How Foreclosure Mills Win by Misusing “Judicial Notice”

Hat tip to summer chic

Judicial Notice is a rule of evidence in which the court receives a written request to accept a document into evidence as proof of the truth of the matter asserted.

In Foreclosures, the truth of the matter asserted is that there is an unpaid loan account, and the named plaintiff or beneficiary has the right to administer, collect and enforce it. If that is alleged in a form that is allowed by law, and proven in the manner allowed by law, the foreclosure will be granted. I might add, that it should be granted to the extent that there is still an unpaid balance due to the named Plaintiff or beneficiary. But in nearly all foreclosure cases, this is NOT the true fact scenario.

There are circumstances where the trial court either MUST accept a document as evidence or in which the court can accept the document as evidence as to its existence. But unless there is an objection, the court will also presume that what is contained in the document is also true.

I hasten to add that it is highly unusual for an appellate court to accept a document or record on judicial notice if it was not introduced as such in the trial court.

Here is an article that discusses judicial notice at length and presents clear definitions and uses for the request.

https://www.dailyjournal.com/mcle/1034-judicial-notice

Here are some relevant quotes from the article by attorney David M Axelrod in California.

Judicial notice is a means of bringing before a trial or appellate court “matters [that] are assumed to be indisputably true, [ so that] the introduction of evidence to prove them will not be required.”

mandatory judicial notice of “decisional, constitutional, and public statutory law,” government rules and regulations, rules of professional conduct, rules of pleading, practice and procedure, the “true signification of all English words and phrases, and … legal expressions,” and [f]acts and propositions of generalized knowledge that are so universally known that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute.”

permissive judicial notice “to the extent … not embraced within … of laws, regulations, legislative enactments, official government acts, court records, rules of court, international law, and two rather expansive catch-all categories: “[f]acts and propositions that are of such common knowledge within the territorial jurisdiction of the court that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute,” and “[f]acts and proposition that are not reasonably subject to dispute and are capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy.”

2. Judicial notice is limited by relevance and hearsay rules.

a. Courts will not take judicial notice of irrelevant matters.

b. A court cannot take judicial notice of the truth of hearsay statements in a document, unless an exception to the hearsay rule applies.

c. The hearsay rule also applies to preclude judicial notice of argument or comments by counsel and judges in other proceedings.

4. Judicial notice extends to a broad cat egory of facts that are “not reasonably subject to dispute and capable of immediate and accurate determination .”

The attorneys who work for the foreclosure mills often request judicial notice of records.

One example — out of many — is any document that shows a header at the top of the document as coming from the sec.gov website. Unwary lawyers and ignorant pro se litigants usually agree that the document is a copy of a government record.

First you should only accept a copy that is certified by the agency that issued it — not a copy, because copies can be and often are chnged digitally to reflect the desires of the lawyer who works for the foreclosure mill.

Second, without an objection as to content being hearsay or relevance, the admission of the document into evidence usually is taken as evidence of the truth of the matters asserted in the document.

And third, the document is generally subject to both a hearsay and relevance objection. For hearsay, see practically every article I have written on these pages. For relevance, only a litigator will know what I am talking about.

The document is NOT relevant unless there is a foundation (testimony admitted as evidence) that proves the existence of the unpaid loan account due to the Plaintiff or Beneficiary.

This foundation can ONLY be established by one of two methods — (1) admission from the homeowner directly or through his/her counsel or (2) by the records custodian for the named Plaintiff or Beneficiary (e.g. U.S. Bank, as trustee etc.) providing sworn testimony in support of the unpaid loan account or an acceptable report about which he has personal knowledge — not “familiarity.”

Without that foundation, there is no need to consider whether the alleged lien has been transferred, or whether the homeowner has failed to make a scheduled payment. Those issues are irrelevant in the absence of establishing the existence of an unpaid loan account with a balance due from the homeowner. Without that, there is no legally recognized claim.

Homeowners frequently lose their cases and fail to successfully defend foreclosures, simply because they admit the existence of an unpaid loan account due to the named Plaintiff or Beneficiary.

The other way they lose is by failing to object to the “payment history” offered by the attorney, working for the foreclosure Mill. This is irrelevant, and should not be admitted into evidence without first establishing the foundation that

  1. An unpaid loan account exists
  2. An unpaid loan account has a balance due that is unpaid
  3. An unpaid loan account is owed to the plaintiff or beneficiary
  4. The Plaintiff or beneficiary has appointed a company to act as “Servicer” in accordance with the tersms of a servicing agreement that is also produced by a records custodian.

The fact that a witness shows up and is willing to be sworn in as a witness does not mean anything they say is true. Their testimony that their employer is a “Servicer” is a matter of opinion and is usually not true. (see below). Unless they have personally witnessed employees of their employer collecting checks or other forms of payment, they must be requried to define “servicer.” Homeowners lose by failing to do that.

If the lawyer representing the foreclosure mill wants to use the “payment history” at all, he, or she must produce foundation testimony from a records custodian who says the are personally knowledgeable that the record is one that represents business conducted by the company that is said to be the issuer of the report.

No such witness ever appears in foreclosure cases. Instead the witness testifies that the report is issued in the ordinary course of business but it not stated by the witness that the report is a representative of transactions that were accepted, processed or forwarded by the named issuer. This sleight of hand trick is the principal reason for literally millions of false foreclosures.

No witness will say that they know that the records are an accurate depiction of transactions or business conducted in the name of “servicer.”

They won’t do that because (a) that would be perjury and (b) it isn’t true. All payments, processing and disbursements are handled by third party financial technology companies that do not work for the named “servicer.”  The “ordinary course of business” that the witness is talking about is being an actor posing as a company performing servicing functions.

Some witnesses know the misleading nature of their testimony and some don’t. So in most cases you will not get an admission, although I have succeeded at doing that in a few cases.

Mostly you get the desired effect by hamemring at “how do you know that.” Like when the witness testifies about familiarity, you can usually destroy them on cross-examination when you start asking what they mean, what they saw, what they did, and how much they were relying upon statements from people who will not testify in court (hearsay).

These witnesses are put through “training” which amounts to memorizing a script. When they say they saw or witnesses input on computers, ask them how close they were and what they actually viewed. They will never have an answer. Then comes the motion to strike the prior testimony as being without foundation and based on hearsay. (also possibly a relvance objection followed by motion to strike).

In the cases I have won, the judge typically sustained by objection granted my motion to strike the preceding testimony but left room for the case to proceeed. Then the finding of fact and conclusions of law are that the Plaintiff or Beneficiary failed to produce sufficient evidence to establish their alleged claim of right to administer any alleged unpaid loan account, or to collect money — or enforce the putative lien.

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Nobody paid me to write this. I am self-funded, supported only by donations. My mission is to stop foreclosures and other collection efforts against homeowners and consumers without proof of loss. If you want to support this effort please click on this link and donate as much as you feel you can afford.

Please Donate to Support Neil Garfield’s Efforts to Stop Foreclosure Fraud.
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 75, 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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Click Here for Preliminary Document Review (PDR) [Basic, Plus, Premium) includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT). Includes title search under PDR Plus and PDR Premium.

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG AND ELSEWHERE ARE BASED ON THE ABILITY OF A HOMEOWNER TO WIN THE CASE NOT MERELY SETTLE IT. OTHER LAWYERS HAVE STRATEGIES DIRECTED AT SETTLEMENT OR MODIFICATION. 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 14 years or more. In addition, although currently rare, it can also result in your homestead being free and clear of any mortgage lien that you contested. (No Guarantee).

Yes you DO need a lawyer.
If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.

Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

 

FCRA Might Be Fertile Ground for Individual and Class Actions Especially under CFPB Rules

if the CRC does not perform the investigation or performs it incorrectly, you can sue them.

In a world where the ability to access credit matters more than the ability to access savings, nothing could be more important than these provisions under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Anyone who read the book or saw the film “The Firm” knows that it is often a boring statute that can take down the worst offenders. It was mail fraud in that story. For more information ask the descendants of Al Capone who died in prison of syphilis after being convicted of income tax evasion. Both bad guys were guilty of murder and mayhem. But what put them away was overbilling clients and evasion of income tax liability and payments respectively.

The Consumer Financial Protection Board is doing a deep dive into both debt collection and reporting under the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act). Apparently, someone woke up to the fact that reporting “agencies” (none of them are governmental) are indeed required to perform both due diligence and an investigation when the “debtor” challenges a negative credit report.

I know. It is boring. But you might get more interested when you consider the importance of these provisions. Or to put a finer point on it, you SHOULD be more interested. Most of the value of your home could end up as equity — i.e., the value you can trade on or borrow.

The investment banks need to make sure that programs like the one I created (AMGAR) never get off the ground. That means making it nearly impossible for any legitimate lender to issue a commitment to refinance the so-called loan with the usual customary standard condition — that it gets the priority position for its lien on the subject property securing the new loan transaction with the homeowner. 

This means that the old “lender” or “successor lender” must actually assert and provide confirmation that it is actually the owner of the receivable allegedly due from the homeowner. Up until now, that standard requirement has been ignored and the marketplace has been coercing homeowners to accept title insurance as a substitute for title. Hint: They’re not the same thing. 

The way this “policy” has been enforced is to prevent the homeowner from seeking hard money or other lenders. There is no better way than negative credit reporting. A bad credit report blocks almost any source of funds for the usual homeowner. So the inability of the “old creditor” to confirm the existence of the loan account never becomes an issue.

But there is a mechanism by which homeowners can defeat this strategy that supports false claims for administration, collection, and enforcement of claims and payments from homeowners. The mechanism is contained in 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(A).

see cfpb_supervisory-highlights_issue-26_2022-04

Here is the quote from the latest CFPB bulletin. Remember that the fact that it is boring does not mean that it won’t provide you with tangible benefits that could change the whole trajectory of your life.

2.2.1 CRC duty to conduct reasonable reinvestigation of disputed information The FCRA requires that a CRC must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation of disputed information to determine if the disputed information is inaccurate whenever the completeness or accuracy of any item of information contained in a consumer’s file is disputed by the consumer and the consumer notifies the CRC directly, or indirectly through a reseller, of such dispute.8 In several reviews of CRCs, examiners found that CRCs failed to conduct reasonable investigations of disputes in multiple ways. Examiners also found that rather than resolving disputes consistent with the investigation conducted by the furnisher, which in many instances would have required correcting inaccurate derogatory information and replacing it with accurate positive information, CRCs simply deleted thousands of disputed tradelines. Examiners also found that CRCs failed to conduct reasonable dispute investigations when they failed to review and consider all relevant information submitted by the consumer in support of their disputes. After identification of these issues, CRCs were directed to cease violating the FCRA’s dispute investigation requirements. [e.s.]

In practice what this means for consumers of all types who partake of the twisted financial products offered under cover of false labels is that if you submit a contest to the credit reporting company (CRC) with an appropriate summary and exhibits and state the nature of the contest and the reasons for it, the CRC must conduct a deliberate investigation to determine whether or not it is true.

And if the CRC does not perform the investigation or performs it incorrectly, you can sue them.

If the “furnisher” (usually a company that has been designated as a “Servicer”) is unable to establish the accuracy of the report the furnisher must withdraw it or the CRC must take it down. That action alone lends corroboration to the defense narrative in foreclosure.

The allegation can then be made that the putative “servicer” and “Creditor” are unable to corroborate their claims for rights to administer, collect and enforce the alleged underlying obligation — despite being contractually bound to do so (FCRA, and bound by the statutory duty to do so (FCRA, FDCOA, RESPA).

So how boring is it when you consider that the place of “creditor” and the fact of “loan account” has been eliminated by Wall Street investment banking strategies? Do you still feel like paying them anyway? Or would you like to know how they are really making money, regardless of whether you pay or not?

PRACTICE HINT: THIS IS ONE EXAMPLE OF WHY HOMEOWNERS SHOULD OBTAIN A FORENSIC INVESTIGATION REPORT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. BEING “CURRENT” IS BOTH IRRELEVANT AND POTENTIALLY DAMAGING IF YOU ARE PAYING ON A NON-EXISTING DEBT FOR THE BENEFIT OF A NONEXISTENT CREDITOR.

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DID YOU LIKE THIS ARTICLE?
Nobody paid me to write this. I am self-funded, supported only by donations. My mission is to stop foreclosures and other collection efforts against homeowners and consumers without proof of loss. If you want to support this effort please click on this link and donate as much as you feel you can afford.

Please Donate to Support Neil Garfield’s Efforts to Stop Foreclosure Fraud.
CLICK TO DONATE

Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 75, 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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CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM. It is free, with no obligation and we keep all information private. The information you provide is not used for any purpose except for providing services you order or request from us. You will receive an email response from Mr. Garfield  usually within 24 hours. In  the meanwhile you can order any of the following:

Click Here for Preliminary Document Review (PDR) [Basic, Plus, Premium) includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT). Includes title search under PDR Plus and PDR Premium.

Click here for 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. Suggestions for discovery demands are included.
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. THE COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG AND ELSEWHERE ARE BASED ON THE ABILITY OF A HOMEOWNER TO WIN THE CASE NOT MERELY SETTLE IT. OTHER LAWYERS HAVE STRATEGIES DIRECTED AT SETTLEMENT OR MODIFICATION. 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. In addition, although currently rare, it can also result in your homestead being free and clear of any mortgage lien that you contested. (No Guarantee).

Yes you DO need a lawyer.
If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.

Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

How Evidence Works for and Against the Consumer/Homeowner

(Once again, because of minor medical issues I decline to do the Neil Garfield Show. I offer this instead)
It is easy to get lost in the weeds. Don’t make up your own words or definitions because your definitions have no relevance to your case. Do hold the accusing side to their words and to the legally accepted definitions of those words as contained in statutes and cases.

But above all, start at the beginning — a rookie mistake made by nearly all young litigators and pro se litigants who skip over the gold to pick up a few pieces of copper.  They exclaim “How could I lose, I have the copper!” And all the court wanted was the gold.

This post is inspired by the factual findings of several of my most generous contributors, and a hat tip to summer chic. Just because you hear a word or term don’t think you know what it means or the context in which it is issued. That is what litigation is all about. 

So first I will repeat what Aristotle said. First, define your terms. I personally know what Fiserv did as a payment processor when it served to intercept and process transactions from POS and ATM devices. I know what it did when it effectively acted as Gateway for intercept processors, including itself.

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Payment processing in all of its forms consists of three distinct nodes: receipt of money, data processing (recording the receipt and disbursement of money) and the actual disbursement of money. In that sense, Fiserv has always been a servicer.

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So it is easy to see why the investment banks trusted FiServ to handle those functions rather than anyone else. And they did. After the Tylor Bean débâcle, they would never let a company actually perform servicing functions because that would leave open the door to stealing.
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It was Black Knight who set up the lockbox arrangements (contracts) but FiServ who actually did the grunt work — receiving, accounting, and disbursing $MONEY$. Except that they didn’t really do disbursing.
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Because the act of depositing the money was a disbursement. They would take a $1,000 check from Homeowner Smith and deposit it into a bank account that was owned and controlled by XYZ Capital Finance, Inc. which was either a subsidiary of the investment bank or a conduit for outflow to offshore accounts. The named “servicer” never saw or even expected to receive that money.
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The reason why I am commenting on this is that this is extraordinarily important to the defense narrative for consumers. The ONLY party who may sue is one who has suffered financial injury “proximately” caused by the conduct of the party against whom he has filed suit.
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I have argued for 16 years that the homeowner deserves to win. But people take that as meaningless drivel from a defense lawyer who will always say that his criminal client is innocent. So try this: you can win and why should you not? If you were facing jail would you really so blithely accept the “inevitable”?
  • If the homeowner fails to make a payment that appears on some schedule and Goldman Sachs loses money because they’re betting that he would make the payment, the injury suffered by Goldman Sachs is NOT LEGALLY caused by the failure of the homeowner to make a payment. GS cannot sue the homeowner for that. That bet is the same as betting on a horserace. You can’t sue the owner for losing or throwing the race.
  • If an investor IS getting paid regardless of whether the homeowner makes a payment or not, then they can claim no injury from the “failure” to make a scheduled payment.
    • The investor who purchased a certificate is simply betting that the investment bank that issued the certificate will make the payments or cause payments to be made according to the terms of the contract that is the certificate — not according to any contract with the homeowner. The certificate parties are investor vs investment bank — not investor vs homeowner.
  • If an investor has no legal claim to receive payments from homeowners nor to administer, collect or enforce any alleged loan account the investor has no claim whatsoever against the homeowner — for the simple reason that the investor has chosen to have no relationship whatsoever with the homeowner in order to avoid liability for lending and servicing errors, mistakes or violations of statutes passed by the Federal and State governments — of which there were tens of millions of cases resulting in hundreds of billions in settlements, so far.
  • If an investment bank was counting on receiving a scheduled payment from a homeowner but had no right to receive it, it may not under current law in any U.S. jurisdiction recover money from the homeowner nor force the sale of the homeowner’s property.
  • If the investment bank had no legal right, title or interest to the underlying obligation, debt, note or mortgage (deed of trust) issued by the homeowner, then it had no right to administer, collect or enforce any payment set forth on any schedule — nor grant the authority to do so to someone else.
    • One may not grant rights that do not belong to the grantor. If I promise to give you my jet, you will not get the jet simply because I don’t have a jet. And if you know I don’t have a jet you have no claim for my failure to deliver it.
  • If a company is named as servicer then unless FiServ is doing the work for that “servicer” company (under contract), then the work done by FiServ is the work of Fiserv, and only Fiserv employees and representatives can testify about what was done and what their records contain.
    • Any report issued by them or based upon FiServ data must be established by foundation testimony from the records custodian of FiServ and not some robowitness employed by the company who was named as a servicer but was not performing the basic servicing functions.
    • Any such report and testimony of the “representative of the named “servicer” are irrelevant, lacking in competence, foundation, or materiality.
    • Such testimony is rank hearsay clearly excludable in every court in every U.S. jurisdiction — but only if a timely and proper objection is raised within the context of a coherent defense narrative.
    • This is because the only thing that a robowitness can really say is that “I received this report and my boss says it is a report from my employer who I have been told by someone (I don’t remember who) is a servicer of an unpaid loan account due from the homeowner to the Greatest Bank of All Time, N.A., not on its own behalf but on behalf of the Indecipherable Trust 200x-04 ALRT-A pass-through certificates, not on its own behalf but on behalf of the holders of those certificates, about whom I know nothing.” 
      • “I know nothing about the content of any servicing agreement between my employer and any creditor who has paid value or otherwise has a right, title, or interest in receiving money from the collection of payments, principal, or interest from homeowners. “
    • In truth, the report is entirely printed out from data received exclusively from FiServ data processing servers and storage servers which are owned, operated and maintained by FiServ which provides services (“servicing”) to and for the exclusive benefit of investment bankers who have no legal right to administer, collect or enforce any debt.
    • In truth, when the robowitness says he or she is familiar with the records of his or her employer what they really mean is that they’re familiar with a script and know absolutely nothing about the operations of their employer because their employer does not want them to know anything. (This is how many such witnesses are “blown up” on the witness stand by hundreds of lawyers across the country.)
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So for purposes of this discussion, a payment processor is a company that processes payments — i.e., something that is actually happening and something that they are a direct party to witness the actual occurrence of actual events and recording them. A “servicer” is a company that services payments from the homeowner and accounts for its actions by recording data on its own records regarding said receipt.
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If they have not done that, then they’re not a servicer in the conventional use of the word, even though the statutory definition for purposes of statutory liability to consumers is much broader. That statutory definition (augmented by regulation X) does not mean that they received any payments nor recorded any such receipt.
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Use of that statutory definition as a basis for misleading the court about the role of the company named as servicer and the origin of the information will eventually become, in fairly short order, the subject of a series of actions by state bar associations, the FTC and the CFPB. Insurers of lawyers have already inserted sufficient cover language to deny coverage for intentional misdeeds. Since the company named as “servicer” is not “servicing” any unpaid loan account receivable (which it will be revealed does not exist) they have no right to testify about it, much less the balance or record of payments.
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This is all true and but it is NOT a sign of judicial corruption to point out instances in which these particular facts are either ignored or denied by the person sitting on the bench. Their job as judges is to rule on what is brought in front of them — not what might have been brought nor what should not have been brought if there had only been an objection. The truth is that in most cases I have received I would have ruled the same way as the judge frequently accused of corruption.

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Once the homeowner has effectively admitted that there is an unpaid loan account receivable exists (without any information), admits that the third party company is a servicer (without any information), and admits that the bank named is the trustee of a trust (without any information), and admits that the trust owns an unpaid loan due from that homeowner or even argues about which trust owns the loan, what choice do I have as a judge but to rule that those facts are, for purposes of the case in front of me, the facts of the case?
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Litigation is about offense and defense. The purpose of defense is NOT to let the evidence in or to find ways to get it out. It is not to prove that the lawyers or anyone else are corrupt, evil, or belongs in jail. Once you make that allegation and can’t legally prove it, you will lose all credibility on the main point — defense. And that will cost you the opportunity to make a ton of money on wrongful foreclosure.
================
DID YOU LIKE THIS ARTICLE?
Nobody paid me to write this. I am self-funded, supported only by donations. My mission is to stop foreclosures and other collection efforts against homeowners and consumers without proof of loss. If you want to support this effort please click on this link and donate as much as you feel you can afford.

Please Donate to Support Neil Garfield’s Efforts to Stop Foreclosure Fraud.
CLICK TO DONATE

Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 75, 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.
*
FREE REVIEW: Don’t wait, Act NOW!

CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM. It is free, with no obligation and we keep all information private. The information you provide is not used for any purpose except for providing services you order or request from us. You will receive an email response from Mr. Garfield  usually within 24 hours. In  the meanwhile you can order any of the following:

Click Here for Preliminary Document Review (PDR) [Basic, Plus, Premium) includes 30 minute recorded CONSULT). Includes title search under PDR Plus and PDR Premium.

Click here for 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. Suggestions for discovery demands are included.
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CASE ANALYSIS 
*

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. In addition, although currently rare, it can also result in your homestead being free and clear of any mortgage lien that you contested. (No Guarantee).

Yes you DO need a lawyer.
If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.

Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Those letters from the lawyer for the “servicer”: PHH

It is true that someone will execute a release of the lien. What is not true is that they have any authority to do so — nor is it true that PHH has any right to receive any money, whether it is a monthly payment or a payoff.

In fact it is not true that PHH will receive any money. They won’t and they don’t. All payments are  directed through lockbox contracts and FINTECH companies into accounts that may bear the name of a company claiming to be a serrvicer but which are owned by someone else.

This is why I keep successfully annoying opposing counsel about the payment history they wish to introduce as a business record exception to the rule against the use of hearsay evidence.

Since none of the data was entered by anyone employed by the company that is claimed to be the servicer, the payment history is neither a business record that is an exception to the rule against hearsay, nor an acceptable substitute for what has always been required: the accounting ledger showing the history (cradle to grave) of the loan account receivable. In fact, the payment history is not even a partially acceptable substitute for that ledger because it does not reflect payments to creditors.

PHH, Ocwen and Reverse Mortgage Solutions (among others) are all part of the same organization. In a recent dialogue between my client and the lawyer for PHH, he stated that payment to PHH will cause the lien to be released. This got me started thinking about the way he worded that. Normally the lawyer would write something like “Payment to PHH, as agent for XYZ Creditor, will satisfy the debt, note and mortgage. Upon receipt of such payment,m the lien will be released.”

Note that this was a representation from the lawyer not PHH and not any creditor. And the lawyer is protected by a form of immunity as long as he is not intentionally misstating the facts knowing that they’re false. If PHH said that, it could be the basis for a fraud action.  It is true that someone will execute a release of the lien. What is not true is that they have any authority to do so nor is it true that PHH has any right to receive any money, whether it is a monthly payment or a payoff.

It is true that someone will execute a release of the lien. What is not true is that they have any authority to do so nor is it true that PHH has any right to receive any money, whether it is a monthly payment or a payoff.

So this is what I said in a comment to the receipt of an email displaying the comments of the lawyer claiming to represent “somebody” which we presume is a claim to represent PHH which in turn is a claim to represent some company claiming to be a creditor merely because they have some paperwork — and not because they ever entered into any purchase and sale transaction in which they bought the underlying obligation, the legal debt, note or mortgage:

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Of course, what is interesting is that the lawyer is saying that payment to PHH will cause the lien to be released. But it doesn’t say who will release it. It’s leaving the rest to your imagination. Any lien release under this scenario would be executed by a person working for a company that has no legal authority to sign it.

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The way it is set up, the person is authorized by the company he works for, but the company lacks the authority to authorize him to sign it. The company, in turn, claims authority by virtue of some contract or document in which the counterparty grants the company the authority. But the grantor also lacks authority.

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The idea here is to get you to take your eye off the ball. The ball is always the underlying obligation. It is the legal owner of the obligation (i.e., the one who purchased it for value) who has the sole authority to grant powers to anyone else over the administration, collection, and enforcement of the underlying obligation.
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It is only when you take your eye off the ball that these companies get away with claiming the status of “holder” of the note and owner of the mortgage. The holder of the note is defined as a party who has physical possession of the note (or the right to physical possession of the note) together with the authority to enforce it.
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These players have been successfully leveraging the idea that physical possession of the promissory note, or the right to physical possession of the promissory note is all that they need in order to establish the legal presumption that they have the authority to enforce it. That has never been true. But in the absence of a persistent and aggressive challenge from the alleged debtor, these parties have been able to steamroll over all weak objections.
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Further, leveraging one presumption into another, they have been successful in raising the additional presumption that transfer of the note to a “holder” is the legal equivalent of transferring legal title to the underlying obligation, thus satisfying the requirement for enforcement that is contained in Article 9–203 of the Uniform Commercial Code. None of that is true; but all of it seems to be true.
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The bottom line is that they know there is no loan account receivable and therefore no legal owner of the underlying obligation. They have done that intentionally for the benefit of the investment banks that set up this scheme. But it has not been difficult for Wall Street to convince the rest of the world that all of these transactions are, in substance, just what they appear to be. Getting the courts, law enforcement, regulators, and even homeowners and their lawyers to look beyond the appearance has been the principal impediment to defeating the scheme.
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Nobody paid me to write this. I am self-funded, supported only by donations. My mission is to stop foreclosures and other collection efforts against homeowners and consumers without proof of loss. If you want to support this effort please click on this link and donate as much as you feel you can afford.
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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.
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

What Happened With Your “Loan” — By admitting that you received a loan you lose.

The plain truth is that homeowners are losing their cases through assymetry of information. They think they understand when they do not have a clue. They are admitting the obvious, which turns out to wholly untrue. In so doing they give the court no choice but to enter judgment aganst them. 

ApplicationForLoanProcessAndFundingOfServiceFees

I am experimenting with new ways to present this. If you click on the above chart you will see that the application process is actually a dead end. Nobody actually agrees to lend any money. Nobody does lend money.

Money arrives later at the “closing” table but unknown to the borrower it is not a loan. Contrary to popular belief which is based on ignorance of the actual process, no loan is sold. No obligation is sold. Nobody ever becomes the owner of any loan or obligation. Nobody records a purchase of any loan obligation. And nobody maintains any loan account receivable.

Whether it is described as a loan broker or “loan originator” (for which there is no legal definition) it is there for the fees. It is not present to participate in any loan nor does it receive any profit from making a loan. It does not share in any profit from making a loan because there is no loan. There is no lender. Calling it a lender does not make it a lender.

But you can reverse that (and lose your case) by calling it a lender in your conversations, pleadings, motions, memoranda or argument in court.

  • As soon as you have done that, for purposes of that case, you have admitted the existence of the loan.
  • In so doing you have tacitly admitted that the loan broker or the originator was the lender.
  • In admitting that there was a lender you have identified the lender as the loan broker or originator.
  • By doing that you have admitted that the originator had ownership of the underlying obligation.
  • By admitting that, you have admitted that the originator or broker paid the money that appeared at the “closing table.”
  • By admitting that you have also admitted that the lender — or its “successor” — suffered an actual economic loss that was proximately caused by the “nonpayment” of the homeowner.
  • And so by admitting that you have admitted that the action for foreclosure is valid.

Just a word about “successors.” You will often find the word used. Sometimes “MERS and its successors.” Sometimes “MERS for XYZ and its successors.” A successor is a company who has purchased the obligation or who has purchased the company that owned the obligation. In residential transactions, there is almost no instance where such an event has occurred.

There are no successors. There are no companies even willing to pose as successors unless they are sham conduits — thinly capitalized to be thrown under the bus or thrown into bankruptcy. The way this is done is clever. Sometimes the sham is actually just a trade name masquerading as a company or a “trust.”

Trusts do not exist for legal purposes unless there is something of value entrusted to a person or company for purposes of administering that thing (res, in Latin) for the benefit of beneficiaries.

The place where many lawyers get hung up on that is that there exists an “allonge” or assignment of mortgage” or “assignment of beneficial interest” to, for example, U.S. Bank, as trustee for ABC-2006 certificates.

If you dig deep enough in discovery just under the surface you will find a “trust agreement.” The trust agreement never grants any powers to the administration of any affairs to the named trustee.  So U.S. Bank is actually prohibited from doing anything with the paper that is assigned to it. In fact, you will find that it lacks the right, power, or duty to even ask what is happening in “the trust.” So labeling it as trustee is merely window dressing and does not describe any trust relationship or position. But you can change all that and lose the case simply by your own reference to U.S. Bank as a trustee, which in turn admits the existence of a trust etc.

Note that the paper “entrusted” to the trustee is not for benefit of investors who, by the ay, are not beneficiaries of the trust. the securities broker is the beneficiary. And note also that the paper transfer of an interest in a mortgage is a legal nullity in all jurisdictions unless there is a contemporaneous transfer of ownership of the underlying obligation. This is further amplified by Article 9 §203 UCC, adopted in all US jurisdictions, that requires payment of value as a condition precedent for filing any foreclosure action.

Please also take notice of the fact that the purported delivery of the original note is mostly fiction since the original note was most likely destroyed shortly after the “Closing.” But even if delivery of the original note is deemed to have occurred, the possessor is neither a holder nor anyone else entitled to enforce it unless they received a delivery from someone who owned the underlying obligation or note.

This is where the Wall Street brokers have snookered the courts, the lawyers, and even homeowners themselves. A holder is someone who has possession and has the right to enforce. The case for foreclosure fails on this point unless, here it is again, the homeowner admits delivery or fails to contest it and allows the assumption of authority to enforce to operate without rebutting that presumption through discovery.

So when U.S. Bank or Bank of New York Mellon says it is appearing “not on its own behalf” you should take them at their word. They have no interest. Treating them as though they do have an interest only leads to the same series of conclusions described above causing the court of law to conclude that your defenses are both technical and dilatory. You have already admitted the case against you — so why are fighting it? That isn’t bias. It is the standard operating procedure. Courts are not exhibiting bias when they do that. They are following orders based upon centuries of legal precedent and statutes.

I have many followers who are adhering to the untenable notion that the courts are acting out of bias or even malice. They are not — even when the judge appears irritated. You must get off that tack which will gain you nothing and lead nowhere and get on board with a defense that actually does work, based on the facts and existing law. Getting angry with me for saying that homeowners are losing their cases rather than “banks” winning the case is a failure to recognize the fact that few people are able to make sense out of the process called “securitization” — a process that never actually happened in residential transactions with homeowners.

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate 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.
*

DID YOU LIKE THIS ARTICLE?

Nobody paid me to write it. I am self-funded, supported only by donations. My mission is to stop foreclosures and other collection efforts against homeowners and consumers without proof of loss. If you want to support this effort please click on this link and donate as much as you fee you can afford.

Please Donate to Support Neil Garfield’s Efforts to stop Foreclosure Fraud.

Please Donate to Support Neil Garfield’s Efforts to stop Foreclosure Fraud.Click

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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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Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

After Complaints to AG and CFPB Follow UP!

If you are not going to follow up on complaints to your attorney general or the CFPB, then you shouldn’t have filed the complaint in the first place. If you are not going to follow up on demand for discovery, don’t bother filing them.

The simple truth is that they never answer the question. They simply use the opportunity to propagate the lie that a loan was securitized when in fact no sale of the loan ever occurred.

Most people and many lawyers fail to recognize a simple legal strategy that is available to them, to whit: that the failure to respond to simple basic questions about The ownership and existence of the underlying obligation open the door for a clear win for the homeowner.

 

Your opposition is simply following the usual playbook. They are missed directing your question. And you should point that out to the AG office or CFPB after you file the complaint.

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The basic thrust of your question is the identification of the creditor who maintains an account receivable for the underlying obligation, and whether the Obligation still exists.
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Their answer Is that the word salad that they are using to label a virtual creditor (if it exists as a legal entity), is the note holder. You were not asking that. And if you did ask that question you would still be asking the same question — how did they become the “holder.”
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Remember that a holder is someone in possession of the note with the right to enforce it. What everyone seems to forget is to ask the question of how the party in possession of the note received the right to enforce (which can only be granted by the party who owns the obligation or who represents someone who owns the obligation).
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And remember nobody gets to own an obligation just because they say so. In order to own an obligation, a party must have entered into a legally recognizable transaction in which they purchased it for value pursuant to Article 9 §203 UCC as adopted by all 50 states. All states also recognize that a purported conveyance of an interest in a mortgage without a conveyance of ownership in the underlying obligation is a legal nullity. 
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Most states allow a rebuttable presumption arising from the possession of the note. The legal fiction adopted in most states is that if you have the note in your possession, or at least if you claim to have a note in your possession, that there must’ve been a delivery of the physical note along with the authority to enforce it.
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Homeowners who fail to rebut this presumption lose their case and their home.
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Homeowners who fail to understand legal procedure do not understand that the inability of the opposition to provide legally required answered to the basic questions about existence and ownership of the underlying obligation can easily be used as the basis to rebut that presumption.
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At the end of that claimed transaction, the purchasing party must claim ownership. If it says it is the owner of the obligation, then it must have entries on its accounting ledgers and banking statements that show payment of value for the underlying debt and the establishment of a loan account receivable.
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It is possible that the entire Wall Street strategy has been based upon the gamble that nobody other than accountants understands double-entry bookkeeping — the only bookkeeping system legally recognized as the starting point of any claim of ownership or transaction about anything.

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Without real transactions and real entries in their ledgers, nobody can claim ownership of the obligation. And nobody can claim authority from the owner of the obligation unless that mysterious virtual creditor has entered into transactions and currently maintains ownership of a loan account receivable. 

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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate 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 FOR REGISTRATION FORM. It is free, with no obligation and we keep all information private. The information you provide is not used for any purpose except for providing services you order or request from us. Inthe meanwhile you can order any of the following:
*
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.Suggestions for discovery demands are included.
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER TERA – not necessary if you order PDR PREMIUM.
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
*
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CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR) (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.
  • 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.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

Document Review for Dummies: Why homeowners and their lawyers get confused by documents proffered by foreclosure mills

It occurs to me that most questions I receive contain either an inquiry about the meaning of documents or statements as if they know the meaning of documents. So here is a short primer on reviewing documents that might help.

WHAT (IF ANYTHING) IS THE TITLE OF THE DOCUMENT?

While this seems to be simply a matter of reading and common sense, there is more to it than that. If I draw a rough picture of a dollar bill and hand it to you, nobody will accept it as payment for anything even if the writing on it says “United States Currency” or “One Dollar.”

The reason for that is simply one short statement: No document is an event. And no label can change that. In the case of my artistic dollar, the event would have been a law that says anyone can draw a dollar bill and that everyone must accept it for all debts, public and private. No such preceding event has ever happened nor is it ever going to happen. People don’t issue currency.  Governments do that.

Labeling it as “one dollar” has no more meaning than angel wings in the snow. But while it is a lot less fun than angel wings, a really good fabricated picture of a dollar is likely to be accepted as if it was a real dollar bill. But passing the fake dollar is an illegal act subject to criminal and civil liability.

APPLICATION: Just because a document bears the label “deed,” “assignment” or “allonge” doesn’t make it so. But most homeowners, lawyers, judges and even regulators fail to recognize this basic common sense precept that has been enshrined in law since the law was first written. This error has even become doctrine, supported by legal presumptions if the face of the document confirms to what would ordinarily expect on the face of such a document.

EXAMPLE: An “assignment” is not an assignment of the mortgage unless (a) the grantor owns it and (b) the assignment also conveys ownership of the underlying debt (or the underlying debt was conveyed in a separate instrument by a grantor who owned the underlying debt). [NOTE: Even then the assignment might not be legally effective such as in the case where someone with toxic waste liability conveys the property to a dummy corporation to avoid being hit with damages, fines and penalties. The grantee must expressly or tacitly accept the assignment.] Ref: Article 9 §203 UCC.

WHY WAS THE DOCUMENT CREATED?

The answer to this question there’s actually another question, to wit: what was the event in real life that the document was intended to memorialize?

This reminds me of what my contract professor in law school pounded into our heads on a daily basis, to wit: The note is not the debt — although it may be evidence of a debt.

The debt exists only in the event of a real-world transaction that is enforceable by law. In the case of loans, that is created upon delivery to the closing table. The debtor is the one who accepted that money with eh understanding he/she had to pay it back and the creditor is the one who gave him/her the money. The debt exists regardless f whether there was my written document. It exists independently of any written document.

If the Payee named on the promissory note is the one who paid money to the debtor/maker), the note is admissible evidence in court to prove the terms of repayment and the existence of the debt. In fact, the law has developed that such a note merges with the debt such that the maker and debtor are the same and the Payee and creditor are the same.

BUT if the Payee named on the promissory note is NOT the one who paid money to the debtor/maker), the note is NOT admissible evidence in court to prove the terms of repayment or the existence of the debt. HOWEVER, under modern law, the execution of the promissory note gives rise to its own independent liability of the maker regardless of whether there was any debtor-creditor relationship between maker and payee. Ref: Article 3 UCC.

Such liability can be enforced over the objection of the maker (that here was no real-world transaction giving rise to the obligation) if the party enforcing the note was a bona fide purchaser for value, acting in good faith and without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses at the time the note was purchased.

APPLICATION: Generally speaking, if there is no real-world event memorialized by the document proffered by a party in litigation, the document is inadmissible as proof of the matter asserted — i.e., that the homeowner owes a debt to the party seeking to enforce it. If there is some real-world event (i.e., the homeowner received the money), then the question becomes whether there existed a legal binding relationship between the Payee on the note and the party who paid the money.

BUT, if the party who paid the money did so with no intent to acquire it or retain ownership of the debt, directly or indirectly, then the payment to the homeowner must be categorized as something other than a loan.

There might still be a liability of the homeowner, but only after the court is able to look at the transaction as a whole, and determine the reason for payment and whether that reason was satisfied by the homeowner’s conduct — which in the case of mortgage loans means the execution of documents that might not have any real value except to start the process of the sale of securities having no relation to the ownership of the debt, note or mortgage.

Such a review would also take into account whether the real terms of the contract were disclosed and whether the homeowner had an opportunity to decline participation or bargain for other terms.

EXAMPLE: As explained above an assignment of mortgage is a legal nullity in all States unless the grantee has also paid value in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the underlying debt —from someone who owns it. Article 9 §203 UCC, adopted in all 50 states, takes it one step further requiring such purchase before anyone could even e considered as a bona fide claimant to enforce a security instrument (mortgage or deed of trust).

So the question is ALWAYS whether such payment of value for the underlying debt ever occurred as an event in the real world.

BUT, an assignment of mortgage that APPEARS to be facially valid is often taken at face value by the homeowner, the lawyers, the course, and the regulators even though the document is not facially valid. Sometimes this is the result of ignorance or laziness. And that brings us to the next point.

WHO SIGNED THE DOCUMENT? WHERE IS WALDO?

This can be really tricky and unless you are prepared to really look at the signature block like you might look at a painting where various figures and shapes appear, you will probably tacitly admit the entire case against you. You have to look long and hard. Think “Where’s Waldo?”

Take absolutely nothing for granted.

So in court, the correct answer is “I don’t know.” After 10-20 years the homeowner has no idea what he/she signed. He/she doesn’t know if the document presented is real or fabricated. He/she, therefore, doesn’t know if that signature on that document is real or fake. SO why admit it? Tell the truth. You don’t know. Make them prove that the document is authentic, valid, and was properly signed by the homeowner(s) at the time fo the original transaction (note that I don’t call it “loan closing” anymore because I don’t think the transaction is legally or logically a loan).

Next on that assignment of mortgage or beneficial rights under a deed of trust: can you tell me in easy English who signed that document and on whose behalf the document was supposedly executed? On close examination in most cases, you cannot. If that cannot be determined from the face of the document then the document is not facially valid. If the document is not facially valid no legal presumptions can arise about its authenticity or validity.

APPLICATION: In most cases, the validity of an assignment cannot be determined without reference to “parol” (external) evidence. Such instruments are facially invalid unless there is something in the public official record that clears up the mystery. Only official public records carry the legal presumption of authenticity and validity as proof of the matter asserted.

NOTE THAT EVEN DOCUMENTS THAT APPEAR TO PASS THE FACIAL VALIDITY SMELL TEST MIGHT STILL BE EXCLUDED AS PROOF OF THE MATTER ASSERTED IF TIMELY OBJECTION IN PROPER FORM IS RAISED AS TO THE CREDIBILITY OF THE SOURCE: Self-proclaimed servicers are preferred by foreclosure mills as thought hey are third parties with no stake in the outcome of the litigation. Good discovery and motion practice could reveal that the reverse is true — the claimed servicer is really a foreclosure vehicle acting for concealed third parties and who goes out of business if the foreclosures are unsuccessful.

EXAMPLE: “John Smith, Official Document Examiner, SOLVANG SERVICING, LLC, as attorney in fact for CSLOBS, INC., successor to Jasmine Bank, as attorney in fact, for AMERICAN BANK AND TRUST, AS SUCCESSOR FOR MAKE A WISH MUTUAL BANKING, ON BEHALF OF THE REGISTERED HOLDERS OF CSLOBS, INC. PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES Series 2006-ZX1.”

There are lots of it assumptions that you could make about such a signature block at the end of the document. None of them would be true. And none of them would make any sense. But it is custom and practice to ignore such signature block as though an authorized signature had occurred on behalf of a grantor who possessed something to grant.

QUESTIONS:

      1. Does John Smith exist? [If you were creating a false document who would want to sign it with their real name?]
      2. Was John Smith an authorized signatory for Solvang?
      3. Was John Smith an employee who knew something about the content of what he was signing or did he just sign it because his job consisted of stamping it writing his signature on thousands of documents per day?
      4. Was John Smith employed by some other company that doesn’t appear on this signature block?
      5. Who owns Solvang? {If the answer is some investment bank then documents executed or created by them suffer from a lack of credibility that could bar their admission into evidence.]
      6. Is the power of attorney attached to the document?
      7. Is there any descriptive language that would enable the reader to ascertain the existence, provisions, and validity of any power of attorney at the time of signing? If not my opinion is that the document is facially invalid. External proof is required to determine whether such power exists and was granted by someone who (a) intended to grant it and (b) had ownership or control over the subject matter (i.e., the mortgage or deed of trust).
      8. Where does Make  A Wish Mutual Bank fit into the chain?
      9. Who is CSLOBS, Inc.?
      10.  Where and what is the registry of holders of certificates? See power of attorney analysis)
      11. Who are the holders of the certificates? [Since they are defined as the parties on whose behalf the document as executed, the absence of an actual name by which they could be identified renders the document facially invalid.]
      12. Are the holders of the certificates the owners of pro-rata shares of debts, notes or mortgages? How do we know that? If not, why are they mentioned?
      13. What exactly passes through where and who is involved in that?
      14. IS THERE A HIDDEN TRUST NAME INVOLVED IN THIS CHAIN? IF SO WHAT I OWNED BY THE TRUSTEE OR THE TRUST? WHO IS THE TRUSTEE? WHAT ARE THE TRUSTEE POWERS? WHO ARE THE BENEFICIARIES? WHO WERE THE TRUSTORS OR SETTLORS?
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Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate 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.
NOTE: I HAVE PREPARED A 2 HOUR PRESENTATION ON DOCUMENT ANALYSIS FOR A ZOOM PRESENTATION. I HAVE NOT YET SELECTED A DATE. THE PRICE IS $595 AND INCLUDES A FOLLOW UP ONE HOUR Q&A MEETING ONE WEEK AFTER THE PRESENTATION FOR THOSE WHO PARTICIPATE LIVE. NO DISCOUNTS ARE AVAILABLE. IT WILL PROBABLY BE THE FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING PLEASE WRITE TO ME AT NEILFGARFIELD@ICLOUD.COM. CLE ACCREDITATION FOR LAWYERS IS EXPECTED. 
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CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM. It is free, with no obligation and we keep all information private. The information you provide is not used for any purpose except for providing services you order or request from us. Inthe meanwhile you can order any of the following:
*
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.Suggestions for discovery demands are included.
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER TERA – not necessary if you order PDR PREMIUM.
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CONSULT (not necessary if you order PDR)
*
*
CLICK HERE TO ORDER PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT REVIEW (PDR) (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.
  • 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.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

 

 

 

Maine Decision Presents New Challenges for Hearsay objections on Fabricated Records

see Bank of N.Y. Mellon v. Shone, 2020 Me. 122 (Me. 2020)

the record keeping shortcomings of some members of a particular business sector should not drive our interpretation of a rule of evidence that applies to the records of all businesses and, more broadly, as Rule 803(6)(B) indicates, to the records of any “organization, occupation, or calling.” If the records kept by mortgage lenders or loan servicers in particular are categorically unreliable, more stringent proof requirements might be appropriate. [e.s.] But there is no good reason to require in every case testimony based on personal knowledge of the practices of the business that created a record when the business that received the record can meet the integration, verification, and reliance criteria of the integrated records approach.

Bank of N.Y. Mellon v. Shone, 2020 Me. 122, 17-18 (Me. 2020)

So the bottom line is that in the musical chairs game currently labeled as “servicing” it is common to have a company claim to be the servicer for an unidentified or unconfirmed creditor. That company in turn sends a witness to court who knows absolutely nothing about the case. But the witness is trained to say that the payment history report  tendered to the court as evidence constitute normal business records that have a presumption of credibility. Note that it is never said, asserted, alleged or sworn that the subject records establish the debt as an asset on the books of any creditor who paid value for the underlying obligation (see Article 9 §203 UCC).

This decision from Maine says that the records MIGT be admissible even if they include “integration” of data from a previous source. And foreclosure mill lawyers are going to be quick to point to this decision and to use it to steamroll over some hapless homeowner to get a foreclosure sale for profit instead of restitution for an unpaid debt that was liquidated contemporaneously with origination of the transaction.

But the court took special pains to point out that they suspected that some players were not as credible as others. The court pointed out specifically that so-called lenders and servicers might have record keeping shortcomings.  Indeed they do since they don’t actually create, maintain or report on data or transactions and instead merely maintain call centers at which people are hired to access screens that are managed by third party vendors working for the investment banks.

So this is the same as any other document that might make it into evidence. It is cloaked with a presumption but you can rebut that presumption by asking pointed questions and taking the deposition of witnesses who are said to have knowledge about transactions that nobody in their company actually handled or participated. You can do this administratively through a QWR or DVL or you could do it in discovery which is more easily enforceable. But answers to QWR and DVL often conflict with prior correspondence and notices, which is helpful.

REMEMBER THIS: THE BOARDING PROCESS DOES NOT GENERALLY EXIST. THE ASSERTION OF A BOARDING PROCESS IS MEANT TO INVOKE THE INTEGRATED RECORD-KEEPING EXCEPTION TO THE HEARSAY RULE. IN OTHER WORDS WHILE THEY COULD NEVER HAVE SUCCEEDED IN GETTING THE ORIGINAL RECORDS INTO EVIDENCE BECAUSE OF LACK OF COMPETENCE AND LACK OF FOUNDATION THEY CAN NOW OFFER INTO EVIDENCE THE RECORDS OF A NEW “SERVICER” WHO TESTIFIES THROUGH AN IGNORANT WITNESS THAT THE RECORDS WERE INTEGRATED FROM A PREVIOUS SOURCE, INSPECTED AND VERIFIED, AS WELL AS RELIED UPON BY THE CURRENT COMPANY IN ITS BUSINESS OPERATIONS. 

*
Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate 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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  • 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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What to do if the foreclosure mill refuses to give you an answer about ownership of the “loan”

Summer Chic write me an interesting email and I wrote back. She poses a question that summarizes the entire situation:
She wrote:

Example: PennyMac claimed that they PURCHASED my loan on May 2, 2019  from someone whom they cannot identify. The financial statements from a non-identified company show that somebody “established a NEW loan” on May 9, 2019. Not a single word about the sale

Here is what I wrote back:
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As unusual PennyMac (or Ocwen or whoever) claims that it purchased a specific loan (usually in bulk). So we all know that a claim is good for pleading but litigation is not about “because I said so.” It’s about proof as admitted by the judge.
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In this case the discovery question is simple: who is the party from whom you acquired ownership of the subject loan in exchange for payment of value? They can’t answer that because no such person or entity exists. When you say “they cannot identify” does that mean you have submitted formal court discovery to them and they failed or refused to answer?
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If you mean that you have asked by phone or standard letter and they couldn’t or wouldn’t say who they paid, that fact — the non answer — will have very little legal probity in the case.
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If you mean that you asked in a Qualified Written Request or Debt Validation Letter, then you have invoked administrative process. Failure to answer that question is a failure to establish the single most important question of the case — is the claimant the owner of the underlying obligation (because it paid real value in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the subject debt, note or mortgage (DOT)? That is, after all their claim if they are claiming ownership or claiming purchase.
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If the named claimant is the owner of the underlying debt then the claimant is the owner of the loan account and can claim a financial loss resulting from nonpayment by the homeowner. Since they have suffered financial damage they are entitled to redress through the courts and that includes judgment on the debt, judgment on the note and judgment on the mortgage (or all three).
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If the named claimant is NOT the owner of the underlying debt then the claimant is NOT the owner of the loan account and cannot claim a financial loss resulting from nonpayment by the homeowner. Since they have not suffered financial damage they are not entitled to redress through the courts and they have no right in law or equity to a judgment on the debt, judgment on the note and judgment on the mortgage (or all three).
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So if administrative process in invoked and they refuse to answer (always the case) then you file complaints with the CFPB and state AG that says, in summary, I am being coerced into a relationship with PennyMac despite the fact that they will not reveal any transaction in which it acquired ownership of my obligation. PennyMac is neither my original lender or table lender nor a successor to anyone who was the original lender or table lender. Its response is required under applicable law. They won’t answer or they are admitting informally that they are unable to identify the transaction except by date but without any information about the “seller” whom they say they cannot identify.
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Lying to AG and CFPB carries some fairly hefty penalties so the banks try to steer clear of flat out lying to those law enforcement agencies. So you usually will find inconsistencies between their answer to the CFPB complaint and what they have previously sent you. You can use those effectively in court as admissions against interest. There will always be inconsistencies because none of what they are saying is or ever was true. But it isn’t up to the judge to dig. It is up to you as litigant to put these inconsistencies squarely in the face of the judge and be able explain in clear persuasive language why this is important.
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If you mean that you asked in formal court discovery, that is an entirely different story. That fact that you asked is relevant. The fact that they didn’t or couldn’t answer is relevant.  And the fact that they failed or refused to answer even after the court entered an order compelling the answer is relevant because you file a motion for sanctions asking for monetary penalties and striking their pleadings.
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Then after they still don’t produce the answer you are in the very strong position of filing a motion in limine — unless the court has already entered an order striking the pleadings of the claimant.
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You cannot pursue a claim if you are unwilling to say how you got hurt. If you are claiming loss from nonpayment you must show entitlement to payment. Otherwise nonpayment is irrelevant. A quick summary of the law is that if the inferences and presumptions arising from allegations of the complaint or exhibits are properly challenged, the homeowner is entitled to rebut those inferences and presumptions.
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But the rebuttal does NOT consist of proving that the claimant does not own the debt, note and mortgage. The rebuttal arises when court rules prevent the claimant from introducing any evidence at trial that they own the debt, note or mortgage. So even if they did own it, and even if you did owe the money, they would still lose because they had not obeyed court rules.
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The fact that a “new loan” seems to have appeared is not dispositive. If there really was change of ownership it is perfectly acceptable for the new owner to change the labels. But more importantly it might be a clue. The new labels might be an indication that the loan data has been included in multiple “portfolios.” Although none of the portfolios consist of anything more than data about the loans instead of ownership of the loans, they all represent different securitization schemes. By challenging the current portfolio and demanding answers to questions about transfers of the loan you can uncover the fact that more than one “implied trust” is being named by underwriters and foreclosure mills as the successor lender.
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Just remember the paperwork introduced as exhibits to the foreclosure complaint or discovery or at trial in most cases is NOT facially valid because it requires the reader to pursue information that is not in the public record. A big error is NOT challenging the facial validity of a document. Failure to do that either waives many of your defenses or makes it a more difficult uphill climb.
*
Neil F Garfield, MBA, JD, 73, is a Florida licensed trial and appellate 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.
  • Yes you DO need a lawyer.
  • If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

More Details on VendorScape, CoreLogic and Black Knight

Hat tip to “Summer chione”

So it is apparent that the banks are responding to discoveries about how orders are transmitted to lawyers, “servicers”, realtors etc.. While it is all the same playbook, they merely change the name of the characters. So internally the name VendorScape might still be used but externally, to the public, they are showing different names and even showing multiple names for the same “service”.

But is always the same, to wit: a central repository of data that has been robotically entered to support misrepresentations of investment banks that massage the data, control the reports, and initiate administration, collection and enforcement under the letterhead of “subservicers” who have almost nothing to do and are merely being kept alive to throw under the bus when this scheme explodes.

For those familiar with the game of Chess, think of the following entities as all being pawns whose existence is to provide a barrier to the encroachment of government or borrowers in litigation — and who can and will be sacrificed when the game explodes.

  1. Foreclosure law firms (“mills”)
  2. “Servicers”
  3. Trustee of REMIC Trust
  4. Trustee on Deed of trust
  5. MERS
  6. Companies that provide “default services”
  7. Realtors
  8. Property  Managers
  9. REMIC  trusts: remember that back in early 2000’s, the same trusts that are being named as claimants today were denied as having any existence or relevance. It was only after failure of naming a servicer or MERS that they fell back on naming the non functional trustee of a nonexistent trust as the claimant.
  10. Every other company that is visible to the investors and homeowners.

And keep in mind that the claims of a “boarding Process” or detailed audit of accounts when the name of one subservicer is changed to something else are totally and completely bogus. There is no transfer much less boarding of accounts. the fabricated accounts are always maintained at the central repository.

The argument over “business records” is sleight of hand distraction. There are no business records. Go do your research. You will see that nothing the banks are producing are qualified business records, muchless exceptions to the hearsay rule. 

It is or at least was universal custom and practice that before accepting  an engagement, lawyers, servicers and realtors needed to have an agreement in writing with their employer. In the wholly unique area of foreclosures, sales, REO and remittances this practice has been turned on its head.

As I have repeatedly said on these pages, lawyers in a foreclosure mill have no idea who hired them. They don’t know the identity of their client. They will and do say that their client is some “subservicer” (e.g. Ocwen), they file lawsuits and documents proclaiming their representation of some bank (e.g. Deutsche) with whom they have (a) no contact and (b) no retainer Agreement.

This is because all that Deutsche agreed to was the use of its name to give the foreclosure an institutional flavor. It is labelled as a trustee but it possesses zero powers of any party that could be legally described as a trustee. It has no fiduciary duty to any beneficiaries nor any right to even inquire about the business affairs of the trust — which we know now (with certainty) do not even exist.

So there is no reason for the foreclosure mill to have an agreement with Deutsche because (a) Deutsche has not agreed to be a real party in interest and (b) Deutsche has no ownership, right, title or interest in any loan — either on tis own behalf or as representative of either a nonexistent or inchoate (sleeping) trust with no assets or business or the owners of non certificated certificates (i.e., digital only). Indeed the relationship between Deutsche and the holders of certificates is that of creditor (the investors) and debtor (Deutsche acting as the business name only of an investment bank who issued the certificates).

So the lawyers in the foreclosure mill are misrepresenting its authority to represent. In fact it has no authority to represent the “trustee” bank.

So the banks have come up with a circular argument that is still erroneously used and believed in court: that because the subservicer (e.g. Ocwen) is the nominal client — albeit without any contact prior to the electronic instructions received by the foreclosure mill — and because the subservicer claims to be acting for either the trustee, teht rust or the holders of certificates, that eh lawyers can claim to be representing the bank, as trustee. In a word, that is not true.

So the foreclosure mill is falsely claiming that its client is the named “trustee” who has no power for a “trust” which has no assets or business on behalf of certificate holders who own no right, title or interest to any payments, debt, note or mortgage executed by any “borrower.”

Instructions from a third party with no right, title or interest that the lawyer should claim  representation rights for yet another party who has no knowledge, right, title or interest is a legal nullity. That means that, in the legal world, (like transfer of mortgage  rights without transfer for the underlying debt), there is nothing that any court is legally able to recognize and any attempt to do so would be ultra vires once the facts are known to the court.

The trick is to present it to the court in such a manner that it is unavoidable. And the best way to do that is through aggressive discovery strategies. the second best way is through the use of well planned timely objections at trial.

All of this is done, contrary to law and prior custom and practice to cover up the fact that all such foreclosures are for profit ventures.

That is, the goal is not paydown of any loan account, because no such account exists on the books of any creditor.

And that is hiding the fact that the origination or acquisition of the loan was completed with zero intent for anyone to become a lender or creditor and therefore subject to rules, regulations and laws governing lending and servicing practices.

They didn’t need to be a lender or creditor because they were being paid in full from the sales of securities and thus writing off the homeowner transaction. Bottom Line: There was no lending intent by the originator or acquirer of the loan. When the cycle was complete, the investment bank owned nothing but still controlled everything.

And the way they controlled everything was by hiring intermediaries who would have plausible deniability because they were using images and records that were automatically generated and produced based upon algorithms written by human hands — programs designed to facilitate foreclosure rather than report the truth.

So let’s be clear. Here is the process. The lawyer, realtor or subservicer knows nothing about the loan until it is time to foreclose. All activity that is conducted under its name is initiated by CoreLogic using the VendorScape system.

So when a lawyer, for example, comes to work, he sits down in front of a computer and gets a message that he doesn’t know came from CoreLogic under the direction of Black KNight who is acting under the strict control of the investment banks. There are no paper documents. The message on the screen says initiate foreclosure work on John Jones in the name of Deutsche Bank as trustee for the CWABS Trust 2006-1 on behalf of the certificateholders of CWABS Trust 2006-1 series pass through certificates.

Contrary to the rules of law and ethical and disciplinary rules governing lawyers, the lawyer does no due diligence to discover the nature his agreement with the naemd claimant, no research on whether the claim is valid, and requires no confirmation ledgers showing establishment of ownership of the debt and financial loss arising from cessation of payments. He/she sends notice of delinquency, notice of default and initiates foreclosure without ever seeing or even hearing about a retainer agreement with Deutsche whom he supposedly represents.

He/she has no knowledge regarding the status or ownership of the loan account. ZERO. By not knowing he/she avoids liability for lying to the court. And not knowing also provides at least a weak foundation for invoking litigation privilege for false representations in court, behind which the investment banks, Black Knight, CoreLogic et al hide. The same plausible deniability doctrine is relied upon by CoreLogic and Black Knight. They will all say that they thought the loan account was real.

But they all knew that if the loan accounts were real, the notes would not have been destroyed, the control over the loan accounts would have stayed close to the investment banks and compliance with lending and servicing laws would have been much tighter — starting with disclosure to investors that their money was being used to justify a nonexistent trading profit for the investment bank, and disclosure to homeowners that they were signing on for an inflated appraisal, immediate loss of equity, and likely foreclosure because after the origination, the only real money to be made off the loan was through foreclosure.

And both investors and borrowers were prevented, through the artful practice of deceit and concealment, from bargaining for appropriate incentives and compensation for assuming gargantuan risks they know nothing about.

This is like cancer and it is continuing. Nobody would suggest that we keep selling crops that were infected with ebola or which contained some tar substance that reliably and consistently produced cancer. The argument that a company or industry might collapse would not fly because in the end we value human life more than allowing companies to profit off of death and destruction. And the argument that allowing the judicial creation of virtual creditors who can enforce non existent debt accounts is going to save the financial system is just as pernicious — and erroneous.

Wall Street banks are merely protecting their profits. Don’t blame them for doing that. It is up to government and the public to stop it and arrive at something other than the false binary choice of either forcing people out of their homes or allowing a “windfall” to homeowners against the interest of all other honest people who make their mortgage payments. The real solution lies in reformation by judicial doctrine or through new legislation — but until that is completed, there should be no foreclosures allowed. Until it is determined how much concealed risk was piled on investors and borrowers, they should not be stuck with contracts or agreements that sealed their doom through concealment of material facts.

*
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.
  • Yes you DO need a lawyer.
  • If you wish to retain me as a legal consultant please write to me at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.
*
Please visit www.lendinglies.com for more information.

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

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. 
  • Yes you DO need a lawyer. 

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

There is no valid cause of action for foreclosure arising from the Uniform Commercial Code. There is a cause of action under common law contract — but nobody has alleged that in claims or defenses.

The only way that enforceability of the homeowner transaction can be preserved is through common law contract, in which UCC presumptions would probably not apply

I recently received a question from a paralegal asking a question I constantly receive — where do I find my loan. Or more specifically how to find out which trust owns my loan. the answer is that (a) you are asking the wrong questions and (b) you are admitting that the loan is actually in a trust. That simply is not true.

Here is my reply:

I appreciate the work you are doing. I think your work would be much easier if you concentrated on a more simple point.

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It seems like you are assuming that the loan is actually in a trust. in order for that to be true, one of two scenarios would have to be true.
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Either the named trustee of a valid trust has purchased the loan for Value in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the underlying debt, note and mortgage or a trustor or settlor has conveyed ownership of the underlying debt, note and mortgage to the trustee or the trust. I am quite certain that you will find that neither one ever occurred.
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By examining various reports by the investment Banks with the goal of determining which some Trust owns the loan, you are admitting that securitization occurred. The truth is that securitization probably did not occur. For securitization to occur, an asset would need to be sold to multiple investors. No investor ever bought any debt, note or mortgage. Nobody else did either.
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Because you have not gone to law school, you might be missing will you find her, and more important, points in the litigation. Every case I have ever won was based upon the findings and conclusions of law published by a judge stating that the plaintiff or claimant in foreclosure have failed to produce evidence of ownership of the underlying debt.
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Ownership of the underlying debt can only be achieved through payment of value in exchange for a conveyance of ownership of the underlying debt. This is often presumed when the promissory note is issued and subsequently transferred. that presumption can often be easily rebutted both in Discovery and in objections at trial.
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The goal of securitization was to eliminate the role of the lender or creditor so that there would be no lender or creditor and therefore no liability for violations of lending or servicing laws. Without a company that has engaged in a transaction in which it paid value for the loan in exchange for a conveyance of the loan from someone who owns it, there can be no claim under Article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by all U.S. jurisdictions.

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I have written extensively on the result of this analysis.

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In cases involving false claims of securitization, there simply is no cause of action or foundation for initiating any foreclosure process based on presumptions arising out of the Uniform Commercial Code.
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The only way that enforceability of the homeowner transaction can be preserved is through common law contract, in which those presumptions would probably not apply.
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And the only way that a common law contract could result in enforceability of the obligation of a homeowner is to have the court create one by the process of reformation, using the doctrines of Quasi contract and Quantum Meruit.

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And the only way that the court could have any Authority or jurisdiction to impose a common law contract would be if an interested party filed a lawsuit asking for reformation.

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In the absence of such a request, the obligation of the homeowner is not enforceable under current law, which has existed for centuries. Forfeiture of a homestead cannot occur unless the claimant actually owns the debt and therefore can claim financial injury as a result of the action or inaction of the homeowner.
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In cases where the claimant arrives on the scene by virtue of language arising from claims of securitization, it has always been my opinion that such a Plaintiff or claimant probably doesn’t exist at all as a legal entity and most certainly does not possess any legal claim arising out of the Uniform Commercial Code, Article 3 or Article 9.

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As a result of my opinion that a common law contract would preserve the homeowner obligation (and the securitization infrastructure), I do not believe that final judgments or orders dismissing the Foreclosure or vacating a sale results in extinguishment of the debt, note or mortgage. Therefore I believe that quiet title does not apply.

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

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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Does the REMIC Trust Exist?

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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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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How to Deal with Motion for Substitution of Plaintiff in Foreclosure Actions

The single basic tool of the investment banks, who are secretly running the whole foreclosure show, is musical chairs. By rotating the players they can successfully bar the courts and the litigants from knowing or pinning down who is real and what is real. All of that ends if you sue the investment bank.

Look at any foreclosure in which claims of securitization are known or suspected and you will find “rotation”.

In nonjudicial states it starts with “Substitution of Trustee” on the deed of trust which can be done without any motion.

Before or after that there is a change in the name of the servicer, which has perplexed judges since I first entered the picture in 2006.

Then there was a change in the credit bid after the foreclosure was complete or during the foreclosure sale where a new party mysteriously ended up “owning” the property.

And now we see with increasing frequency, the substitution of a new claimant or plaintiff during the foreclosure proceedings.

Motion for substitution of Plaintiff are becoming the rage simply because most state courts require a wrongful foreclosure action to be against the party who initiated the action. So the investment banks simply took their cue from that. They designate a new Plaintiff or a new claimant during the proceeding. Presto there is no wrongful foreclosure action. But there still may be the normal abuse of process claim.

Either way, they have no right to designate the first or the new Plaintiff or claimant. 


I would say that the likelihood of successful opposition to the motion for substitution of plaintiff is very low, as long as some explanation is offered. But this should trigger aggressive discovery where you go after the transaction by which the new plaintiff became the designee.

In a nutshell no such transaction exists because there was also no transaction by which the first Plaintiff became a creditor. It is all smoke and mirror. 


I am not saying that you shouldn’t oppose the motion for substitution of plaintiff. What I am saying is that the judge will regard it as merely a housekeeping chore until you raise the central issues of your defense narrative.

The moral of the story is that if you are going to sue for wrongful foreclosure you should be naming the investment bank that was calling the shots. Everyone else is a moving target with plausible deniability. That may not always be so easy to determine, but it isn’t impossible. We can help with that.

If you go after the investment bank you will be able to overcome the plausible deniability and technical requirements of claims based upon wrongful foreclosure. You can say that the action was brought by them using the name of a sham conduit. The change in “Plaintiff” therefore changes nothing.

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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Could IRS Enforcement of REMICs Bring Wall Street Into Line? Yes but they won’t do it. Investors and homeowners continue to suffer as victims of fraud.

The most obvious places to look for correction in the illegal conspiracies masquerading as securitization of residential debt were the IRS , the SEC, the FDIC and the FTC and probably later the CFPB. Qui tam (whistleblower) actions were regularly dismissed because the agency that lost money due to false claims rejected the notion that it was a false claim or that anything bad had occurred. Sheila Bair lost her job as head of the FDIC for protesting policy set by Presidents Bush and Obama that failed to hold the line.

So here is a 2014 article that talks about how we could have regulated the investment banks through IRS examination of the REMICs.

Corruption is the answer. Too many people were making too much money and were “donating” too much money to people in public office. Enforcement was impossible. The real answer is extremely simple — stop all private money in elections. All elections should be publicly funded. No exceptions.

see.. PA Journal of Business Law – REMIC Tax Enforcement

The problem remains that US government agencies refuse to police schemes that are labelled as securitization of debt. If they are securitization of debt then market forces apply and everything COULD even out in the end. The problem is that the debt was never sold into a securitized scheme and nobody cares even though that has eliminated even the possibility of the existence of any creditor.

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REMIC policing by the IRS would be ideal to reveal the fatal deficiencies and fraudulent character of these securitizations schemes. It is why the first 9 lawyers tasked with drafting the documents for securitization all quit with one declaring that she would not be party to or an accessory to a criminal enterprise. There is no entity that qualifies as REMIC in residential loans. AND the reason is very simple:  neither investors nor the trust is buying the loans.
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So all the tests and premises about having an ownership interest, and about the quality of the loans are all false tests designed to cover up the fact that there has never been securitization of any residential loan except is very specific rare circumstances where individual mortgage brokers have sold loans to small groups of investors with repurchase agreements. In most instances those turned out to be scams.
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The way they got away with it is that there was a securitization process — i.e., one in which new securities were issued, even if they were unregulated. But only those schooled in Wall Street finance grasp the fact that they were securitizing bets on data — something that is very ornate and complex.
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Once you DO grasp the idea of what they really were doing and are still doing then you see why all the documents in all the foreclosures had to be fabricated, forged, backdated and robosigned. 
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You can also see why they have robowitnesses come to court and why they show only the business records of a servicer who has no contact with the so-called principal named in the claim or lawsuit. You can see why there is never a proffer of the business records of a creditor because there is no creditor.

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There cannot be contact between foreclosure mill and trustee of REMIC trust, there cannot be contact between “servicer” and Trustee of REMIC trust, there cannot be direct contact between investment bank and any of the players because any such contact would undermine the essential ingredient of the entire plan — plausible deniability of intent or knowledge of the scope of the illegal plan.

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The job of the litigator is to assume that that the entire thing is fraudulent and to ask for what they cannot give — answers to simple questions about the ownership and authority and status of the “obligation” that in reality is nothing more than a return of the consideration paid for a license to sue the homeowner’s private data and homeownership as mere points of reference for the issuance and trading of complex securities.
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But you must make it look like all of those companies are in actual contact and that payments from consumers or from the forced sale of their property are going to a creditor. You need to do that in order to give a judge cover for ruling in favor of the investment bank who is not even in the courtroom.
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The answer is as simple as simple can be: they are making everything up.
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Documents are not real unless they memorialize something that happened in the real world. But Wall Street banks put together a plan that made it appear that a sale of the debt occured where there had been no such sale. Or to be even more specific, they made it appear that there had been a purchase by or on behalf of the investors or trusts. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The truth is that investment bankers never looked at homeowner transactions as loans. They saw the money they paid to homeowners as a cost and condition precedent to creating and selling new securities. 
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Why no creditor? Because that is how you escape liability for lending law violations. 
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Why call it a loan? Because that is how you keep consumers from bargaining for their share of the very rich pie created by investment banks in the sale and trading of derivatives, insurance contracts, hedge products and just plain bets on fictitious “movement” of data that was completely controlled, in the sole discretion, of the investment banks. 
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They were printing money for themselves. The losers were and remain investors who buy “certificates” that are nothing more than a cover for underwriting the sale of securities for a company that doesn’t exist. the losers are the homeowners whose issuance of a note and mortgage triggers a vast undisclosed profit scheme in which the wealth of America shifted from the many to the few.

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BUYING RMBS CERTIFICATES IS LIKE BUYING TULIPS JUST BECAUSE THERE IS A MOB OF PEOPLE WHO FOR COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL AND TEMPORARY REASONS THINK THEY ARE VALUABLE.
*

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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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Wait! Somebody must have paid something right?

How do you know what was paid by whom and when and what terms applied? The whole point here is that money was paid by investors who did not receive ownership to the debt, note or mortgage. Nor did they assign any equitable right to the debt, note or mortgage. Since the value was paid by a party who never received ownership, no “successor” would have any reason to pay value for ownership nor did they do so.
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And before you decide to shift gears, the investment bank took in money from investors as a commercial deposit — i.e. a  third party loan — as part of purchase of promissory note (certificate) to make payments to the buyers. While that COULD have resulted in the vinestment bank becoming the owner of the debt, note and mortgage on loans granted to borrowers, it didn’t. Like the investors who bought certificates, they paid for it but not in exchange for ownership of the debt, note or mortgage.
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Not one note or mortgage was made payable to the investment bank and not one “Loan” transaction was funded directly by the investment bank who channeled funds through several existing legal business entities. This was done to evade liability for lending law violations and as Chase found out you can’t have it both ways. You either were the lender or you were not. You either “succeeded” to the position of the predecessor or you didn’t.
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The media gets it wrong because they cannot conceive of a scheme that simply isn’t allowed under existing law and if it was allowed there would be changes in all affiliated laws as well — this giving investors the real scoop on what was being done with their money and the borrowers the real scoop on how much revenue was being generated from the origination or acquisition of their loan. In the current custom and practice of securitization of residential debt, the certificates and possibly the promissory notes would be regulated as securities.
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The key change in the law that is needed for securitization to be allowed as practiced and for title to be cleared is the designation of a non-owner who didn’t pay value for the debt to be the creditor. This is a massive paradigm shift, but one which is probably needed. But right now the ONLY way we can acquire a debt is through payment of value for it in exchange for rights of ownership of the debt.
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That is precisely where the media, attempting to report on the facts, gets it wrong. they simply cannot conceive of a scenario where all this paperwork would be flying around and that such instruments would be meaningless, without value and legal nullities — except for erroneous legal presumptions arising from the erroneous conclusions that the instruments have facial validity. So you see court decisions and article referring to sales that never occurred. They also report loans that never occurred.
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And so we have a huge body of law allowing foreclosure rewarding people and business entities who receive the proceeds of forced sale as revenue instead of payment on a debt they never owned or paid for. And that is required change in the law that is needed. Upon revision of all relevant statutes, once a business entity is “designated” as creditor all efforts by anyone else must stop as to collection, processing, administering, or enforcement of any debt, note or mortgage. The game of musical chairs played by investments banks, servicers, “trustees” etc. must stop if we are to make sense out of any of this.
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In most cases loans were originated from non capitalized brokers or sellers of loan products, not lenders or were creditors. This information is withheld from borrowers contrary to the requirements of Federal and state disclosure requirements to consumer borrowers.
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Also withheld from borrowers is the fact that their signature, name, reputation and home is being used as part of a securitization scheme in which the loan labeling is misleading because neither the originator nor even the “warehouse lender” has any risk of loss. The entire transaction is different from what the borrower thought and different from what the borrower had a right to think as per common law, Federal and state lending statutes.
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Borrowers are not required to understand that the “loan” is no longer part of the system in which money supply increases (because that already happened when investors purchased certificates from investment banks).  But under current law lender s ARE required to know that and do know that and they further know that their incentive is to get the signature of a consumer for fees not interest income.
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The entire burden of viability of any consumer loan is not on the borrower (Caveat emptor) but on the lender who knows better. That is the law. AND the law presumes that the risk of loss is a self-regulating market force that forces lenders to make good loans. But what happens when there is no such risk? The transaction is changed and the transaction is no longer within the boundaries of the existing lending laws.
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In short, such transactions are either not legal or carry heavy penalties for violations. If banks avoid such liabilities by intentional concealment of the true facts and thus produce catastrophic anomalies in the marketplace (see 2008) displacing tens of millions of people from their homes, why should those homeowners bear the full burden of such a catastrophe? Both policy and law agree on this. They shouldn’t.
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The counterpart in what was labeled as a loan agreement was in actuality a vendor to the investment banking industry who didn’t receive interest as revenue for making a loan and who had no risk of loss. It was a scheme where all participants received fees, commissions, bonuses trading profits and other compensation arising from the origination of the transaction intentionally mislabeled as a loan in which the mislabeled “lender” was seen as seeking interest income on principal when in fact the interest payments and even the payments on principal were completely irrelevant to the originators and the “warehouse” lenders.
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“Successors” under current law are merely designees not successors because they have not contributed any money toward payment of value for the debt — a basic black letter requirement under current law.
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All of this is very counterintuitive and it is meant to be. The more complicated the banks make it the more everyone relies on the banks to tell them what these paper instruments mean and what events are memorialized in those paper instruments. But the plain fact is that there are no events memorialized in the paper instruments. There were no transactions. Why would anyone pay value for a debt that is not owned by the “seller?”
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Rescission and Burden of Proof

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

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

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GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit  the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.
Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.
I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.
PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM 
Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

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

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

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

Here is my response:

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

You must be extremely aggressive and confrontative in standing your ground.
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As for the “free house”  argument the answer is simple. There is no free house. unless you are seeking to quiet title, which I think is an unproductive strategy if you not on solid ground with TILA Rescission. You are only seeking to eliminate the current people from attempting to enforce the mortgage, collect on the note or enforce the note. The last point might be your weakest point (without rescission). Enforcement of the note under Article 3 of The Uniform Commercial Code is much more liberal the enforcement of the security instrument under Article 9.
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It is actually possible that they could get a judgement on the note for monetary damages but not a judgment on the mortgage (without rescission in play). They can only get a judgment on the mortgage if the claimant has paid value for the debt. of course all of this should be irrelevant in view of the rescission which completely nullifies the note and mortgage.
Education of the court is extremely important. There is no free house in rescission. The obligation to repay remains the same. That obligation is not secured by the mortgage which has been rendered void nor is it payable pursuant to the terms of the promissory note which was also rendered void by the rescission. the obligation under contract (loan agreement)is simply replaced buy a statutory obligation to repay the debt.
They had ample opportunity to comply with the statute and get repaid. They didn’t. That is no fault of the homeowner.
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If they want repayment of the debt they might be able to still get it. If they produce a claimant who has paid value for the debt and had no notice of the rescission and who regarded your current claimants as unlawful intervenors, the same as you, then it is possible but the court might allow the actual owner of the debt to comply with the statute and seek repayment of the debt.
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At least that is what you will argue. You probably know that no such person exists. The ownership of the debt has been split from the party who paid value for it. So they probably don’t have anyone who qualifies.
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As for your last question about discovering the actual dates on which the debt was purchased pursuant to Article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code, as a condition precedent to enforcement of the security instrument (mortgage or deed of trust), the answer is that neither the debt nor the note were ever purchased for value. The whole point is that they’re saying that these transactions occurred when in fact they did not.
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The only transaction that actually took place in which money exchanged hands is the one in which the certificates were sold to the investors. It might be successfully argued that the Investment Bank had paid the value for the debt so that is another possibility. If that argument succeeds then for a brief moment in time the Investment Bank was both the owner of the debt and the party who had paid value for it. But then it subsequently sold all attributes of the debt to the investors. the investors did not acquire any right title or interest directly in the subject debt, note or mortgage the only correct legal analysis would be that the Investment Bank retained bare naked title to the debt but had divested itself of any Financial interest in the debt. That divestiture generally occurred within 30 days from the date of funding the origination or acquisition of the loan.

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

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This requires properly worded Discovery demands and aggressive efforts to compel Discovery, followed by motions for sanctions and probably a motion in limine.
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Since you have a notice of rescission within the 3-year time period, what you are actually revealing is that your opposition has no legal standing. Their claims to have legal standing are entirely dependent upon the loan agreement which has been cancelled by your notice of rescission. Unless they can now also state that they are the owners of the debt by reason of having paid for it, they are not a creditor or a lender. therefore they have no legal standing to challenge legal sufficiency of the notice of rescission nor any standing to seek collection on the debt. And they certainly have no legal standing to enforce the note and mortgage which have been rendered void according to 15 USC 1635.
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Their problem now is that their only claim now arises from the TILA rescission statute — and all such claims are barred by the statute of limitations on claims arising from the Truth in Lending Act. That time has long since expired.

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

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So you’re going to have to address the elephant in the living room. The fact remains that if you are successful, as you should be, you will end up with a windfall gain. The judge knows that and denying it will only undermine your credibility. The Counterpoint is that if your opposition does not own the debt by virtue of having paid for it pursuant to the requirements of statute then their attempt at foreclosure is really an attempt to generate Revenue. If the Foreclosure is not going to provide money for restitution of an unpaid debt it can’t be anything else other than Revenue.
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In order to drill that point home you are going to need to argue, contrary to the judge’s bias, that not only is the current claimant not the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it, but that the current claimant is not an authorized representative of any party who paid for the debt by reason of having paid for it and that the proceeds of foreclosure, if allowed, will never be used to pay down the debt. Again the only way you’re going to accomplish this is through very aggressive Discovery and motions.
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Don’t attempt to prove the dates of transactions, the data for which is within the sole care custody and control of your opposition, and can be easily manipulated, if you only focus only on the paperwork.
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Don’t accept that burden of proof. The only way your opposition has gotten this far is because of legal presumptions arising from that claimed possession of the original note. you need to research those legal presumptions. Generally speaking the legal presumption of fact must include the conclusion that the claimant is the owner of the debt by reason of having paid for it. Possession of the note is considered the same as title to the debt, The presumption arises therefore that possession of the note is ownership of the debt and the further presumption is that ownership of the debt is not likely to have been transferred without payment of value.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit  the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.
Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.
I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.
PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM 
Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================
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To be a “servicer” the company must received the appointment to administer the loan account from someone who is authorized to make the appointment. A power of attorney is only sufficient if the grantor is the owner of the debt — or had been given authority to make such appointment from the owner of the debt.
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A person who is authorized to make the appointment is either the owner of the debt by virtue of having paid for the debt or an authorized representative of the owner of the debt by virtue of having paid for the debt. This is a key point that is frequently overlooked. By accepting the entity as a servicer, you are impliedly admitting that they have authorization and that a true creditor is in the chain upon which your opposition is placing reliance. In short, you are admitting to a false statement of facts that will undermine your defense narrative.
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If the servicer is really authorized to act as such then your attempt to defeat foreclosure most likely fails because the case is about a real debt owed to a real owner of the debt.
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The fact that they allege that they maintain records may be a true or false representation. But whether it is true or false, it does not mean that they had authorization to maintain those records or to take any other action in connection with the administration of the loan. Of course we know now that any such records are composed of both accurate and fabricated data.
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We also know that the data is kept in a central repository much the same as MERS is used as a central repository for title.
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The representations in your case about and intensive audit and boarding process most likely consist of fabricated documents and perjury. There was no audit and there was no boarding process. The data in most cases, and this probably applies to your case, was originated and maintained and manipulated at Black Knight formerly known as Lender Processing Systems.
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Contrary to the requirements of law, the central repository does not ever handle any money or payments or disbursements and therefore does not create “business records” that could be used as an exception to the hearsay rule. The same thing applies MERS. These central repositories of data do not have any actual role in real life in connection with any financial transaction. Their purpose is the fabrication of data to support various purposes of their members.
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All of this is very counterintuitive and difficult to wrap one’s mind around. but there is a reason for all of this subterfuge.
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From a legal, accounting and finance perspective the debt was actually destroyed in the process of securitization. This was an intentional act to avoid potential risk of laws and liability. But for purposes of enforcement, the banks had to maintain the illusion of the existence of the debt. Since they had already destroyed the debt they had to fabricate evidence of its existence. This was done by the fabrication of documents, recording false utterances in title records, perjury in court and disingenuous argument in court.
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The banks had to maintain the illusion of the existence of the debt because that is what is required under our current system of statutory laws. In all 50 states and U.S. territories, along with centuries of common law, it is a condition precedent to the enforcement of a foreclosure that the party claiming the remedy of foreclosure must be the owner of the debt by reason of having paid value for it.
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The logic behind that is irrefutable. Foreclosure is an equitable remedy for restitution of an unpaid debt. It is the most severe remedy under civil law. Therefore, unlike a promissory note which only results in the rendition of a judgment for money damages, the Foreclosure must be for the sole purpose of paying down the debt. No exceptions.
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The problem we constantly face in the courtroom is that there is an assumption that there is a party present in the courtroom who is seeking restitution for an unpaid debt, when in fact that party, along with others, is seeking revenue on its own behalf and on behalf of other participants.
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The problem we face in court is that we must overcome the presumption that there was an actual legal claim on behalf of an actual legal claimant. Anything else must be viewed through the prism of skepticism about a borrower attempting to escape a debt. The nuance here is that the end result might indeed be let the borrower escapes the debt. But that is not because of anything that the borrower has done. In fact, the end result could be a remedy devised in court or by Statute in which the debt is reconstituted for purposes of enforcement, but for the benefit of the only parties who actually advance money and connection with that debt.
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More importantly is that nonpayment of the debt does not directly result in any financial loss to any party. The loss is really the loss of an expectation of further profit after having generated revenue equal to 12 times the principal amount of the loan.
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While there are many people who would argue to the contrary, they are arguing against faithful execution of our existing laws. There simply is no logic, common sense or legal analysis that supports using foreclosure processes as a means to obtain Revenue at the expense of both the borrower and the investor. And despite all appearances to the contrary, carefully created by the banks, that is exactly what  is happening.

Jurisdictional Defense —- Certificate Holders vs Trust

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

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

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit  the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM. The key to victory lies in understanding your own case.
Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 954-451-1230. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.
I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.
PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM 
Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
========================

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

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LACK OF SUBJECT MATTER JURISDICTION: the complaint attempts to state a cause of action on behalf of the certificate holders of an apparent trust, although the trust is not identified as to the jurisdiction in which it was created or the jurisdiction in which it operates.
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Even assuming that such a trust exists and that it issued certificates, there is no allegation or attachment of an exhibit demonstrating that the certificates contain a conveyance enabling the holder of the certificate to enforce the alleged debt, note or mortgage upon which the complaint relies. In fact, independent investigation shows the exact opposite.
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Nor is there any allegation that any money is due to the certificate holders or any allegation that the certificate holders possess the promissory note or have the right to enforce either the promissory note or the mortgage. Even if the indenture for the certificates were produced before this court, it would only show a contract for payment from a party other than the homeowner in this action. Accordingly, no justiciable controversy has been presented to the court. In the absence of an amendment curing the above defects, the complaint must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
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STANDING:
  1. As to Bank of New York Mellon there is no allegation or attachment to the complaint that alleges or demonstrates an agency relationship between Bank of New York Mellon and the certificate holders, on whose behalf the complaint is allegedly filed. If Bank of New York Mellon is the trustee of an existing trust and the trust is alleged to own the debt note and mortgage along with the rights to enforce, then the agency or representative capacity of Bank of New York Mellon is with the trust, and not with the certificate holders. Based upon the allegations of the complaint and independent research defendant asserts that there is no representative capacity between Bank of New York Mellon and the certificate holders.
  2. As to the alleged trust which has not been properly identified there is no allegation that the action is brought on behalf of the trust; but the implied allegation is that the trust is the plaintiff. The complaint states that the action is brought on behalf of the certificate holders who merely hold securities or instruments apparently issued in the name of the alleged trust. There is no allegation or exhibit attached to the complaint that would support any implication that Bank of New York Mellon possesses a power of attorney for the certificate holders or the trust. In fact, in litigation between Bank of New York Mellon and investors who have purchased such certificates, Bank of New York Mellon has denied any duty owed to the certificate holders.
  3. As to the certificate holders, there is no allegation or exhibit demonstrating that the certificate holders have any right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage nor any right to enforce the debt, note or mortgage. Based upon independent research, the certificate holders do not possess any right, title or interest to the debt, note or mortgage nor any right to enforce. In fact, in Tax Court litigation the certificate holders are deemed to be holding an unsecured obligation, to wit: a promise to pay issued in the name of a trust which may simply be the fictitious name of an investment bank. There is no contractual relationship between the defendant and the certificate holders. Further, no such relationship has been alleged or implied by the complaint or anything contained in the attachments to the complaint.
  4. As to the certificate holders, they are neither named nor identified. Yet the complaint states that the lawsuit is based upon a claim for restitution to the certificate holders. The reference to the trust may be identification of the certificates but not the certificate holders. In fact, based upon independent investigation, the holders of such certificates never received any payments from the borrower nor from any servicer who collected payments from the borrower nor from the proceeds of any foreclosure. In the case at bar. the complaint is framed to obscure the fact that the forced sale of the property will not be used to satisfy the debt, note or mortgage in whole or in part.
  5. As to any of the parties listed in the complaint as being a plaintiff or part of the plaintiff there is no allegation or exhibit demonstrating that any of them paid value for the debt, or received a conveyance of an interest in the debt, note or mortgage from a party who has paid value for the debt as required by article 9 § 203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by state law, which states that a condition precedent to the enforcement of a mortgage is the payment of value for the debt. Hence regardless of who is identified as being the actual plaintiff none of the parties listed can demonstrate financial injury arising from nonpayment or any other act by the defendant.
  6. In the absence of any amendment to cure the above defects, the entire complaint and exhibits must be dismissed with prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and lack of a plaintiff who has legal standing to bring a claim against the defendant.
The only thing I would add to the existing second affirmative defense is the affirmative statement that based upon independent investigation, such signatures were neither authorized nor proper, to wit: they consist of forgeries or the product of robosigned in which the signature of a person is affixed without knowledge of the contents of the instrument to which it is affixed.
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In my opinion, the specificity that I have employed in the above comments not only provides a basis for dismissal, but also the foundation to support Discovery requests that might otherwise be denied, to wit: who, if anyone, ever paid money for the debt?
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