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Eric Mains: #MeToo- Is Social Justice a Viable Alternative to a Flawed and Compromised Judicial System?

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Neil Garfield

# MeToo and #MineToo revolución!

By Eric Mains, J.D, Former Federal Bank Regulator

In the last few months we have seen a literal wave of the wealthy and influential falling from grace, losing their positions of power and ducking for cover as their conduct becomes scrutinized in media and social media. They have become keenly aware if they have something to hide in their past or present that maybe, just maybe, the specter of justice, fate, retribution… call it what you will, but a reckoning of some sort may finally be coming for them.

The key difference from what we have experienced in the recent past is this is not just a few token individuals who are intentionally being sacrificed by other peers just to placate the masses, to give us a sense that there is justice out there, while a majority of the remaining transgressors remain free to go about business as usual. Until recently perpetrators of sexual harassment could expect their violations to either go unreported, or if reported by a victim to a typically “helpful” HR representative at a major corporation, would likely result in that persons termination shortly afterwards or a hushed payout and dismissal from employment. So, what’s changed? Why this sudden firestorm in the specific areas of sexual harassment & civil rights?

Well for one, the rise of social media giving voice to those who were previously either too intimidated or too ashamed to go through the regular channels of our justice system or report incidents to mainstream media. The lessening of any stigma attached with coming forward over allegations of sexual misconduct or workplace harassment to be sure; but perhaps more overlooked has been the slowly building tension from all corners of America with a justice system that over the past few decades has become ever more inaccessible and ever more compromised for certain victims.

The courts in America have slowly devolved (or evolved, depending on your perspective) into a long, drawn-out, pay-for-play system which favors those with the most money and connections. They can hire consultants to figure out how to pick and influence juries, and to try and maneuver into the most favorable venues with the most sympathetic judges. Whether the offense is sexual misconduct, civil rights violations, foreclosure fraud, etc., in many cases if the transgressors have enough resources, they are likely to see a deminimus sentence and little punishment handed out. This disparity in a lack of justice for victims, as compared with other areas of the law, has long existed due to the perceptions surrounding the victims by those in the public and in the system as well.

The above may sound cynical to some, or simply a self-evident statement of the way things are to others. Those in the former category, who are true believers in our current justice system, may think that movements like #MeToo are just mob justice, devoid of the kind of impartial and logical dissemination of fact based justice they believe our current system provides. To them, it represents chaos, it threatens the foundational platitude that, “We are a nation of laws”, with a system that meets out justice in a generally fair and impartial manner while ensuring the innocent aren’t wrongly accused or convicted. That would be a valid sentiment-IF backed factually by a system that did function as such a majority of the time. Most would simply point out to the supporters of our current system that unless they have had blinders on for the past 200 years, they would notice our system has done a pretty haphazard job at providing for such an idealized form of justice in practice.

Don’t get me wrong, having a law degree and having worked as a government regulator I want to be able to have more faith in our justice system and the rule of law, faith that we do have mostly impartial and fair judges, and a court system accessible and open for equal justice to all. I still remember from my law school days something that particularly offended me at the time, when one of my professors stated matter-of-factly to our property law class the futility of assuming case law or precedent was necessarily going to ensure victory in the court room, “Unfortunately, most of the time the law is what the judge says it is, heh, heh, haauurrgh”. In hindsight, Professor Rooney was right, and the reality of our justice system keeps smacking I & my former classmates in the face daily just to drive home that point. Looking at a crosscut of some recent data and analysis of our nations various court systems shows the general problems petitioners/consumers/victims run into once inside it.

Consider access to the judicial system: In a Propublica study of bankruptcy filings, it found for those residing in majority black zip codes who file for bankruptcy, the odds of having their cases dismissed (and failing to attain lasting relief) were more than twice as high as those of debtors living in mostly white zip codes. Why? In general, it was driven by money. Impoverished filers could not afford to file for the costlier Chapter 7 cases as opposed to Chapter 13’s, resulting in less of their unaffordable debt loads being relieved. They, ironically, could not afford to get lasting relief from the bankruptcy system because of immediate financial distress. See https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bankruptcy-data-analysis . A facial review of our justice system shows one in which only those with income below stated poverty lines can access free legal help in general, and that help is generally outgunned and outmanned. Got $200-$350 to file your court case and pay for your attorney fees/retainer in a civil matter otherwise? Not likely, and a pretty good chunk of those between the $20K-50K range really can’t afford the cost of entry in civil litigation, and are quickly priced out of the game when litigating against corporations. Why not take advantage of some impartial arbitration if you can’t sue?….don’t make me laugh.

How about impartiality in judicial decisionmaking? In a recent paper, Judging the Judiciary by the Numbers: Empirical Research on Judges, by Jeffrey Rachlinski (Cornell) & Andrew Wistrich (CA Central Dist. Ct.), the authors found that just like most humans, judges succumb to various “mental shortcuts” that can lead them to mistakes. The paper’s abstract reads “Do judges make decisions that are truly impartial? A wide range of experimental and field studies reveal that several extra-legal factors influence judicial decision making. Demographic characteristics of judges and litigants affect judges’ decisions.

Judges also rely heavily on intuitive reasoning in deciding cases, making them vulnerable to the use of mental shortcuts that can lead to mistakes. Furthermore, judges sometimes rely on facts outside the record and rule more favorably towards litigants who are more sympathetic or with whom they share demographic characteristics. On the whole, judges are excellent decision makers, and sometimes resist common errors of judgment that influence ordinary adults. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests that judges are vulnerable to systematic deviations from the ideal of judicial impartiality.” See Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 17-32, July 2017 at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2979342

Racial and gender discrimination in decisionmaking? In Examining Empathy: Discrimination, Experience, and Judicial Decisionmaking, by Laura Beth Nielsen & Jill Weinberg of Northwestern University, a 2012 paper at http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cms/documents/weinberg_nielsen_-_examining_empathy.pdf , the researchers reported that white federal judges are about four times more likely to dismiss race discrimination cases outright, and are half as likely as black federal judges to rule in favor of people alleging racial harassment in the workplace.

The authors argue this is because African American judges have likely experienced discrimination themselves, and therefore they can recognize more complex and subtle forms of racial harassment. How about gender bias in sexual assault cases? “A Baltimore detective said 90% of sexual-assault cases are ‘bulls—,’ but that’s just the start of the department’s problems” from http://www.businessinsider.com/justice-department-slams-baltimore-police-department-gender-bias-2016-8 …and here https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-substantial-evidence-gender-bias-missoula-county-attorney-s-office .

A DOJ investigation in Missoula in 2014 noted the following “Despite their prevalence in the community, sexual assaults of adult women are given low priority in the County Attorney’s Office; The County Attorney does not provide Deputy County Attorneys with the basic knowledge and training about sexual assault necessary to effectively and impartially investigate and prosecute these cases; The County Attorney’s Office generally does not develop evidence in support of sexual assault prosecutions, either on its own or in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies; Adult women victims, particularly victims of non-stranger sexual assault and rape, are often treated with disrespect, not informed of the status of their case and revictimized by the process; and The County Attorney’s Office routinely fails to engage in the most basic communication about its cases of sexual assault with law enforcement and advocacy partners.” This is a 2014 report of just one city…ever wonder why women from the 1970’s, 80’s & 90’s often never bothered/dared reporting any assaults until now? Enough said.

Racial discrimination in sentencing? In a first of its kind report from 2014-2015 found here http://projects.heraldtribune.com/bias/sentencing/ The Herald-Tribune in Florida spent a year reviewing tens of millions of records in two state databases. Among the stated findings: “Florida’s sentencing system is broken. When defendants score the same points in the formula used to set criminal punishments — indicating they should receive equal sentences — blacks spend far longer behind bars. There is no consistency between judges in Tallahassee and those in Sarasota. • There’s little oversight of judges in FL. The courts keep a wealth of data on criminal defendants. So does the prison system. But no one uses the data to review racial disparities in sentencing. Judges themselves don’t know their own tendencies. Across FL, when a white and black defendant score the same points for the same offense, judges give the black defendant a longer prison stay in 60% of felony cases. For the most serious first-degree crimes, judges sentence blacks to 68% more time than whites with identical points. For burglary, it’s 45% more. For battery, it’s 30%.”

Consistency in decision making and opinions based on case precedent? In a Nevada Law Journal paper entitled Stare Decisis In The Inferior Courts Of The United States, by Joseph W. Mead, his abstract notes “While circuit courts are bound to follow circuit precedent under “law of the circuit” the practice among federal district courts is more varied and uncertain, routinely involving little or no deference to their own precedent” While I simply don’t have room for his full analysis here, I will note he concludes his paper in part as follows “But we are now left with a puzzle. If district courts indeed possess the power to either adopt the law of the district or require some other level of deference to precedent, and there are good reasons to do so, why have so few followed this path? I think the answer is not that district courts are choosing not to, but that they have not yet given the matter consideration.”

Foreclosure Bias? That’s an entire book, just ask David Dayen who wrote Chain of Title, or Abigail Field who accurately noted back in 2011 http://fortune.com/2011/04/18/fighting-a-foreclosure-suit-hope-for-the-right-judge/ “Not all judges are confronting the issues in the same way. Many are adopting procedures to stop any fraudulent behavior by the banks and are investigating questionable documents submitted in their cases. Other judges are turning a blind eye, at best.”

While I will save that aspect for a near future article, I will simply note that some judges going beyond turning a blind eye; they are straying into obstruction of justice, using a “selectively creative” doctoring of fact patterns from homeowner complaints to suit their narratives when issuing rulings, or just outright failing to address motions to correct error or address black letter law when challenged by attorneys. Par for the course, especially in the federal court system, which took a shamefully compromised former AG Eric Holder’s call to consider his TBTF/sympathy for the devil ideology in favor of Wall Street banks, and the fed courts ran like Usain Bolt with it (All while Holder’s temporarily vacant office was being kept warm at Covington & Burling, and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac were being systemically looted by the Obama administration). A recent article discusses how the black community and consumers suffered in the name of this flawed ideology http://peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/12/07/destruction-of-black-wealth-during-the-obama-presidency/ by Ryan Cooper and Matt Bruenig)

I know what many are thinking at this point: “So What? What are you telling us we don’t already know? The justice system is not perfect, it never will be, but it’s functional, and it’s the best we have to work with!” It would be the last part of that sentence that I would wholeheartedly disagree with, and why a platform like #MeToo is now becoming an important, and I think very valid, social justice alternative. Our system is not the best it can be in part because we have come to accept the fallacy that judges, politicians, prosecutors, police, CEO’s, talk news hosts, etc., those who help to shape, influence, or enforce our justice system in different ways, should be held to a different level of accountability, job performance, and social review than the rest of society.

You screw up on your job, make a bad decision that costs the company, hurts clients/constituents, and choose to allow an illegal or immoral activity to take place?-FIRED! Those in the aforementioned categories? Insider trading based on stock tips you get in office, OK! Screw over constituents/rear end a petitioner because his mother dresses him funny? That’s valid! Harass your office assistant or underling? You gave them a job, and they knew the game, grin and bear it! I could go on, but need not. Not only do those with access and who benefit from the system not want change, but those who work within it often don’t recognize the need for change (See Mead & FL Herald Tribune report, supra). Those within it don’t tend to question the biases that have been ingrained in them when they do make decisions (See Rachlinski, Nielsen, etc., supra). They are subject to undue influence by those with access and money who know how to “work” the justice system.

I routinely quote, and will continue to quote Frederick Douglass, because 150 years later the reality he highlighted has not changed one iota, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Church Frederick! If we must accept that our system is biased, broken, and not soon to change, how the hell can we expect to wrangle justice out of it when all avenues for influencing seem out of our control? That’s where Douglass recognized the simplicity of the truth, and so does #MeToo-It’s demand! It’s fear of a collective and sizeable retribution for ignoring social justice & common morality. It’s creating consequences outside of a non-functional system that ultimately can lead to change in that system. Social media has given a voice to those who have not had a simple, affordable, accessible platform to demand justice denied them. Technology has now made that possible, and another old adage has proven itself to be as true as ever-“Cockroaches scurry under the light”

Can the wrong perpetrators of alleged crimes be identified or wrongly harassed by a # MeToo movement? Yes, but that risk is also true in the current system. Laws are in place to protect or compensate the innocent or wrongly accused, as well as punish those who knowingly make false statements. If the law and our justice system is a search for truth and justice, then maybe # MeToo will help expedite the administration of this in a system where it has been delayed and denied those without money and a voice. Maybe it’s time for a few more platforms like it from civil rights violations to fraudulent foreclosure….Maybe it’s time to remind those in our system who they are there to work for, and demand they do a better job of it… to demand a change from them and our system instead of quietly submitting…. Viva la # MeToo revolución!

Editor’s note: Perhaps the wronged homeowner’s call to arms simply starts with a simple hashtag called #MineToo. If you have been victimized by a loan servicer or foreclosed on fraudulently tweet #MineToo!!!

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: #metoo, #minetoo, bank regulator eric mains, eric mains fdc, foreclosure fraud, lendinglies, Livinglies, NEIL GARFIELD | 6 Comments »

The Phantoms of Foreclosure: Phantom Creditors, Trusts and Debt

Posted on December 9, 2017 by Neil Garfield

by Jay Guggenheim

Hurry! Sign up for the ‘Death of a Salesman’ seminar on Monday at 4pm Eastern here.

Neil Garfield, attorney Charles Marshall and investigator Bill Paatalo discuss how mortgage servicers are collecting phantom debt on behalf of phantom creditors by creating fabricated and forged documents on the Neil Garfield show. Servicers counterfeit mortgage notes and pursue collection of this ‘debt’- but who do they send the proceeds they collect to, if there is no true creditor or funded trust that can be identified, or can accept payments from the servicer?

It is now known that:

The banks funded themselves instead of the trusts which never really existed (phantom trusts).
The banks covered up their theft of investor money by originating or buying loans with investor money and not trust money.
The theft has been the subject of settlements in which the owner of the debt — the investors — is paid off with cash and “resecuritization” in which actual loans were “sold” into a new trust (Like Zuni) by a party who STILL didn’t own them (phantom sales).
The proceeds of judicial and nonjudicial sales do not go to investors but back to the “underwriters” of nonexistent worthless certificates issued by nonexistent trusts that are registered nowhere and unfunded (phantom trusts).
The underwriter acts as “Master Servicer” for the phantom trust and collects “servicer advances” that were neither advances nor from the servicer, but rather a return of investor capital even if it was OTHER investors.
The “Trustee” of the Trust is not a Trustee either in writing nor in practice (phantom trustees).
We know the banks are acting on their own behalf and not on behalf of the investors or the trusts.

What we still don’t know- is where do the proceeds collected by the servicers from homeowners go- if there is no Trustee or Trust?

The servicers are trying a ‘hide in plain site’ strategy by deliberately adding new players to the chain of title and switching servicers so another opaque level is created.

Servicers are often changed the moment a homeowner goes into default. Therefore, if litigation ensues, the servicer won’t have to reveal who payments are being forwarded to because no payments are being made, and
Servicers often change immediately after a foreclosure sale occurs so it isn’t disclosed where the sale proceeds went to.

Therefore, Neil Garfield suggests that homeowners and attorneys subpoena, not demand in discovery, who receives/received payments from the servicer, and name not only the current servicer in litigation, but former servicers as well. Charles Marshall points out that he sees this servicer-switch particularly with homeowners who prove difficult or litigious, and to create an additional layer to conceal the truth. The servicer transfers are an attempt to launder the papertrail. He also says that this strategy makes it more difficult to discover who the true lender at origination was.

Neil Garfield says this plan is standard operating procedure now and that he can “imagine a room full of lawyers trying to plan out a strategy to confuse the homeowners, attorneys and courts- first they must make the money and ownership transfers difficult to understand, and then they must devise a system that makes it difficult for pro se litigants to get the information they need to create a defense.”

Back in 2007 and 2008 Garfield said he was sending out QWRs on behalf of homeowners who were not in default and saw an interesting pattern. The homeowners who were current, and not in foreclosure, would receive letters providing a payoff amount, but no copies of note or assignments; but homeowners in foreclosure would receive payoff amounts including endorsed notes and assignments, to establish a credible chain-of-title. Thus, those in foreclosure received a full QWR response including fabricated and robosigned documents that created the appearance of legitimacy.

Neil Garfield says that the banks and servicers have created an Industry of Fraud where people can create an entity, purchase lists of old debt that may or may not be valid, and attempt to collect. Most people will tell the debt-collector to prove it or go to hell, but there is a percentage of poor, disadvantaged or unsophisticated people who will pay up. Mortgage servicers and REMIC trustees are following the same business model by attempting to collect on debt they can’t prove they own without resorting to fabricated and forged documents.

Investigator Bill Paatalo says that in all of the years of investigating the trusts he has not yet seen any evidence that the trusts were funded or the entity foreclosing on the home purchased the debt legitimately. In litigation, he never sees a credit or certificate holder identified and the banks rely on smoke and mirrors to collect on the phantom debt. He said that he recently had a client that was not in default but was curious about who owned his loan. Bill’s client received a response from Aurora emphatically stating that the note had never been transferred and would never be transferred unless there was a default. Aurora was perplexed why a homeowner that was not in default was concerned about the ownership of his loan. Paatalo claims he has called the GSEs and Hud who refuse to return his phone calls so he can verify a Power of Attorney. He says it is clear that the Power of Attorneys are being substituted for the missing assignment of mortgages- because Power of Attorneys are typically not recorded in the county records.

Phantom debt is being collected on behalf of phantom creditors and the nonexistent party is being papered over by pledging the loan to a trust that doesn’t exist, as agents of agents of agents, and false Power of Attorneys and Attorneys in Fact. The scheme creates such a convoluted ‘fact’ pattern so that homeowners and their attorneys must try to untangle the ownership knot thus requiring hours and hours of work. Garfield points out that this layering, or laddering as Goldman Sachs calls it, id a deliberate attempt by the banks, to confuse whoever is bothering them.

For example, there may be a signature and the name of a corporation on a document, below it will show Bank of America as successor to Lasalle Bank as Trustee, as Trustee for XYZ trust, as Attorney In Fact, for x entity. This deliberate obfuscation should be brought to the attention of the court and is a strategy to push out time and space- to buy time and also for attorneys to create additional billing hours.

Neil Garfield calls this strategy of the major investment banks, the “real thiefs in interest” because they do not posses a party who can be identified as the “true party in interest” as required to declare a default or foreclose. The investment banks create puppet attorneys who do their dirty work, and because of this risk, the lawfirms facilitating this crime are paid handsomely.

Bill Paatalo recently who is an expert on the ‘hide, conceal, and cover’ strategies by the banks, recently obtained a copy of a itemized settlement statement from a lawfirm defending a USBank/Chase foreclosure. The bank had paid over $450k and over 1,224 billable hours to defend against a simple foreclosure action, to buy a Cynthia Riley issue and hide the fact there was no certificate holders. Paatalo points out that the head attorney was paid $628 an hour for four months of full 40-hour work weeks. It is likely the mortgage wasn’t a fraction of this amount, but it shows that the banks are afraid. He points out that it is unlikely that any investors would authorize that type of expenditure if they existed- but would look for an equitable solution.

Garfield says to take the billing expense issue one step further, and states that attorney fees are deliberately ran up by law firms defending the banks due to the risk of the work being done. Attorneys submitting forged and fabricated documents are putting their careers on the line, therefore they build in a profit for undertaking that much risk.

Additionally, the lawfirms have software that can recreate the record, cover up bonuses, move numbers around and create legitimate billing hours that were never done. This ‘bonus’ is overlooked by the bank as compensation for risk taking. Listen to the audio recording above to listen to investigator Bill Paatalo discuss a recent tax settlement where the certificate holders state that they have no right to recover from the homeowner, and no right to enforce the mortgage or note.

And lastly, Neil Garfield educates homeowners that the chances of proving in court ‘what really happened’ will likely not happen for sometime, if ever, and the goal of the homeowner and his or her attorney should be to reveal the GAPS in what is being assumed as the foreclosure path.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: Bill Paatalo, charles marshall, death of a salesman, Livinglies, phantoms of foreclosure | 3 Comments »

The Neil Garfield Show: Foreclosure Q & A. Have a Question? Neil Garfield wants to hear from you!

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Neil Garfield

Q & A with Neil Garfield

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the The Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

Co-hosted with attorney Charles Marshall.

Do you have a perplexing question about foreclosure, securitization or chain-of-title issues?

Neil Garfield will answer questions from callers. Please keep your question brief and limit yourself to one question so other guests may have an opportunity to speak with Neil. Information provided is for educational purposes only and is NOT intended as legal advice. Neil recommends you meet with an experienced attorney in your jurisdiction for guidance.

The Neil Garfield blog at www.livinglies.wordpress.com is the nation’s premiere website for information on fighfting wrongful foreclosure, identifying predatory bank practices, securitization issues and .chain-of-title issues.

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Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: attorney charles marshall, lendinglies, Livinglies, neil garfield foreclosure show | Leave a comment »

Investigator Bill Paatalo: Nationstar Conducts “Bulk Note Sales” Without The “Notes?”

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Neil Garfield

Originally Posted by Bill Paatalo on Oct 26, 2017 at www.bpinvestigativeagency.com

In 2013, investors in six “RALI Series” Trusts filed a complaint in New York against their Master Servicer (Nationstar Mortgage, LLC) for conducting “Bulk Note Sales” of non-performing loans owned by the trusts for its own benefit; specifically to recoup upwards of a billion-dollars worth of servicing advance receivables. The Plaintiff / Investors accused Nationstar of conducting these “Bulk Note Sales” without having any ownership or requisite authority to do so. (See: KIRP LLC V Nationstar Mortgage LLC).

Per the complaint:

“INTRODUCTION
1. KIRP is a significant investor in certificates issued by six residential mortgage backed security trusts sponsored by Residential Accredit Loans, Inc. (the “RALI Trusts”). KIRP brings this action against Nationstar, the Master Servicer for the RALI Trusts, for its liquidating loans owned by the trusts through on-line auctions at fire sale prices without authorization and in blatant abdication of its servicing duties under the governing contracts.

2. As the Master Servicer, the RALI Trusts pay Nationstar to “service” the mortgage loans owned by the trusts in the best interests of the trusts and their certificateholders. This includes working to maximize the recoveries on each of the mortgage loans through enumerated actions detailed in Pooling and Servicing Agreements (the “Servicing Agreements”), which set forth the Master Servicer’s duties. However, rather than fulfilling its responsibilities to maximize recoveries, Nationstar has recently embarked on a campaign to benefit its own interests at the expense of the RALI Trusts and their certificateholders, through auctioning off the trusts’ mortgage loans in bulk (“Bulk Note Sales”) for amounts that are a fraction of the loans’ unpaid balances or the value of the properties securing the loans. While these Bulk Note Sales injure KIRP and the RALI Trusts’ other certificateholders by dissipating the assets of the RALI Trusts, they provide multiple benefits to Nationstar, including through allowing them to more quickly recoup certain advances they made on the mortgage loans as part of their servicing duties. KIRP seeks to enjoin Nationstar from engaging in any further Bulk Note Sales in breach of its duties and to recover damages for the Bulk Note Sales that have already occurred.”

When I read this complaint, a couple questions immediately jumped out at me regarding the so-called “notes” being auctioned off by a party that doesn’t own said notes. What did Nationstar disclose to the “purchasers” at auction as to their rights to sell the notes? And, were the “original notes” actually delivered to the bulk-sale purchasers by Nationstar as a non-owner of the notes?

I went to the SEC and located the 424(B)(5) Prospectus filing for one of the named trusts in the lawsuit (RALI 2006-QO1). (See: http://www.secinfo.com/dsvRa.vC1.htm#7fll).

Here’s what the Trust disclosed as to the custody of the loan files on P.S-108:

Custodial Arrangements                                                          

      The trustee will appoint Wells Fargo Bank,  N.A., to 
serve as custodian of the mortgage  loans.  The  custodian is 
not an affiliate of the  depositor,  the master servicer or the 
sponsor. No servicer will have custodial  responsibility for 
the mortgage loans.  The custodian  will maintain mortgage 
loan files that contain  originals of the notes,  mortgages,  
assignments and allonges in vaults located at the sponsor's 
premises in Minnesota. Only the custodian has access to these 
vaults. A shelving and filing system segregates the files 
relating to the mortgage loans from other assets serviced 
by the master servicer.

If Nationstar had no authority per the trust instruments to sell, liquidate, and convert the notes for its own personal gain, it’s hard to believe that Wells Fargo would release the “original” notes in bulk to Nationstar for these purposes. The likely scenario is that the bulk purchasers were delivered copies of the notes from Nationstar’s servicing system that were pawned off as “originals.”

This goes to the heart of what I have suspected for years now in regards to these “bulk non-performing loan purchases” by debt buyers. The “Sellers” often have no rights to sell these loans, and the “Buyers” are purchasing bogus collateral files with no “original notes” and no verifiable chains of title.

Judge Mosman Quote - Re-Default and Authentic Note

Contact Investigator Bill Paatalo at www.bpinvestigationagency.com

Private Investigator

BP Investigative Agency, LLC

bill.bpia@gmail.com

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: Bill Paatalo, investigator bill paatalo, lendinglies, Livinglies, mortgage fraud, Nationstar | 11 Comments »

How You Can Easily Research State Records For Evidence Of Unremediated LPS Robo-Signing Fraud

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Neil Garfield

How You Can Easily Research State Records For Evidence Of Unremediated LPS Robo-Signing Fraud*[1]

By Eric Mains, Former FDIC Team Leader

Introduction

Many of the banks conducting foreclosures 2008-2013 relied on a few large foreclosure mills to litigate cases for them, and still do. For large banks, it made sense–consolidate your cases with specialized firms employing dozens of attorneys/paralegals, one-stop shop the process. Most of these firms from 2008-2013 used a version of Lender Processing Services (“LPS”) Desktop software program to create needed assignments for claimed holders of loans (Extra stress on the “claimed” part!). Some estimates put LPS’s dominance of the foreclosure software marketplace at 80% of the market during that period. LPS helped banks retain attorneys for foreclosures, and not surprisingly often chose large foreclosure mills to partner with- mills that often times had much in common with the infamous David Stern firm in Florida.

Stern’s firm became infamous for performing foreclosures using robo-signed/ forged documents when parties claiming holder in due course status lacked one inconvenient little thing–proper chain of title backing up their alleged home loans. The Stern law firm was ultimately brought down by its malfeasance after being investigated by the Florida AG’s office and sued successfully in multiple class actions. See http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/judge-class-action-status-for-homeowner-lawsuit-against-florida-law-firm/cQbMHYSVMFUCZOILofW10K/.

The robo-signing scandal was also brought front and center in modern pop culture when CBS’s 60 Minutes newsmagazine aired an episode on the infamous use of “Linda Green” by an LPS unit as a pseudonym to endorse thousands of invalid note assignments. The episode told the story of Lynn Szymoniak’s successful investigation and qui tam lawsuit exposing the rampant use of robo-signing/forgery by banks and foreclosure mills to pursue illegal foreclosure actions. See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whistleblower-facing-foreclosure-wins-18-million/ .

In 2013 a widely touted Consent Judgment (CJ) by the various State AG’s offices claimed to have resolved LPS’s robo-signing practices, see http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2013/2013-01-31-lps-settlement.html . The problem became however, if there were 1000’s of these robo-signed documents out there, how exactly did the AG’s offices follow up to confirm the documents were in fact remediated? How did they confirm the robo-signing/forgery by LPS had stopped? This was what the CJ required, and the State AG’s offices were to get quarterly reports from LPS confirming their compliance through January 2018. So why are the State AG’s offices refusing to release copies of these compliance reports to this day?

Why have they never published a list of the names of known robo-signers to be distributed to homeowners or their attorneys? Or released data on how many homeowners received required remediation under the settlement? Strange behavior from the office(s) of AG’s who collected millions under the settlement with LPS, and claimed a “Win” for consumers…or maybe not so strange if they simply failed to do anything TO follow up on the CJ. So what can the average person, or potentially a class action attorney, do to see if LPS actually complied with the CJ and remediated documents BEFORE foreclosing on homeowners, as the CJ required? Below is a basic guide one can use to get started.

STEP #1- Identify the Foreclosure Mill Attorney

Attorneys in every state are identified by a unique Attorney number (see ex. below). This makes it very easy to track the cases they have handled if your state has an online database. Unfortunately for large foreclosure mills, this also makes it extremely easy to track the specific foreclosure cases their attorney’s have handled because that’s basically the only kind of cases they handled. Alternately, you can do a search by name of bank, name of trust, etc., in most state databases, but the attorney ID number seems to work best when concentrating on one firm. The example I use below is from the State of Indiana, and uses the IN public roll of attorney database, as well as its Odyssey case management system which allows the user to search non-confidential cases. Most states do provide similar such free database systems to the public. The case lists usually go back up to a decade or more.

(Example from Indiana website at https://courtapps.in.gov/rollofattorneys )

Indiana Roll of Attorneys

The Roll of Attorneys is the listing of all attorneys licensed to practice law in Indiana. Search for attorneys by name or attorney number. Each attorney’s record includes license status, disciplinary history, contact information, and any other names the attorney has practiced under.

Top of Form

Search for an Indiana attorney:

By Name :

Last Name (required)

First Name

Attorney Number:

99999-99

Bottom of Form

Results

Kemper , Lawrence Joseph 18029-29 Carmel IN 10-31-1994 Active In Good Standing

STEP #1a- Search For Cases the Firm/Attorney Handled.

The mortgage foreclosure cases will be marked as such, with all litigation information available when you click on the details. Once you do that, you have party names, filings, home address of the house being foreclosed, etc. So, say you are looking for all foreclosures handled by a foreclosure mill attorney from 2008-2010, or end of 2012 through 2014? Easy to sort out using a database like above, just refine your search fields.

Prepare a list of foreclosure cases filed by your subject attorney/firm. You will want to narrow it down by the relevant dates LPS & its attorneys were required to remediate documents (2008-2010), as well as looking at foreclosures instigated and completed between early to mid-2012 through end of 2013 (or in some cases later). Why? If you later find evidence of robo-signing and backdating post January 2013, this helps establish the foreclosure mill attorneys and LPS directly violated the CJ by moving ahead with a foreclosure using documents they knew violated its terms. With your list of cases, names, etc., you’re ready for Step #3.

https://public.courts.in.gov/mycase/#/vw/Search

Search Results

Attorney Search
Attorney Search
First:
Middle:
Last:
Sounds-like:
Business:
Attorney#:	18029-29
DOB:
Court:
Limit To:	Civil
File Date:
Status:

List
Hide List Details Show List Details
Table

1 to 20 of 2449

by File Date, Descending

1 2 3 4 5

JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association v. Glen David Johnson, Glen David Johnson, Any Unknown Occupants et al

49D07-1709-MF-034571

Court

Marion Superior Court, Civil Division 7

Case Type

MF – Mortgage Foreclosure

Filed

09/11/2017

Status

09/11/2017, Pending

Charges

Parties

JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, Johnson, Occupants, Flanagan DDS, IMC Credit Services, LLC, MSW Capital LLC, Unifund CCR Partners Assignee of Palisades Ac…

Attorneys

Tekulve, Kemper, Flatt, Lawrence, Matheis

STEP #2- Locate the Land Record of Interest and Assignments.

Once you have this information, it is a simple matter to locate any recorded assignments in the county recorder’s office. Luckily, this is also available online & automated for your convenience in most states……and cheaply at that!! Using the State of Indiana as an example again, they use a commercial service called Doxpop (FYI, Doxpop handles MI too). Through these services, ANYONE can search for recorded land title records (See below). Average cost to search for, pull up, and print an assignment from home or office? $1-3 per assignment, depending on if you buy a bulk search package or just do single search. You are going to be scanning for any assignment performed just prior to, or during, a foreclosure action. In some cases a corrective assignment may exist, and if so the signature should be that of the actual person authorized to sign for a bank….good to have for later.

https://www.doxpop.com/prod/in/recorder/

Wells County Recorded Documents are now available through Doxpop! Details here.

Welcome to Doxpop Recorded Documents

NEW! Looking for full-size preview images of documents? Try our new Unlimited Viewing service, available in participating counties. Watch a demo to learn more.

Doxpop provides access to over 16,804,357 recorded documents from 42 counties in the Doxpop Network. Our information is updated every ten minutes and is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are working every day to bring new counties to our Recorded Document Service.

Learn about our advanced searching options, enhanced results, document details, and document images.

You can use our recorded document search features to find documents by name, details about the document such as the date, and information about the property to which the document refers. These documents include documents deeds, mortgages, and liens. (See a more complete list of document types.) By subscribing to any Doxpop search plan you can access these features, view all details about a document, and purchase, view, and print pages directly from our website.

STEP #3- Time to Start Comparing Sig’s, Date(s), & Notary Cards Against Your Claimed Notary.

Time to start playing “Which signature(s) don’t match?” (both Attorney-in-Fact and Notary), and “Which recording dates don’t make sense?”. You will be comparing signatures of known LPS robo-signers, whose names are easily found on the web… Google “robo-signers & LPS” as a search and you will find a trove of websites listing names. In the alternative, you will find many of them listed in Lynn Szymoniak’s original qui tam lawsuit, also available on the web in PDF.

So what are you looking for?

-Signatures by “Attorneys-in-Fact” on assignments used in a foreclosure case should match one another if made by one person. They shouldn’t be unrecognizable scribble marks in one case, legible in another, non-matching in multiple instances, etc., …common-sense stuff.

-Look at the signatures of the “Notary” on the assignment. Ditto with the above- BUT FURTHER– If they are a registered notary, does their signature match the signature card on file at the registered State agency? (Available by going down in person or requesting such from that county by mail usually).

-If the notary dated the assignment on “XX-XX-XXXX” date, then the assignment would have been sent directly to the county recorder’s office to be recorded afterwards, usually 30 days to protect priority of lien. If there is an unexplained lapse in time from notary signing to recording.. 9 months..years..Why??

Question(s) for attorney’s in a FC case if they performed discovery-

a.) Did the foreclosure mill attorney ever disclose that the documents used and material parties involved in your case included LPS, or the use of the Desktop software platform?

b.) The CJ directly affected the FC mill attorneys because of LPS conduct of interfering in the relationship between FC mill attorneys & their “real” clients (banks, servicers). LPS was found to have virtually taken over the foreclosure process in retaining and directing attorneys as to what to do from 2008-2013. Query- was the attorney effectively able to relay any requests for discovery/production of documents, arbitrate loan modification meetings (required in many states), etc., with the “real”/ supposed note holder, or did LPS interfere with these activities so pervasively as to render them a nullity?

b.) Did the foreclosure mill attorney disclose to you the fact a Consent Judgment had been issued and the documents in your case might be covered by it? Did they point out a toll free number was available for you to contact and request information/lodge complaints?

Remember- it was just such evidence of forgery and backdating, attorney/client interference, etc., that landed Lynn Szymoniak $18M when she filed her qui tam lawsuit…..her suit ultimately leading to the 2013 $125M Multistate Consent Judgment with LPS. What could a good class action attorney do with mass evidence LPS & FC mill attorney’s NEVER remediated robo-signing as required or disclosed material evidence/parties in discovery?….. Love to find out!

The Terms of the 2013 Consent Judgment in Relevant Part

– Definitions, section 2.2: “Covered Conduct” shall mean LPS’ practices related to mortgage default servicing, including document creation, preparation, execution, recordation, and notarization practices as they relate to Mortgage Loan Documents as well as LPS’ relationships with attorneys representing the servicers and other third parties through the Effective Date of this Judgment.

– Release, section 2.7: “Nothing herein shall be construed as a waiver or release of any private rights, causes of action, or remedies of any person against the Defendants with respect to the Covered Conduct.” (See above!)

** Important- The Below Was Required of LPS under the CJ

“LPS will undertake a review of documents executed during the period of Jan. 1, 2008 to Dec. 31, 2010 to determine what documents, if any, need to be re-executed or corrected. If LPS is authorized to make the corrections, it will do so and will make periodic reports to the AG’s Office of the status of its review and/or modification of documents.” See, http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2013/2013-01-31-lps-settlement.html

Per section 3.2 of the Consent Judgment, the 48 State AG’s offices are responsible for monitoring LPS compliance with the consent judgment through January 31, 2018. LPS is required to be in compliance with not only the terms of the Consent Judgment, but other mortgage servicing agreements and judgments in force, such as the widely touted National Mortgage Settlement, and is in compliance with the servicing standards of those settlements and other applicable state or federal laws.

Through January 31, 2018, LPS will allow the 48 state AG’s access to non-privileged documents without need for a subpoena or other compulsory process.

Section 6.1 allows the 48 State AG’s the right to reopen investigations into LPS for noncompliance with the CJ.

Section 7.1 allows for the State AG’s to take action for other violations of law, and take any actions necessary to protect the health and safety of the public.

What’s in it for you?

A search of 100 assignments looking for evidence that foreclosures were completed in violation of the CJ using robo-signed or backdated documents may cost as little as $100-$200. Cost to benefit ratio wise, if you are a large class action law firm, and if you have just a 10% hit ratio of questionable documents after searching 500 documents, that’s $500-$1000 spent to get 50 potential clients. Not bad when you look at what happened with David Stern’s firm, and look at the millions of dollars collected it in class actions.

The State AG’s are in a bit of a quandry as noted above, because if mass evidence is unearthed showing a failure to remediate and correct before foreclosing on innocent homeowner in direct violation of the CJ, they will be forced to take action. This would further open up the possibility that mass actions against large foreclosure mills will be settled quickly, unless such firms want to risk being faced with the fate of the late David Stern firm. Not bad for a minimal investment, and a little legwork.

So in closing, and to reiterate, developing a large database of signatures by name, FC mill involved, and date(s) in critical to be able to demonstrate that what the AG’s were supposed to insure happened, unfortunately, did not. The proof required is no different than it was for Lynn Szymoniak back in 2011, and just as basic and generally cheap to find….The only question is whether enough defrauded homeowners, their attorneys, or a class action firm cares to dig…..

[1] *The contents of this paper are not meant as legal advice, but merely a tool to be used by those who may wish to research foreclosure cases, and potentially seek legal advice from a licensed attorney.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: blackknight/lps, eric mains fdic, lendinglies, Livinglies, LPS Consent Judgement, Lps desktop, lps robosigning, state attorney generals | 9 Comments »

Listen now to the recorded The Neil Garfield Show: Setting your case up for Litigation, Modification or Settlement.

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Neil Garfield

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the The Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

Log-in to listen to archived show.

This episode will discuss setting up your case for litigation, modification or settlement. California attorney Charles Marshall will discuss settlement framework (writ large and small), and the numerous misunderstandings regarding how settlement should or even can work.

The overwhelming majority of civil cases will settle well before reaching the trial stage of a lawsuit, nationwide. Whether we’re talking about a divorce, a car accident lawsuit, or foreclosure case parties often choose to settle their case rather than leave their respective fates in the hands of an unpredictable jury. But is settlement always more beneficial?

Settlement Basics

“Settlement” is a term for formal resolution of a legal dispute without the matter being decided by a court judgment (jury verdict or judge’s ruling). Usually it means the defendant offers a certain sum of money to the plaintiff in exchange for the plaintiff’s signing a release of the defendant’s liability in connection with the underlying incident or transaction. This can happen at any point in a civil lawsuit. It can even occur before the plaintiff files a lawsuit at all, if the parties can come together a reach a fair agreement soon after the dispute arises, and both sides are motivated to do so.

Benefits of Settling a Case:

Expense.
Stress.
Privacy.
Predictability.
Finality.

With foreclosure lawsuits a homeowner often has a personal or profound sense of right and wrong, and decides to make an important point that impacts more than the parties in the case. For cases challenging the constitutionality of a law or some other perceived fundamental unfairness, settling also doesn’t create precedent and won’t affect public policy.

If one or both parties aren’t motivated to settle, or aren’t coming to the negotiating table with a remotely realistic offer, then resolution of the lawsuit before trial may not be possible. This is often the case in foreclosure disputes- by the time the lender is prepared to settle, the homeowner wants vengence for the harm they have sustained (justifiably).

Please contact Attorney Charles Marshall at:

California Attorney Charles Marshall, Esq.

cmarshall@marshallestatelaw.com

Phone 619.807.2628

This program is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice.

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

Our Services: https://livinglies.me/2016/04/11/what-can-you-do-for-me-an-overview-of-services-offered-by-neil-garfield/

Register for Consultation here: https://live.vcita.com/site/lendinglies

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: attorney charles marshall, foreclosure litigation, lendinglies, lititation, Livinglies, livinglies blog, modification, neil garfield radio show, settlement | Leave a comment »

The Neil Garfield Show at 6pm EST: Contrived complexity from the usual suspects: MGIC master insurance pools

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Neil Garfield

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the The Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

Tonight California attorney Charles Marshall hosts the show and is joined by Investigator Bill Paatalo. Paatalo recently stumbled upon an insurance policy that was issued for loans in a trust, but discovered that the trust no longer existed due to a payoff of all loans within the trust years before by Mortgage Guarantee Master Policy (MGIC). However, that didn’t stop BNY Mellon “as Trustee” from filing a foreclosure complaint on behalf of the dissolved trust.

The insurance agreement is a “treasure trove” of insight as to the secret workings between the servicers (who are named as the “Insured”) and MGIC.

The Plaintiff not only ceased to exist due to a merger, but the trust itself was terminated with all loans paid off long before the filing of the complaint.

Bill Paatalo and California attorney Charles Marshall believe that MGIC issue is yet another example of contrived complexity by lenders/’trusts’/purported trustee’s and ‘beneficiaries’ in mortgage transactions, particularly when recording documents pursuant to taking properties to sale, or when subverting the credit bidding rules at sale.

It is likely that the insurance carrier is calling the shots with modifications and foreclosures because the policy states approval must be provided by the insurer.

Is this another sham wherein the instructions from the banks are filtered through yet another layer of complexity? Homeowners should inquire if there is an insurance policy on the purported trust that claims to own their loan. Radian and AIG also offer policies like MGIC.

Charles Marshall, Esq.

Law Offices of Charles T. Marshall

415 Laurel St., #405

San Diego, CA 92101

cmarshall@marshallestatelaw.com

Phone 619.807.2628

Investigator Bill Paatalo

BP Investigative Agency, LLC
P.O. Box 838

Absarokee, MT 59001
Office: (406) 328-4075

bill.bpia@gmail.com

http://www.bpinvestigativeagency.com

MAIN NUMBER: 202-838-NEIL (6345).

Get a Consult!

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

Our Services: https://livinglies.me/2016/04/11/what-can-you-do-for-me-an-overview-of-services-offered-by-neil-garfield/

Register for Consultation here: https://live.vcita.com/site/lendinglies

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: attorney charles marshall, bpinvestigativeagency, california attorney, investigator bill paatalo, Livinglies | 3 Comments »

CitiGroup Whistleblower Richard Bowen: The Immaculate Corruption

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Neil Garfield

bowen

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1118575381433&ca=a2e5c0b7-db56-42f8-9a03-3310d938cb61

Watch the video here: http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/immaculate-corruption

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson: The Immaculate Corruption featuring Richard Bowen. Photo: Sharyl Attkisson

Full Measure News is broadcast to 43 million households in 79 markets on 162 Sinclair Broadcast Group stations, including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, MyTV, Univision and Telemundo affiliates and streams live Sunday mornings at 9:30 a.m. ET.

In some markets they are seen more than the cable news competition in that time slot, and by more viewers than CNN, MSNBC, and CBNC combined and equal or surpass the audience size of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and ABC’s “This Week.” They explore “untouchable topics in a fearless way,” from immigration, terrorism, government waste, national security and whistleblower reports on government and corporate abuse and misdeeds. It is hosted by Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting.

This past Sunday, I was honored to be featured on my “experience” at Citigroup, which many have called “The Immaculate Corruption.” [watch it here].

Sharyl Attkisson and Richard Bowen

The interview started with, “This is the story of how systems intended to hold people accountable failed and Bowen claims even helped cover for them… Richard Bowen knew where the figurative bodies were buried at banking giant Citigroup, once the largest company in the world. As a senior vice president, Bowen blew the whistle on Citigroup’s practices leading up to the banking crisis – practices like buying and selling risky mortgages and misrepresenting them to the public and investors.”

Sharyl noted, ”Not much has happened in terms of from what I can see to the actual people at Citigroup who were allegedly responsible for this behavior.” “That would be very accurate,” I responded.

Sharyl continued,

In 2009, Congress created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Six members were appointed by Democrats, four by Republicans.

Bowen was asked to testify. And he was eager to do it. It was a setting where he says he could publicly tell what he knew, exempt from his Citigroup confidentiality agreement. He wrote up his testimony, naming names and laying blame. However, shortly before he testified Bowen was told to “take out much of the damning evidence that they had originally told me to put in.”

He says the commission wanted major edits; “what they also conveyed is that the edits were not optional. If I did not make the edits I would probably be taken off the witness list.” Bowen says he had to cut out eight pages, almost a third of his planned testimony. And almost nobody knew that when he testified on April 7, 2010.

Last March, the financial commission’s records were quietly unsealed for the first time. And we were able to obtain copies of Bowen’s original testimony, including parts that were cut.

Sharyl: “Did they have you take out names of people responsible”?

Richard Bowen: “Yes. They had originally wanted me to put in the names and the specific instance of cover-ups that I had witnessed. All of that had to be taken out, at least the names”.

Sharyl continued…

Financial commission staff members who dealt with Bowen say the reason his testimony was shortened is simply because it was too long. They deny suggesting any edits, say there was no attempt to censor or silence Bowen, and say that all acted with the best of intentions and followed the highest ethics…

And there’s something of a bombshell in the formerly hidden documents: In 2011, when the Financial Commission concluded work, it secretly determined some of the world’s largest financial institutions had possibly violated securities law.

The Financial Commission privately referred 11 charges against nine executives, including Robert Rubin and two other Citigroup officials, to Justice Department Attorney General Eric Holder for possible prosecution.

Now that the documents have finally been released after 5 years, Senator Elizabeth Warren has written the FBI and Justice Department Inspector General asking why nothing came of those criminal charge referrals.

“The [Department of Justice] has not filed any criminal prosecutions against any of the nine individuals,” writes Warren. “Not one of the nine has gone to prison or been convicted of a criminal offense. Not a single one has even been indicted or brought to trial.”

On the program I expressed my concern, ”If we do not hold people accountable, then we’re going to see the same behavior. In the 1980s and the banking and S&L crisis, we sent over 800 senior bankers to jail. This crisis which is 70 times worse, I’d say, maybe even greater than that, we have sent no one to jail. And, and I think we basically are saying, there’s no downside to doing this.”

I fervently believe that by allowing the big banks to get away with fraud we are condoning their behavior and it will happen again. The large banks have a stranglehold on the financial services industry. If we are going to institute real change, then we must first break up the large banks, then repeal parts of the Dodd-Frank act to open up the banking industry to real competition.

Although Dodd-Frank was originally passed to reign in the large banks, it has turned into a gift to the larger banks because they have the wherewithal to lobby and gut those provisions that directly affect them. This leaves a disproportionate share of compliance costs on the smaller banks; which then has them selling to the larger banks as they can’t afford to compete.

And Sharyl concluded the interview, “As for Citigroup, it continues to rack up the fines. Last week, it paid $28 million more to settle claims that it gave homeowners the “runaround” when refinancing their home mortgages.”

http://www.richardmbowen.com/first-time-televised-smoking-gun-evidence/

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: Citigroup, foreclosure fraud, Livinglies, richard bowen, whisteblower | 17 Comments »

Foreclosure Action 101: What to do first when you know nothing about Foreclosure Defense

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Neil Garfield

So you just received that dreaded letter in the mail announcing that a loan servicer who likely never loaned you a dime is going to foreclose on your home. Your adrenaline rockets through your veins, you go into Fight or Flight mode and at some point you say, “Holy sh*t- what do I do now?”

Hopefully by the time you get the letter you have already done some research starting with a trip to the county record’s office (or online) and examined and purchased certified copies of the documents filed in the county records. Typically you will find a copy of your Mortgage or Deed of Trust, followed by subsequent filings called Assignments. The Assignments show a transfer of ownership. There may be Notices of Default filed in the records as well as Quit Claim deeds or Probate documents.

Once you have these documents you should examine every bit of information contained on those documents or hire a company specializing Chain of Title assessments. The Lending Lies team can conduct an affordable Chain of Title assessment to determine any breaks in title, robosigning or ownership issues that cloud title. To date, the Lending Lies team has not found one Chain of Title without significant issues clouding title and evidence that ownership is in question.

We also highly recommend investigator Bill Paatalo of the BP Investigative Agency if the homeowner requires a more in-depth report on securitization and trust issues in addition to Chain of Title issues. For more information about Bill Paatalo please go to: http://www.bpinvestigativeagency.com. He also has an excellent blog on his site with information about fraudulent foreclosures.

Please be careful who you hire to conduct a Chain of Title assessment. There are companies out there professing to be affiliated with Neil Garfield who may attempt to lure unsuspecting homeowners into Chain of Title assessments and Quiet Title packages that are not proven.

If you decide to do the assessment yourself you will need to google every entity claiming ownership, alleged dates assigned, and evidence of robosigning. You are looking for evidence of fraud. Was the company in business when the assignment was made? Are Fannie, Freddie or MERS involved? Is the signor a known robosigner who did not work for the company they signed for? Could the notary have actually been present when the assignment was done? Is there evidence of the document being photoshopped? We recommend that every homeowner facing foreclosure conduct a thorough Chain of Title assessment so that they can identify possible issues early on and be better prepared to present their case to an attorney.

In the past many homeowners would file a lawsuit hoping their attorney would find the breaks in the Chain of Title or other issues affecting ownership somewhere down the line. The attorney and homeowner would hope to get this information in discovery- but were often stonewalled. However, waiting until years to obtain information in discovery is not a pro-active method of attack.

For example, it is much better to know that the entity that transferred your loan was not in business, that the assignment was signed by a known robosigner, and that the trust had already been dissolved years before the assignment- or some other issue early on before filing suit. The bank already knows what they did fraudulently and how to cover their tracks before they set foot in court. Shouldn’t you have some idea of where the fraud exists in regards to your own loan? By knowing information about the entities claiming ownership of your loan and their weaknesses you have more leverage from the onset.

The next thing you should do, if you haven’t already, is to send a Qualified Written Request and a Debt Validation letter to your servicer. Examples can be found on Livinglies or if you prefer, a Lending Lies paralegal can help customize a targeted letter for mailing. Instead of a general Qualified Written Request, the Lending Lies team will request specific information- that the servicer can’t likely provide. The benefit of this service is having Neil Garfield and his paralegal tailor the letters specifically to the findings in your Chain of Title assessment so the servicer is accountable and must answer the questions in your request.

The more information you can receive from your loan servicer, the more apt they are to make errors and provide conflicting information that can help you demonstrate the servicer’s lack of standing. Typically the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing at most servicer’s organizations. Many homeowners who send Qualified Written requests and Debt Validation letters will often not receive the information requested but on occasion receive information that raises further issues. The servicer’s failure to properly respond sets up the servicer for fines and damages under the Fair Debt Collection laws.

Armed with a Chain of Title Assessment, a Qualified Written Request, and Debt Validation information, a homeowner facing foreclosure will have a better understanding of what occurred over the course of their loan. Armed with this information, it is much easier to get an attorney interested opposed to calling an attorney and stating, “my servicer is foreclosing on me illegally” without any evidence to support your claims.

At Lending Lies we routinely speak to people who have been litigating a foreclosure issue for years and still don’t know the basic facts of their case. Before contacting an attorney to defend against foreclosure you should have the following items before proceeding:

One-page Overview of Case with 3 to 5 primary issues you have targeted as wrongful
Brief Timeline
Targeted Qualifed Written Request results
Targeted Debt Validation letter results
Chain of Title results
Forensic Audit if issues with Chain of Title are identified (we recommend that homeowners contact: Bill Paatalo at http://www.bpinvestigativeagency.com)

On average, an attorney will assess the merits of your case in less than two minutes. If you can get his or her attention immediately you have a much better chance of the attorney agreeing to represent you. The attorney, like the court, wants hard evidence that substantiates your claims. The attorney will also appreciate a client who is focused, organized and doesn’t go off on tangents that waste valuable time.

In conclusion, don’t wait to start building your case after you retain an attorney. Conduct your due-diligence on the entities claiming they own your loan, research who and when they obtained the rights, investigate the parties on your documents and all entities including the signers, trust and if those parties are licensed to conduct business in your state. If you keep digging- you are more likely than not to find issues that support that the servicer attempting to foreclose has no standing to do so.

For consultations with Neil Garfield or paralegal assistance, please contact Lending Lies at:

(202) 838-6345 or info@lendinglies.com.

Investigator Bill Paatalo can be contacted at: (406) 328-4075 or http://www.bpinvestigativeagency.com

This article is not legal advice and does not represent an attorney/client relationship but is strictly for informational purposes.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: foreclosure 101, foreclosure due diligence, lendinglies, Livinglies | 12 Comments »

The Neil Garfield Show Tonight at 6pm Eastern: The Illusion of Ownership: JPMC cannot prove ownership of WaMu Loans

Posted on November 17, 2016 by Neil Garfield

The WaMu-JPMorgan Illusion Live at 6 pm

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the The Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

Mortgage Fraud Investigator Bill Paatalo and Southern California Attorney Charles Marshall join Attorney Neil Garfield to discuss Loan Modification Fraud, and recent foreclosure trends.

Bill Paatalo, a dogged investigator of the WaMu transfer of “loans” to JPMC has discovered recently that WaMu loans claimed to be owned by JPMorgan Chase, through the “Purchase & Assumption Agreement” with the FDIC, were in fact sold by WaMu to “Private Investor – AO1” prior to the FDIC’s Receivership.

JPMC claims to own these WaMu loans to which there is also no record of the sales and transfer histories of the loans-even within their servicing platform. It is likely that WaMu sold and securitized the loan(s) prior to September 25, 2008.

If no schedule or inventory of WaMu loans has ever been produced, and there are no servicing records in existence from WaMu showing whether or not the loan was ever sold or securitized, could it be possible the loan(s) were sold by WaMu prior to September 25, 2008?

Paatalo states that Chase’s own witness testified that “Ao1” is a private investor, and this code does not mean “bank owned.” Paatalo continues, “It is almost too much to believe that one of the largest banking institutions in the world, would not have tracked the loans it originated and sold into the secondary market within its servicing systems.”

Homeowners and Attorneys may want to ask Chase, who is “Private Investor AO1?”

If you have a WaMu/Chase loan or foreclosure issue, and need answers about your loan- we recommend that you contact Bill Paatalo and order a report so that you will have a better understanding of your situation.

To read the rest of Bill Paatalo’s article please go to: http://bpinvestigativeagency.com/who-is-private-investor-ao1-jpmorgan-chase-refuses-to-reveal-the-identity-of-this-investor/

Bill Paatalo- Oregon Private Investigator

Office: (406) 328-4075
www.bpinvestigativeagency.com

Attorney Charles T. Marshall- Serving all of California

cmarshall@marshallestatelaw.com

Phone 619.807.2628

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: Chase, jpmc fraud, lendinglies, Livinglies, neil garfield radio show, WAMU | 3 Comments »

Five Questions with David Dayen about Foreclosure Fraud, Activism and Hope

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Neil Garfield

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/24/1572040/-Five-questions-with-David-Dayen-about-foreclosure-fraud-activism-and-hope

David Dayen (dday to old-timers at Daily Kos) has been the most single most dogged journalist digging into the massive fraud perpetuated on American homeowners in the last decade, the fraud that almost brought down the global economy. In fact, he wrote the book on it—Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize (reviewed here). He is a contributing writer to The Intercept, and a weekly columnist for The Fiscal Times and The New Republic. He also writes for The American Prospect, Vice, The Huffington Post, and more. He lives in Los Angeles. Here I followed up with him about his reporting on the foreclosure fraud and the book for our five questions feature.

1. You wrote about it in the book, but can you tell us how you connected with Lisa, Michael, and Lynn, the people at the heart of your story?

So there’s a scene in the second half of the book where Lisa, Michael, and Lynn are invited to Washington to discuss the foreclosure fraud scandal (that’s the mass delivery of false documents in foreclosure cases by financial institutions who do not have the legal right to foreclose) with a bunch of activists, lawyers, writers, some political staffers. I think someone from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was there. And I was asked to be there. At the time I was writing for Firedoglake and was just starting to wrap my head around this particular scandal.

I knew of Michael’s website but didn’t know him. And I don’t think I knew Lisa and Lynn at all at that time. But their stories stood out, because they were the only foreclosure victims in the room. They had something to bring to the crisis that none of us shared. So they became sources of mine. I’d read their websites and ask them questions. Years later, one of them, I think Lisa, told me that they were surprised I was interested in this and even though I was not in foreclosure. In their experience everybody fighting foreclosure fraud was personally affected. So their world was foreign to me and my world was foreign to them.

2. What led to your interest in the issue?

I was blogging at FDL, I was editing the news desk. And the portfolio of what I was to write about was “the news.” So, be it The Huffington Post or Talking Points Memo while sitting in your living room 3,000 miles away from Washington, or sitting in an office, I was still working my day job off and on at that time. (I edited television shows for many years.)

So I was always looking for those stories where I could add value, something to set me apart from other writers, something I could cover that wasn’t being covered. It still kind of amazes me that foreclosures could fall into that bucket. Over 9.3 million people were evicted in foreclosures or some other transaction that forced them to give up their homes from 2006 to 2014. This is the largest financial purchase that most people will ever make, the source of a large portion of their wealth, and the human drama associated with it is really incalculable. And yet the foreclosure crisis still remains on the fringes, on the business pages if anywhere.

What brought it home for me was a personal interaction. My wife and I have a friend who was very involved with the Obama campaign in 2008, he traveled to Nevada to knock on doors for him, was a major supporter. And one day, in the middle of an email conversation, he just came out with, “What I want to know is, why was President Obama’s plan to help those struggling with their mortgage written to favor the banks instead of the people?” At the time none of us knew that he was even having a problem with his mortgage. But I asked him to tell me his story, and it turns out it was a very familiar situation, he was trying to get a loan modification from his mortgage company (Citi Mortgage), and they approved him for a trial payment that was several hundred dollars a month lower. The trial payments were supposed to convert to permanent within three months, but Citi dithered and stalled for half a year, and then told him he was denied a permanent modification, and that he owed the difference between his trial payment and his original payment within 30 days or they would kick him out of his house.

This was very common, it turned out, a way for the banks to weaponize Obama’s modification program (called HAMP) and turn it into a predatory lending scheme. And I wrote that up and posted it at FDL (using an assumed name for my friend because he was still negotiating with Citi Mortgage). And I put out the call for more stories. Dozens of them came in, and the rest is history.

3) The book has been extremely well-received and well-reviewed. In fact, Sen. Elizabeth Warren raved about it: “If you’re looking for a book to read over Labor Day weekend—one that will that will get your heart pumping and your blood boiling and that will remind you why we’re in these fights—add this one to your list.” You’ve had numerous appearances talking about it around the country. What have you learned from that experience?

First of all, this is an ongoing nightmare. I wrote this book as sort of a work of history, to rescue something that had verged on going down the memory hole—that for all the excuses about how no high-ranking executives went to jail for the sins of the financial crisis because there were no good cases or what they did wasn’t illegal, there was an alternate history to be written, led by these three remarkable people who took it upon themselves to expose the greatest consumer fraud in American history while fighting their own punishing foreclosure cases. But in talking to people and getting feedback through email and social media, it reinforced what I already knew, that this is a living history. Every day in America, someone is thrown out of their home based on false documents, and both the political system and the justice system is thoroughly disinterested in changing that fact to arrive at a different outcome.

In St. Louis, I had a guy drive four hours from Chicago to tell me his story about experiencing fraud on his home and starting to work with a half-dozen lawyers to fight foreclosures in his city. In Philadelphia a woman told me she was about to be evicted in a week; the bank just got awarded summary judgment in her case. In Los Angeles a man told me he’d been in court over his home for almost a decade. And I’m pen pals with at least two dozen other homeowners keeping up the fight. It’s remarkable that these cases go on, that these people summon the inner courage to persevere against incredible odds. But Americans have this emotional connection to their homes and a resistance to injustice. They care enough to see things through, to not extinguish the fire burning inside them. Though the stories are horrible, they’re oddly life-affirming at the same time.

4. The book leaves us with kind of a frustrating ending—as admirable and important as the work these activists have done is, it’s still happening. What would it take to fix it, and do you think your book can help kick-start a reaction?

No.

I try to be very clear with the people who ask me for advice. I’m not a lawyer and I cannot counsel them. But it’s very, very hard to win these cases. I didn’t set out to write a book that someone at the Justice Department would read and say “He’s right, we screwed up, let’s round up everyone on Wall Street.” It’s not going to happen.

I’d say two things—one looking backward, and one looking forward. One, I do think that people in high-ranking positions were shaken by the work they did, or rather didn’t do, in the face of this crisis. I have been told by people that the work of the activists, for which I was mostly a conduit, made a real difference. Someone who didn’t give me his name, but who told me he worked at a very high level on this issue, came up to me at an event and said that the $25 billion settlement we got over these practices, which was woefully inadequate, would have been much worse without my efforts. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.

The other point is that this is a book that tells the story of a movement. And movements don’t always succeed. We hear about the great successful movements in history in our textbook, the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement, but lots and lots of smaller groups failed leading up to those victories. I say in the book that movements crash on the shore like waves, and each one gets a little bit closer to its destination. These three people didn’t have anything—no resources, no institutional knowledge, no history of activism. But they got on the Internet and built websites and collected knowledge and pushed this huge scandal into the public consciousness, if only for a brief moment. And without them, you don’t have Occupy Wall Street, and you don’t have the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party, and you don’t have the Bernie Sanders campaign. There’s a level of awareness about the financial industry now that didn’t exist in 2008, one that’s not going away. And Lisa, Michael, and Lynn helped to forge that.

5. What do Daily Kos readers need to know and do to help fight this ongoing battle?

Stay educated and involved! And recognize that the financialization of our economy, the power and hold that the banks retain, is about more than just foreclosures. Just after Labor Day we saw Wells Fargo fined for creating high sales targets that led its workers to forge documents and create millions of phony customer accounts. That’s not exactly what happened in the foreclosure fraud scandal but it’s a close cousin. And the real scandal there is not about consumer fraud actually—most of these accounts sat dormant, and only a few generated fees. It was securities fraud; Wells Fargo demanded high sales targets because they wanted to show robust growth to their shareholders and boost the stock. Incidentally, Wells Fargo’s CEO took $155 million in stock options from 2012 to 2015, giving him a real incentive to kick up the stock in whatever phantom way possible. That drive for short-term profits remains the biggest single source of recklessness among major banks, with consequences for consumers and investors and the broader economy. Dodd-Frank has not come close to wiping that away. And we need to be speaking out about how we can.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: daily kos, DAVID DAYEN, foreclosure fraud, Livinglies | 2 Comments »

FHFA Loan Reduction, Reduction: What’s Your Function?

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Neil Garfield

PRM_Map

The Fair Housing Financing Agency has announced the details on the principle reduction program. The program is severely limited and requires that reductions be made only to owner-occupied borrowers who are 90 days or more delinquent as of March 1, 2016. The program will only apply to borrowers whose mortgage have an outstanding unpaid balance of $250k or less, and whose market-to-market loan-to-value rations exceed 115%.

Thus, the program is likely targeted towards the lower and middle class borrower who are upside down. This program clearly discriminates against the middle class borrower who purchased homes in the $250,001.00 to $417,000 loan limit range insured by the FHFA. Where is their relief? Many of these borrowers were offered homes based on inflated appraisal values.

Under the proposed rules, the FHFA said that approximately 33,000 borrowers are potentially eligible for the “final crisis-era modification program.” The reality is that the number of eligible borrowers is actually less than that.
A new report, published Monday by the FHFA, states that the FHFA now estimates that more than 30,000 borrowers will be eligible nationwide – the number is 30,761 to be exact. The FHFA report, states that the reduced number of eligible loans can be attributed to “the fact that the housing market is continuously evolving and may have improved in some areas.” Great excuse FHFA- by the time the program is done, Lending Lies team members predict that less than 12,000 homes will receive principle reductions based on prior results of the FSHA and GSEs.

Even more worrisome is attempting to predict how the FHFA and the loan servicers will use this program to ensure a default and foreclosure occurs. We predict that applications will be lost, eligible people will be foreclosed on during negotiations or turned away- and the program will end as soon as the intended public relations blitz creates the illusion that your government genuinely wants to help. We’ve seen how this type of program plays out when you get servicers administering assistance programs- the programs become a tool to engineer a default.

Since the program already requires homeowners to be at least 90 days past due on your loan, how many homeowners will be told to simply skip three months of mortgage payments to become eligible? All of a sudden the borrower’s options diminish quickly and the unsuspecting homeowner loses their home.
Don’t be fooled, we’ve been down this road before. Why must a homeowner fall behind 3 months on their mortgage payments? Because it will likely make it almost impossible for most families who have no savings to come up with a lump sum to cure the arrearage to stop a foreclosure sale. This is but another tactic to strip lower-middle class families of their homes and the end result will be a nation of renters who can never build any true wealth.

Back to the story. Where will these eligible borrowers be located? According to the FHFA report, eligible borrowers “tend to be concentrated in communities across the country that have not yet fully recovered from the foreclosure crisis, especially in states with long foreclosure timelines.”
The latest FHFA report actually sheds more light on that, showing the top ten states where the eligible borrowers are.

According to the FHFA report, the top ten states with the most potentially eligible borrowers are located in:
Florida – 6,260 potentially eligible borrowers
New Jersey – 6,257 potentially eligible borrowers
New York – 2,823 potentially eligible borrowers
Illinois – 2,434 potentially eligible borrowers
Ohio – 1,214 potentially eligible borrowers
Pennsylvania – 1,109 potentially eligible borrowers
Nevada – 1,032 potentially eligible borrowers
Maryland – 726 potentially eligible borrowers
Connecticut – 703 potentially eligible borrowers
Massachusetts – 682 potentially eligible borrowers

The FHFA report also provides more detail on the delinquency status, loan balances, and loan-to-value ratios of the eligible borrowers.

In Florida, for example, the 6,260 potentially eligible borrowers have an average loan balance of $156,719, an average LTV of 158%, and are an average of 1,590 days delinquent, which is nearly 4.5 years.

In New Jersey, the 6,257 potentially eligible borrowers have an average loan balance of $171,403, an average LTV of 163%, and are an average of 1,791 days delinquent, which is almost 5 years.
According to the FHFA, the principal reduction modification terms include capitalization of outstanding arrearages, an interest rate reduction down to the current market rate, an extension of the loan term to 40 years, and forbearance of principal and/or arrearages up to a certain amount to be converted later to forgiveness. This sounds like a pretty good option for those borrowers who are likely to lose their home.

However, when the government offers a plan that appears too good to be true- it usually is. Most modifications we have examined in the last year are not a good deal for the homeowner, and in the majority of cases the homeowner would be better off letting the home go back to the servicer. Typically, the homeowner will end up paying all arrearages, their payment will go up, and at the end of the 40 year term there will be a balloon payment required.

The process of capitalizing outstanding arrearages typically makes it impossible to modify the principal value of the home. The FHA admits that the average home in Florida is 4.5 years delinquent. The arrearage on a 200k home would be around $48,000 and with late penalties probably another $10k or more. The program doesn’t make sense because the homeowner is still going to end up in a loan where the own more than the property is worth.
This may be the reason behind the program for the FHFA. If they can get borrowers to sign new loan documents (even if they can’t afford the payments), they can “fix” all of the loans that have major title issues including robosigned and fabricated documents. This program could create the illusion that the homes that were in the home reduction program convey clear title (when they don’t and never can).

In theory, the federal government benefits in these ways from the home reduction program:

1. They create more defaults by telling people to fall behind 90 days or lost their applications. Thus creating larger arrearages that can’t be cured (or even forcing a homeowner over the $250k limit by delaying if the numbers are close).
2. They can use the program to create new loan documents to ‘fix’ title issues.
3. They can collect some of the payments before the home once again falls into default (which is likely since the borrower will have larger payments and balances amortized over 40 years).
4. With the continuing cooling real estate market, the homeowner will be underwater.
I won’t get into how the FHFA and servicers will issue reduction programs on loans they don’t own- but apparently the federal government housing agencies create the rules as they go.
At Lending Lies, we are gearing up for more calls from homeowner who lost their home while being considered for a loan reduction plan. Next year we will field calls for homeowners who accepted reduction programs that were unaffordable and resulted in the loss of their home. We hate to be skeptics, but the HAMP program actually caused more suffering and resulted in more home losses than it saved. This program, just like HAMP, sounds great on paper- but the numbers and strategy only work in a land of make-believe.

Eligible borrowers should expect a letter from their mortgage servicer about a principal reduction no later than Oct. 15, 2016, the FHFA said. Caveat Emptor.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: fhfa mortgage reduction program, foreclosure relief, home modification, lendinglies, Livinglies, neil garfield esq | 3 Comments »

Mortgages: Weapons of Middle-Class Mass Destruction

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Neil Garfield

By the Lending Lies Team

http://www.zillow.com/research/foreclosures-and-wealth-inequality-12523/

Losing your home by foreclosure to a bank that used fabricated documents to foreclose is a tragedy that has tainted the American dream for millions of Americans. The process is unjust, unlawful and dehumanizing. But even years after the former homeowner has moved forward with their lives they sustain another injury they are probably not even aware of- and that is the loss of rebound gains in the market.

Oddly, homes that are foreclosed on tend to gain value back at a higher rate than properties that have not been previously foreclosed according to real estate website Zillow who conducted research on the matter. Former owners missed out on potential profits generated by the “recovery” and therefore sustained even more financial harm. Instead, the profits went to governmental agencies, GSEs (Fannie/Freddie), hedge funds, investors and flippers who bought these properties for pennies on the dollar.

In the Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, homes that were foreclosed had a 79 percent increase in price from the market’s lowest point. The research also shows that the homes that were foreclosed upon were the homes of lower-income people and young families.

These families who were illegally foreclosed upon were thrust into an inflated renters market where they likely secured accommodations that were inferior to the living conditions of the home they lost and even less affordable. The prior owner lost their down payment, any equity and any appreciation in home value. Many of these families may never recover from the financial slaughter they suffered.

“You had a ton of appreciation for these foreclosed homes, but the [prior] homeowners weren’t getting the benefits,” said Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s chief economist. “Lower-end and foreclosed homes were bought up by investors who would transform those homes into rental properties. … Had they held onto their home in many markets, homeowners would’ve made back their original investment plus much more.” The foreclosure crisis has contributed to the massive wealth gap that has evolved since the 2008 market crash.

Even more concerning are the actions of the Veteran’s Association that guarantees the loans of United States service members who obtain VA-guaranteed mortgages. The VA is not assisting veterans who served their country to retain their homes when default threatens. In fact, the VA is known to foreclose on the homes of veterans for pennies on the dollar, evict the veteran, hold the property and then sell the property at a large profit.

Recently the Lending Lies team learned of a veteran with health issues caused by Agent Orange exposure. The VA foreclosed on his home that had a remaining balance of 7k. The VA held the property for a year and then sold the home for over 100k. The displaced veteran who had paid on his home for decades did not share in the profits the VA made from the sale of his home.

Homeowners have the potential to be damaged at three different junctions during their loan: at closing, during default, and post-default. The homeowner is damaged at closing when they receive a table funded loan, there is no disclosure regarding WHO the true creditor is, and they are not told that they are signing a Note that is actually a security and not a mortgage. The homeowner does not receive disclosure that investors will make millions of dollars from the homeowner’s signature and is not told that he/she will carry all of the risk when the game of securitization is put into play.

A homeowner may be damaged during the term of their loan by the loan servicer who is looking for an opportunity to create a default so they can foreclose on the home. The homeowner may be given erroneous information by the servicer or may not receive service to resolve an issue that may occur during the life of the loan. The servicer may create a default by misapplying payments, inflating the balance by applying illegal fees, and other tactics to engineer a default. When a homeowner facing default contacts their loan servicer looking for assistance, the homeowner is not engaging with a servicer who is looking to find a solution. Instead, the homeowner is dealing with an agent who is trained to find the homeowner’s Achilles heel in which to exploit and create a default.

At this point the homeowner in default will experience the Foreclosure Machine where documents disappear into ether or magically transform, bank presidents have G.E.D’s, and due process means you had your three minutes in front of a judge. The majority of homeowners caught up in this stage of foreclosure will gladly do anything to end their misery. Despite their knowledge that the servicer foreclosing has no standing- the wounded homeowner may prefer to chew off their own arm to escape the clutches of attorneys, motions, and bank intimidation. This is the stage where the homeowner should refuse to back down and dig in their heels, but the majority flee.

After the homeowner has lost their home to an entity who had no standing to foreclose, the homeowner will suffer further economic decimation. The vultures who made millions off of the economic destruction of the American middle and lower-middle class will become their landlord. While the tenant works to make his monthly rental payment and is not building any equity, the landlord will sit back and collect the passive income while the foreclosed property appreciates at 18% plus a year.

Can there be any doubt that taking out a home mortgage from a mega-bank is not a method of middle-class mass destruction? Caveat Emptor.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: foreclosure fraud, lendinglies, Livinglies, mega banks foreclose, middle class mass destruction, mortgage fraud | 10 Comments »

Lack of Standing is an Affirmative Defense

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Neil Garfield

Appellant Robert J. Stoltz prevailed against Aurora Loan Servicing and Nationstar Mortgage in Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals. Honorable Judge Daniel R. Monaco reversed the final foreclosure judgment ruling that the plaintiff’s failure to prove standing at the inception of the suit was fatal (see Dickson v. Roseville Props., LLC, 40 Fla. L. Weekly D2520 (Fla. 2d DCA Nov. 6, 2015- quoting, “For better or for worse, it is settled that it is not enough for the plaintiff to prove that it has standing when the case is tried; it must also prove that it had standing when the complaint was filed.”).

Nationstar Mortgage had filed suit against homeowner, Robert Stoltz, and a different servicer named Aurora Loan Servicing was substituted as plaintiff prior to the trial. In the lower court the servicer claimed they were the holder of the note, not that they were foreclosing on behalf of a holder. Stoltz raised the question of standing at inception by pleading lack of standing as an affirmative defense in his amended answer.

Standing at inception of a lawsuit is required in Florida. The present servicer was required to prove at trial that the original servicer (the one that filed to foreclose) held the note at the time the case was filed (see: Russell v. Aurora Loan Servs., LLC, 163 So. 3d 639, 642 (Fla. 2d DCA 2015)).

During the trial, the present servicer attempted to achieve this burden by presenting a note bearing an undated indorsement in blank. An indorsement in blank is considered legally sufficient to prove that the person in possession of the note is a holder and has standing to proceed at trial (see: Focht v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 124 So. 3d 308, 310 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013).

However, the indorsement in this case was undated and was not attached to the original complaint, and therefore was insufficient to prove that the original servicer held the note at the inception of the case. Without additional evidence that the original servicer actually possessed the Note at the inception of the case- the case should have been dismissed (see: Sorrell v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 41 Fla. L. Weekly D847 (Fla. 2d DCA Apr. 6, 2016)).

The current servicer’s only evidence of standing presented was the testimony of its corporate representative. The testimony of this representative failed to establish that the original servicer held the note when the case was filed. Therefore, the current servicer could not prove standing at inception. The borrower’s motion for involuntary dismissal should have been honored in this case (see Russell, 163 So. 3d at 643; May v. PHH Mortg. Corp., 150 So. 3d 247, 249 (Fla. 2d DCA 2014)).

The court took into consideration that the operative complaint attached a copy of an
assignment purporting to transfer both the note and mortgage to the original servicer priorto the date suit was originally filed. That document may have proven that the first
servicer had standing at inception (see: Focht, 124 So. 3d at 310 (“A plaintiff who is not
the original lender may establish standing to foreclose a mortgage loan by submitting a
note with a blank or special endorsement, an assignment of the note, or an affidavit
otherwise proving the plaintiff’s status as the holder of the note.”). However, the current servicer, failed to admit this document into evidence during trial.

On Appeal, the servicers did not argue and failed to cite any authority that the assignment was sufficient to support the judgment when standing is contested during trial (see: Beaumont v. Bank of N.Y. Mellon, 81 So. 3d 553, 555 n.2 (Fla. 5th DCA 2012)- a copy of an assignment of a note in the court file was not competent evidence where it was never authenticated and offered into evidence). The final judgment was reversed and the case remanded back to the trial court with directions to enter an order of involuntary dismissal. With Florida’s lack of a statute of limitations on foreclosures, the servicer will likely have ample time to “correct” their deficiencies and errors and attempt to foreclose again ad nauseum.

STOLTZ-v-AURORA-LOAN-SERVICES-LLC(1)
Congratulations to attorney Nicole R. Moskowitz of Neustein Law Group, Aventura representing Appellant Robert Stoltz.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: affirmative defenses foreclosure, aurora loan servicing lack of standing, collier county foreclosure, florida foreclosure standing, Livinglies, nationstar lack of standing, NEIL GARFIELD, stoltz v aurora loan et al | 7 Comments »

How Much Did Banks Pay For The 2008 Financial Crisis? Fines And Settlements Of Over $160 Billion In Past 8 Years

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Neil Garfield

See here: 160billionbankfee

So for an average of $20 Billion per year, the mega banks received an infinite supply of forever stamps — “forever” in the sense that they committed epic fraud and are still doing it. I believe this will be regarded as the most historic blunder in American history committed by three consecutive and diametrically opposed Presidential Administrations with the legislative branches of government and the judicial branch of government complicit or at least falling into the party line. In the end Clinton, Bush#2, and Obama all made the same mistake — thinking that market forces would keep the country and the world safe from the financial equivalent of thermonuclear war.

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

In return the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury “bailed out” banks that were “too big to fail” — in a total amount that will probably never be known but which most economist and financial analysts agree is in the neighborhood of over $5 trillion, plus allowing the mega banks to keep more than $10 trillion they stole from investors. The bitter irony is that this plan sucked all the juice out of our economy, household wealth and the ability of consumers to spend — which is responsible for 70% of our Gross Domestic Product.

Even more ironic is that the ‘bailout” was not a bailout.” It was extortionate. The banks had no losses. They were SELLING bonds so they couldn’t have suffered a loss from devaluation of the bonds. They were funding loans with investor money so they couldn’t have had losses from loan defaults. And they were writing mortgage documents for loans that did not exist. What they risked losing was future profits they would make if somehow there was someone with money (i.e., the U.S. Government) who would shore up the unfortunate patsies who wrote insurance on completely worthless bonds, and who were indirectly insuring against defaults on loans that the mega banks had already planned to fail because they were not funding those loans.

In no instance, as far as I can tell, did any of the major policy decisions emerge from a discussion about what was good for the country, which is to say what is good for the common man, woman and child. Adding insult to injury, the people we elected and their appointees who said they knew what was going on, didn’t have a clue. True enough we don’t elect people who are experts in everything, but we do entrust them with the authority and the mandate to find out what they need to know before they do anything.

Incredibly all three administrations and all the Congresses and state legislatures functioned off of cliff notes and 30 minute meetings that consisted of Wall Street people selling the idea of de-regulation on an industry that had repeatedly proven it was untrustworthy and still allowed to promote themselves as banks you can trust. I count 6 times in American History that banks forced us into depression or deep recessions — all caused by pernicious schemes that were too bad to ever succeed. But it was worth it for the big banks because they made far more money than they ever had to give back.

Even more incredible is that it would appear that the two major candidates for the next administration will not change a thing. And THAT is why the vast majority of the American people don’t think either one of them will be good for the country. As long as they start from the assumption that protecting the banks is the same thing as protecting the financial system, which is the same as protecting the American populace. This assumption is patently wrong. Protecting the banks is enabling them to continue their fraudulent behavior which strikes at the unimportant people — i.e., most of the people who live and work in the United States.

7,000 Community Banks, Savings and Loans, and Credit Unions can weather the storm if the Mega-Banks face consequences for their

crimes against the American people.

The real answer is to start with the proposition that the only correct action is one that is good for the country — which means that all people who live and work here would receive some benefit from the action taken. If that means taking the mega banks down, so be it. There are over 7,000 community banks, savings and loans, and credit unions in this country that all use the exact same IT backbone used by the mega banks.

There is nothing that the mega banks do that cannot be exactly duplicated by all those smaller 7,000 banks. In fact, the smaller banks are geographically closer to borrowers, make better loans and have fewer defaults. As for ATM card access, credit cards etc, any bank can become a co-branded issuer using that existing IT platform and the gateway organizations that control it — if the mega banks were forced to comply with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision stating that access to the internet is and should be treated as a utility.

Starting with the premise that what is good for the common man/woman/child is good for the country, policy would head toward clawback of trillions of dollars across the globe and being able to pay reparations to the dozens of countries who were virtually destroyed by acts of global financial terrorism. It would also lead to the global recognition that the so-called loans were not loans.

Those transactions fell into a gray unsecured area of finance the law in which the homeowner (erroneously called the borrower) received money that came from a party who did not know that they were being cheated. The liability exists — that the homeowner must pay the that portion of the money that was received from specific “investors” (victims) but there is no loan contract where the party funding the transaction and the person taking the money have no agreement and no knowledge of the existence of the other.

Add to that that none of the intermediaries have any contractual authority to do what they did — directly fund loans out of money from pension funds et al — and you have one thing left on the plate, to wit: an unsecured liability that arises only in the event that the injured party(ies) (investors) make an equitable claim against the homeowner (e.g. unjust enrichment).

The idea that only the homeowner should pay for losses on this scheme is absurd and the idea that the banks can continue to sell their “rights” to servicer advances that were not advanced by the servicer but rather out of the investors’ money is absurd on steroids. If that doesn’t motivate anyone, think about this: I know for a fact that all the top Wall Street bankers are laughing nervously at how stupid we are and restating the old adage “Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the stupidity of the American people.” The only reason they are nervous is that they know that all good things come to an end. Jamie Dimon likes to remind people in the first minute of any conversation that he speaks to the very top of political power in this country. Maybe we should give him someone else to talk to.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: bail outs, forgery fraud, fraud foreclosure, Livinglies, NEIL GARFIELD, us treasury | 16 Comments »

“Prejudice” Element of Wrongful Foreclosure

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Neil Garfield

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/court-of-appeal-addresses-prejudice-48045/

By Kevin Brodehl

If a property owner loses their property through a foreclosure sale initiated by someone who did not validly own the debt, has the property owner automatically suffered enough “prejudice” to pursue a claim for wrongful foreclosure? Or does the property owner also need to show that it would have been able to avoid foreclosure by paying the debt to the true lender?

The California Supreme Court’s recent Yvanova decision (reviewed on Money and Dirt here: California Supreme Court: Borrowers Have Standing to Allege Wrongful Foreclosure Based on Void Assignment of Note) only partially addressed the “prejudice” issue. In Yvanova, the Supreme Court discussed prejudice, but only “in the sense of an injury sufficiently concrete and personal to provide standing,” not “as a possible element of the wrongful foreclosure tort.” The Court held that the plaintiff in that case demonstrated sufficient prejudice — lost ownership of property in an allegedly illegal foreclosure sale — to confer standing to pursue a wrongful foreclosure claim.

A recent opinion by the California Court of Appeal (Fourth District, Division One, in San Diego) — Sciarratta v. U.S. Bank National Association — picks up the “prejudice” analysis where Yvanova left off, and addresses prejudice as an element of a wrongful foreclosure claim.

The facts: a twisted tale of note assignments

In 2005, the property owner obtained a $620,000 loan secured by real property in Riverside County. The note and deed of trust identified the lender as Washington Mutual (WaMu).

In April 2009, JPMorgan Chase Bank (Chase), as successor in interest to WaMu, assigned the note and deed of trust to Deutsche Bank. The trustee promptly recorded a Notice of Default, followed by a Notice of Sale.

In November 2009, Chase recorded a document assigning the note and deed of trust to Bank of America (even thought just months earlier, Chase had already assigned the note and deed of trust to Deutsche Bank — oops!). On the same date as the assignment, Bank of America recorded a Trustee’s Deed, reflecting that Bank of America had acquired the property at a trustee’s sale in exchange for a credit bid.

In December 2009, Chase recorded a “corrective” assignment of the note and deed of trust, suggesting that the April 2009 assignment to Deutsche Bank was a mistake, and was really intended to be an assignment to Bank of America.

The property owner sued the banks and the trustee for wrongful foreclosure.

The trial court’s ruling: no prejudice; case dismissed

The banks filed a demurrer, arguing that the property owner could not allege “prejudice,” which is an essential element of a wrongful foreclosure claim.

The trial court sustained the banks’ demurrer and dismissed the case.

The property owner appealed.

The court of appeal’s opinion

The Court of Appeal reversed, holding that a property owner who loses property to a foreclosure sale initiated by someone purporting to exercise rights under a void assignment suffers enough prejudice to state a claim for wrongful foreclosure.

The court first relied on the Supreme Court’s holding in Yvanova that “only the entity currently entitled to enforce a debt may foreclose on the mortgage or deed of trust securing that debt.” In this case, based on the clear paper trail of assignments, the entity entitled to enforce the debt was Deutsche Bank, but the entity that foreclosed was Bank of America.

Based on the complaint’s allegations, the court noted, the assignment was not merely voidable but void. The court observed, “Chase, having assigned ‘all beneficial interest’ in [the property owner’s] notes and deed of trust to Deutsche Bank in April 2009, could not assign again the same interests to Bank of America in November 2009.”

The court concluded that a property owner “who has been foreclosed on by one with no right to do so — by those facts alone — sustains prejudice or harm sufficient to constitute a cause of action for wrongful foreclosure.” The court added:

The critical issue is not the plaintiff’s ability to pay, but rather whether defendant’s conduct resulted in the plaintiff’s harm; i.e., a foreclosure that was wrongful because it was initiated by a person or entity having no legal right to do so; i.e. holding void title.

The court also offered policy grounds supporting its decision. The court’s ruling would encourage “lending institutions to employ due diligence to properly document assignments and confirm who currently holds a loan.” A contrary ruling, on the other hand, would subject property owners to unfairly losing their property in foreclosure to someone who does not even own the underlying debt, with no court oversight.

Lesson

The Sciarratta decision will make it easier for property owners to assert wrongful foreclosure claims…….

To read more please visit:

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/court-of-appeal-addresses-prejudice-48045/

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: california foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, jesinoski, lendinglies, Livinglies, prejudice wrongful foreclosure, sciarratta | 8 Comments »

Discovery: Your BlackKnight in Shining Armor?

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Neil Garfield

http://www.bkfs.com/RealEC/DivisionInformation/SettlementAgents/ClosingInsightSettlementAgents/Pages/default.aspx

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

Maybe it is time to drill down a little deeper into ways to obtain Discovery. The same company that brought us the DOCX line of “original” fabricated documents has created a software platform used by the mega banks to streamline closings. Closing Insight and its predecessors (I think Chase uses its own version of this platform) could provide information on the real facts of each “closing”. Discovery requests should be directed to access the information on the platform which is now owned and operated by LPS/BlackKnight.

Note that most loans over the mortgage meltdown period that are still in existence were refi’s and not original loans. Most lawyers and judges presume that the closing paid off the old loan. But this is often not the case. Since the party on the prior “mortgage” and “note” was simply a conduit, they would not have received a penny from the new closing with the “borrower.” The reason for this is simple: they never had a dime of their own money in the loan nor were they in a contractual relationship with anyone who did have money in the deal. Hence they would not have received any money since the source of both deals was a dynamic dark pool of money where “trust” money was commingled in a way that made it impossible or nearly impossible to trace any specific investor to any specific loan deal.

Add all that up and you get (1) a satisfaction of mortgage from a non-mortgagee and (2) no consideration for the signing of the loan documents and (3) withholding that information from the “borrower” who in fact borrowed no money from the “refinance” of his prior “loan.” This means to me that the loan documents should never have been signed or delivered much less recorded. It also means that the current loan documents (and possibly the previous loan documents) are VOID and thus subject to an action for a Quiet Title action.

None of this means that there is not some liability for repayment of the party(ies) who DID have money in the deal in which they could plead to get repayment of their money. But two things are true: (1) the statute of limitations has probably run on most of those liabilities and (2) the injured party would need to know they are injured. Since the borrower clearly does not know the identity of the injured party, the borrower cannot be said to be guilty of creating a situation where the debt is diminished or nullified. And since the injured party(ies) don’t even know they are injured, much less how or in relation to what deal, they are prevented from stepping forward to claim their due.

Once upon a time such schemes would be cleared up by courts very quickly. Back then they understood that foreclosure was a drastic remedy that should not be taken lightly. But today the erroneous presumption that the borrower received money (presumed even by the borrower) leads courts to bend and break laws, rules and regulations such that any claiming bank or servicer will win regardless of whether they are in fact a creditor and regardless of whether or not they have any actual authority to represent the other victims of this scheme — the investors.

PRACTICE NOTE: It is necessary to be very aggressive and very well prepared to argue for discovery on these closings. The Judge arrives with the assumption in mind that what happened back then is none of your business and already established. Potentially an affidavit from a forensic analyst or expert witness might assist in discovery litigation. The problem with waiting on the affidavit or declaration until trial is that the expert can only offer an opinion without corroboration. If discovery has been fought and won, the expert’s opinion will be nearly self-evident. If discovery has been fought and lost, it should provide very strong grounds for appeal.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: blackknight/lps, closinginsight, discovery, lendinglies.com, Livinglies, NEIL GARFIELD | 13 Comments »

California Supreme Court Rules in Yvanova, “The borrower owes money NOT TO THE WORLD at large but to a particular person or institution.”

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Neil Garfield

Yvanova v New Century Mortgage 02182016 Supreme Court of California opinion

By William Hudson

Last week the California Supreme Court ruled in Yvanova v. New Century Mortgage Corporation (Case No. S218973, Cal. Sup. Ct. February 18, 2016) that homeowners have standing to challenge a note assignment in an action for wrongful foreclosure on the grounds that the assignment is void. Obviously if the court had ruled differently, the banks would have had absolute carte blanche to forge mortgage assignments with wild abandon. In fact, without a system of endorsements and assignments it would be almost impossible to determine what party has a legitimate interest in a property and chaos would have ensued (sound familiar?).

The Yvanova ruling puts to rest the prior assumption by most California courts that a homeowner lacks standing to challenge a void assignment. This decision has the potential to open the litigation floodgates by borrowers who were improperly foreclosed on due to fraudulent or improper assignments. In fact, you can bet that homeowners who lost their homes due to the court’s resistance to follow established law will be filing suit.

In Yvanova, she complained that the bank had resorted to the use of fraudulent documents in order to foreclose. First she identified that a bankrupt entity called New Century assigned a deed of trust years after the company ceased to exist. The mortgage assignments demonstrated that even though New Century was dissolved in 2008, New Century allegedly assigned Yvanova’s deed of trust to Deutsche bank in 2011. It was also discovered that Yvanova’s note could not have been delivered to the Morgan Stanley trust pool because the trust had a cutoff date of January 2007. Deutsche Bank, the servicer, claims to have transferred the deed of trust to that pool in December 2011. Thus, 3 years and 11 months after the trust had closed.

By law, and to ensure tax-free pass-through status by the REMIC (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit) notes placed in trusts must be placed into the pool by a certain date. The Morgan Stanley trust had a cutoff date of January 2007 but Deutsche Bank claims the note they received by a zombie assignment was placed in the pool in 2011. Thus, a nonexistent company called New Century transferred a note to a closed trust.

Up until Yvanova was settled, the California courts rejected hundreds of similar claims over the years stating that borrowers were not a party to or holder of the debt (see Jenkins f. JP Morgan Chase). The California courts essentially ruled that homeowners may now challenge wrongful foreclosures on the grounds that the assignment of the note was invalid or the chain of assignment was faulty. In securitized trusts, it is fairly common for the endorsements and assignments to be either inaccurate or downright fraudulent (photoshopped, robosigned, etc.). The big securitizing banks like Ocwen, Deutsche, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo better prepare for a tsunami of wrongful foreclosure suits in California.

The California Supreme Court, by ruling in favor of Yvanova, effectively confirmed the 2013 California Appellate ruling Glaski v. Bank of America, which held that a homeowner facing a non-judicial foreclosure has standing to challenge violations of the pooling and servicing agreement. One of the most insightful quotes in Yvanova states, “The borrower owes money not to the world at large but to a particular person or institution, and only the person or institution entitled to payment may enforce the debt by foreclosing on the security.”

The California Supreme Court got it right when they elaborated that, “A homeowner who has been foreclosed on by one with no right to do so has suffered an injurious invasion of his or her legal rights at the foreclosing entity’s hands. No more is required for standing to sue.” Could it be that the California courts are tired of the 9 years of fraudulent banking games that have clogged the court system with no end in sight?

It wasn’t the homeowner who got sloppy, greedy and decided to start forging and photoshopping legal documents. It was the banks that engineered this complete fiasco from the top to bottom. Maybe now the banks will clean up their act, or they will be forced to find a more efficient and convincing way to forge and falsify endorsements and assignments. To date, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing- and the banks only hope that the homeowner doesn’t discover their deception.

I will reiterate again, if a bank claims to own a debt then why not simply show the documentation and prove it? This entire mess could be cleaned up very quickly if the banks would simply show the court evidence of ownership- but the courts know the banks don’t have it. By now we know that this entire debacle was engineered under the premise of plausible deniability and the screws are coming loose.
It is evident that the courts have had enough. The Supreme Court in Yvanova stated that:

“… California borrowers whose loans are secured by a deed of trust with a power of sale may suffer foreclosure without judicial process and thus ―would be deprived of a means to assert [their] legal protections if not permitted to challenge the foreclosing entity‘s authority through an action for wrongful foreclosure. (Culhane, supra, 708 F.3d at p. 290.)

A borrower therefore ―has standing to challenge the assignment of a mortgage on her home to the extent that such a challenge is necessary to contest a foreclosing entity‘s status qua mortgagee‖ (id. at p. 291)— that is, as the current holder of the beneficial interest under the deed of trust.”
The decision goes on to state that:

“In seeking a finding that an assignment agreement was void, therefore, a plaintiff in Yvanova‘s position is not asserting the interests of parties to the assignment; she is asserting her own interest in limiting foreclosure on her property to those with legal authority to order a foreclosure sale. This, then, is not a situation in which standing to sue is lacking because its ―sole object . . . is to settle rights of third persons who are not parties. (Golden Gate Bridge etc. Dist. v. Felt (1931) 214 Cal. 308, 316.)”

Apparently the California Supreme Court just grew a pair and the remaining 49 states might want to listen up. With all of the fraud settlements that have occurred over the past seven years, it is evident that what is occurring isn’t simply sloppy paperwork or unintentional oversight but blatant fraud, theft and criminal conspiracy if you want to be honest. It is a sad day in America when a homeowner must go all the way to the Supreme Court in order to obtain a fair and just ruling. If the courts had ruled in favor of the banks (and I am sure the judges in Yvanova knew what was on the line), there is no doubt in my mind that banks would have had a foreclosure feeding frenzy.

The court states the obvious, that there is an investor or entity who may suffer an unauthorized loss of its interest in the note if the foreclosure proceeds, “when an invalid transfer of a note and deed of trust leads to foreclosure by an unauthorized party, the ―victim‖ is not the borrower, whose obligations under the note are unaffected by the transfer, but ―an individual or entity that believes it has a present beneficial interest in the promissory note and may suffer the unauthorized loss of its interest in the note.”

And finally, the court gets to the meat of the matter- the issue of standing. “As it relates to standing, we disagree with defendants’ analysis of prejudice from an illegal foreclosure. A foreclosed-upon borrower clearly meets the general standard for standing to sue by showing an invasion of his or her legally protected interests (Angelucci v. Century Supper Club (2007) 41 Cal.4th 160, 175)—the borrower has lost ownership to the home in an allegedly illegal trustee‘s sale. (See Culhane, supra, 708 F.3d at p. 289 [foreclosed-upon borrower has sufficient personal stake in action against foreclosing entity to meet federal standing requirement].) Moreover, the bank or other entity that ordered the foreclosure would not have done so absent the allegedly void assignment. Thus- [t]he identified harm—the foreclosure—can be traced directly to [the foreclosing entity‘s] exercise of the authority purportedly delegated by the assignment.”

In conclusion, the court clarifies who is allowed to enforce the note without showing overt favoritism to the bank. Please note the eloquence of the last line in this paragraph in the Yvanova decision:

“Nor is it correct that the borrower has no cognizable interest in the identity of the party enforcing his or her debt. Though the borrower is not entitled to object to an assignment of the promissory note, he or she is obligated to pay the debt, or suffer loss of the security, only to a person or entity that has actually been assigned the debt. (See Cockerell v. Title Ins. & Trust Co., supra, 42 Cal.2d at p. 292 [party claiming under an assignment must prove fact of assignment].) The borrower owes money not to the world at large but to a particular person or institution, and only the person or institution entitled to payment may enforce the debt by foreclosing on the security.”

Again, “The borrower owes money NOT TO THE WORLD at large but to a particular person or institution, and ONLY the person or institution entitled to payment may enforce the debt by foreclosing on the security.” The court isn’t magically creating case law- this is exactly what the promissory note entitles the bearer to do- collect on a debt. The note does not say, “If you have a forged document you randomly printed a copy off the internet or photoshopped- you have standing.”

Only the individual or entity with actual STANDING can foreclose on a home. The fact that the homeowner defaulted on an alleged contract (that probably didn’t happen the way the contract reflects the transaction) doesn’t mean any party claiming to be a note holder can foreclose on the home. Like Jerry McGuire said, “SHOW ME THE MONEY.” Until the mortgagee shows up with actual evidence of ownership- no servicer, “lender” or unknown party should be able to randomly foreclose on a home simply by saying they own the note.

Again, this is the beauty of rescission. By precluding the servicer from walking into court with a forged note, mortgage and alleged contract- and forcing this party to demonstrate contractual standing- many fraudulent foreclosures would be prevented. It is tragic that so many people have lost their homes because the courts permitted a pretend lender with no standing to waltz in and take a home simply by showing fraudulent documents and making false claims.

Finally, the Yvanova ruling leaves us with the crowning glory of this decision, “A homeowner who has been foreclosed on by one with no right to do so has suffered an injurious invasion of his or her legal rights at the foreclosing entity‘s hands. No more is required for standing to sue.” Thank you California Supreme Court justices for ruling according to law instead of the banking lobby.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: CALIFORNIA, foreclosure, Livinglies, NEIL GARFIELD, rescission, standing, Yvanova | 15 Comments »

Banks Targeting LivingLies?

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Neil Garfield

There is an old expression which I may have used on this site before says “you know that you are over the target when you start getting flack.”

In a variety of ways, we have uncovered a number of strategies being employed by the large banks on Wall Street directed at discrediting the discussion on this blog and making it as difficult as possible for us to do business. One of the ways that they do this is by planting articles in various periodicals which make it seem as though the housing crisis is behind us and that the banks are doing everything possible to alleviate the suffering of homeowners who are under the gun of wrongful foreclosures that amount to nothing less than outright theft.

Another way they do it is by posting “comments” on the blog that are designed to take up a lot of space and interfere in serious discussion between the readers. The latest round of spamming from the banks has been pointed out to us by a reader and the way that we are handling this is by eliminating the comments from those people who are clearly interfering in intelligent conversation and bona fide research that appears in the comment section in each blog article. To those whom we suspect are paid spammers from the banks, we are sending the following email:

“We received numerous complaints from other followers of the blog regarding comments that you have posted. We are now blocking any comments from you and we will be watching for any variations used by you to post comments that are designed to confuse and chase people away from the blog. We are very much aware of the effort of banks to interfere with our operations and we must be extremely careful to stop any activity on the site that appears to be spawned by people who are paid by the banks to discredit the blog. If you wish to appeal this decision please send an email to NeilfGarfield@Hotmail.com.”

As for the attempts to interfere in our business I will not give any details here nor will I state how we are staying one step ahead of the banks who would like to see the blog taken down in the business destroyed. I am no stranger to fighting with these banks. And they are no stranger to losing the fight when the issues finally appear on the radar screen.

For my part I will continue to provide increasing depth, suggestions, strategies and tactics for lawyers to use against these banks. There is no doubt in my mind that these banks will eventually fall despite all attempts by government and central bankers to create the illusion of strength when in fact both the financial condition of the banks and the financial condition of the economy continued to be bankrupt beyond repair.

There is only so far that you can kick the can down the road. Now that I have so much company in this effort in the form of attorneys, government officials, and pro se litigants, it can be fairly said that my efforts have spawned a cottage industry in which these banks will find themselves the target as real people represented by real lawyers seek money damages and other relief. The outcome of this is very clear to me. There are many economists who have seen and recently made comments based upon their analysis of government issued economic statistics; in particular there are concerned that financial services was at equilibrium with the rest of the economy when it accounted for only 16% of economic activity.

Now at a time when unemployment and underemployment combined with those people who have given up completely may have reached an all-time high, it is apparent to those economists that the alleged growth of our gross domestic product is in large measure due to our willingness to treat the trading of worthless paper as economic activity. The proof is in the pudding. The only way we can say that our gross domestic product is improving at a low rate of 2.5% is by ignoring the fiction of economic activity in the financial sector.

Financial services are now counted in gross domestic product at around 48% versus the 16% when financial services were at equilibrium with the volume of actual production of products and delivery of services. While unemployment grows and while wages continue to stagnate and even decline, we invite a social catastrophe caused by graphic economic inequality supported by fictitious numbers and arrogant policies controlled by those who have received the largest benefit from the largest crime in human history.

Thus the question being answered by this blog and others like it is how long we will listen to government statistics showing an increase in economic activity of 2.5% which is a complete illusion, and when will we start acting on the fact that comparable economic activity has declined by 32%. Think about it.

And by the way, those people who think that they can earn easy money by acting on behalf of the banks should realize that they are extremely expendable and will definitely be thrown under the bus once the plan of action has been disclosed. To the extent that you have any written confirmation of instructions from the banks as to how to interfere with this blog and other discussion sites, I suggest you make copies and have them distributed in different geographic locations. Otherwise, in the event of a lawsuit for interference in our contractual relations with customers and prospective customers, you might end up being the lead defendant.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: banks, financial services, Gross Domestic Product, Livinglies, Spamming | 126 Comments »

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