everyone else to look only at the payments history — not the debt, who owns it and whether anyone suffered a loss resulting from any lack of payment by the homeowner.
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Their strategy is to get the court to presume that in the absence of payments someone must have suffered a financial loss since the debt was clearly established in a transaction in which the homeowner received money and issued a note and mortgage. In the present securitization era that paradigm is wholly untrue but not obvious because the banks turned “lending” on its head. The homeowners took what they thought was a loan but the banks were not lenders and had no intention of becoming lenders.
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The problem is that most homeowners believe the myth promulgated by the banks because they don’t understand what really happened in what the banks call “securitization.”
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The truth is that nobody has suffered a financial loss from “nonpayment” by the homeowner.
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Everyone has already been paid as to the principal obligation.
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Collection efforts directed at the extinguished obligation are pure business strategy designed to increase already astonishing profits achieved through “Securitization” which like everything else is not in substance what the label conveys, to wit: the homeowner obligation was never sold to investors and therefore cannot be said to have been securitized. 
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One of my most prolific contributors points out how Fannie Mae uses a company who to this day incredibly remains out of the limelight despite being the only company whose division president, Lorraine Brown, went to jail for falsifying documents. It wasn’t really her fault. There were no transactions that fit the mold required to have an enforceable claim in foreclosure. But the banks wanted the money anyway. So they invented the appearance of transactions even though nothing had happened in the real world.

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It isn’t just Fannie Mae. Most homeowner transactions are established on LPSDesktop.

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The banks, in their never ending quest to send us down rabbit holes only present the “servicers” and their “business records”.

They do that to (a) avoid the hearsay rule because someone comes in without knowledge and says he has knowledge that these records were created in the ordinary course of business and they were created at or near the time of the transactions — which is only partially true and (b) to avoid the pesky problem of presenting details about the transaction that could show that the debt and the role of the creditor were extinguished in the process they’re calling “Securitization.”

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Practitioners would be wise to keep in mind two things:
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(1) the “servicers” are not servicers in the sense that anyone thinks of a servicer. They do process payments from homeowners but they do not process anything else. — The “servicer” records do NOT show where payments were forwarded, which would identify and confirm that the claimant or Plaintiff in foreclosure is in fact the owner of the debt.
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(2) the payment record from the “servicer” reflects only those payments received by that servicer (and perhaps an unaudited compilation of prior payments reported through LPS Desktop). The payment history might be admissible in evidence but only as to the record of payments, about which the practitioner should object for lack of foundation. — Without testimony or other evidence that (a) the debt was established as owned by a specific creditor anad (b) that the payment history is part of the records of the creditor, not just the servicer, the payment history should be excluded. 
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(3) A subpoena issued to Black Knight fka Lender processing Systems, aka LPS, demanding records relating to the subject debt, note or mortgage will be met with a barrage of objections, which if properly litigated will probably result in a favorable decision for the homeowner.
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(4) The object of litigation of foreclosure defenses is to show that the debt was removed from the chain. You accomplish this by relentlessly and aggressively pursuing the identity of the creditor. there isn’t one where any REMIC is involved.
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(5) Without a creditor there can be no delegated authority to enforce, collect or even administer the loan. “Authority” does not exist in a vacuum. there must be a source of authority. And the source of authority must be someone who legally owns rights to the debt over which he can delegate, as owner, the rights to enforce. 

see Black KnightÕ latest innovation: LoanSphere supports entire loan lifecycle – HousingWire

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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In the meanwhile you can order any of the following:
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
*
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR PLUS or BASIC includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT)
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Eviction, evidence, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | 2 Comments »

Has any homeowner transaction ever been sold to investors? No? Then why are we accepting the bank myth that it was securitized?

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Bob gives me a mortgage and I sign a note for $300k. Bob assigns the mortgage and note to Steve in exchange for “certificates / securities.” Bob retains the note and pledges to Jim in a collateral assignment to raise money to fund more loans. (i.e. WaMu and the Federal Home Loan Banks). I stop paying and soon Steve declares a default and tries to foreclose. My defense is that Steve doesn’t have the note, never took the note, and the note was collaterally assigned elsewhere before Steve filed the foreclosure action. If so, we can make that same defensive argument in every case it would seem.

No that is not a good defense. Your defense should be centered on who owns the debt. And only someone who has paid value for the debt can own it. If someone pays value in exchange for ownership of either the note or mortgage, then it is presumed that they own the debt — and it would be very hard to rebut that presumption.

So if someone pays money without getting or being entitled to a document that transfers the ownership of the debt from the current owner to the new owner, they have not acquired the debt.

Similarly, if someone has not paid value for the debt or note and they do get such a conveyance of ownership of the debt, even from one who is the owner of the debt, they too don’t own the debt. And a non-owner of the debt cannot issue any rights or instructions regarding the debt without deriving authority from an owner of the debt who paid for it.

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The transaction between Bob and Steve was a sale. Steve paid value unless the certificates or securities he used as payment were known to be worthless at the time of the sale. The fact that Bob retained possession of the note does not change the analysis. When Steve seeks to enforce the note he either has to get Bob to produce it or if he can’t, then he needs to plead a lost note. The transaction that you have used as an example does not convert the note to a security.

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Steve also has the option of suing Bob in the event that Bob is reluctant to turn out for possession of the note. but in all events Steve can show that he bought the note, which means that he bought the debt, and therefore is probably a holder in due course or at least a holder with rights to enforce as the owner of the debt.
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But the analysis does change if the example is changed slightly. If Bob was loaning you money because Steve was contemporaneously taking Bob out of the loan, then in substance the conduct of the parties shows that Steve was the actual lender and that Bob was simply an intermediary. This is the essence of a table funded loan which is against public policy as set forth in the Truth in Lending Act.
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So if Steve did not take possession of the note because Steve did not want to be accountable or liable for violations of lending laws as a lender, there is a case to be made that the nature of the transaction shifted. And if Steve gave Bob the money to lend to you because Steve was contemporaneously divesting himself from any risk of loss on the loan, then the argument would go one of two ways.
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Either the next person in the chain acquired ownership interest in the debt and note — or if Steve was merely selling derivatives whose value was indexed on the performance of your loan, then then the debt and note probably lost a creditor who could legally claim rights to enforce. As I see it, this would definitely be true if nobody in the chain was carrying the debt and note as an asset after Steve made his sale of derivatives.
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But I don’t think that under Securities analysis, the latter example would result in finding that the note had been converted to a security. It’s hard to see any analysis that would support that conclusion. If nobody was paying for legal ownership of the note then how would the note be converted?
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Of course that could be one possibility that would preserve the securitization infrastructure. And maybe if the courts catch the Wall Street banks with their hands in the cookie jar, the banks themselves might push that idea.
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Given the political climate that allows Wall Street to make up its own rules, that might happen, leaving both investors and homeowners out in the cold. That is why I’m starting to push Reformation as the better alternative which takes all stakeholders into account.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, forensic investigation, forgery, legal standing, Mortgage, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | 3 Comments »

What is Real in “Securitization”?

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Neil Garfield

The first thing to remember about securitization is that it isn’t real. No Investor ever bought any debt, note or mortgage on residential property. That makes all the documents used in foreclosure of “securitized” loans totally fake. And that is why there was a 50 state settlement and hundreds of other settlements with regulators, attorneys general and investors.

What was left out of all those settlements was any means by which illegal foreclosures could be stopped and any credits earned by homeowners or any credit which reduced the amount owed by the homeowners. As it turns out — nothing ever reduces the homeowner’s debt. Not even payment. Not even foreclosure. 

This could only be true if there was no account on any books of account in which the homeowner’s debt was held as  an asset. You cannot reduce what isn’t there. So failure to credit the nonexistent account is somehow treated as a completely legal event. think about it.

There is nothing wrong about hypothecating an asset in service of a financial transaction. As Wall Street has shown us anything could be an asset and therefore subject to a legal transaction. what they didn’t show us is that there was no legal transaction, which means nobody paid money except at the front end. And those who paid — the investors — didn’t buy any debt, note or mortgage.

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If I issue a note to someone who actually did give me money as a loan, and he asks me for collateral, I can conditionally assign my rights to a mortgage I actually own because someone issued me a note and secured it with a mortgage. How “conditional” is the assignment? That depends upon state law and the contents of the assignment.
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And in turn the Payee on the note I issued now has an asset upon which he can borrow. etc. The asset is the receivable from me that he has on his books which got there because he paid out money. So he debited CASH and Credited ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE. Classic double entry bookkeeping.
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The ONLY question is whether the paperwork is a memorialization of actual events in the real world or if the paperwork is merely an attempt to create fake facts, an illusion that supports the designee of a non creditor to foreclose on property.
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If all the events are real then the law allows it and recognizes it and enforces it. But that enforceability under current law stops at the door of paperwork that does not memorialize an actual financial event in the real world.
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People think that it isn’t so simple. But it is. People say that there would be no foreclosures if I was right. But it is they who are wrong because they don’t understand legal procedure and the banks not only understand it, they were also responsible for writing it.
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So by codifying into law the proposition that the holder of a note is presumed to own the debt until rebutted, they have thus created a vehicle for deceit because judges are not presented with evidence in rebuttal. The truth is that the claimants are not even “holders”. And dig a little deeper they are not even possessors because the original note was destroyed.
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And because judges are sloppy people just like the rest of us, they will often treat a non creditor claiming to possess a note as a holder in due course — thus denying homeowner attempts at discovery. All without any allegation of HDC status or any evidence that the claimant is a party who paid value in good faith without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR PLUS or BASIC includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT)
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | 1 Comment »

Why Reformation Makes Sense as a Response to Illegal Claims of Servicing, Collection or Enforcement of Homeowner Mortgage Obligations

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Neil Garfield

In the world of pretend REMICs, there can be no debate that investors who buy “certificates” are unsecured creditors of the investment banks and that investment banks are not legally creditors of homeowners. So why are we allowing investment banks to administer, collect and enforce homeowner obligations?

This has been my point from the beginning in 2006 when I started writing and appearing on TV and Radio. The “Securitization” never happened. Investors became unsecured creditors of the investment bank (IB) not secured creditors of homeowners. In turn the investment bank also wanted to avoid accountability and liability as lender so the IB never accepted any legal document saying that it had paid for and it owned the underlying homeowner obligation.

But for purposes of enforcement through foreclosure the IB designates a non-creditor to initiate foreclosure proceedings. There is no basis in law for this behavior and it is both illegal and inequitable for this conduct to be allowed.

  • The claim that  the action is brought on behalf of  or for the benefit of investors who own certificates is false.
  • The implied assertion that whatever deficiencies exist in the presentation of parties and documents in foreclosures, the granting of a foreclosure will result in payment to a creditor who would otherwise have suffered a loss is also false.
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That leaves nobody to own the debt. Under current law, absent a contract that says otherwise, nobody can administer, collect or enforce a debt without owning it or representing someone who owns it. Since nobody owns it nobody satisfied that condition precedent as set forth in Article 9 §203 UCC.
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In the absence of a creditor the obligation can only be enforced by a designee or nominee that is accepted by the debtor.
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It will take a court decision to decree that since there is no alternative remedy at law, the homeowner is consenting to the designation of a party to enforce who then becomes the lender for purposes of accountability or liability under lending and servicing laws.

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There is no contract that says otherwise  unless and until a court declares it under the rules of reformation, quasi contract and quantum meruit.
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So in all homeowner transactions arising within the scope of claimed securitization, homeowners lost their access to any party who claimed to be a lender or creditor except the originator who was not lending any money and who was in most cases thinly capitalized such that penalties for lending and servicing violations would simply result in bankruptcy and no relief to homeowners. 

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And in the underwriting process, despite the obvious and expressly stated requirements of law no lender was left who had any stake or risk of loss in ensuring the validity of the appraisal or the viability of the loan.
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They might call it a loan transaction, but it wasn’t. It was deceitful process for obtaining the homeowner’s participation in a highly profitable securitization scheme. A scheme where the profits were neither disclosed as to existence or amount and that withheld consideration from the homeowner for his/her participation.
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As such the apparent “loan agreement” was simply a cover and a vehicle for concealment of the true nature of the transaction with the homeowner.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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In the meanwhile you can order any of the following:
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, forensic investigation, forgery, hearsay, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, originator, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, STATUTES | Leave a comment »

Regulatory Capture and Monopoly of Residential Lending by Wall Street

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Neil Garfield

It is simply not true and has not been true for 20 years that lending is subject to free market forces or that lenders are subject to regulation. 

all of this has resulted from extraordinary illegal Market Control which has resulted in the complete inability of small financial institutions to compete with lending practices sponsored by investment banks on Wall Street.

As a result consumers are negatively affected. Contrary to the requirements of law they do not have the right to choose the party with whom they are dealing, they do not have the protections of the truth in Lending Act, and they are lured into a dangerous transaction in which the counterparties have an incentive merely to bring a transaction into existence and label it as a loan.

When it comes to regulation, it is the legislature that deems who is worthy of regulating and on what terms. The legislature then enacts into law those terms and creates the agency or enforcement mechanism.
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Regulatory Capture occurs when persons and companies whom the legislature has deemed worthy of regulating have control over the agency or enforcement mechanisms. This happens all the time when the regulators are persons formerly, currently or intended to be employed by the companies that they are supposed to regulate.
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I am sure, now that it has been pointed out, that there has been in a concerted strategy of regulatory capture that has negatively impacted the legal profession and therefore chilled access to the courts and to counsel. This has enabled a monopoly that has so constrained free market forces as to make them virtually irrelevant. It is simply not true and has not been true for 20 years that lending is subject to free market forces or that lenders are subject to regulation.
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Even the most uninformed lay person knows by now that the Wall Street banks screwed the market and the marketplace. True, they don’t understand how it was done. But they know it happened, which is why I have counseled persons running for public office to run against the banks, because right now, almost everyone hates the Wall Street securities firms that call themselves “investment banks.”  But very little is being done to counter their illegal impact on free markets, consumer rights, and the hallmark of any capitalist economic system — competition.
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This has shown up in regulation and discipline of lawyers. Lawyers who advance false claims in court go with both impunity and immunity. Lawyers who defend homeowners from those false claims almost always find themselves the target some investigation, complaint discipline, sanctions or judgements from Bar associations, the FTC or the attorney general of some state.
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The result is entirely predictable. Most trial lawyers won’t take on cases involving foreclosure defense because they fear for their livelihood. Consumers are the ones who suffer the most because they can’t find a lawyer to take their case. So they try to appear pro se and they lose because only lawyers know how to navigate the judicial system. It’s a perfect storm for the Wall Street firms.
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I am also sure that all of this has resulted from extraordinary illegal Market Control which has resulted in the complete inability of small financial institutions to compete with lending practices sponsored by investment banks on Wall Street.
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Homeowner transactions sponsored by Wall Street do not rely upon profits from the transactions with homeowners. They rely entirely upon profits from false claims arising out of securitization Cycles. so it is literally possible and often happens that the marketing and other expenses associated with generating transactions with homeowners are much higher than any cash flow that could be considered Revenue. This makes it possible to offer incentives and lower interest rates for the sole purpose of initiating another securitization cycle, which is the source of all actual profit.
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As a result consumers are negatively affected. Contrary to the requirements of law they do not have the right to choose the party with whom they are dealing, they do not have the protections of the truth in Lending Act, and they are lured into a dangerous transaction in which the counterparties have an incentive merely to bring a transaction into existence and label it as a loan.
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Those counterparties also have an incentive to see the transactions fail, since they have knowingly created obligations based upon false appraisals and false assessments of viability. In doing that they have guaranteed themselves additional profit simply by insuring the certificates that are indexed on the performance of the homeowner transactions. And they further profit from false claims leading to forced sale of property for profit rather than restitution for an unpaid obligation.
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Thus this monopolistic control causes homeowners to enter into transactions that they think are loans but instead are investments into securitization schemes. The terms and incentives for conduct are far different than the reasonable expectation of any reasonable consumer borrower. 
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The other class negatively impacted by this strong arm behavior is the U.S. class of approximately 7,000 community banks, credit unions and savings and loan associations that would otherwise be able to compete for loan business but can’t because they are presented with a bad choice: either they serve merely as sham conduits to feed securitization or their loan business virtually fails. In turn this negatively impacts their ability to cross market for depository business and other bank services. 
My point is that just like 100 + years ago when the big trusts were considered impregnable, they were brought down with a thud by claims that they had ruined the free markets with both economic control and asymmetry of information. Regulatory capture was of course a perk that enabled them to write and make laws that made their ruinous behavior totally legal — until the courts and Congress said it wasn’t legal.

Plaintiffs present this evidence as a prototypical example of “regulatory capture,” a term coined by public choice economists to indicate when members of a regulated occupation also dominate the regulatory and law-making process in their field. Professor Todd Zywicki of George Mason University School of Law, a leading scholar in law and economics, testified that the limitations on funeral home ownership in Maryland are consistent with the principles of regulatory capture. He stated that in his opinion the Morticians Act appears to be:

an effort to create governmentally imposed barriers to entry in the funeral home industry and thereby to transfer wealth to a discrete, well-organized interest group at the expense of consumers of funeral home services and the public at large. The result of this regulation is reduced competition in the provision of funeral home services and higher prices and reduced choice in funeral home products and services for consumers.

Brown v. Hovatter, 516 F. Supp. 2d 547, 553 (D. Md. 2007)

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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In the meanwhile you can order any of the following:
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, credit unions, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, originator, Pleading, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, STATUTES | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

PennyMac and Other Companies are Making False Claims as “Servicers”: Black Knight, the king of fabricated documents is behind 62% of all “servicing records.”

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Neil Garfield

The bottom line is that companies claiming to be servicers are not servicers although they perform some servicing functions as “clients” of Black Knight.

This provides a veil of plausible deniability for lying in court about testimony and documents. Hiding behind litigation immunity foreclosures are being pursued and granted resulting in windfall payments to intermediaries who never had any stake in the financial stake of any homeowner transaction. 

Examination of the facts shows that the “boarding process” is nonsense i.e., a lie). “New Servicers” simply log on to the Black Knight system. There is no boarding required. It is a total lie to fool courts into believing that the records were tested when they were not. 

Black Knight is not mentioned in part because of its prior record of criminal conduct. That record gives rise to inferences of lack of credibility or questions or credibility — either one of which is enough to prevent the employment of legal presumptions arising from what appear to be facially valid documentation. Without those presumptions there is no case because none of the claimants can offer proof of transactions in which actual ownership and control over the underyling obligation can be established. 

There is nothing like an admission that can change the course of thinking by a judge, lawyer, homeowner or law maker. Except for one thing: when the party not only admits the truth of the matter asserted but affirmatively alleges it in a lawsuit against someone else.

Exhibit A, brought to my attention by multiple sources and contributors to my blog. It is a lawsuit by someone who professes to have no connection with the alleged “servicing” of any transactions that are referred to as residential mortgage loans. It is never named in any lawsuit as a servicer. It does not show up in court as the source of servicing records. It does not send any robowitness to court to say that he/she is familiar with the books and records of this company. And yet, here is Black Knight, formerly Lender Processing Services and DOCX infamy (Lorraine Brown, President went to jail).

In a lawsuit against PennyMac, Black Knight asserts that PennyMac infringed upon its proprietary system that supplies the servicing records for 62% of all “servicing” performed in the U.S., — and that means that in 62% of all foreclosures, the companies that were proffered as servicers were not the servicers or at least did not perform all servicing functions — especially, as you read the complaint, as to payment histories and relevant documents for foreclosure.

So we have the only company that was ever caught red handed with fabricating, falsifying, recording, forging, robosigning false transaction documents. They changed their name but not their business model. Their business model is being the central repository of all the data that is created, stored, and manipulated with respect to 62% of all alleged “loans.”

That makes Ocwen and other loan servicers liars. And I have successfully pointed that out in trial. When you look at the copies submitted to qualify for an exception to the hearsay rule as a “business record” you can see that this did not come off of any particular system. And upon questioning of the witness they will profess ignorance as to the location of the server on which documents and records are created, maintained and manipulated.

No document is ever produced showing that Black Knight was named as servicer for any trust. That is because the trust has nothing and Black Knight is not working for nothing. Black Knight is working for investment banks who are the prime and only drivers of all trading, administration, collection and enforcing of contracts relating to securities and homeowner transactions. The transaction data (38%) not controlled by Black Knight is primarily controlled by a Chase controlled entity in the same way.

So the bottom line is that when the servicer representative comes into court to testify as to the foundation of the payment history, there are two things to remember for cross examination.

First, the copies he/she is attesting to are not from any system owned or controlled by his company and are not the records of the trustee or trust of any REMIC Trust.

Second those records are always missing any references to what goes out. Without entries showing disbursements to creditors, the records are incomplete. Without records showing establishment of the debt as an asset of some creditor, the records are incomplete. And THAT is what undermines the foundation for the admission of the records and can lead to objection and a motion to strike the exhibit during trial.

Failure to object and failure to attack in this way leads inevitably to a finding that the documents are real and that the information is true which then proves a default because the payment history says so.

But it doesn’t prove a default and the litigator must be able to show that. A default is established ONLY when proof of ownership of the asset (Loan) is established in the name of the claimant or Plaintiff. This never happens because there is no creditor showing the loan as an asset on its financial statements.

In current securitization practices, there is no creditor that actually claims ownership under generally accepted accounting principles that require a financial transaction (payment) in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the underlying debt as a required by Article 9 §203 UCC as adopted by all U.S. jurisdictions. And if they are not creditors then they can’t be considered lenders and therefore can claim that lender liability does not attach to them. 

And without any officer of the trustee or trust testifying that those are there records of test rust, the copies preferred by the foreclosure mill and the robowitness are just props and not evidence and do not qualify as exceptions as business records. Accordingly they are barred by the hearsay rule which stands in the way of any evidence that lacks credibility.

Black Knight vs PennyMac Lawsuit

So why am I saying all this?

Here are some quotes from a complaint filed by high end lawyers representing Black Knight against PennyMac who they say falsely and illegally used the Black Knight systems, namely MSP© and Navigator©. Here is what Black Knight says, which corroborates, word for word what I have been saying for 14 years:

“Black Knight’s proprietary MSP® System, including its interdependent NavigatorTM electronic reference and procedural library, is the mortgage industry’s leading mortgage servicing software [e.s.] package. The result of years of research, complex coding, and continuous improvement, the MSP® System is used to service over 62% of the first lien mortgage loans in the United States, providing its users – the country’s largest and most successful lending institutions – with the ability to manage their portfolios in compliance with a broad set of laws and regulations. Black Knight protects its proprietary system through secrecy, and users of the MSP® System are granted access only under strict nondisclosure agreements with individual access controls.”

Now to be sure, they will claim that they are only providing software that “servicers” use. But that is not the way it actually happens. Black Knight owns, operates, maintains all servers with an iron hand as directed by the investment banks who like Black Knight want to be out of sight and therefore out of mind of any court.

The facts that every litigator should know is that the two parties who are not mentioned — the investment bank who started ands till controls the securitization scheme and Black Knight who is the central repository for all data to make sure that there is no public competition for claiming the same loan, are the only ones that actually out as real parties real witnesses.

So then we come to the fact that claims of servicing by PennyMac are completely false. If you read carefully and make appropriate inquiries one fact stands out: PennyMac is acting under Black Knight. PennyMac may get to make certain entries which in turn are tested by Black Knight and PennyMac may get to print out copies of reports that are produced by certain algorithms at Black Knight but PennyMac has no role in creation or maintenance of business records on Black Knight, who in turn does not do anything for trusts because it has no contracts with trusts. it has contracts with investment banks.

Notice how they are keeping the agreement between PennyMac and Black Knight a secret. Also note that the agreement names Fidelity Information Services, Inc. an Arkansas corporation as the principal and PennyMac is referred to as “client”.

“Pursuant to that certain Master Agreement entered into as of April 30, 2008, together with any addenda thereto (the “Master Agreement”), PennyMac became a registered user of the MSP® System and was granted a limited right to access and use the MSP® System in order to process PennyMac mortgage transactions.[e.s.] The Master Agreement includes clear and comprehensive restrictions against misuse of the MSP® System and associated confidential materials. Due to a confidentiality requirement in the Master Agreement, as well as the volume of documents, Black Knight attaches hereto as Exhibit “A” the cover page of the Master Agreement. A complete copy of the Master Agreement is in the possession of PennyMac, but a duplicate copy will be provided upon request.”

So the lawsuit is couched as a copyright infringement case. But the real purpose is that of the investment banks — to prevent the decentralization of data records that could reveal the fact that loans were sold multiple times in multiple ways. Of course there is also the monopolistic position that Black Knight enjoyed and wanted to protect. But without the support of the investment banks it would never have filed this lawsuit,.

“The MSP® System is made of a number of interdependent “modules,” with each performing a different function in the process of servicing a mortgage loan. These modules work together synergistically to produce the familiar experience and end product that is critical to the system’s success.”

“For example, the following specific aspects of the MSP® System contribute to its unique value: data schema and fields; user experiences and interfaces; files and records; transaction-type codes and sequence codes; input, processing and output transactions; workstation guides; technical support services; and documentation of the foregoing. Data collected are organized in specific files incorporated in a table that includes multiple records, each of which is a row that also includes a series of fields or cells, each of which has a specific name and position range. The confidential logic and business rules that drive the collection and manipulation of the data provide Black Knight a competitive advantage.” [e.s.]

“The NavigatorTM application is a critical component of the MSP® System. Acting in effect as an extremely detailed electronic reference and procedural user manual, it provides authorized users of the MSP® System with comprehensive information regarding each MSP® System module and workstation necessary to understand and use the MSP® System to service mortgage loans. This includes confidential details of MSP®-specific files; data dictionaries; data schema, records, and fields; MSP®-specific transaction-type and sequence codes; processing operations associated with MSP®-specific files; and MSP®-specific input and output transactions. It also contains confidential workstation guides and other user materials explaining how to work with MSP®-specific files and initiate execution of MSP®-specific operations. The NavigatorTM application and its related documentation are made available only to authorized users of the MSP® System for limited uses and are specifically designated by Black Knight as confidential proprietary, and trade secret information.

An authorized MSP® System user can also access data from the MSP® System in real-time using MSP® Mortgage Web Services. Like the NavigatorTM application, MSP® Mortgage Web Services contains detailed confidential documentation explaining its functionality and unique and proprietary data formatting structures and request codes, among other topics. And like the NavigatorTM application, MSP® Mortgage Web Services and its related confidential documentation”

One of our prolific readers and contributors “summer chic” has offered the following information that I consider useful in framing complaints:

On June 8, 2020 Black Knight announced that former OneWest CEO (aka OCC) Joseph Otting joined Black Knight’s  Board of Directors…..
 
 Black Knight is a renamed Lenders Processing Services/DocX who forged millions of assignments which were filed in Courts around the Nations to steal homes from American families.
 
 Bill Foley (FNF) , owner of LPS, DocX, Black Knight, ect. continues its illegal practices as of today while deceive borrowers with bogus Title Insurances. 
 
Speaking about monopoly, Mr. Foley owns majority of US Title Companies.
 
PennyMac is a renamed Countrywide Financial 
 
Caliber Home Loan is a renamed Countrywide Financial
 
HomeXMortgage is a renamed Fremont Loan and Investments
 
Matrix Private Capital is a renamed Lehman Brothers
 
New OCC Mr. Brooks is also a former OneWest CEO….
 
Former BlackRock CEO Michael Bright was CEO of Ginnie Mae….
 
VA Appraisal system is controlled by Bank of America via Core Logic LoanSafe program which is  renamed Countrywide’s LandSafe Appraisal system which BOA sold to VA in 2014….
 
Ginnie Mae’s Senior VP Michael Drayne is a seasoned  fraudster from Chevy Chase bank who was sued by investors and insurers for over $5.2 Billion securities fraud. Drayne was never charged for any damages.

*Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.*

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.

*Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, hearsay, investment banking, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, Motion Practice and Discovery, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: , , , , | 8 Comments »

The Best Article Yet on Illegal and Immoral Practices by Investment Banks Making False Claims About “Securitization of Debt” by Francesca Mari on Aaron Glantz Book “Homewreckers”

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Francesca Mari in the JUNE 11, 2020 ISSUE of The New York Review of Books, has written a truly excellent piece on a book called “Homewreckers” by Aaron Glantz. 

If you ever had any doubt about whether homeowners have the moral high ground and whether the investment bankers have no moral or legal grounds for what they did, you should read the article and buy the book. ( I get nothing from sales of the book and I have not met either author — although I will contact them for interviews on my show).

The only point that I think both Mari and Glantz miss is that the loans were never securitized. Securitization is the process of selling assets in pieces to multiple investors. No residential loan to my knowledge has ever been sold to investors even on paper much less in reality.

Let me put it this way: there has never been a transaction in which investors buying certificates, investment banks or anyone else paid value in exchange for ownership of any debt, note or mortgage. They paid value but not for the loan. And they received the benefit of their bargain.

At the end of the day there is nobody who has paid value in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the debt, note or mortgage. Claims of ownership of the debt, note or mortgage are all false even though they are documented. Documents are not transactions. They are evidence of transactions. And if there was no such transaction then the documents are false.

And that is why all of the documents in foreclosures are false, fabricated, forged, backdated and robosigned. The documents are false but they are presumptively valid if they conform to statutory requirements. The point missed by most homeowners, lawyers and judges is that just because they are presumed valid doesn’t mean they cannot be tested and rebutted.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Eviction, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Motions, originator, Pleading, politics, Presumptions, Servicer, TRUST BENEFICIARIES | 3 Comments »

Sham Affidavit Rule in Federal Courts Might Apply to State Court Actions in Foreclosure

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Neil Garfield
A sham affidavit is one that asserts facts that are inconsistent with facts alleged in pleadings or previously proffered in discovery, prior affidavit or proffered documents. This happens a lot in foreclosure cases when foreclosure mills file motions for summary judgment. They often casually change the claimant by reference or name adding some power of attorney or other claim that is not attached or explained. The sham affidavit rule bars the affidavit in its entirety if it asserts facts or positions that are not consistent with prior assertions.
The sham affidavit rule can apply to attempts to contradict not only prior deposition testimony, but prior written discovery as well. We’ve blogged about the sham affidavit rule a number of times. Briefly, the rule is that:
[A] party cannot create a genuine issue of fact sufficient to survive summary judgment simply by contradicting his or her own previous sworn statement (by, say, filing a later affidavit that flatly contradicts that party’s earlier sworn deposition) without explaining the contradiction or attempting to resolve the disparity.
Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp., 526 U.S. 795, 805-06 (1999) (string citation omitted). See also Perma Research & Development Co. v. Singer Co., 410 F.2d 572, 578 (2d Cir. 1969) (generally viewed as the seminal case on sham affidavits). https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=60c7a1e1-4d34-4916-9a12-f41ab8fc5bf6
If a sham affidavit is filed, it is therefore barred unless the affidavit itself refers to the prior assertions and explains the differences that appear in the current affidavit. This explanation is not something that anyone in the foreclosure mill or servicer can do since they don’t have access to any of the facts causing the issuance of a default letter or foreclosure in the first place. They are just following orders.

*Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.*

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.

*Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, legal standing, Motions, Pleading, prima facie case, Servicer | Leave a comment »

This will probably get me in plenty of hot water with lawyers. Homeowners should be winning foreclosures most of the time. The reason they don’t? — Ineffective Counsel.

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Neil Garfield
The problem is not the judges. The problem is the lawyers who walk into court believing that the loan is real, claimant is real, the claim is real and that they are only looking for technical ways to get their client out of a valid deal.
The problem is exacerbated by magical thinking — that by pointing out bad acts by the foreclosure mill or servicer they will automatically cancel the mortgage, get quiet title and somehow the “debt” will disappear. Is it any wonder that judges are responding negatively to such assertions?
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Well I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the primary basis for appeal in capital murder cases — ineffective counsel — is the real reason why homeowners think that the courts are ignoring the obvious. This is most manifest in a phenomenon I refer to as hallway trial lawyers. When they are speaking to their clients in the hallway outside the courtroom they sound great; but once inside the courtroom they are either mute or should be mute.
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Hallway lawyers can be great trial lawyers — if they would only prepare and obsessively roll the issues over in their mind as they approach a hearing or filing of a motion, pleading, or brief. And they would win far more often than they would lose if they did the work. That takes two things that most people lack — other than trial lawyers — commitment and courage. Like any performer you must give it your best and accept a pie in the face occasionally.
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In 45 years of litigation I have won and lost cases. Most of them I won. In hindsight I would say that virtually every loss is attributable to one factor —- lack of adequate planning, preparation and execution.
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My own experience is that when I have done my job as a litigator I have consistently successfully defended foreclosure cases because there is no case. That knowledge propels to me to object, challenge and refute basic assumptions in an orderly, timely and effective way. I am clear as to the basis of my objections and challenges and how it it lacks foundation, relevance or relies upon inadmissible statements or documents. And I am relentless. 
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While there are judges who simply refuse to consider any possibility of a homeowner victory, many of such judges can be turned when approached correctly. They are merely starting from assumptions they are required to make. They are not against the homeowner. They are for the rule of law.
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The problem is not the judges. The problem is the lawyers who walk into court believing that the loan is real, the claim is real and that they are only looking for technical ways to get their client out of a valid deal. The problem is exacerbated by magical thinking — that by pointing out bad acts by the foreclosure mill or servicer they will automatically cancel the mortgage, get quiet title and somehow the “debt” will disappear. Is it any wonder that judges are responding negatively to such assertions? 
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Why should any judge relieve a debtor of an obligation because of bad acts by a creditor? The answer is that they should not because if they did they would be destroying the foundation of a nation of laws. If you were owed the money then you would not think that is such a good idea either.
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That is why I strive to show the truth of the transaction between the homeowner and whoever sold the transactional documents for the homeowner to sign or the truth behind the acquisition of what had been a valid loan agreement.
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For the homeowner it was a loan and as soon as you admit that it was a loan, you are already in deep trouble. By admitting the loan you admit the existence of a conventional creditor and a conventional debtor. You also admit the existence of a conventional debt and you can’t contest  the non payment by the homeowner and therefore you are conceding that the homeowner is in breach of a loan agreement without excuse. Fabricating paperwork is no excuse to get out of paying a loan you received. You still owe the money.
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The lawyers and homeowners who complain that this gives them no place to go are missing the essential truth of Wall Street securitization: in nearly all cases the debt was never sold. If you start with the wrong premise you will always end up with the wrong result. 
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The entire enterprise was about selling and reselling private financial data of homeowners who for their part were tricked into thinking they were entering a loan agreement while the other side spared no effort in avoiding the title and liability of a lender under lending laws. That is not a loan and the agreement was not a loan agreement. 
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More importantly, the agreement might not be enforceable at all since (a) there was no meeting of the minds and (b) there was an absence of consideration caused by the payment of consideration together with an obligation to pay it back.
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For the investment banks this was solely about getting consent to sell private data and issuing sand trading securities based on the data not any debt. Anyone who does not understand the significance of that should probably not be litigating these cases. They will lose and thus contribute to the growing body of evidence that most people lose defending actions titled or labelled as foreclosures even though most people could win.
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Mass joinder and mass petitions to change the mandatory requirements for filing foreclosure actions can be done with direction from licensed people who actually understand that there is neither an actual claimant nor a claim in the creation, administration, servicing or enforcement of any transactional documents in which a homeowner is one of the parties.
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My opinion is that without central direction, preparation, investigation, and strategic and tactical planning by experienced trial lawyers, homeowners will continue to be food for a profitable scheme created and advanced by Wall Street.
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My opinion is that this is a massive social issue as well. By finally denying Wall Street banks of profit from foreclosures and all the profitable events leading up to foreclosure, the vast inequality of power and wealth can be addressed, at least in part.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT.  IT IS NOT A SHORT PROCESS IF YOU PREVAIL. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, Motions, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, securities fraud, sham transactions, standing | 11 Comments »

The Problem With those Powers of Attorney

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Just because a power of attorney appears to be facially valid doesn’t  mean that it IS facially valid, nor that it is substantively valid.

Sign Petition to Change the rules to Protect Homeowners from Fraudclosure.

Powers of Attorney are part of the strategy engineered by investment banks on Wall Street. Here is the problem with the POA or LPOA strategy.

In summary it is merely part of a larger strategy that seeks to create the illusion of real claims by real parties when in fact no such claim exists and no claimant exists. the claimant never gets the proceeds of foreclosure sale.

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The reason they do it is to insert an intermediary who can claim plausible deniability and that they were just following orders. It also serves the purpose of creating the illusion of a representative capacity between principal and agent.
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And that serves to create the illusion that the “principal” is somehow relevant to the transactional documents with the homeowner — although they never come right out and say that (because it is untrue).
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So the introduction of a Power of Attorney or Limited Power of Attorney is merely sleight of hand maneuvering to get a judge to believe that nobody would have gone to the trouble of creating and executing these documents unless there was something real going on. Unfortunately most lawyers, including those who represent homeowners in foreclosure, believe that to be true. As a result they completely miss the strategy that works in defeating such actions that are falsely labelled as foreclosures.
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Here is the truth.
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No POA ever gives anyone the right to claim ownership, control, administrative rights or the right to enforce any obligation of any homeowner. Instead it says it gives rights to speak for a label which may or may not be a legal entity — i.e., a “trust” which in fact is either nonexistent or “inchoate” under law.
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No trust, no matter how well written, creates a valid legal trust unless and until something of value is entrusted to the named trustee to hold for the benefit of defined beneficiaries upon certain terms expressly set forth in the trust. If the trustee does not own the alleged obligation, then the trust is irrelevant to any claim or proceeding.
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No named “trustee” has ever been party to a transaction in which the named trustee has ever received something of value from a seller or settlor who conveyed anything to the named trustee much less ownership of any obligation, note or mortgage from any homeowner.
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The existence of a note and mortgage is generally construed to be prima facie evidence of the existence of a loan agreement. But the absence of any “lender” conduct of the counterparties to those transactional documents demonstrates conclusively that there was no meeting of the minds. This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that the investment banks wanted the transaction to look like a loan but but were completely unwilling to be considered “lenders” for purposes of compliance with lending statutes.
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The homeowner had every reasonable basis to think he/she was getting a loan — which means that there was a lender with a risk of loss and who therefore would not underwrite a transaction that was doomed to fail. Instead the real parties in interest, operating through dummy entities, were intentionally creating agreements that were extremely likely to fail. This enabled them to bet against the viability of those agreements. Therefore the less the quality of the appraisal, the loan terms, the household income etc., the more certain the investment bank could be of making money though failure of the DATA (not the debt) to perform. But since the investment banks and the homeowners had entirely different transactions in mind, there could be no meeting of the minds and there never was.
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None of the counterparties or their representatives ever considered themselves to be lenders. None of them ever purchased any obligation from a homeowner and registered such purchase as an asset receivable from a homeowner nor did they make an entry on the liability side of their balance sheet as a reserve for bad debt. Clearly nobody on the other side wanted to be liable as a lender for violations of lending statutes. None of them wanted to be “lenders.” Hence the transactional documents do not represent  meeting of the minds.
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Therefore, every such Power of Attorney grants nothing. It might be facially valid but it is not substantively valid because the purported grantor owned nothing and therefore could grant no powers over assets that were not owned.
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Note that I no longer refer to “loan documents.” Instead I refer to transactional documents. That is because I no longer believe that the transaction involving the homeowner should be referred to as a loan, even though that was what was intended by the homeowner. It wasn’t intended as a loan by anyone else who was directly or indirectly a counterparty to the transaction with the homeowner.
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In nearly all cases, the original transactional documents referred to the purchase of the homeowner’s consent and rights to resell personal data. The part of the transaction requiring payments from the homeowner was merely a vehicle for reducing the consideration paid for that consent. And the only place it is obliquely albeit not directly referenced as a loan is in actions that are falsely labelled as foreclosures. In all other transactions and documents the subject is clearly the sale and trading on data, not ownership of any debt owed by anyone.
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In a court of equity (i.e., foreclosure) the payment of consideration concurrent with an obligation to return that consideration should be treated as no consideration.
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Hence the apparent contract is rendered unenforceable for lack of consideration. This construction does not produce any financial loss to any party who paid consideration to the homeowner. All such parties are richly rewarded for procuring the signature of the homeowner far in excess of any claim for repayment of the consideration paid for the homeowner’s consent. This construction merely restricts the profits of the players in “securitization” to a level that is fair and proper after full disclosure.
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Further, in a court of equity, the payment of consideration for the consent of the homeowner to allow sale and resale of his personal  financial data should have been disclosed, was legally required to be disclosed and failure of which disclosure is a basis for the court to use its inherent authority to determine the amount of the compensation to be fairly paid to homeowners.
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That amount would be equal to what homeowners would have demanded in general and what investment banks would have offered as incentives in a free market with full disclosure.

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, forgery, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, originator, Pleading, securities fraud, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, STATUTES, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee, Unlawful Detainer | Tagged: | 4 Comments »

Why Homeowners Lose Their Homes to Crooked Banks

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Neil Garfield

The first and foremost thing about this is that where any loan is subject to claims of securitization, that claim is false. So no investor ever  bought any loan, debt, note or mortgage. Not ever. All documents claiming to memorialize such transactions are false. So the designated claimant has no claim.

To win these cases you must be realistic about what you are up against. The justice system doesn’t care about the merits of any claim, defense or denial unless it is properly and timely presented in accordance with the established rules of procedure and laws of evidence. It is not really an oversimplification to say that noncompliance with the rules means you lose even if you are right.

I can file a lawsuit against you, the reader, for anything right now even though I have no claim and I can win — and maybe claim your property to satisfy the judgement. The fact that I never had a claim is irrelevant to the system. Once the judgment or order is entered that is the law of the case. This is what crooked banks are using as their means to gain more profit through foreclosures.

[Practice Note: there is a very real privacy issue that has not been adequately explored in connection with homeowner transactions. If the true nature of the homeowner transaction was to obtain consent to sell private data then the consideration might be zero — because the money given to homeowners was offset entirely by a duty to pay it back with interest. So in addition to a lack of informed consent, the failure of consideration might negate all consent. This might augment a claim for quantum meruit for the real plan: the issuance and trading of securities.] 

The presence of questions does not mean that there is an absence of evidence. While the burden of proof is on the claimant to establish the necessary elements for a prima facie case, procedural law favors the claimant, especially in foreclosure cases. Homeowners can and should win, but they often lose because they think that being right is enough.

The apparent facial validity of the documents presented means that even if the documents were fabricated and the plaintiff was misrepresented as having legal existence, for purposes of the case, the judge is required to presume that the claim is true and that the claimant is real. the perpetrators of such a fraud get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. the property is sold and the proceeds are distributed as revenue without any accountability.

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Merely denying those facts is insufficient. You must be able to produce evidence to the contrary, to wit: either facts that show that the presumption is untrue or, more likely, the fact that the Foreclosure Mill was unable to or unwilling to answer basic questions about the ownership and authority over the debt.

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Many lawyers and pro se litigants make a common error. They think that by denying the existence of the plaintiff or the claim that they have shifted the burden back to the claimant or at least the Foreclosure Mill.  This assumption is misplaced particularly in foreclosure litigation. theoretically the denial of a fact that has been alleged is sufficient to force the claimant to prove the allegation of fact. But in foreclosures, thanks to form pleading, very few facts actually need to be alleged in order for a Judicial or non-judicial foreclosure to proceed.
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The denial from the homeowner is therefore a denial of facts that have not been alleged. It gets worse. The presumption arising from documents that appear to have facial validity ends the matter unless the court is faced with credible and persuasive evidence to the contrary.
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And the Foreclosure mill is never going to admit that it doesn’t have a client who is a claimant, and it is never going to admit that the claim doesn’t exist.
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The only avenue open to the homeowner is the exhaustion of all procedures and remedies under the rules of discovery. At the conclusion of that process, the homeowner will be in a position to argue that the failure of the opposition to answer the most basic questions about the claim that they have submitted, combined with their refusal to even follow court orders, should result in sanctions and further, should result in an inference that the claimant doesn’t exist and that the claim is without merit.
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This would not automatically mean that the homeowner wins the case. While sanctions under these circumstances could include striking the pleadings or the claim or the proof of claim in bankruptcy court, the judge is probably going to be more inclined to grant a motion in limine by the homeowner that prevent the Foreclosure Mill from introducing any evidence of ownership or authority over the debt, note or mortgage.
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That SHOULD end it but often doesn’t. Even then many courts will leave open the possibility of producing actual proof of ownership or authority over the debt. Appellate courts have been inconsistent in reversing or affirming such orders.

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The fact that they did not prove the claim independently of the legal presumptions merely means that the judge was satisfied that the prima facie case had been established.

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So the way homeowners are often presenting their position is basically that the judge should not have assumed that the elements of a prima facie case had in fact been established. But that means that you had introduced sufficient evidence to cast doubt on the validity of the documents relied upon in the foreclosure. By that point, the judge has already decided that you didn’t. You raised questions and denied things but you proved nothing.
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So you are now so far down the road in the Foreclosure action that it is probably impossible to reopen any form of discovery. This is why I recommend in such cases that you file an independent lawsuit that could survive a motion to dismiss. By filing lawsuit you raise issues that can be subject of inquiry in discovery, depositions, and subpoenas duces tecum.

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I think pro se litigants in particular also might be confusing the difference between a void judgment and an erroneous judgment. Arguments often appear to be directed to an erroneous judgment, although they contain good arguments against jurisdiction, which could be directed to characterizing the judgment as void. You need to be more specific that the judgment is void and why and not confuse your arguments of error with your argument of lack of jurisdiction.
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This is not something you’re going to be able to do on your own. You need to hire an attorney.
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SECURITIZATION NOTES: All securitizations I have reviewed have one thing in common: the sale of certificates that do not convey any right, title or interest to any debt, note or mortgage. No other financial transaction takes place after that point — except payment of some of the investor money to homeowners. Tax court cases make this abundantly clear: holders of certificates have no secured interest in anything and no interest at all in the performance or enforcement of any obligation.
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The transaction with homeowners was simply acquiring consent from the homeowner to sell private data multiple times to multiple buyers.
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No payments from homeowners — either voluntary or involuntary — are ever forwarded to anyone who has paid money. No proceeds from foreclosure are ever paid to reduce any debt because there is no asset receivable on any balance sheet in which the debt is claimed.
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Thus the presentation of a payment history in court is a distraction from the fact that there is no evidence of any records of any company that claims a loss from nonpayment on a debt.
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A proper objection to the introduction of such a document could be lack of foundation and lack of relevance — unless there is testimony or other evidence linking the payment history with the books of account of the claimant, there is no claim. But like all objections, if not timely raised it is waived. 
Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed attorney since 1977. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker, securities broker, securities analyst, and financial analyst.

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In the meanwhile you can order any of the following:
*
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
*
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR PLUS or BASIC includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT)
*
FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. IN FACT, STATISTICS SHOW THAT MOST HOMEOWNERS FAIL TO PRESENT THEIR DEFENSE PROPERLY. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Motions, originator, Pleading, Presumptions, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | 3 Comments »

How to Challenge The Credibility of Documents Offered to Support Foreclosure

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Neil Garfield

Legal presumptions are not meant to be used as a means for achieving an illegal or unjust result. But they do exactly that when apparently facially valid documents are left unchallenged.

A successful challenge to the credibility of the source of documents initially filed in foreclosure will end the case in favor of the homeowner. the reason is simple: with legal presumptions operating in favor of the foreclosure mill they have no case to offer or prove.

If you start at the beginning and challenge the narrative immediately it can and should lead to excellent results for homeowners under siege by profiteers seeking to force the sale of the subject property.

The plain truth is that all documents from securitization schemes seeking to foreclose are false. But at first glance they appear to be facially valid, which only raises legal presumptions if the deems the document to come from a credible source. This is true in all jurisdictions.

It’s high time for lawyers and pro se litigants to challenge the presentation of initial documents as coming from a source that (1) has a stake in the outcome and is therefore biased and (2) not credible based upon administrative findings in all 50 states in which the documents were not merely found to be defective but also untrue.

In all cases based upon securitization schemes, not even the named Plaintiff knows who owns the debt, note or mortgage. Ask anyone. Even in appellate proceedings the foreclosure mills had to admit they had no idea about the identity or existence of a creditor.

In other cases, attorneys were forced to admit that they never had any contract or or even CONTACT with their “client.” Cases whose style beings with the words “US Bank. Deutsche Bank, or Bank of New York Mellon” are sham cases with sham clients. The lawyer is neither instructed by nor paid by the bank nor is to processing the foreclosure on behalf of either the bank or any trust.

The same lack of knowledge is true for the foreclosure mill who operates under the protection of litigation immunity, the servicer who is receiving instructions from an investment bank posing as Master Servicer, a trustee who has no knowledge or administrative powers over the loan, a trust that has never been party to negotiation or sale of the debt or note or mortgage.

see RobosigningAdministrativeOrder

In all 50 states you have administrative orders in the courts, and administrative findings by the Departments of Justice and Attorneys general and even county clerks that point out with specificity the fact that the documents used by foreclosure mills were faked. That is fact, not opinion.

In hundreds of cases including some where I was lead counsel, there are specific recorded findings from trial judges as to how the foreclosure was faked.

It should not be that hard for lawyers to argue to the court that given the amount of work done (thousands of man hours) investigating the mortgage lending and foreclosure practices, some credence should be given to the now universal view that the documents were faked.

There can be no dispute that the documents all come from parties who have a unique and essential interest in the outcome of the foreclosure claim — i.e., preservation of revenue and achievement of additional revenue arising from the proceeds of a forced sale, none of which will be directed to anyone who paid value for the debt, note or mortgage.

The indicia of credibility and reliability are simply not there. And the indicia of lack of credibility and reliability are all there. Legal presumptions therefore are not legally available. 

It is not a big leap to also argue that the documents contained data that was also also untrue because in every case where the documents were faked, there was no follow up of actual evidence or proof of the claim.

It never happened that the investment banks said “ok, just to make everyone feel better here is the actual proof that the loan was owned by XYZ Corp, who suffered an actual (rather than hypothetical) financial loss arising from nonpayment of the debt. So the foreclosure although based upon false documentation did not produce an unjust result.”

That didn’t happen because there was no such evidence. In every case the foreclosure resulted in a windfall profit to all the participants in the foreclosure.

Remember you are simply challenging the presumption, thus allowing the claimant to prove its claim without the presumption. that is exactly  what the rules require. The fact that you defeat a presumption and that the claimant’s attorneys are forced to actually prove the truth of the matters asserted on the documents is not a stand alone reason for entry of judgment in favor of the homeowner.

THIS IS NOT A PUNISHMENT WHERE THE CLAIMANT IS DEPRIVED OF ITS CLAIM BECAUSE IT DID  SOMETHING ILLEGAL. IF THEY CAN STILL PROVE THE CLAIM, THEY WIN.

If indeed the homeowner does owe money to the claimant and they are both parties to a loan  agreement that the homeowner has breached then the claimant is entitled to foreclosure.

Legal presumptions are not meant to be used as a means for achieving an illegal or unjust result. But they do exactly that when apparently facially valid documents are left unchallenged.

In virtually all cases, such documents are not even facially valid, once you examine the contents and the signature block. Look at it. Study it. And then create your defense narrative. 

These cases are winnable because they should be won by homeowners not because of some technical argument.

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. IN FACT, STATISTICS SHOW THAT MOST HOMEOWNERS FAIL TO PRESENT THEIR DEFENSE PROPERLY. EVEN THOSE THAT PRESENT THE DEFENSES PROPERLY LOSE, AT LEAST AT THE TRIAL COURT LEVEL, AT LEAST 1/3 OF THE TIME. IN ADDITION IT IS NOT A SHORT PROCESS IF YOU PREVAIL. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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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, forgery, investment banking, Investor, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, Presumptions, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing, TRIAL OBJECTIONS | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

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