Black Knight fka Lender Processing Systems — Short memories can hurt you

Posted on November 16, 2021 by Neil Garfield

Frankly, I am frequently bewildered by the astonishment of people who should know better. Everything that I report on my blog is derived from actual concrete reliable data and information and previous legal proceedings in which there were administrative findings of fact and legal consequences. Some followers of my blog are well-intentioned but are married to the view that the system is so corrupt, nobody can do anything about it. But I have been doing “something about it” (i.e., winning cases) for 15 years — along with several dozen other lawyers and even many pro se homeowners. Even people in other countries have had success.

This blog and my radio show and webinars are devoted to one thing: getting homeowners to wake up as early as possible to the fact that they have been duped into a transaction about which they know nothing but which they think they know everything.

I don’t deny that the results are corrupt. But I do think that the consequences of entering the legal system without knowledge of legal procedure will produce a fatal result in most cases. Being right is not enough

Black Knight is a financial technology (FINTECH) company that played a pivotal role in the creation and promotion of false fabricated documents. In turn, this resulted in the fake national narrative that the loan account receivables still existed when in fact those accounts were extinguished during the process of securitization. And that is because securitization was not and never was intended to securitize any obligation owed by any homeowner who was falsely labeled as a borrower.

Without that false narrative, judges would have refused to allow foreclosure judgments to be entered or foreclosure sales to be conducted. But just like any other court action, the judge is restricted to consider only what is presented — not what should’ve been presented or what could’ve been presented. Before the era of false claims of securitization of debt, judges regularly refused to allow foreclosure even when they were uncontested — if the paperwork was not properly presented in the correct form. The only thing that has changed is that the investment banking community has entered the lending marketplace with the paperwork that is properly presented in the correct form, but which is false.

Black Knight, Inc. went public in 2017, underwritten by Goldman Sachs. This is a closely related company to Black Knight Financial Services LLC. Black Knight has branded itself as an authority for data on real estate and in particular mortgage lending. But it continues, through its direct operations and its relations with closely related companies to provide “gap” documents that are completely fabricated, false, backdated, and forged by automated processes.

In other words, it is directly or indirectly involved in the creation of false data that it then reports. Black Knight has an indemnification agreement in which it protects Servicelink (another closely related Black Knight company) from any claims. That is because the “services” performed by Servicelink and other companies is the man behind the curtain — i.e., the actual company that provides automated processing of receipts from homeowners, records of those receipts, and deposit of those funds into accounts controlled by the investment banking company who has no ownership interest in any payments, obligation legal debt, note or mortgage from any homeowner.

In plain language, this means that homeowner payments are revenue to the investment banks and not a reduction in any loan account receivable. And THAT is because there is no loan account receivable —- a fact that is nearly universally rejected by anyone who does not have years or decades of experience in investment banking and accounting.

But just because it is rejected by people who are ignorant of the facts, does not mean it is wrong or in any way misleading.

Had tip to summer chic.

There were several other press releases across the country just like this one. The one thing missing from all of these suits, settlements and orders is the connection of the dots. If we know that the industry was using fraudulent, forged, false, backdated, robosigned documents then two questions emerge:

  • Why were the related foreclosures not reversed?
  • More fundamentally, why were fake documents needed? In an industry in which lenders literally wrote the laws, the template documents, and the procedures by which loans were originated and enforced, why was it so easy to originate the loans in extreme volume and not so easy to enforce them without falsifying documents?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jennifer López
DATE: December 16, 2011 702-486-3782

NEVADA ATTORNEY GENERAL SUES LENDER PROCESSING
SERVICES FOR CONSUMER FRAUD

Carson City, NV – Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced today a lawsuit against Lender Processing Services, Inc., DOCX, LLC, LPS Default Solutions,
Inc. and other subsidiaries of LPS (collectively known “LPS”) for engaging in deceptive practices against Nevada consumers.

The lawsuit, filed on December 15, 2011, in the 8th Judicial District of Nevada, follows an extensive investigation into LPS’ default servicing of residential mortgages in
Nevada, specifically loans in foreclosure. The lawsuit includes allegations of widespread document execution fraud, deceptive statements made by LPS about efforts to correct document fraud, improper control over foreclosure attorneys and the foreclosure process, misrepresentations about LPS’ fees and services, and evidence of an overall press for speed and volume that prevented the necessary and proper focus on accuracy and integrity in the foreclosure process.

The robo-signing crisis in Nevada has been fueled by two main problems: chaos and speed,” said Attorney General Masto. “We will protect the integrity of the foreclosure process. This lawsuit is the next, logical step in holding the key players in the foreclosure fraud crisis accountable.”

The lawsuit alleges that LPS:

1) Engaged in a pattern and practice of falsifying, forging and/or fraudulently executing foreclosure-related documents, resulting in countless foreclosures that were predicated upon deficient documentation;

2) Required employees to execute and/or notarize up to 4,000 foreclosure-related documents every day;

3) Fraudulently notarized documents without ensuring that the notary did so in the presence of the person signing the document;

4) Implemented a widespread scheme to forge signatures on key documents, to ensure that volume and speed quotas were met;

5) Concealed the scope and severity of the document execution fraud by misrepresenting that the problems were limited to clerical errors;

6) Improperly directed and/or controlled the work of foreclosure attorneys by imposing inappropriate and arbitrary deadlines that forced attorneys to churn through foreclosures at a rate that sacrificed accuracy for speed;

7) Improperly obstructed communication between foreclosure attorneys and their clients; and

8 ) Demanded a kickback/referral fee from foreclosure firms for each case referred to the firm by LPS and allowed this fee to be misrepresented as “attorney’s fees” on invoices passed on to Nevada consumers and/or submitted to Nevada courts.

LPS’ misconduct was confirmed through testimony of former employees, interviews of servicers and other industry players, and extensive review of more than 1 million pages of relevant documents. Former employees and industry players describe LPS as an assembly-line sweatshop, churning out documents and foreclosures as fast as new requests came in and punishing network attorneys who failed to keep up the pace.

LPS is the nation’s largest provider of default mortgage services, processing more than fifty percent of all foreclosures annually.

The Office of the Nevada Attorney General recently indicted Gary Trafford and Gerri Sheppard as part of a separate, criminal investigation into the conduct of robo-signing scheme which resulted in the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent documents with the Clark County Recorder’s Office between 2005 and 2008.

Nevada homeowners who are in foreclosure or are facing foreclosure are advised to seek assistance as soon as possible. Homeowners can find information for a counseling agency approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by calling 800-569-4287 or by visiting http://1.usa.gov/NVCounselingAgencies.

Additional information on foreclosure resources can be found at www.foreclosurehelp.nv.gov.

Anyone who has information regarding this case should contact the Attorney General’s Office hotline at 702-486-3132 (when promoted select “0”) to obtain information on how to submit a written complaint. Nevada consumers can file a complaint with the Nevada Attorney General’s Office about LPS by sending a letter with copies of any supporting documentation to the Nevada Office of the Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection: 555 E. Washington Ave Suite 3900, Las Vegas, Nevada 89101

EDITOR’S NOTE: Contrary to what has been written or implied by people who are either misinformed or who are being directly paid by intermediaries for the investment banks on Wall Street, the simple answer to the direct question that I have posed above is that the reason for the fake documentation is that there was no real documentation that could be used. There was no real documentation because there were no real transactions supporting the documents that were used in foreclosure.
Every long-term illegal scheme has three main attributes:
  1. A false national narrative created by advertising and government complicity.
  2. False labels that comply with the false national narrative, combined with government acceptance of those labels.
  3. Addiction to the revenue produced by the scheme. This applies to all players, high and low.

When you look at the Madoff Ponzi scheme (40 years), the Purdue pharma scheme (30 years) on OxyContin, or the securitization Ponzi scheme (30 years), the elements are the same. And the results are interesting from an academic point of view: despite the catastrophic results of those schemes, there remain many people (Including those in government) who still subscribe to the narrative and use the labels. It’s very challenging to let go of a belief even when there is ample evidence and even knowledge of the falsity of the presumptions.

 

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Right in Front of Our Eyes: Black Knight and U.S. Bank

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Anyone who knows about foreclosure litigation and securitization of residential debt knows that the only way the banks could succeed is if they had a central repository and central command center from which all documents were fabricated and all instructions were issued.

For nearly all loans the central command was Lender Processing Systems, aided by DOCX. While DOCX is technically defunct and Loraine Brown went to jail taking one for the team, the functions of LPS remained the same.

LPS  changed its name to Black Knight and in a PR coup transformed itself into the publisher of what is largely viewed as comprehensive data on mortgage lending and foreclosures.

Hence it went from the purveyor of false, fraudulent, forged documentation to the purveyor of data perceived as reliable and thence became a trusted source whose data is considered worthy of legal presumptions.

Systems at LPS/Black Knight include data processing on virtually all residential loans subject to claims of securitization many of which are represented by data on the MERS  Platform which is a workaround to hide separate split transfers of the debt, the note and the mortgage or deed of trust.

The systems on LPS/Black Knight are designed for the the express purpose of presenting consistent data in foreclosure claims. As such it also enables the rotation of apparent servicers, none of whom perform bookkeeping functions even if some of them interact with borrowers as if they were actually the servicers.

The rotation of servicers comes with the false representation and illusion of boarding in which the process is falsely represented as meaning that the new servicer inspected, audited, reviewed and input the data into their own system. None of that occurred. Instead the new servicer merely gained access to the same LPS system as the last servicer with a new login and password.

All evidence shows that the functions for fabricated, forging and robosigning documents continue to be performed under the direction of LPS/Black Knight which receives all instructions from various investment banks who have each started their own securitization scheme masking apparent trades in the secondary market for loans and trades in the shadow banking market where “private contracts” are regularly traded without any securities regulation.

Far from dropping their connection with LPS/DOCX the major banks have completely embraced this central repository of all loan data, all of which is subject to manual and algorithmic manipulation to suit the needs of the banks; thus they produce a report that creates the illusion of credibility, reliability and even independence even though none of those things are true.

So now U.S. Bank is further embracing LPS/Black Knight technology in the form of “Empower” for loan originations. U.S. bank is of course the major player whose name is used in foreclosures despite the fact that it has no interest in the loans and does not receive one cent from foreclosure sales of property. It merely receives a royalty for the use of its name as part of a fictitious name of a nonexistent trust which is falsely represented to have engaged in a transaction in which the trust acquired the debt, note and mortgage on multiple loans.

This deal furthers the PR myth. It strengthens Black Knight as having the attributes of a legitimate player when in fact it is a central figure in the greatest economic crime in human history.

see https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-bank-expands-relationship-with-black-knight-to-correspondent-and-hfa-lending-channels-on-empower-loan-origination-system-300859760.html

US Bank will implement the Empower LOS to manage loans purchased via its correspondent and HFA lending channels. The bank already uses Black Knight’s MSP servicing solution which integrates with the LOS; and its artificial intelligent virtual assistant AIVA.

“Aligning with Black Knight’s Empower for our Correspondent and HFA business serves our forward-looking vision of providing innovative capabilities that advance the lending process and provide a better client experience,” said Tom Wind, executive vice president, US Bank. “Expanding our enterprise relationship with Black Knight allows us to enhance our digital capabilities and customer experience throughout the entire homeownership cycle.”

 

Filed under: boarding process, burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, CORRUPTION, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, forensic investigation, forgery, investment banking, Investor, Mortgage, Motions, originator, Pleading, prima facie case, Servicer, sham transactions, standing | Tagged: , , , | 8 Comments »

Attorney Verification of Foreclosure Complaints

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Neil Garfield

This is a blatant flaunting and end run around the rule of law. Following a 15 year tradition of fabricating “facially valid” documents, lawyers are having an employee of the law firm sign documents to verify a complaint or other filing.

Get a consult! 202-838-6345
https://www.vcita.com/v/lendinglies to schedule CONSULT, leave message or make payments.
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
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Practically every consult I do for attorneys in litigation involves some document that was fabricated, forged and/or robosigned. This trick at misdirection of the court is accomplished by fabricating a document that looks to be facially valid but contains nothing but blatant lies about the people who signed it, the people who offered it, and the lawyers who pursue a false narrative based upon the presumptive validity of documents they know are not just flawed but more importantly fictitious having been fabricated strictly for the purpose of litigation and foreclosure.

Such documents are inadmissible, so the false proffer in court is that they are old valid and authentic documents that were not fabricated for use in court.

The latest turn (although not new) in these events is the execution of a “verification” or other document to be filed with the court by an employee of a law firm that at least initially starts the foreclosure. You may remember that David Stern and others made millions providing this service to banks, servicers and other parties who were involved in the initiation or maintenance of an action to foreclose. While Stern lost his license to practice law, he made off with tens of millions of dollars in fees directly attributable to falsifying documents.

Like the Bernie Madoff situation, some people were thrown under the bus and some people were not. Madoff’s PONZI scheme was not a singular event involving the the largest economic crime ($60 Billion) in Wall Street history. The publication of it gave convenient cover to underwriting banks and other cooperating entities involved in the absolute greatest of all PONZI schemes — the sale of worthless securities issued by empty trusts (over $5 trillion). The PONZI aspect was the same. But Madoff’s scheme was barely 1% of the amount stolen by Wall Street banks. And the Courts have been unwitting accomplices.

The actual “promise to pay” the investors came from the empty trust and not a homeowner or group of homeowners. The debt owed by homeowners was never owed to either the creditor (the investors) nor the trust (which was empty and never operated).  And the payments came from a dynamic dark pool consisting entirely of investor money that was legally and actually supposed to be in a bank account clearly labeled for the REMIC Trust that issued the RMBS — and then managed by a “Trustee” but the Trustee turned out to have no power. All the payments received by investors came from the dark pool — not from borrower payments or recoveries in foreclosure.

All power was vested in the “Master Servicer” which of course was the underwriter who sold the bogus RMBS in the first place — another hallmark of control always present in PONZI schemes. The entire scheme was based upon invested capital being diverted from the trusts — and then covered up by (a) payments out of the dynamic dark pool (PONZI) and (b) originating rather than buying nonconforming loans (a more elaborate PONZI).  The rest of the money was concealed in “trading profits” that are gradually released from the stockpile of money sucked out of the economy by the participating banks.

All of these transactions were “off balance sheet.” Since there were no “real transactions” in “real life” (loans, sales of loans creating a chain) the obvious fraud could only be covered up by getting court orders on a mass scale that assumed the false bank narrative was true. Those court orders and judgments were the first and only presumptively legal document in the entire chain. This is why the banks seek foreclosures at all costs to seal up potential civil and criminal liability for their initial theft from investors. Modifications must be done for purpose of appearances, but they are an intrusion into the business plan of getting as many foreclosures booked as possible.

In order to obtain such orders judges had to be satisfied that the designated forecloser was indeed a “lender” or “Creditor.” In order to do that the banks had to present fraudulent documents. In order to get the fraudulent documents through the system, the bank attorneys knew that in most cases they would only need to present “facially valid documents.” The judges would not look “under the hood.” And borrowers who could see the scam did not have access to information that would lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Hence most contested foreclosures are still resolved in favor of the co-venturers involved in the fraudulent scheme.

Foreclosure mills are among the people whom the banks will readily throw under the bus (“we’re shocked to discover that our law firm was committing such heinous crimes”). If the law firms were unwilling to provide these “extracurricular services” they never would have retained the business of foreclosures. The banks needed to win because they needed that one legal document that would create the almost conclusive presumption that everything that preceded the judgment allowing foreclosure. And the banks knew that could only be done by fraudulent misrepresentations to the courts, to borrowers, to government agencies including law enforcement that to date has jailed absolutely nobody except Lorraine Brown of DOCX.

So what do I say when represented by an obviously  false document executed by an employee of the foreclosure mill? For example I just received (hat tip to Bill Paatalo) one such “verification” in  which the signor declares that the client is out of town and so the law firm is executing the verification for the client.

The obvious response is that (1) being located somewhere else doesn’t prevent an authorized competent person from doing the verification (2) the absence of a competent witness does not give authority to anyone else to verify as though they were a competent witness (3) the verification does not and probably cannot assert that the signor is competent, to wit:

COMPETENCY consists of (a) OATH (b) PERCEPTION (C) MEMORY and (d) the ability to communicate what the witness saw, heard or otherwise experienced personally.

The law firm clearly has no personal knowledge and therefore is executing the verification just to satisfy the elements of a facially valid verification, when both reason and parole evidence clearly shows that the verification is a sham.

Hence, sanctions should be appropriate against the employee who signed it, the lawyer, the law firm and the “client” if the client knew that this was being done. Of course in most cases the party named as bringing the foreclosure is NOT the client, which is another fraudulent misrepresentation in court that would defeat jurisdiction. The client is always the sub-servicer who takes orders from the “Master Servicer”, i.e.  the underwriter who created bogus trusts to issue bogus mortgage bonds and walked away with trillions of dollars.

 

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Lorraine Brown To Be Set Free

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Neil Garfield

What we have here is what I dubbed in 2008 “A holographic image of an empty paper bag.”

The farce of securitization continues every day. In the savings and loan crisis of the 1980’s more than 800 bankers were jailed. This time only one person was jailed and she is about to be set free. Despite the revelations of illegal and fraudulent practices by banks acting in multiple roles as REMIC Trusts, Trustees, Master Servicers, and attorneys in fact, despite the fact that the money for loans was converted by those banks and covered up with a trail of paper that was garbage, despite the wholesale gutting of investors and homeowners alike, this appears to be the end of criminal prosecution even as the fraud continues.

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

—————-

see http://www.vice.com/read/the-only-person-jailed-for-the-foreclosure-crisis-will-soon-go-free

The only thing they continue to get wrong is the presumption that the bank conduct was the result of negligence. There was no negligence. All the acts were the components of a carefully constructed criminal enterprise. And that is why 9 lawyers who were tasked with writing the documents for “securitization” quit. They refused to take part in what they called a criminal enterprise.

The truth is they rented the name of Linda Green to be used on tens of thousands of documents in order to distance the perpetrators from the actual fraud. This practice of “rent-a-name” is mirrored in the role of “Trustees” for “REMIC Trusts” that never conducted business, “Master Servicers”, “Subservicers” and others.

In a case I won last week with Patrick Giunta, a state court judge laid out the discrepancies and absence of any connection between the “evidence” and the myriad of companies meant to complicate the relationships such that piercing through the veil of fraud would be nearly impossible. But a very persistent Judge did it anyway — after painstakingly going through the documents and other evidence, while we waited nearly 2 hours for his decision.

Watch for my article on this when the case has been completed. Spoiler alert: Look carefully at the PSA on exhibit “A” and think about what was required to tie in the “MLS” (Mortgage Loan Schedule) with the PSA. The robo-witness was at best mistaken when he testified that the MLS, bearing no markings of any kind as to where it came from, was Exhibit “A” to the PSA “Trust Instrument.”And the presentation of the MLS was in direct conflict with what was written on “Exhibit “A”. What we have here is what I dubbed in 2008 “A holographic image of an empty paper bag.”

Here are some excerpts from the VICE article:

Brown was CEO of DocX, the third-party document-processing company that engineered the production of some 2 million fictitious mortgage assignments, often forged by people whose name didn’t match their signature, as a recent VICE investigation documented. These assignments were used as evidence in foreclosure cases nationwide beginning in the mid 2000s, leading to an untold number of people being ejected from their houses. Some 9 million Americans have surrendered their homes to banks since 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the case that netted Lorraine Brown added to the evidence pile suggesting much of that misery was based on fraud.

Linda Green, a former shipping clerk for an auto-parts store, signed as the vice president of at least 20 other financial institutions, according to records compiled by Lynn Szymoniak, a whistleblower who wrote the fraud complaint that triggered the Jacksonville FBI investigation. But Green’s signatures all featured different styles of handwriting, because various people in the office wrote her signature on DocX mortgage assignments. According to a 60 Minutes profile from 2011, Green was selected to be the authorized bank officer because she had an easy-to-spell name.

Federal officials in Jacksonville believed that not only DocX, but their clients—the mortgage companies seeking false evidence—committed fraud by lacking a clear chain of title on millions of homes. And their superiors at FBI headquarters saw potential in the case, according to the FOIA documents. “If evidence collected shows intent to defraud investors by the real estate trusts, this matter has the potential to be a top ten Corporate Fraud case,” read one reply from the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division that authorized additional resources to the Jacksonville office.

 

Call 202-838-6345

https://www.vcita.com/v/lendinglies to schedule CONSULT, leave message or make payments.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

David Dayen: The Only Person Jailed for the Foreclosure Crisis Will Soon Go Free

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Neil Garfield

http://www.vice.com/read/the-only-person-jailed-for-the-foreclosure-crisis-will-soon-go-free

Lorraine Brown, the lone American convicted of a crime for the mass production of bogus documents used to illegally kick people out of their homes, will be released from prison in Pittsfield Township, Michigan, this week. After serving the minimum 40 months of a 20-year maximum state sentence, Brown is set to be paroled into the feds’ custody, where she will serve out the remainder of a concurrent federal sentence and should get released in the next year.

Brown was CEO of DocX, the third-party document-processing company that engineered the production of some 2 million fictitious mortgage assignments, often forged by people whose name didn’t match their signature, as a recent VICE investigation documented. These assignments were used as evidence in foreclosure cases nationwide beginning in the mid 2000s, leading to an untold number of people being ejected from their houses. Some 9 million Americans have surrendered their homes to banks since 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the case that netted Lorraine Brown added to the evidence pile suggesting much of that misery was based on fraud.

In the course of their criminal investigation into foreclosure fraud, the FBI and US Attorney’s office in Jacksonville, Florida, home of the parent company of DocX (known as Lender Processing Services), called in dozens of agents and forensic examiners, conducted 75 interviews, issued hundreds of subpoenas, and reviewed millions of documents. But after all that, only Lorraine Brown went to prison. She was always something of a scapegoat, but that even she is now on her way out after doing paltry time is a testament to the ongoing failure of the American legal system to mete out proportional punishment for white-collar crime.

Check out the VICE News special on the demolition of foreclosed homes in Detroit.

In Brown’s case, the banking industry needed the raw materials her office provided because investment banks had apparently botched the ownership records on millions of securitized loans while packaging them into bonds. “The fraud in this matter was the result of negligence in the process of creating Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS),” read an FBI request for additional resources to prosecute the case that eventually took down Brown.

A review of 600 pages of documents from the FBI investigation, obtained by VICE through the Freedom of Information Act, focused on DocX, the company one former employee called a mortgage document “sweatshop.” Temporary and low-wage workers posed as bank vice presidents, working long hours signing documents at two long tables. Employees signed as many as 2,100 documents per day, and DocX accelerated the assembly line by having other workers sign on the behalf of those authorized by the bank.

For instance, Linda Green, a former shipping clerk for an auto-parts store, signed as the vice president of at least 20 other financial institutions, according to records compiled by Lynn Szymoniak, a whistleblower who wrote the fraud complaint that triggered the Jacksonville FBI investigation. But Green’s signatures all featured different styles of handwriting, because various people in the office wrote her signature on DocX mortgage assignments. According to a 60 Minutes profile from 2011, Green was selected to be the authorized bank officer because she had an easy-to-spell name.

Federal officials in Jacksonville believed that not only DocX, but their clients—the mortgage companies seeking false evidence—committed fraud by lacking a clear chain of title on millions of homes. And their superiors at FBI headquarters saw potential in the case, according to the FOIA documents. “If evidence collected shows intent to defraud investors by the real estate trusts, this matter has the potential to be a top ten Corporate Fraud case,” read one reply from the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division that authorized additional resources to the Jacksonville office.

But besides Brown being singled out for some prison time, the US legal system basically swept the whole thing under the rug. Lender Processing Services, DocX’s parent company, paid millions in fines and settlements, but none of its executives were indicted. Neither were the executives of any of DocX’s clients, which included most of America’s major banks.

In fact, Brown’s indictment suggested she alone directed the document forgery and fabrication scheme “unbeknownst to DocX’s clients”—that is, without the banks who needed the illegal docs being in on the scheme.

“Lorraine Brown was a very small cog in a giant machine,” Szymoniak, the whistleblower, told me via email in response to the parole news.

The former CEO technically has 18 months left to run on her federal sentence, but her lawyer Mark Rosenblum told the Detroit News he expects her to serve only a portion of that. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) can reduce up to 15 percent of any given sentence, and the most recent stats from 2012 show that federal prisoners for fraud crimes serve roughly 88 percent of their sentences. That would make Brown eligible for time served in about 11 months.

The activity that put Brown in prison was eventually wrapped into overlapping civil settlements by state and federal law enforcement that saw banks and associated companies involved in the scheme paid billions in penalties. At the time, Justice Department officials said they reserved the right to criminally prosecute anyone suspected of wrongdoing.

 

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , | 12 Comments »

Reminder: President of DOCX Pled Guilty to Fabricating and Forging Documents

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Neil Garfield
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THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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Article by Lynn Symoniak

On November 20, 2012, Lorraine O’Reilly Brown, the former president of mortgage-document mill, DocX, LLC, a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services, pleaded guilty in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.  DocX produced over one million mortgage assignments.  These assignments were used in foreclosures across the country. Brown admitted that she knew that these assignments were being prepared to use in foreclosures.

In tens of thousands of cases, these fraudulent documents were used by mortgage-backed trusts to show that the trust acquired a mortgage.  The information on these assignments was false – the trusts did not acquire the mortgages on the date set forth on these DocX Assignments.

Signatures were forged, notarizations were wrongly added to create an appearance of authenticity.  Job titles were falsely claimed.

Which trusts used these phony DocX-prepared mortgage assignments?  The trusts that used these Mortgage Assignments to foreclose include those listed below, with the name of the trustee following the name of the trust.

ABFC TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

ABFC 2004-OPT4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

ABFC 2005-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

ABFC 2005-HE1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

ABFC 2006-HE1 (U.S. Bank)

ABFC 2006-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

ABFC 2006-OPT2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

ABFC 2006-OPT3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

 

ACE SECURITIES CORP. HOME EQUITY LOAN TRUST & TRUSTEES

Ace Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust Series 2004-OP1 (HSBC Bank)

Ace Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust Series 2006-NC1 (HSBC Bank)

Ace Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust Series 2006-OP1 (HSBC Bank)

Ace Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust Series 2006-OP2 (HSBC Bank)

Ace Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust Series 2007-HE5 (HSBC Bank)

 

AMERICAN HOME MORTGAGE ASSETS TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

AHM Assets Trust, 2005-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2005-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-3 (Citibank Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-4 (Citibank Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-5 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2006-6 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-3 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-4 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-5 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Assets Trust, 2007-6 (Deutsche Bank)

 

AMERICAN HOME MORTGAGE INVESTMENT TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

AHM Investment Trust, 2004-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2004-3 (Citibank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2004-4 (Bank of NY)

AHM Investment Trust, 2005-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2005-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2005-3 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2005-4 (U.S. Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2006-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2006-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2006-3 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2007-1 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2007-2 (Deutsche Bank)

AHM Investment Trust, 2007-SD1 (Deutsche Bank)

 

AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE SECURITIES TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2003-5 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2003-8 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2003-AR1 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2004-R3 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2004-R7 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2004-R9 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R1 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R2 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R3 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R4 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R5 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R6 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R7 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R8 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R9 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R10 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-R11 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust ARSI 2006-M3 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2006-R1 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2006-R2 (Deutsche Bank)

Ameriquest Mortgage Securities Trust 2006-R7 (Deutsche Bank)

 

ARGENT SECURITIES INC. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Argent Securities, Inc. 2003-W3 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2003-W6 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2004-W10 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2004-W11 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2005-W1 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2005-W2 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2005-W3 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2005-W4 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2005-W5 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-M1 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-M2 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-W1 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-W2 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-W3 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-W4 (Deutsche Bank)

Argent Securities, Inc. 2006-W5 (Deutsche Bank)

 

ASSET-BACKED SECURITIES CORP. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2003-HE6 (Wells Fargo Bank)

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2004-HE3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2005-HE5 (U.S. Bank)

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series OOMC 2005-HE6 (Wells Fargo Bank)

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series OOMC 2006-HE3 (U.S. Bank)

AB Securities Corp. Home Equity Loan Trust, Series OOMC 2006-HE5 (U.S. Bank)

 

BANC OF AMERICA FUNDING CORP. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Banc of America Funding Corp. Mort. PT Certs., 2008-1 (U.S. Bank)

 

BEAR STEARNS AB SECURITIES I TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Bear Stearns AB Securities I Trust 2006-AC3 (U.S. Bank)

 

CARRINGTON MORTGAGE LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Carrington Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2005-OPT2 (Deutsche Bank)

Carrington Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2006-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

 

CITIGROUP MORTGAGE LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2004-OPT1 (Wells Fargo)

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2005-OPT3 (Deutsche Bank)

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2005-OPT4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2006-AMC1 (Deutsche Bank)

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2006-HE2 (U.S. Bank)

Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust, Series 2007-SHL1 (HSBC Bank)

 

DEUTSCHE ALT-A SECURITIES MORT. LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Deutsche Alt-A Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2006-AR6 (HSBC Bank)

Deutsche Alt-A Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2007-1(HSBC Bank)

 

DEUTSCHE ALT-B SECURITIES MORT. LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Deutsche Alt-B Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2006-AB2 (HSBC Bank)

Deutsche Alt-B Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2006-AB3 (HSBC Bank)

Deutsche Alt-B Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2006-AB4 (HSBC Bank)

Deutsche Alt-B Securities Mort. Loan Trust, 2007-AB1 (HSBC Bank)

 

GSAA HOME EQUITY TRUST & TRUSTEES

GSAA Home Equity Trust 2006-6 (U.S. Bank)

GSAA Home Equity Trust 2006-9 (U.S. Bank)

GSAA Home Equity Trust 2006-10 (Deutsche Bank)

GSAA Home Equity Trust 2006-11 (Deutsche Bank)

 

GSAMP TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

GSAMP 2004-OPT (Deutsche Bank)

 

GSR NORTGAGE LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

GSR Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-AR1 (U.S. Bank)

GSR Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-OA1 (Deutsche Bank)

 

HARBORVIEW MORTGAGE LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Harborview Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-7 (Deutsche Bank)

Harborview Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-14 (Deutsche Bank)

Harborview Mortgage Loan Trust 2007-2 (Deutsche Bank)

Harborview Mortgage Loan Trust 2007-5 (Deutsche Bank)

 

HSI ASSET SECURITIZATION CORP. “OPT” TRUSTS AND TRUSTEES

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2005-OPT1 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2006-OPT1 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2006-OPT2 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2006-OPT3 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2006-OPT4 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2007-HE1 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Securitization Corp., 2007-OPT1 (Deutsche Bank)

HSI Asset Loan Obligation Trust, 2007-AR1 (Deutsche Bank)

 

IXIS TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

IXIS Real Estate Capital Trust 2006-HE1 (Deutsche Bank)

 

JP MORGAN ACQUISITION CORP. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

JP Morgan Acquisition Corp. 2005-OPT1 (U.S. Bank)

JP Morgan Acquisition Corp. 2005-OPT2 (U.S. Bank)

 

LUMINENT MORTGAGE TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Luminent Mortgage Trust 2006-7 (HSBC Bank)

 

MASTR ADJUSTABLE RATE MORTGAGES TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

MASTR Adjustable Rate Mortgages Trust 2006-OA1 (U.S. Bank)

MASTR Adjustable Rate Mortgages Trust 2007-1 (U.S. Bank)

 

MASTR ALTERNATIVE LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

MASTR Alternative Loan Trust 2006-2 (Bank of New York)

 

MASTR ASSET-BACKED SECURITIES TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

MASTR Asset-Backed Securities Trust 2003-OPT2 (Wells Fargo)

MASTR Asset-Backed Securities Trust 2004-OPT2 (Wells Fargo)

MASTR Asset-Backed Securities Trust 2005-OPT1 (Wells Fargo)

 

MERRILL LYNCH MORT. INVESTORS TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Merrill Lynch Mort. Investors Trust, 2004-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Merrill Lynch Mort. Investors Trust, 2006-OPT1 (U.S. Bank)

 

MORGAN STANLEY ABS CAPITAL I, INC. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Morgan Stanley ABC Capital I, Inc. Trust 2004-OP1 (Deutsche Bank)

Morgan Stanley ABC Capital I, Inc. Trust 2005-HE1 (Deutsche Bank)

Morgan Stanley ABC Capital I, Inc. Trust 2005-HE2 (Deutsche Bank)

Morgan Stanley ABC Capital I, Inc. Trust 2007-NC3 (Deutsche Bank)

 

NOMURA HOME EQUITY TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Nomura Home Equity Loan 2005-HE1 (HSBC Bank)

 

NOVASTAR MORTGAGE FUNDING TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Novastar Mortgage Funding Trust 2007-2 (Deutsche Bank)

 

OPTION ONE MORTGAGE LOAN TRUSTS AND TRUSTEES

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2003-1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2003-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2003-3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2003-4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2004-1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2004-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2004-3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2005-1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2005-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2005-3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2005-4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2006-1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2006-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2006-3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-5 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-6 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-CP1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-FXD1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-FXD2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, 2007-HL1 (HSBC Bank)

 

QUEST TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Quest Trust 2006-X1 (Deutsche Bank)

 

SAXON ASSET TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Saxon Asset Securities Trust 2005-2 (Deutsche Bank Americas)

 

SECURITIZED ASSET-BACKED RECEIVABLES, LLC TRUSTS AND TRUSTEES

Securitized AB Receivables, LLC 2004-OP1 (Wells Fargo)

Securitized AB Receivables, LLC 2004-OP2 (Wells Fargo)

Securitized AB Receivables, LLC 2005-OP2 (Wells Fargo)

Securitized AB Receivables, LLC 2006-OP1 (Wells Fargo)

 

SECURITIZED ASSET INVESTMENT LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Securitized Asset Investment Loan Trust 2004-4

 

SG MORTGAGE SECURITIES TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

SG Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-OPT1 (HSBC Bank)

SG Mortgage Securities Trust 2005-OPT2 (HSBC Bank)

SG Mortgage Securities Trust 2006-OPT2 (HSBC Bank)

 

SOUNDVIEW HOME LOAN “OPT” TRUSTS AND TRUSTEES

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2005-OPT1 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2005-OPT2 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2005-OPT3 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2005-OPT4 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2006-OPT1 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2006-OPT2 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2006-OPT3 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2006-OPT4 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2006-OPT5 (Deutsche Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2007-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2007-OPT2 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2007-OPT3 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2007-OPT4 (Wells Fargo Bank)

Soundview Home Loan Trust, 2007-OPT5 (Wells Fargo Bank)

 

STRUCTURED ASSET INVESTMENT LOAN TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Structured Asset Investment Loan Trust 2003-BC9 (Bank of America)

Structured Asset Investment Loan Trust 2004-11 (Bank of America)

Structured Asset Investment Loan Trust 2005-3 (U.S. Bank)

 

STRUCTURED ASSET MORTGAGE INVESTMENTS II , INC. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Structured Asset Mort. Investments II, Inc. 2006-AR5 (JP Morgan Chase)

 

STRUCTURED ASSET SECURITIES CORP. TRUSTS & TRUSTEES

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2003-BC10 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2003-BC11 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2004-3 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2005-OPT1 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2005-SC1 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2006-BC2 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2006-BC6 (U.S. Bank)

Structured Asset Securities Corp. 2006-OPT1 (Wells Fargo Bank)

 

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , | 27 Comments »

More Charges Against Brown at DOCX

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Neil Garfield

What’s the Next Step? Consult with Neil Garfield

CHECK OUT OUR NOVEMBER SPECIAL

For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure, please call 520-405-1688, customer service, who will put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

“Shortcuts like robo-signing are just one piece of the mortgage foreclosure crisis,” said Schuette.  “Our investigation remains ongoing, and we will bring to justice every lawbreaker we find.”

—-

The message is finally getting through. Justice moves slowly. I have mentioned here that it takes a long time for law enforcement to unravel a complex financial scheme and build a case that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Finally it is starting. Brown has already entered plea deals in other states. This time it is in Michigan where the allegations from Attorney General Schuette are virtually identical to the defenses raised and dismissed by thousands of Judges who believed that borrowers were simply trying to get out of a legitimate debt.

Neither the debt nor the documentation turns out to be legitimate — all based upon fraud, forgery, and now with these charges RICO. Incredibly the investigation at the Michigan AG office only began in 2011. The rest of us began our investigations in 2007 or even earlier in some cases like Katherine Ann Porter when she was a professor at the University of Iowa and the Fordham Law students who published the article “Will the real party in interest please stand up” in the Fordham Law Review (see right side of this blog to access article). Students were able to decipher the lies and cover-ups before the issue of PONZI schemes and fraud were raised in an outcry by lawyers and borrowers who were gradually worn down to the bone by Judges who just didn’t believe the “theories” (based upon fact) advanced by borrowers who wanted to get rid of the remedy of foreclosure and a way to modify their mortgages to real value.

Like other states, Michigan is passing laws to protect and provide remedies for the illegal practices used by the Banks, but they still don’t grasp the full import of the false documentation, the credit bids by non-creditors, and the fact that the balances due on the loans are far below the amount demanded by the banks because of payments from insurance, credit default swaps, federal bailouts etc.

The real question is what restitution should be provided to the millions of people who were victims of foreclosure by entities that neither funded nor purchased the loan? Besides getting their house back, how much in damages should the banks be required to pay. When will the AG’s sink their teeth all the way into the largest economic crime in human history?

MIchigan Charges DOCX Brown with Felonies

 

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , | 79 Comments »

GUILTY! DOCX Defendants Plead in Fraud Cases

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Neil Garfield

“Ms. Brown admitted to participating in the falsification of more than a million documents.”

What’s the Next Step? Consult with Neil Garfield

CHECK OUT OUR NOVEMBER SPECIAL

For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure, please call 520-405-1688, customer service, who will put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

Editor’s Comment: A 2 year sentence can only be justified if she is cooperating with authorities, but he narrative coming out of this is that her “clients” didn’t know what she was doing. THAT is impossible.

“If citizens had filed these types of documents with a bank in an attempt to get a loan, the banks would have filed criminal cases against them,” Mr. Koster said. “The mortgage servicing industry has to be held to the same standard that the banks hold the rest of us to.”

The fact is that no bank would have accepted these documents if they came from a borrower and the deals would never have been done. Banks know when they are looking at fabricated documents and they know what questions to ask including requiring supporting documentation from the people who are “represented” on those one million falsified documents.

The real question is whether anyone in government is going to undo the damage caused by these practices. And perhaps even more important, why was it necessary to falsify documents if the deals were legitimate?

Think about it. If the origination of these loans had been proper, all the documents that were routinely required, verified and investigated would be present and accounted for. Instead the documents vanished, destroyed or lost 40%-80%  of them. That is no accident.

If the origination documents had been done properly, securitization could have been possible. But the banks were not interested in securitization, except as a buzz word to get investors to buy bonds. The origination documents would have named the REMICs as the payee and secured party. This is property law 101. If securitization was actually in action then the money from the investors would have been put in a trust account bearing the name of that REMIC. Neither one happened.

The Wall Street banks snookered the investors by diverting the money from the sale of bogus mortgage bonds from unfunded, incomplete common law trusts, which is to say, the trusts either held nothing or didn’t even exist for all practical purposes. They diverted the paperwork away from the REMIC so they could claim ownership of the loans for purposes of “trading” (tier 2 yield spread premium) and collecting the insurance, hedge proceeds and federal bailouts.

Here is what the “trading” looked like: The Wall Street Banks took let’s say $1 million from a pension fund (simplifying the situation) into numbers we can all grasp).

The pension fund was expecting a return of 5% or $50,000 per year in interest plus amortized principal. The banks put in the prospectus that the payments could come out of the money from the investing pension funds — the first red flag that a PONZI scheme was at work.

Then the Bank pulling the strings on thousands of puppets, the banks steered blacks, Latins and other unsophisticated, purposely uneducated borrowers into higher priced loans than they were qualified to receive. (I.e., predatory lending according to Federal and state deceptive lending laws).

For simplicity let’s say the loan was for $500,000 at 10%. The originator was representing several things that were not true to the borrower. First that they were the lender (violation of TILA), second that standard underwriting procedures were being followed including verification of income and verification of the value of the property (no such underwriting occurred because neither the originator nor the bank pulling the strings had any risk of loss — they were playing with investor — i.e., pension fund — money).

So they take the $500,000 loan at 10% which means that it would pay $50,000 per year in interest (just like the investor pension fund thought) but they did it knowing that the high price of the loan and the falsely appraised value of the property and false statement of income of the borrower would not repay the loan.

Now here comes the “trade”: They “sell” the loan to the investors for $1 million, the amount invested, because it produces $50,000 per year in interest income but that was contrary to the expectations and representations made to the investor who expected high quality mortgages in viable loans that would be repaid.

So the bank takes in $1 million, funds $500,000 and take the other $500,000 as a “trading profit,” without putting up a dime. And THAT is why the REMIC’s name was not put on the note and mortgage (or deed of trust). If the REMIC’s name had been put on the origination documents, the “trade could not exist because it would be selling the loan to itself.

The end result is that the Wall Street bank makes a $500,000 tier 2 yield spread premium trading profit by stealing the money of the pension funds. By not putting the name of the real source of funds on the origination documents, they raise another red flag showing that a PONZI scheme and a separate fraud were in play here.

And this is why I say you should FIRST FOLLOW the money using the DENY and Discover strategy. Once that order is entered requiring them to show the money trail they are dead in the water and you’ll either get the house or get a settlement in all likelihood — but you must present a credible, understandable threat to them.

And you must be as relentless in pursuing them as they are in pursuing the homeowner. The lawyers that have followed this advice or realized it on their own are picking up victory and after victory. The timid lawyers who for reasons unknown to this writer are afraid to deny the obligation, note and mortgage, lose almost every time.

Back in 2007 I told everyone that the defense was going to be plausible deniability on the part of the Wall Street banks — that they didn’t know of all the violations in the origination and assignments of the loans. That they deny knowledge is already established. That is plausible for them to deny it is impossible. It was the violations themselves that enabled the Wall Street banks to profit while the rest of the country was plunged into recession.

Guilty Pleas in Foreclosure Fraud Cases

By

The founder and former president of DocX, once one of the nation’s largest foreclosure-processing companies, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to fraud in one of the few criminal cases to have arisen out of the housing crisis.

The executive, Lorraine O. Brown, 56, entered a guilty plea in federal court in Florida and a plea agreement in state court in Missouri related to DocX’s preparation of improper documents used to evict troubled borrowers from their homes. Ms. Brown’s guilty pleas will lead to a prison term of at least two years, the Missouri attorney general said.

Foreclosure abuses, like the routine filing of apparent forgeries with the nation’s courts, gained widespread notoriety in 2010. Ms. Brown admitted to directing DocX employees, beginning in 2005, to sign other peoples’ names on crucial mortgage documents. Many of the documents, like assignments of mortgages and affidavits claiming that a borrower’s i.o.u. had been lost, were used by banks and their representatives to foreclose on homeowners. DocX also filed falsely notarized documents with county clerks across the country. These practices are now known as robo-signing. In her plea, Ms. Brown admitted to participating in the falsification of more than a million documents.

“We are sending a signal to the financial industry that these mortgage documents have meaning, they are legal documents and if you are going to file them in the courthouses of this country then they had better be honestly drafted,” said Chris Koster, the Missouri attorney general.

In a statement, Mark Rosenblum, a lawyer for Ms. Brown in Jacksonville, Fla., said: “By negotiating a settlement to her situation and entering her guilty plea, Lori has started the process of getting on with the rest of her life.”

Ms. Brown entered her pleas Tuesday afternoon. She pleaded to one count of mail fraud in federal court in Jacksonville and agreed to one count each of forgery and perjury in Missouri. The Missouri pleas follow a settlement last summer in which DocX agreed to pay the state $2 million and to cooperate with its investigation.

DocX, founded by Ms. Brown and later purchased by Lender Processing Services of Jacksonville, has executed and notarized millions of mortgage documents for big banks and loan servicers. Lender Processing closed the company in April 2010 after evidence of problems emerged.

According to her plea in Missouri, Ms. Brown said that in 2009 she directed a DocX employee to develop a surrogate signers program at the company because there were “too many documents to sign and not enough people with signature authority.”

Mr. Koster said he was unsure when Ms. Brown would be sentenced. In the federal case, she could face a minimum of probation and a maximum of five years in prison. In the Missouri matter, she could receive a sentence of two to three years. But if she receives a federal sentence of probation or fewer than two years in prison, Mr. Koster said, she would be obligated to serve at least two years in Missouri.

“If citizens had filed these types of documents with a bank in an attempt to get a loan, the banks would have filed criminal cases against them,” Mr. Koster said. “The mortgage servicing industry has to be held to the same standard that the banks hold the rest of us to.”

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , | 77 Comments »

Missouri AG Sells Out to LPS

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Neil Garfield

LPS has settled with Missouri for non-prosecution. The Missouri AG agreed to accept the assertion of LPS that it had no idea that all the criminal behavior was ever happening. They are soooooo sorry that they are paying $2 million to the state as a charitable contribution. Think I’m joking? read the article. This is an outrage and should be stopped and the AG should be kicked out of office.

Agreement Not to Prosecute Docx, LLC and Assurance of Voluntary Compliance

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , | 15 Comments »

Servicer Sues LPS-DOCX OVER ROBO-SIGNING — “SURROGATE SIGNING”

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Neil Garfield

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ROBO-SIGNING IS NOW CALLED SURROGATE SIGNING

AHMSI SUIT CONFIRMS PRACTICE IS WRONG, UNAUTHORIZED AND INVALID

EDITOR’S NOTE: I find it interesting that LPS continued to fabricate and forge documents after AHMSI told them to stop. It could only mean that they were really taking orders from someone else. The ankle biting is escalating.

The AHMSI lawsuit seeks:

  1. a declaratory judgment that the contract between the parties, as amended, is binding and effective;
  2. an order compelling defendants to arbitrate AHMSI’s claims for breach of contract and indemnification; and
  3. an award of damages relating to non-arbitrable claims sufficient to reimburse AHMSI for the millions of dollars in losses stemming from defendants executing, notarizing, and recording improper assignments on behalf of AHMSI.

DocX prepared, executed and recorded lien releases, assignments of mortgage and related documents for AHMSI from April 2008 through November 2009.  During this time certain DocX and LPS employees were duly appointed by AHMSI’s board of directors as “Special Officers” of AHMSI, with powers limited to executing mortgage-related documents.  However, in late November 2009, LPS informed AHMSI that from March 2009 through October 2009, a substantial number of assignments of mortgage were executed by “surrogate signers,” that is, by individuals who were not designated as Special Officers, but who signed in the name of one or more of the designated Special Officers. At no time did AHMSI sanction or know of the “surrogate signing” practices of LPS and DocX.  

Jordan Dorchuck, chief legal officer – AHMSI, said, “Upon learning of this unauthorized use of surrogates, we terminated the services of DocX and promptly conducted an extensive, 50-state remediation effort to address any issues caused by this problem.  Our remediation efforts are, and have been, focused on correcting affected assignments of mortgage to ensure they comply with all local, state and federal laws. This has been a vast undertaking, necessitating coordination with local counsel in each state.”  

Based in Coppell, Texas, AHMSI is the 15th largest mortgage servicer in the country, managing nearly $72.5 billion in loan servicing, representing approximately 384,000 customers. Since its inception in April 2008, AHMSI has modified over 175,000 mortgage loans, including over 27,000 under the U.S. government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). AHMSI’s more than 3,000 associates work each day with the mission of helping families preserve their dream of home ownership. AHMSI is a privately-held company owned by equity funds managed by WL Ross & Co., a financial management company with over $8 billion in assets under management.

SOURCE American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc.

Philippa Brown, +1-469-645-3103, philippa.brown@ahmsi3.com

AHMSI sues LPS and DocX over ‘surrogate’ signing scandal
by KERRY CURRY
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011, 10:43 am

[[Update 1: Changes terminology from robo-signing to surrogate signing.]]

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS: 17.045 -2.43%) and its DocX affiliate caused American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. to lose millions from the robo-signing of mortgage documents, a lawsuit filed Tuesday contends.

Coppell, Texas-based AHMSI filed suit in a Dallas district court against Jacksonville, Fla.-based LPS alleging more than 30,000 residential mortgages across the country were affected by  “improper execution, notarization and recording of assignments of mortgage.”

LPS could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of AHMSI’s unsuccessful attempt to recover its losses during more than a year of talks with LPS. AHMSI said the defendants first promised to indemnify AHMSI and then later claimed it had no duty to do so because the contract involved with the faulty assignments had already expired.

But AHMSI contends the “defendants conveniently ignore that they created tens of thousands of assignments of mortgage and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in payment in accordance with the terms of a supposedly nonexistent contract.”

The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the contract between the parties is binding and an order compelling LPS and DocX to arbitrate AHMSI’s claims of breach of contract and indemnification. It seeks an unspecified amount of damages, but puts the figure in the millions.

“DocX prepared, executed and recorded lien releases, assignments of mortgage and related documents for AHMSI from April 2008 through November 2009,” AMSI said.

Certain DocX and LPS employees were appointed by AHMSI’s board of directors as “special officers” of AHMSI with powers limited to executing mortgage-related documents, according to the mortgage servicer.

“However, in late November 2009, LPS informed AHMSI that from March 2009 through October 2009, a substantial number of assignments of mortgage were executed by ‘surrogate signers,’ that is, by individuals who were not designated as special officers, but who signed in the name of one or more of the designated special officers. At no time did AHMSI sanction or know of the ‘surrogate signing’ practices of LPS and DocX,” AHMSI said.

The servicer said it terminated its contract with DocX after the revelation and conducted a 50-state remediation effort to correct affected assignments.

“Defendants practice of ‘surrogate signing’ has forced AHMSI to address a myriad of legal issues, problems and proceedings in venues across the country,” the lawsuit alleges.

AHMSI is one of the largest mortgage servicers in the country. It manages nearly $72.5 billion in loan servicing, representing about 384,000 customers, the company said.

In October, LPS said varying signature styles from its subsidiary, DocX, resulted from a DocX practice that has been discontinued and only affected two lenders/servicers, but did not identify those servicers. LPS said at the time that it had not executed affidavits with substantive information on behalf of its clients since 2008, and said it has been mischaracterized in the media in terms of its default-related services.

Since then, LPS and DocX have the the source of several investigations. In April, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he would look into questionable mortgage documentation filed in the state’s Register of Deeds offices, particularly those linked to DocX.

Also in April, LPS signed a consent order with the Federal Reserve to settle a federal investigation into foreclosure practices at the firm and major mortgage servicers. LPS was required to boost oversight of its processes.

Write to Kerry Curry.

Follow her on Twitter @communicatorKLC.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 32 Comments »

Aztec Foreclosure Corp Antics Analyzed

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Neil Garfield

MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION ANALYSIS – CLICK HERE

BY ‘NANCY DREW”

In California, OR, WA, CO (non judicial states) place an Automatic Stay one must file Bankruptcy “BK” which stops notice of defaults?
sadly allowing substitute trustee to act as robo-mill and includes bank attorneys who don’t have to reveal ‘security’ the mortgage note as collateral attached.

‘substitute’ trustees file falsified documents as does the documented LPS/DOCX employees, just the employee may be a contractor such as Aztec Foreclosure Corp.

The falsified documents as required by the BK courts excludes the same transactions in judicial states just the ‘Trustee’ and Substitute Trustee don’t have to disclose the ‘name of the loan trust, trust fund, certificates, the ‘mortgage note’ as collateral attached inside and sliced and diced when sold to FREDDIE MAC and others Institutional Investors.

You are forced to fight harder under COTA and Accounting GAAP to reveal what is not recorded with county recorder. You are forced to fight pro pe and when 90 days in default of any amount, the SERVICER of the asset as a receivable – advances funds and tracks the debt they will claim when they liquidate your mortgage.
You are fighting with the ‘Servicer’ who has to advance funding to the ‘Master Servicer’ get it! The party before BK does not have legal standing and the CA Courts ignore? WHY?

Aztec Foreclosure Corp

Aztec Foreclosure Corporation is a full service foreclosure trustee concentrating its practice in the representation of mortgage lenders and other financial institutions in foreclosure of residential real estate collateral in the States of California and Nevada.

Aztec Foreclosure Corporation of Washington is a full service foreclosure trustee serving the State of Washington.

Who is Robbie Weaver Office Manager in CA and Elaine Malone Foreclosure Supervisor? Who is the ‘attorney’ providign due dilligence? Kelly D. Sutherland ‘Managing Attorney’ in state of Washington? Is she licensed to practice in CA?

Look at the 21 Pages of Completed RESALES of Properties!
Please take NOTICE that
THe ‘LIST’ 21 pages of sales REPORT generated by data extracted from databases in which somebody programmed the appearance of the data in a report form all CREATED BY A COMPUTER

A LIST OF ‘COMPUTER GENERATED SALES’ ALL PURCHASED AT THE ‘OPENING BID’ WERE THE HIGHEST BID’
WHO WAS AT THE SALE? WHAT ‘TRUSTEE’ SIGNED C/O …. generated 8/12/2011 @ 3:00:50 PM

Report Date 8/12/2011 (Note the report is generated bya computer from database) organized by Case#, Sale Date, Property Address, Bids in which then the ‘security’ identified. Get that information while you are in BK!

http :// www . aztectrustee . com / Reports / CAZ_WebCompSalesRpt . pdf

Aztec Foreclosure Corporation | Professional Foreclosure Trustee Serving California and Nevada

Aztec Foreclosure Corporation of Washington (Washington State only)

Aztec Foreclosure Corporation has the necessary experience working with lenders to protect their delinquent mortgage assets. Our tenured staff has assisted lenders in their default management department, providing unique insight and an ability to better communicate with our clients. Our knowledge and experience extends beyond the routine foreclosure process into the daily operations of the default management industry. Aztec Foreclosure Corporation of Washington provides the same services in the State of Washington.

STATE OF CALIFORNIA:
Notice of Default – State of California
Upon receipt of the foreclosure referral package, the Notice of Default (“NOD”) is prepared and forwarded to the title company for recording along with the executed Declaration from the lender. Recoding of the NOD constitutes ‘first legal’ when recorded. Once recorded, a copy of the NOD and Declaration will be mailed to all parties to the Deed of Trust and parties having recorded a request for notice.

A Trustee Sale Guarantee (“TSG”) will be ordered from the title company and reviewed upon receipt that will disclose all parties entitled to notice, as well as any other encumbrances recorded against the Deed of Trust and reviewed for any possible defects which may exist that would prevent continuation of foreclosure. The one-month mailing notices are sent to any parties requiring notice.

Notice of Sale
A Notice of Sale (NOTS) will be recorded in the appropriate county and all parties requiring notice will be sent certified and regular mailings of the upcoming foreclosure sale date. The NOTS will be published for three successive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation for the city and county the property is located. A copy of the NOTS will be posted on the property itself and recorded in the county recorder’s office. The sale will be conducted at the time and place set forth on the NOTS.

Bidding instructions will be requested from the client and should be submitted to our office no later than 5 days before the scheduled sale date. Aztec will bid according to the client’s instructions. If there are no competitive bidders, the interest of the property will revert to the beneficiary. Third party bidders must outbid the beneficiary to obtain the property, and the sale proceeds are distributed in the order of priority, with the beneficiary being satisfied first.

The sale may be postponed pursuant to the client’s instructions without an additional publication. The sale may be postponed up to a maximum of 365 days after the original sale date. After that a new publication will have to be set with a new sale date, mailings, etc.

Redemption
There is a 3 month redemption period that must run from when the NOD is recorded before a foreclosure sale can be set. Effective June, 2009, CA implemented the CA Foreclosure Prevention Act which required an additional 90 days of redemption:

On February 20, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger signed ABX2 7 and SBX2 7, which establish the California Foreclosure Prevention Act. The California Foreclosure Prevention Act modifies the foreclosure process to provide additional time for borrowers to work out loan modifications while providing an exemption for mortgage loan servicers that have implemented a comprehensive loan modification program. Civil Code Section 2923.52 requires an additional 90 day period beyond the period already provided before a Notice of Sale can be given in order to allow all parties to pursue a loan modification to prevent foreclosure of loans meeting certain criteria identified in that section.

A mortgage loan servicer who has implemented a comprehensive loan modification program may file an application for exemption from the provisions of Civil Code Section 2923.52. Approval of this application provides the mortgage loan servicer an exemption from the additional 90-day period before filing the Notice of Sale when foreclosing on real property as designated by this Section.

Upon expiration of redemption, sale, publication and posting dates will be set. The sale cannot be held until the expiration of 21 days from redemption.

Sale
The sale will be conducted at the time and place set forth on the NOTS. Aztec will bid according to the client’s instructions. If there are no competitive bidders, the interest of the property will revert to the beneficiary. Third party bidders must outbid the beneficiary to obtain the property, and the sale proceeds are distributed in the order of priority, with the beneficiary being satisfied first.

The sale may be postponed pursuant to the client’s instructions without an additional publication. The sale may be postponed up to three times at the request of the beneficiary, after which it will be necessary to republish a new sale date.

Conveyance & Final Title
After the foreclosure sale is conducted, a Trustee’s Deed Upon Sale is issued by Aztec conveying title to the successful bidder. If the property reverts to the beneficiary, it is sent for recording within a few days of the sale. If a third-party purchases the property, the unrecorded Trustee’s Deed will be sent to the address specified by that party.

If the property is to be conveyed to the Secretary of Housing & Urban Development (“HUD”) or Secretary of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), a Grant Deed from the beneficiary to the agency is sent to the client for execution prior to the sale.

After receipt of the Grant Deed, if it is a VA loan, the deed is sent for recording immediately. Aztec will order a title policy and forward it to VA within their required time line. If it is a HUD loan, Aztec will await instructions to record the deed to HUD. Prior to the deed recording, Aztec will obtain tax and lien information to verify if title is clear before recording the HUD deed. When all taxes and liens are cleared, with the client’s instructions, the deed is recorded. Once recorded, the title policy is obtained and forwarded to HUD within their required time line. The clients are given copies of the title polices and recorded deeds.

The only post-sale right of redemption occurs when an IRS tax lien is recorded against the property. Once the sale is held, the lien is extinguished, but the IRS retains a 120-day right of redemption. During this time frame, the IRS has the right to purchase the property.

Reinstatement and Payoff
The trustors, owners and junior lienholders have a statutory right to reinstate the loan up to five business days prior to the sale. The beneficiary may waive the five-day limit and accept reinstatement at any time prior to the sale. Reinstatement must be tendered in the amount of all sums due the lender plus all foreclosure fees, costs and any attorney’s fees and costs incurred.

Deficiency Judgment – State of California
The right to a deficiency judgment following the foreclosure sale is limited by anti-deficiency legislation. Under California Code of Civil Procedure Section 508b, there can be no deficiency judgment on foreclosure of a purchase-money mortgage or trust deed. Also, under Section 580d, one cannot seek a deficiency after a non-judicial foreclosure sale.

The anti-deficiency rule does make a distinction between vendors and third-party lenders. The vendor is precluded from seeking a deficiency judgment where his loan secures payment of the balance of the purchase price of real property. In respect to a third-party lender, the anti-deficiency rule applies only to a dwelling of not more than four families given to secure repayment of a loan that was used to pay all or part of the purchase price of such dwelling occupied entirely or in part by the purchaser.

Deficiency judgments may be obtained if the obligation is not subject to California Code of Civil Procedure, Section 580. These cases are outside the scope of this synopsis.

Eviction – State of California
The eviction process is initiated by serving the owners/trustors with a three-day Notice to Quit. All other occupants must be given a sixty-day Notice to Quit.
After the 3/60 day period has expired and if the property is still occupied, a Complaint for Unlawful Detainer is filed. The summons and complaint are sent for service upon all defendants. The requisite personal or substitute service of process may take up to two weeks. In cases where service cannot be effectuated, application is made to the court for permission to serve by posting and mailing the summons and complaint to the property.

Defendants have five days to answer the complaint after service, plus ten extra days if service was made by substitute service or posting and mailing. If the defendants do not respond timely, a default judgment is entered. If defendants file an answer and contest the action, a motion for summary judgment is filed and usually granted within two weeks. In those infrequent cases in which summary judgment is not granted, a trial date is requested. A judgment and writ for possession are submitted to the court within 48 hours of a trial, granting a motion for summary judgment or a default judgment is entered. The court is requested to forward the writ to the marshals for posting on the property. Processing of the writ and posting take approximately two weeks.

The defendants have five days to vacate after posting of the writ. The marshal then returns to the property to physically remove the occupants. The servicer must arrange to have a representative present to take possession and secure the property. The majority of eviction cases that are former owner occupied are completed within 60 to 75 days.

SEE AZTEC FORECLOSURE ‘TRUSTEE’

SAME DETAILS ABOVE FOR NEVADA,
AND SAME DETAILs ABOVE FOR ‘WASHINGTON STATE ONLY’

Washington Staff:

Kelly D. Sutherland
Managing Attorney
360.260.2253 ext 281
ksutherland@logs.com

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments »

SHAREHOLDER CLASS ACTION TO BE FILED AGAINST LPS, DOCX

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Neil Garfield

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary

ANOTHER CASE TO WATCH: When this class action is filed, it will contain allegations and details you probably didn’t know. Like the other class actions and AG actions across the country, make the effort to follow what is in the record. The position of the pretender lenders and documents fabricators changes depending upon who is suing them and what causes of action are in the lawsuit.

By watching the court file and the pleadings and responses and memorandums of law from BOTH sides, you will find material you can use in your own case. This is especially true if the class action is against a defendant that is the same entity that claims to have standing in your case. Any action or allegation or representation by counsel may be used as an admission against interest in your own case, which, if accepted by the Court, is presumptively true.

Lender Processing Services, Inc.

  • Issue: Securities fraud

Introduction

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP is investigating potential illegal conduct as alleged in a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of all persons who purchased or acquired the common stock of Lender Processing Services, Inc. (“Lender Processing” or the “Company”) (NYSE: LPS) between July 29, 2009 and October 4, 2010, inclusive (the “Class Period”).

Background on Lender Processing Services, Inc. Securities Class Litigation

The action, pending in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, was brought against Lender Processing and certain of its officers and directors for violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Lender Processing, headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, describes itself as the mortgage industry’s number one provider of mortgage processing services, settlement services and default solutions, and the nation’s leading provider of integrated data, servicing and technology solutions for mortgage lenders.

The action alleges that during the Class Period, defendants made material misrepresentations and omissions regarding Lender Processing’s business practices, financial condition, and prospects. Specifically, the complaint alleges that defendants failed to disclose: (i) that the Company engaged in improper and deceptive business practices; (ii) that the Company’s subsidiary, Docx, falsified documents through the use of “robo signers”; (iii) that the Company engaged in improper fee sharing arrangements with attorneys and/or law firms; (iv) as a result of the its deceptive business practices, the Company’s reported financial results and financial outlook lacked any reasonable basis in fact and were materially false and misleading.

On October 4, 2010, in response to negative media reports and government investigations of the Company relating to possible forged foreclosure documents it provided to mortgage lenders, Lender Processing issued a press release commenting on purported “mischaracterizations of its services.” As a result, the market learned that Lender Processing’s business practices were potentially deceptive and fraudulent, causing its stock price, which had already declined significantly from its Class Period high of $43.99 in October 2009, to fall an additional $2.72 per share, or 8.6 percent, on October 4, 2010 to close at $28.76 per share. On the following day, the price of Lender Processing stock fell another $1.45 per share, or 5 percent, to close at $27.31 per share, on unusually heavy trading volume.

Contact Lieff Cabraser

If you purchased Lender Processing securities during the Class Period, you may move the Court for appointment as lead plaintiff by no later than January 24, 2011. A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. Your share of any recovery in this action will not be affected by your decision of whether to seek appointment as lead plaintiff. You may retain Lieff Cabraser, or other attorneys, as your counsel in this action.

If you are a Lender Processing shareholder and you would like Lieff Cabraser to review your claim, please click here to contact a securities attorney at Lieff Cabraser or contact securities attorney Sharon M. Lee by telephone toll-free at (800) 541-7358.

About Lieff Cabraser

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Nashville, is a nationally recognized law firm committed to advancing the rights of investors and promoting corporate responsibility.

Since 2003, the National Law Journal has selected Lieff Cabraser as one of the top plaintiffs’ law firms in the nation. In compiling the list, the National Law Journal examined recent verdicts and settlements in addition to overall track records. Lieff Cabraser is one of only two plaintiffs’ law firms in the United States to receive this honor for the last eight consecutive years.

Michael H. Simmons

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

LPS DEPOS REVEAL THE FACTS

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Neil Garfield

submitted by Barbara

LPS DEPOS!!!

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/12/18/full-deposition-transcript-of-lender-processing-services-scott-a-walter-part-2-steven-j-baum-p-c-o-max-gardner-us-trustee/

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/12/18/full-deposition-transcript-of-lender-processing-services-lps-scott-a-walter-part-1/

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/12/18/full-deposition-transcript-of-lps-greg-allen-mers-is-alive/

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/12/16/sff-bombshell-deposition-transcript-of-lps-fidelity-bill-newland/

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments »

DOCX Price List Shows Purchased Perjury

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Neil Garfield

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has uncovered a price list from a company called DocX that specializes in “document recovery solutions.” DocX is the technology platform used by Lender Processing Services to manage a national network of foreclosure mills. The price list includes such things as “Create Missing Intervening Assignment,” $35; “Cure Defective Assignment,” $12.95; “Recreate Entire Collateral File,” $95. Notes Smith:

    [C]reating . . . means fabricating documents out of whole cloth, and look at the extent of the offerings. The collateral file is ALL the documents the trustee (or the custodian as an agent of the trustee) needs to have pursuant to its obligations under the pooling and servicing agreement on behalf of the mortgage backed security holder. This means most importantly the original of the note (the borrower IOU), copies of the mortgage (the lien on the property), the securitization agreement, and title insurance.

How do you recreate the original note if you don’t have it? And all for a flat fee, regardless of the particular facts or the supposed difficulty of digging them up.

All of the mortgages in question were “securitized” – turned into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and sold off to investors. MBS are typically pooled through a type of “special purpose vehicle” called a Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit or “REMIC”, which has strict requirements defined under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code (the Tax Reform Act of 1986). The REMIC holds the mortgages in trust and issues securities representing an undivided interest in them.

Denninger explains that mortgages are pooled into REMIC Trusts as a tax avoidance measure, and that to qualify, the properties must be properly conveyed to the trustee of the REMIC in the year the MBS is set up, with all the paperwork necessary to show a complete chain of title. For some reason, however, that was not done; and there is no legitimate way to create those conveyances now, because the time limit allowed under the Tax Code has passed.

The question is, why weren’t they done properly in the first place? Was it just haste and sloppiness as alleged? Or was there some reason that these mortgages could NOT be assigned when the MBS were formed? Denninger argues that it would not have been difficult to do it right from the beginning. His theory is that documents were “lost” to avoid an audit, which would have revealed to investors that they had been sold a bill of goods — a package of toxic subprime loans very prone to default.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: | 14 Comments »

FORMS: Kentucky RICO Class Action v MERS, GMAC, DEUTSCH, Nationstar, Aurora, BAC, Citi, US Bank, LSR, DOCX, LPS, and attorneys

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Neil Garfield

SERVICES YOU NEED

“To the judges throughout the Commonwealth and to the homeowners, the foreclosing Plaintiff, a servicing company or “Trust” entity appears to be a bank or lender.    This falsity is due to its name in the style of the case.    They are not banks or lenders to the loan.    They are not a beneficiaries under the loan.    They do not possess a Mortgage in the property.    They will never have a right to posses a mortgage in the property.    It would have been a more honest representation for the foreclosing entity to called itself something like “Billy Bob’s Bill Collectors,”

10.03.10KENTUCKY RICOClassActionComplaint

Salient allegations in very well written complaint, although I still have some doubts about whether they will get the class certified. Kentucky is a non-judicial state”

“Come the Representative Plaintiffs, by counsel, on behalf of themselves and others so situated as putative class members pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23.    and for their Class Action Complaint against the name Defendants and yet to be named Defendants, make their claim for treble and punitive damages, costs and attorneys fees under 18 U.S.C. 1962 and 1964, otherwise known as the “racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,” hereinafter (“RICO”) and for all violations of law heretofore claimed.

An ongoing criminal investigation has been in place in the state of Florida by both the Florida Attorney General and the Justice Department.    Upon information and belief, a parallel investigation is ongoing in the state of Kentucky and at least three other states.

Defendant Merscorp, Inc., is a foreign corporation created in or about 1998 by conspirators from the largest banks in the United States in order to undermine and eventually eviscerate long-standing principles of real property law, such as the requirement that any person or entity who seeks to foreclose upon a parcel of real property: 1) be in possession of the original note, 2) Have a publicly recorded mortage in the name of the party for whom the underlying debt is actually owed and who is the holder of the original Promissory Note with legally binding assignments, and 3) possess a written assignment giving he, she or it actual rights to the payments due from the borrower pursuant to both the mortgage and note.

MERS is unregistered and unlicensed to conduct mortgage lending or any other type of business in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and has been and continues to knowingly and intentionally illegally and fraudulently record mortgages and conduct business in Kentucky on a large scale and systematic fashion..

LSR Processing LLC, is a document processing company, based in the state of Ohio to generate loan and mortgage documents.    Upon information and belief it is owned by one or more of the partners of LSR law firm.    LSR Processing was created in order to facilitate the conspiratorial acts of the Defendants in relation to the creation of fraudulent Promissory Notes, Note Assignments, Affidavits and Mortgage Assignments LSR Processing has a pattern and practice of drafting missing mortgage and loan documents and in turn, having them executed by their own employees.

This case arises due to the fact that for the Class Plaintiff and the members of this putative class, their Mortgages and in some cases, the foreclosures that followed, were and will be based upon a mortgage and a note in the mortgage that are not held by the same entity or party and are based upon a mortgage that was flawed at the date of origination of the loan because Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (“MERS”) was named as the beneficiary or nominee of the lender on the mortgage or an assignee and because the naming of MERS as the beneficiary was done for the purpose of deception, fraud, harming the borrower and the theft of revenue from in all one hundred (120) Kentucky Counties through the illegal avoidance of mortgage recording fees. (e.s.)

In the case where a foreclosure has been filed, the entity filing the foreclosure has no pecuniary in the mortgage loan.    The foreclosing entity is a third party.    The entity lacks standing, and most times, the capacity to foreclose.    The entity has no first hand knowledge of the loan, no authority to testify or file affidavits as to the validity of the loan documents or the existence of the loan. The entity has no legal authority to draft mortgage assignments relating to the loan.    The foreclosing entity and its agents regularly commit perjury in relation to their testimony.

The “lender,” on the original Promissory Note was not the lender. The originators of the loan immediately and simultaneously securitized the note.    The beneficial interest in the note was never in the lender.    MERS, acting as the mortgagee or mortgage assignee, was never intended to be the lender nor did it represent the true lender of the funds for the mortgage. The Servicer, like GMAC Mortgage, or some party has or is about to declare the default, is not in privity with the lender.    The true owner or beneficiary of the mortgage loan has not declared a default and usually no longer have an interest in the note. The Servicer is not in privity nor does it have the permission of the beneficial owners of the Note to file suit on their behalf.

The obligations reflected by the note allegedly secured by the MERS mortgage have been satisfied in whole or in part because the investors who furnished the funding for these loans have been paid to the degree that extinguishment of the debts has occurred with the result that there exists no obligations on which to base any foreclosure on the property owned by the Class Plaintiffs. Defendants have and will cloud the title and illegally collect payments and attempt to foreclose upon the property of the Plaintiffs when they do not have lawful rights to foreclose, are not holders in due course of the notes.
42.    Any mortgage loan with a Mortgage recorded in the name of MERS, is at most, an unsecured debt.    The only parties entitled to collect on the unsecured debt would be the holders in due and beneficial owners of the original Promissory Note.
43.    The loan agreements were predatory and the Defendants made false representations to the Class Plaintiffs which induced the Class Plaintiffs to enter into the loans and the Defendants knew the representations were false when they were made.

In these cases, the property could be foreclosed by default, sold and transferred without ANY real party in interest having ever come to Court and with out the name of the “Trust” or the owners of the mortgage loan, ever having been revealed. Many times the Servicer will fraudulently keep the proceeds of the foreclosure sale under the terms of a Pooling and Servicing Agreement as the “Trust” no longer exists or has been paid off.    The Court and the property owner will never know that the property was literally stolen.
52.    After the property is disposed of in foreclosure, the real owners of the mortgage loan are still free to come to Court and lay claim to the mortgage loan for a second time.    These parties who may actually be owed money on the loan are now also the victims of the illegal foreclosure.    The purchaser of the property in foreclosure has a bogus and clouded title, as well as all other unsuspecting buyers down the line.    Title Insurance would be impossible to write on the property.

Although the Plaintiffs attempting to foreclosure refer to themselves as “Trustees” of a “Trust,” the entities are not “Trustees” nor “Trusts” as defined by Kentucky law.    Neither are the entities registered as Business Trusts or Business Trustees as required by Kentucky law. In every case, where one of these MBS have come to a Kentucky Court the entity foreclosing lacked capacity sue to file suit in the State of Kentucky.    There is no “Trust Agreement” in existence.    The entity filing has utilized a Kentucky legal term it has no right to use for the sole purpose of misleading the Court.
55.    Although the “Trust” listed may be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) as a Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (“REMIC”), more often than it is not properly registered in any state of the union as a Corporation, Business Trust, or any other type of corporate entity.    Therefore, the REMIC does not legally exist for purposes of capacity for filing a law suit in Kentucky or any other State.

The transfer of mortgage loans into the trust after the “cut off date” (in the example 2006), destroys the trust’s REMIC tax exempt status, and these “Trusts” (and potentially the financial entities who created them) would owe millions of dollars to the IRS and the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet as the income would be taxed at of one hundred percent (100%).
64.    Subsequent to the “cut off date” listed in the prospectus, whereby the mortgage notes and security for these notes had to be identified, and Note and Mortgages transferred,    and    thereafter, the pool is permanently closed to future transfers of mortgage assets.
65.    All Class members have mortgage loans which were recorded in the name of MERS and/or for which were attempted through a Mortgage Assignment to be transferred into a REMIC after that REMIC’s “cut off” and “closing dates.”
66.    In all cases, the lack of acquisition of the Class Members’ mortgage loans violates the prospectus presented to the investors and the IRS REMIC requirements.
67.    If an MBS Trust was audited by the IRS and was found to have violated any of the REMIC requirements, it would lose its REMIC status and all back taxes would be due and owing to the IRS as well as the state of Kentucky.    As previously stated, one hundred percent (100%) of the income will be taxed.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Investigation Highlights Challenges to Foreclosure Docs

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Neil Garfield

Got this off the “Mortgage Servicing News” newsletter:
June 16, 2010
Investigation Highlights Challenges to Foreclosure Docs

By Kate Berry

The backlash is intensifying against banks and mortgage servicers that try to foreclose on homes without all their ducks in a row.

Because the notes were often sold and resold during the boom years, many financial companies lost track of the documents. Now, legal officials are accusing companies of forging the documents needed to reclaim the properties.

Recently, the Florida Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the use of “bogus assignment” documents by Lender Processing Services Inc. and its former parent, Fidelity National Financial Inc. And a state judge in Florida has ordered a hearing to determine whether M&T Bank Corp. should be charged with fraud after it changed the assignment of a mortgage note for one borrower three separate times.

“Mortgage assignments are being created out of whole cloth just for the purposes of showing a transfer from one entity to another,” said James Kowalski Jr., an attorney in Jacksonville, Fla., who represents the borrower in the M&T case.

“Banks got away from very basic banking rules because they securitized millions of loans and moved them so quickly,” Kowalski said.

In many cases, Kowalski said, it has become impossible to establish when a mortgage was sold, and to whom, so the servicers are trying to recreate the paperwork, right down to the stamps that financial companies use to verify when a note has changed hands.

Some mortgage processors are “simply ordering stamps from stamp makers,” he said, and are “using those as proof of mortgage assignments after the fact.”

Such alleged practices are now generating ire from the bench.

“The court has been misled by the plaintiff from the beginning,” Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Traynor said in a motion dismissing M&T’s foreclosure action with prejudice and ordering the hearing.

The Marshall Watson law firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which represents M&T in the case, declined to comment and the bank said it could not comment.

In a notice on its website, the Florida attorney general said it is examining whether Docx, an Alpharetta, Ga., unit of Lender Processing Services, forged documents so foreclosures could be processed more quickly.

“These documents are used in court cases as ‘real’ documents of assignment and presented to the court as so, when it actually appears that they are fabricated in order to meet the demands of the institution that does not, in fact, have the necessary documentation to foreclose according to law,” the notice said.

Docx is the largest lien release processor in the United States working on behalf of banks and mortgage lenders.

Peter Sadowski, an executive vice president and general counsel at Fidelity National in Fort Lauderdale, said that more than a year ago his company began requiring that its clients provide all paperwork before the company would process title claims.

Lender Processing Services, which was spun off from Fidelity National two years ago, did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday. The company disclosed in its annual report in February that federal prosecutors were reviewing the business processes of Docx. The company said it was cooperating with the investigators.

“This is systemic,” said April Charney, a senior staff attorney at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and a member of the Florida Supreme Court’s foreclosure task force.

“Banks can’t show ownership for many of these securitized loans,” Charney continued. “I call them empty-sack trusts, because in the rush to securitize, the originating lender failed to check the paper trail and now they can’t collect.”

In Florida, Georgia, Maryland and other states where the foreclosure process must be handled through the courts, hundreds of borrowers have challenged lenders’ rights to take their homes. Some judges have invalidated mortgages, giving properties back to borrowers while lenders appeal.

In February, the Florida state Supreme Court set a new standard stipulating that before foreclosing, a lender had to verify it had all the proper documents. Lenders that cannot produce such papers can be fined for perjury, the court said.

Kowalski said the bigger problem is that mortgage servicers are working “in a vacuum,” handing out foreclosure assignments to third-party firms such as LPS and Fidelity.

“There’s no meeting to get everybody together and make sure they have their ducks in a row to comply with these very basic rules that banks set up many years ago,” Kowalski said. “The disconnect occurs not just between units within the banks, but among the servicers, their bank clients and the lawyers.”

He said the banking industry is “being misserved,” because mortgage servicers and the lawyers they hire to represent them in foreclosure proceedings are not prepared.

“We’re tarring banks that might obviously do a decent job, and the banks are complicit because they hired the servicers,” Kowalski said.

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