originator | Livinglies's Weblog

Bank Fraud From the Top Down

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Neil Garfield

MERS is not, as its proponents claim, a device for eliminating the recording charges on legitimate purchases and sales of mortgage loans; instead it is a “layering” device (another Wall Street term) for creating the illusion of such transfers even though no transaction actually took place.

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

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I recently had the occasion to ghost write something for a customer in relation to claims based upon fraud, MERS, and “Successors.” Here is what I drafted, with references to actual people and entities deleted:

MERS was created in 1996 as a means for private traders to create the illusion of loan transfers. On its website MERS states emphatically that it specifically disclaims any interest in any debt and disclaims any interest in any documentation of debt (i.e., a promissory note) and specifically disclaims any interest in any agreement for collateralizing the obligations stated on the note.
There is no agreement in which MERS is authorized as an agent of any creditor. The statement on the note and/or mortgage that it is named as nominee for a “lender” is false. No agreement exists that sets forth the terms or standards of agency relationship between the Payee on the subject “note” or the mortgagee on the subject mortgage. MERS is merely named on instruments without any powers to exercise on behalf of any party who would qualify as a bona fide mortgagee or beneficiary.
No person in MERS actually performs ANY action in connection with loans and no officer or employee of MERS did perform any banking activity in relation tot he subject loan. MERS is a passive database for which access is freely given to anyone who wants to make an entry, regardless of the truth or falsity of that entry. It is a platform where the person accessing the MERS IT system appoints themselves as “assistant secretary” or some other false status in relation to MERS. MERS is not, as its proponents claim, a device for eliminating the recording charges on legitimate purchases and sales of mortgage loans; instead it is a “layering” device (another wall Street term) for creating the illusion of such transfers even though no transaction actually took place.
Hence there is no basis under existing law under which MERS, in this case, was either a nominee for a real creditor and no basis under existing law under which MERS, in this case, could possibly claim that it was either a mortgagee or beneficiary under a deed of trust.
MERS has not claimed and never will claim that it is a mortgagee or beneficiary.
The lender, under the alleged “closing documents” was also a sham nominee. None of the parties in the alleged “chain” were at any times a creditor, lender, purchaser, mortgagee, beneficiary, or holder of any note. None of them have any financial interest or risk of loss in the performance of the alleged “loan” obligations.
Plaintiff reasonably relied upon the representations at the “Closing” that the originator who was named as Payee on the note was lending her money. But in fact the originator was merely acting as a broker, conduit or sales agent whose job was to get the Plaintiff to sign papers — an event that triggered windfall compensation to all the participants (except the Plaintiff), equal to or even greater than the amount of principal supposedly due from the “loan.”
In fact, the originator and multiple other parties had entered into a scheme that was memorialized in an illegal contract violating public policy regarding the disclosure of the identity of the “lender” and the compensation by all parties who received any remuneration of any type arising out the “Closing of the transaction.” The name of the contract is probably a “Purchase and Assumption Agreement” — a standard agreement that is used in the banking industry after the loan has been underwritten, approved and funded. In the case at bar those parties entered into the Purchase and Assumption Agreement before the subject “loan” was closed”, before the Plaintiff even applied for a loan.
The source of the money for the alleged “loan” was a “dark pool” (a term used by investment bankers) consisting of the money advanced by investors who thought they were buying mortgage bonds issued by a Trust, in which their money would be managed by the Trustee. In fact, the Trust is either nonexistent or inchoate having never been funded with the investors’ money. The dark pool contains money commingled from hundreds of investors in thousands of trusts.
The investors were generally stable managed funds including pension, retirement, 401K money for people relying upon said money for their living expenses after retirement. They are the unwitting, unknowing source of funds for the transaction described as a “closing.” Hence the loan contract upon which the Defendants rely is based upon fraudulent representations designed to mislead the court and mislead the Plaintiff and the byproduct of a broader scheme to defraud investors in “Mortgage backed securities” that were issued by a nonexistent trust that never owned the assets supposedly “backing” the “security” often described as a mortgage bond.
Thus the fraud starts with the misrepresentation to investors that the managed funds would be managed by a trustee and would be used to acquire existing loans rather than originate new loans. Instead their funds were used directly on the “closing” table by presumably unwitting “Closing agents.” The fact that the funds arrived created the illusion that the party named on the note and mortgage was actually funding the loan to the “borrower.” This was a lie. But it explains why the Defendants have continually refused to provide any evidence of the “purchase” of the loan by the parties they claim to form a “Chain.”
In the alleged “transfer” of the loan, there was no purchase and no payment of money because at the base of their chain, the originator, there was no right to receive the money that would ordinarily be a requirement for purchase of the loan. There also was no Purchase and Assumption Agreement, which is basic standard banking practice in the acquisition of loans, particularly in pools.
As Plaintiff as recently learned, the originator was not entitled to receive any payment from “successors” and not entitled to receive any money from the Plaintiff who was described as a “borrower.” In simple accounting terms there was no debit and so there could be no “corresponding” credit. And in fact, the originator never did receive any money for purchasing the loan nor any payments that were credited to a loan receivable account in its accounting records. Yet the originator executed or allowed instruments to be executed in which the completely fraudulent assertion that the originator had sold the loan was memorialized.
The “closing” was completely improper in which Plaintiff was fraudulently induced to execute a promissory note as maker and fraudulently induced to execute a mortgage as collateral for the performance under the note. Plaintiff was unaware that she had just created a second liability because the debt could not be legally merged into an instrument that named a party who was not the lender, not a creditor, and not a proper payee for a note memorializing a loan of money from the “lender” to the Plaintiff.
The purpose of the merger rule is to prevent a borrower from creating two liabilities for one transaction. The debt is merged into the note upon execution such that no claim can be made on the debt. None of these fine points of law were known to Plaintiff until recently. The reason she did not know is that the originator and the rest of the parties making claims based upon the fraudulent “loan” memorialized in the note all conspired to withhold information that was required to be disclosed to “borrowers” under Federal and State Law.
In the case at bar, the debt arises from the fact that Plaintiff did in fact receive money or the benefit of payments on her behalf — from third parties who have no contractual, constructive or other relationship with the source of funds for the transaction. The note is based upon a transaction that never existed — a loan from the originator to the Plaintiff. The debt is based upon the receipt of money from a party who was clearly not intending to make a gift to Plaintiff. The debt and the note are two different liabilities.
Assuming the original note exists, Plaintiff is entitled to its its cancellation and return, along with release and satisfaction of the mortgage that collateralizes the obligation set forth on the sham promissory note.
In the interim, as this case clearly shows, the Plaintiff is at risk of a second liability even if she prevails in her claim that the note was a sham, to wit: Under UCC Article 3, if an innocent third party actually purchases the mortgage or deed of trust, the statute shifts the risk of loss onto the maker of the instrument regardless of how serious and egregious the practices of the originator and the background “players” who engineered this scheme.
Further the financial identity and reputation of the Plaintiff was fraudulently used without her knowledge and consent to conduct “trades” based upon her execution of the above referenced false instruments in which many undisclosed players were reaping what they called “trading profits” arising from the “closing” and the illegal and unwanted misuse of her signatures on instruments in which she was induced to sign by fraudulent misrepresentations as to the nature and content of the documents.
Plaintiff suffered damages in that her title was slandered and emotional distress damages and damage to her financial identity and reputation. Further damages arising from violation of her right to quiet enjoyment of the property was violated by this insidious scheme.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: Article 3 UCC, fraud, investors, maker, MERS IT, mortgagee, originator, Payee | 4 Comments »

LOAN ORIGINATORS ARE NOT LENDERS

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Neil Garfield

WE HAVE REVAMPED OUR SERVICE OFFERINGS TO MEET THE REQUESTS OF LAWYERS AND HOMEOWNERS. This is not an offer for legal representation. In order to make it easier to serve you and get better results please take a moment to fill out our FREE registration form https://fs20.formsite.com/ngarfield/form271773666/index.html?1453992450583

Our services consist mainly of the following:

30 minute Consult — expert for lay people, legal for attorneys
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Case review and analysis
Rescission review and drafting of documents for notice and recording
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Expert witness declarations and testimony
Consultant to attorneys representing homeowners
Books and Manuals authored by Neil Garfield are also available, plus video seminars on DVD.

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. You also may fill out our Registration form which, upon submission, will automatically be sent to us. That form can be found at https://fs20.formsite.com/ngarfield/form271773666/index.html?1452614114632. By filling out this form you will be allowing us to see your current status. If you call or email us at neilfgarfield@hotmail.com your question or request for service can then be answered more easily.

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

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see Hancock Ins v JPMorgan Chase et al

The question hanging in the air because nobody wants to answer it is that if a party is merely an originator and NOT a lender or creditor, then is there any theory under which a loan contract could be considered consummated? Anyone who has been reading my blog over the years knows I think the answer is no — especially because that practice is called a table funded loan and is considered PREDATORY PER SE according to REG Z under the Truth in Lending Act.

The second question would be whether there is any debt owed to a party on a note and mortgage arising out of a “closing” where there was no loan between the originator and the “borrower?” Again I answer no from simple contract theory. The fact that I give you $5 does not mean you owe my friend Joe $5 unless I transfer the debt.

The banks have managed to confuse courts for 10 years but their “15 minutes” appears to be up. They have reversed it.

Joe gets you to sign a note and mortgage to his benefit and he lends no money. Then Mary asks me for $5 so she can lend it to you. We all hire a closing agent. Mary sends my $5 to the closing agent and the closing agent procures your signature on the note and mortgage that was prepared by Mary.

The note and mortgage are payable to Joe. So now, according to the paperwork, you owe Joe $5. My $5 is given to you by the closing agent, who assumes the $5 came from Joe. So you and I have a debtor-creditor relationship that neither of us knows about. You and Joe have a false relationship of “maker” and “payee” on the note that never should have been released from “closing” had the real facts been revealed by disclosures required by the Truth in Lending Act.

That lack of knowledge is at the center of all the controversies in cases where securitization is asserted. They securitized the paper but not the debt.

According to substantive law, you owe either Mary or me — not under the UCC or contract law but under rules of equity. It is a claim that is unsecured. If someone actually buys the note then you are screwed because if they paid for the note in good faith and without knowledge of your defenses, they can enforce it. Mary gets an assignment or fabricates an assignment from Joe and pays him a fee for his “troubles.”

Notice that my $5 is never mentioned in the paperwork with anyone. And my $5 is the only real money in the “game.” If later I figure out where my money went, then I can sue you under equity (unjust enrichment, etc) and win. If someone pays for the paper they can also win. You are left with an action for damages against Joe and maybe Mary. But they are most likely long gone. So you became indebted for $10 even though you only borrowed $5. Add the cost of litigation and interest and your loan probably goes from $5 to $5,000, with little hope of recovery from anyone — unless a judge believes your defenses and insists on proof of the underlying transactions, in which case Joe and Mary will get free room and board from the state (Prison).

Back to the paperwork. Mary’s Uncle creates a company and Mary transfers the loan papers to her uncle’s company. Note that the paperwork has been transferred, not the underlying debt. The paperwork is like a quitclaim deed from someone with no interest in the land. Other than me, nobody has paid any money for the origination or acquisition of the loan. But I have no paperwork protecting my interest even though Mary promised she would get it to me.

I own the debt. But since I don’t know you exist, I never claim any money from you. Instead Mary’s Uncle hires a bank to act like the servicer for the company formed by Mary’s Uncle. The servicer brings suit in the name of the company and they sue you for the $ plus fees, interest and litigation expenses.

If you have guessed that the courts have been rubber stamping a criminal conspiracy, I would agree.

FROM WILLIAM PAATALO

DEFINITION of ‘Third–Party Mortgage Originator‘ 1. A person or company involved in the process of marketing mortgages and gathering borrower information for a mortgage application. This information is then transferred or sold to the actual mortgage lender.

And here’s Fannie Mae’s Definition:

https://www.fanniemae.com/content/guide/selling/a3/3/01.html

Fannie Mae classifies mortgages into three different origination types:

retail,
correspondent, or
broker.

Refer to the Glossary for the definition of each origination type.

A third-party origination is any mortgage that is completely or partially originated, processed, underwritten, packaged, funded, or closed by a third-party originator, that is, an entity other than the lender that sells the mortgage to Fannie Mae, such as a mortgage broker or correspondent. Fannie Mae does not consider a mortgage that is originated and/or funded by a lender’s parent, affiliate, or subsidiary to be a third-party origination unless the parent, affiliate, or subsidiary uses the services of a mortgage broker or loan correspondent to perform some or all of the loan origination functions.

From the Table of Contents of the attached Hancock Ins. v. JPMC, et al.:

THE THIRD PARTY ORIGINATORS OF THE MORTGAGE LOANS UNDERLYING THE CERTIFICATES ABANDONED THEIR UNDERWRITING GUIDELINES AND APPRAISAL STANDARDS …………………………………………………………………………….88
1. BNC…………………………………………………………………………………………….90
2. CIT Group…………………………………………………………………………………….91
3. Countrywide………………………………………………………………………………….93
4. FNBN…………………………………………………………………………………………..95
5. Fremont………………………………………………………………………………………..96
6. GreenPoint……………………………………………………………………………………99
7. Impac Funding…………………………………………………………………………….102
8. IndyMac……………………………………………………………………………………..103
9. MortgageIT…………………………………………………………………………………107
10. New Century……………………………………………………………………………….108
11. People’s Choice…………………………………………………………………………..112
12. PHH……………………………………………………………………………………………113
13. Sebring……………………………………………………………………………………….114
14. Wells Fargo…………………………………………………………………………………114

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: disclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, fraud, originator, securitization, table funded loans | 13 Comments »

Securitization for Lawyers: How it was Written by Wall Street Banks

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Neil Garfield

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

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Continuing with my article THE CONCEPT OF SECURITIZATION from yesterday, we have been looking at the CONCEPT of Securitization and determined there is nothing theoretically wrong with it. That alone accounts for tens of thousands of defenses” raised in foreclosure actions across the country where borrowers raised the “defense” securitization. No such thing exists. Foreclosure defense is contract defense — i.e., you need to prove that in your case the elements of contract are absent and THAT is why the note or the mortgage cannot be enforced. Keep in mind that it is entirely possible to prove that the mortgage is unenforceable even if the note remains enforceable. But as we have said in a hundred different ways, it does not appear to me that in most cases, the loan contract ever existed, or that the acquisition contract in which the loan was being “purchased” ever occurred. But much of THAT argument is left for tomorrow’s article on Securitization as it was practiced by Wall Street banks.

So we know that the concept of securitization is almost as old as commerce itself. The idea of reducing risk and increasing the opportunity for profits is an essential element of commerce and capitalism. Selling off pieces of a venture to accomplish a reduction of risk on one ship or one oil well or one loan has existed legally and properly for a long time without much problem except when a criminal used the system against us — like Ponzi, Madoff or Drier or others. And broadening the venture to include many ships, oil wells or loans makes sense to further reduce risk and increase the likelihood of a healthy profit through volume.

Syndication of loans has been around as long as banking has existed. Thus agreements to share risk and profit or actually selling “shares” of loans have been around, enabling banks to offer loans to governments, big corporations or even little ones. In the case of residential loans, few syndications are known to have been used. In 1983, syndications called securitizations appeared in residential loans, credit cards, student loans, auto loans and all types of other consumer loans where the issuance of IPO securities representing shares of bundles of debt.

For logistical and legal reasons these securitizations had to be structured to enable the flow of loans into “special purpose vehicles” (SPV) which were simply corporations, partnerships or Trusts that were formed for the sole purpose of taking ownership of loans that were originated or acquired with the money the SPV acquired from an offering of “bonds” or other “shares” representing an undivided fractional share of the entire portfolio of that particular SPV.

The structural documents presented to investors included the Prospectus, Subscription Agreement, and Pooling and Servicing Agreement (PSA). The prospectus is supposed to disclose the use of proceeds and the terms of the payback. Since the offering is in the form of a bond, it is actually a loan from the investor to the Trust, coupled with a fractional ownership interest in the alleged “pool of assets” that is going into the Trust by virtue of the Trustee’s acceptance of the assets. That acceptance executed by the Trustee is in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement, which is an exhibit to the Prospectus. In theory that is proper. The problem is that the assets don’t exist, can’t be put in the trust and the proceeds of sale of the Trust mortgage-backed bonds doesn’t go into the Trust or any account that is under the authority of the Trustee.

The writing of the securitization documents was done by a handful of law firms under the direction of a few individual lawyers, most of whom I have not been able to identify. One of them is located in Chicago. There are some reports that 9 lawyers from a New Jersey law firm resigned rather than participate in the drafting of the documents. The reports include emails from the 9 lawyers saying that they refused to be involved in the writing of a “criminal enterprise.”

I believe the report is true, after reading so many documents that purport to create a securitization scheme. The documents themselves start off with what one would and should expect in the terms and provisions of a Prospectus, Pooling and Servicing Agreement etc. But as you read through them, you see the initial terms and provisions eroded to the point of extinction. What is left is an amalgam of options for the broker dealers selling the mortgage backed bonds.

The options all lead down roads that are absolutely opposite to what any real party in interest would allow or give their consent or agreement. The lenders (investors) would never have agreed to what was allowed in the documents. The rating agencies and insurers and guarantors would never have gone along with the scheme if they had truly understood what was intended. And of course the “borrowers” (homeowners) had no idea that claims of securitization existed as to the origination or intended acquisition their loans. Allan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, said he read the documents and couldn’t understand them. He also said that he had more than 100 PhD’s and lawyers who read them and couldn’t understand them either.

Greenspan believed that “market forces” would correct the ambiguities. That means he believed that people who were actually dealing with these securities as buyers, sellers, rating agencies, insurers and guarantors would reject them if the appropriate safety measures were not adopted. After he left the Federal Reserve he admitted he was wrong. Market forces did not and could not correct the deficiencies and defects in the entire process.

The REAL document is the Assignment and Assumption Agreement that is NOT usually disclosed or attached as an exhibit to the Prospectus. THAT is the agreement that controls everything that happens with the borrower at the time of the alleged “closing.” See me on YouTube to explain the Assignment and Assumption Agreement. Suffice it to say that contrary to the representations made in the sale of the bonds by the broker to the investor, the money from the investor goes into the control of the broker dealer and NOT the REMIC Trust. The Broker Dealer filters some of the money down to closings in the name of “originators” ranging from large (Wells Fargo, Countrywide) to small (First Magnus et al). I’ll tell you why tomorrow or the next day. The originators are essentially renting their names the same as the Trustees of the REMIC Trusts. It looks right but isn’t what it appears. Done properly, the lender on the note and mortgage would be the REMIC Trust or a common aggregator. But if the Banks did it properly they wouldn’t have had such a joyful time in the moral hazard zone.

The PSA turned out to be the primary document creating the Trusts that were creating primarily under the laws of the State of New York because New York and a few other states had a statute that said that any variance from the express terms of the Trust was VOID, not voidable. This gave an added measure of protection to the investors that the SPV would not be used for any purpose other than what was described, and eliminated the need for them to sue the Trustee or the Trust for misuse of their funds. What the investors did not understand was that there were provisions in the enabling documents that allowed the brokers and other intermediaries to ignore the Trust altogether, assert ownership in the name of a broker or broker-controlled entity and trade on both the loans and the bonds.

The Prospectus SHOULD have contained the full list of all loans that were being aggregated into the SPV or Trust. And the Trust instrument (PSA) should have shown that the investors were receiving not only a promise to repay them but also a share ownership in the pool of loans. One of the first signals that Wall Street was running an illegal scheme was that most prospectuses stated that the pool assets were disclosed in an attached spreadsheet, which contained the description of loans that were already in existence and were then accepted by the Trustee of the SPV (REMIC Trust) in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. The problem was that the vast majority of Prospectuses and Pooling and Servicing agreements either omitted the exhibit showing the list of loans or stated outright that the attached list was not the real list and that the loans on the spreadsheet were by example only and not the real loans.

Most of the investors were “stable managed funds.” This is a term of art that applied to retirement, pension and similar type of managed funds that were under strict restrictions about the risk they could take, which is to say, the risk had to be as close to zero as possible. So in order to present a pool that the fund manager of a stable managed fund could invest fund assets the investment had to qualify under the rules and regulations restricting the activities of stable managed funds. The presence of stable managed funds buying the bonds or shares of the Trust also encouraged other types of investors to buy the bonds or shares.

But the number of loans (which were in the thousands) in each bundle made it impractical for the fund managers of stable managed funds to examine the portfolio. For the most part, if they done so they would not found one loan that was actually in existence and obviously would not have done the deal. But they didn’t do it. They left it on trust for the broker dealers to prove the quality of the investment in bonds or shares of the SPV or Trust.

So the broker dealers who were creating the SPVs (Trusts) and selling the bonds or shares, went to the rating agencies which are quasi governmental units that give a score not unlike the credit score given to individuals. Under pressure from the broker dealers, the rating agencies went from quality culture to a profit culture. The broker dealers were offering fees and even premium on fees for evaluation and rating of the bonds or shares they were offering. They HAD to have a rating that the bonds or shares were “investment grade,” which would enable the stable managed funds to buy the bonds or shares. The rating agencies were used because they had been independent sources of evaluation of risk and viability of an investment, especially bonds — even if the bonds were not treated as securities under a 1998 law signed into law by President Clinton at the behest of both republicans and Democrats.

Dozens of people in the rating agencies set off warning bells and red flags stating that these were not investment grade securities and that the entire SPV or Trust would fail because it had to fail. The broker dealers who were the underwriters on nearly all the business done by the rating agencies used threats, intimidation and the carrot of greater profits to get the ratings they wanted. and responded to threats that the broker would get the rating they wanted from another rating agency and that they would not ever do business with the reluctant rating agency ever again — threatening to effectively put the rating agency out of business. At the rating agencies, the “objectors” were either terminated or reassigned. Reports in the Wal Street Journal show that it was custom and practice for the rating officers to be taken on fishing trips or other perks in order to get the required the ratings that made Wall Street scheme of “securitization” possible.

This threat was also used against real estate appraisers prompting them in 2005 to send a petition to Congress signed by 8,000 appraisers, in which they said that the instructions for appraisal had been changed from a fair market value appraisal to an appraisal that would make each deal work. the appraisers were told that if they didn’t “play ball” they would never be hired again to do another appraisal. Many left the industry, but the remaining ones, succumbed to the pressure and, like the rating agencies, they gave the broker dealers what they wanted. And insurers of the bonds or shares freely issued policies based upon the same premise — the rating from the respected rating agencies. And ultimate this also effected both guarantors of the loans and “guarantors” of the bonds or shares in the Trusts.

So the investors were now presented with an insured investment grade rating from a respected and trusted source. The interest rate return was attractive — i.e., the expected return was higher than any of the current alternatives that were available. Some fund managers still refused to participate and they are the only ones that didn’t lose money in the crisis caused by Wall Street — except for a period of time through the negative impact on the stock market and bond market when all securities became suspect.

In order for there to be a “bundle” of loans that would go into a pool owned by the Trust there had to be an aggregator. The aggregator was typically the CDO Manager (CDO= Collateralized Debt Obligation) or some entity controlled by the broker dealer who was selling the bonds or shares of the SPV or Trust. So regardless of whether the loan was originated with funds from the SPV or was originated by an actual lender who sold the loan to the trust, the debts had to be processed by the aggregator to decide who would own them.

In order to protect the Trust and the investors who became Trust beneficiaries, there was a structure created that made it look like everything was under control for their benefit. The Trust was purchasing the pool within the time period prescribed by the Internal Revenue Code. The IRC allowed the creation of entities that were essentially conduits in real estate mortgages — called Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits (REMICs). It allows for the conduit to be set up and to “do business” for 90 days during which it must acquire whatever assets are being acquired. The REMIC Trust then distributes the profits to the investors. In reality, the investors were getting worthless bonds issued by unfunded trusts for the acquisition of assets that were never purchased (because the trusts didn’t have the money to buy them).

The TRUSTEE of the REMIC Trust would be called a Trustee and should have had the powers and duties of a Trustee. But instead the written provisions not only narrowed the duties and obligations of the Trustee but actual prevented both the Trustee and the beneficiaries from even inquiring about the actual portfolio or the status of any loan or group of loans. The way it was written, the Trustee of the REMIC Trust was in actuality renting its name to appear as Trustee in order to give credence to the offering to investors.

There was also a Depositor whose purpose was to receive, process and store documents from the loan closings — except for the provisions that said, no, the custodian, would store the records. In either case it doesn’t appear that either the Depositor nor the “custodian” ever received the documents. In fact, it appears as though the documents were mostly purposely lost and destroyed, as per the Iowa University study conducted by Katherine Ann Porter in 2007. Like the others, the Depositor was renting its name as though ti was doing something when it was doing nothing.

And there was a servicer described as a Master Servicer who could delegate certain functions to subservicers. And buried in the maze of documents containing hundreds of pages of mind-numbing descriptions and representations, there was a provision that stated the servicer would pay the monthly payment to the investor regardless of whether the borrower made any payment or not. The servicer could stop making those payments if it determined, in its sole discretion, that it was not “recoverable.”

This was the hidden part of the scheme that might be a simple PONZI scheme. The servicers obviously could have no interest in making payments they were not receiving from borrowers. But they did have an interest in continuing payments as long as investors were buying bonds. THAT is because the Master Servicers were the broker dealers, who were selling the bonds or shares. Those same broker dealers designated their own departments as the “underwriter.” So the underwriters wrote into the prospectus the presence of a “reserve” account, the source of funding for which was never made clear. That was intentionally vague because while some of the “servicer advance” money might have come from the investors themselves, most of it came from external “profits” claimed by the broker dealers.

The presence of servicer advances is problematic for those who are pursuing foreclosures. Besides the fact that they could not possibly own the loan, and that they couldn’t possibly be a proper representative of an owner of the loan or Holder in Due Course, the actual creditor (the group of investors or theoretically the REMIC Trust) never shows a default of any kind even when the servicers or sub-servicers declare a default, send a notice of default, send a notice of acceleration etc. What they are doing is escalating their volunteer payments to the creditor — made for their own reasons — to the status of a holder or even a holder in due course — despite the fact that they never acquired the loan, the debt, the note or the mortgage.

The essential fact here is that the only paperwork that shows actual transfer of money is that which contains a check or wire transfer from investor to the broker dealer — and then from the broker dealer to various entities including the CLOSING AGENT (not the originator) who applied the funds to a closing in which the originator was named as the Lender when they had never advanced any funds, were being paid as a vendor, and would sign anything, just to get another fee. The money received by the borrower or paid on behalf of the borrower was money from the investors, not the Trust.

So the note should have named the investors, not the Trust nor the originator. And the mortgage should have made the investors the mortgagee, not the Trust nor the originator. The actual note and mortgage signed in favor of the originator were both void documents because they failed to identify the parties to the loan contract. Another way of looking at the same thing is to say there was no loan contract because neither the investors nor the borrowers knew or understood what was happening at the closing, neither had an opportunity to accept or reject the loan, and neither got title to the loan nor clear title after the loan. The investors were left with a debt that could be recovered probably as a demand loan, but which was unsecured by any mortgage or security agreement.

To counter that argument these intermediaries are claiming possession of the note and mortgage (a dubious proposal considering the Porter study) and therefore successfully claiming, incorrectly, that the facts don’t matter, and they have the absolute right to prevail in a foreclosure on a home secured by a mortgage that names a non-creditor as mortgagee without disclosure of the true source of funds. By claiming legal presumptions, the foreclosers are in actuality claiming that form should prevail over substance.

Thus the broker-dealers created written instruments that are the opposite of the Concept of Securitization, turning complete transparency into a brick wall. Investor should have been receiving verifiable reports and access into the portfolio of assets, none of which in actuality were ever purchased by the Trust, because the pooling and servicing agreement is devoid of any representation that the loans have been purchased by the Trust or that the Trust paid for the pool of loans. Most of the actual transfers occurred after the cutoff date for REMIC status under the IRC, violating the provisions of the PSA/Trust document that states the transfer must be complete within the 90 day cutoff period. And it appears as though the only documents even attempted to be transferred into the pool are those that are in default or in foreclosure. The vast majority of the other loans are floating in cyberspace where anyone can grab them if they know where to look.

Filed under: AMGAR, bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, discovery, escrow agent, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, GTC | Honor, investment banking, Investor, MBS TRUSTEE, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motions, Neil Garfield Show, originator, Pleading, securities fraud, Servicer, taxes, Title, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: appraisals, Assignment and ASsumption Agreement, broker-dealer, CDO manager, closing agent, distribution reports, form over substance, guarantees, insurance, legal presumptions, Master Servicer, MBS, Mortgage, mortgage backed bonds, note, originator, Pooling and Servicing Agreement, Porter Study, Prospectus, ratings, REMIC, Reserve, SECURITIZATION DOCUMENTS, Servicer advances, title and securitization reports, trust, trustee | 6 Comments »

Theory vs Fact and What to do About It in Court

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Neil Garfield

NOTICE: The information contained on this blog is based upon fact when stated as fact and theory when stated as theory. We are well aware that the facts presented on this blog are contrary to the facts as presented by mainstream media, the executive branch of government and even the judicial branch of government. We do not consider anything to be fact unless it is corroborated in at least three ways. Some of the information is based upon extensive interviews with industry insiders who have shared information based upon a promise of anonymity. Some of the information is based upon intensive research into specific companies and specific people including the hiring of investigative services. Some of the information is based upon personal knowledge of Neil Garfield during his tenure on Wall Street and in his investment banking activities related to the trading of commercial and residential real estate. All fact patterns presented as true in this blog are additionally subjected to the test of logic and the presence or absence of a contrary explanation.

THE TRUE NARRATIVE OF SECURITIZATION

Think about it. When the bond sells or is repurchased, what happens to the loans. The bond “derives” its value from the loans (hence “derivative”). So if you sell the bond you have sold a share of the underlying loans, right? Wrong — but only wrong if you believe the spin from Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve cover for quantitative easing (expansion of the money supply not required by demand caused by increased economic activity). Otherwise you would be entirely correct.

If you buy a share of General Motors you can’t claim direct ownership over the cars and equipment. That is because GM is a corporation. A corporation is a valid “legal fiction”. When you create a corporation you are creating a legal person. Now let’s suppose you give your broker the money to buy a share of General Motors, does that give the broker to claim ownership over your investment? Of course not — with one major glaring exception. The exception is that securities are often held in”street name” rather than titled to you as the buyer. You can always demand that the stock certificate be issued in your name, but if you don’t then it will be held in the name of the brokerage house that executed the transaction for you. So on paper it looks like the share of GM is titled to the brokerage house and not you. It is standard practice and there is nothing wrong with it in theory until you take away accountability for malfeasance.

Before brokers were allowed to incorporate, the owners or partners were individually liable for everything that happened in the brokerage company. So they were not likely to claim your security held in street name as their own. In fact, the paper crash in the late 19060’s was directly related to the fact that the securities held in street name did not match up with the statements of investors who had accounts with the brokerage houses who screwed up the paperwork so badly, that some firms crashed and to this day there are unresolved certificates in which the identity of the actual owner is unknown.

And if they sold your share of GM, the proceeds were supposed to be yours. In the yesteryear of Wall Street rules they would only execute a sell of your share of GM if you ordered it. It can be fairly stated that the reason why the financial system broke down is that brokers had nothing stopping them from claiming ownership over the investors money (thus stealing both the money and the identity of the investor) and nothing stopping them from claiming ownership over a loan that was issued by a borrower and used by the broker to sell, trade and profit from exotic securities using the investors’ money without accounting to either the investor or the borrower (or the regulators) of the details of such trades.

Today it is still supposed to be true that the brokers are “honest” intermediaries just like your commercial bank that handles your checking account, but as it turns out neither the investment banks nor the commercial bank have a culture of caring for or about their customers or depositors. The system has broken down.

And so the moral hazard of having corporations managed by officers who are not likely to go to jail or go bankrupt when the system of gambling with customer money goes bad, they suffer nothing. They get paid bonuses for any upside event but they never feel the pain when things go bad. Back “in the day” there were three things stopping bankers from defrauding the public: personal responsibility, agency regulation and industry pressure from peers who feared the public would stop doing business with them if it became known that their deposits were being “managed” in ways most people could not be true.

Now we can return to the question of what is the legal result of a transfer of a mortgage backed bond. You have given the brokerage house the money to buy the bond (let’s say you are a pension fund). The brokerage house should have given your money to the “legal person” that issues or owns the bond. So if you are the first buyer of the bond, then the money should go to the trustee of the New York common law trust (REMIC) that issues the bond to you — except that it is in reality issued in “street name” — I.e., in the name of the brokerage house. This is contrary to the intent of the prospectus and PSA given to investors but it is left intentionally vague as to whether this path is legally mandated. The courts are all caught up in the paperwork instead of looking at the actual transactions and matching those transactions with common law principles that have been presumptively true for centuries.

The 1998 law exempts mortgage back bonds from being called securities so it could be argued that they should not be issued in street name, a process applicable to securities trading. Without the devices of “Selling Forward” (selling what you don’t have — yet) and issuing ownership in “Street name” it would have been very difficult for any of this mayhem to have grown to such pornographic proportions.

NOW HERE IS WHERE THE CRIME STARTED: No trust agreement was ever created, so this gave the bankers wiggle room in case they wanted to avoid trust law. The creation of the trust is said to be in the PSA and prospectus and one could be implied from the wording, but it is difficult in plain language to confirm the intent to create a trust. Nonetheless it became part of Wall Street parlance to refer tot he special purpose vehicles qualifying for special tax treatment under REMIC statutes as “trusts.”

No bond was issued in most cases. The bond issued by the “trust” in reality was merely notated on the books of the investment banking brokerage. Nearly all bonds therefore have no paper certificate even available (called non certificated). The “private label” bonds are so full of legal holes that they could not hold air, much less water.

No money was given to the trustee or the trust. No assets were deposited into the trust. The trust never acquired or originated any loans because it didn’t pay for them. It didn’t pay for them because it had no money to pay for them. The money you gave to purchase a bond never went to the trustee or the trust. In fact the trustee failed to start a file on your “trust” and therefore never assigned it to their trust department. The trustee also never started a depository account for the trust. It would have been named “XYZ Bank in trust for ABC trust”. That never happened except when they were piloting the scheme that become the largest Economic crime in human history.

Banks diverted your money from the trust into their own pockets. Without telling you, they put the money into a commingled undifferentiated account. The notation was made that the investor was credited with the purchase of one bond but the bond was never issued and the trust didn’t get the money so there was no deal or transaction between you and the trust. You gave the brokerage firm your money for the bond but you never got the bond. The issuance of the bond from the trust was a fiction perpetrated by the brokerage house. Since neither the trustee nor the trust had any records nor an account where your money could be deposited, it never came into legal existence, but more importantly it lacked the funds to buy or originate residential mortgage loans.

Money was controlled by the investment banks, not the trusts or the trustees. That money was sitting in the the brokerage account along with thousands of investors who thought they were buying millions of bonds in thousands of trusts. Having voluntarily ignored the existence of the allegedly existing trust, it doesn’t matter whether the trust did or did not exist because it was never funded and therefore was a nullity. In reality, the investors were not owners of a trust or beneficiaries of a trust, they were common law general partners in a scheme that rocked the world.

From the start the money chain never matched the paperwork. The brokerage house wired money to the depository account (checking account) of the closing agent (usually a title agent) “on the ground” who also received closing papers from Great Loans, Inc. (not a real name, but represents the “originators” as they came to be called whose name showed up on all the settlement papers and disclosures required for a real estate closing with a “lender). The payee on the note and the mortgagee on the mortgage was named “lender” even though they had never made a loan.

Donald Duck was your lender. The entire lender side of the closing was fictitious. The originators were not just naked nominees, they were fictitious nominees for a fictitious lender who was never disclosed. Under Reg Z and TILA this is a “table funded loan” and it is illegal because the borrower, by law, is required to be given information about the identity of his lender and all the fees, commissions and other compensation paid to various parties.

The investment bank owes the borrower all of its compensation, plus treble damages, attorney fees and costs. A table funded loan is one in which the borrower is deprived of the choice guaranteed by the Federal Truth in Lending Act. It is defined as “predatory per se” which means that all you need to show is that the closing parties, including the closing agent, engaged in a pattern of conduct in which the identity of the real lender was withheld.

Terms of payment and repayment were never disclosed to the lenders and never disclosed to the borrowers. The borrower is also supposed to know, as part of the disclosures of compensation, the terms of repayment. In this case the prospectus and PSA disclose a repayment scheme that makes you, the investor, a co-obligor on repaying your own investment. This is because the terms of the “bond” clearly state that the brokerage house can pay the interest or principal on your investment out of your own funds. That provision is used by the FBI in thousands of PONZI scheme investigations as a red flag for the presence of fraud.

The Terms of the loan were never disclosed to the investor or the buyer. The behavior of the banks can only be considered as legal or excusable if the enabling language existed to allow trading using your money as an investor/depositor/lender. The behavior of the banks does not match up with either the paper trail or the money trail of actual transactions.

AND HERE IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING. The closing agent knows they got money not from the originator and not even from the party that later claims to have made the loan. But they go ahead anyway, issue worthless title insurance, and they close the loan, distributing money as stated in the closing settlement papers; but what is not disclosed in the closing settlement papers is that the terms of repayment for the bond are different from the terms of repayment on the note. And another thing not disclosed is what happened to your money that was supposedly invested in the purchase of a bond payable by a “trust” that didn’t have the money to originate or acquire loans because the brokerage house never tendered it to the trust. The trustee knew it was playing a part in a fictional play and the only thing they were interested in was getting their paycheck for pretending to be the trustee, when in fact there was no trust account, no trust assets, and no bond actually issued by the trust.

The Secret Yield Spread Premium in which the banks stole part of your money when you gave them money to buy into mortgage bundles immediately reduced the amount invested to a level that guaranteed that you would never be repaid. Many different types of loans were made this way. In fact, 96% of all loans made during the mortgage meltdown period were initiated this way. The brokerage house had an affiliated company that was called an aggregator. The aggregator would collect up all the loans that were REPORTEDLY closed, whether they really closed or not. This information came from the loan originator who in effect was billing for services rendered: pretending to be a lender at a closing I which it had no interest. The collection of loans included as many toxic loans as could be found because on average, the collection of loans would have a higher expected interest rate than without the toxic loans. Toxic loans (loans that are known will die in default) carry a very high rate of interest even if the first payment is a teaser payment of one-tenth the amount of the actual augment of principal and interest that would ordinarily apply, and which was applied later when the loans were foreclosed.

The undisclosed yield spread premium is certainly due back to the borrower with treble damages under current law. An investment carrying a higher rate of return usually is worth more on the open market than one with a lower rate of return — assuming the risk on both is comparable. The brokerage house managed to use its influence and money to get the rating agencies to say that these collections of mortgages (bundles) were “investment grade” securities (forgetting that the 1998 law exempted these bonds as “securities”). So for example, let’s take your investment and see what happened. The brokerage house pretended to report that your money had gone into the trust which we already know did not happen. The interest rate of return you were expecting from the highest grade “investment securities” was lower than the average rate of return on investments on average. After all you knew the risk was zero, so the return is lower.

PLAIN LANGUAGE: Brokers took a part of your investment money and created a fictitious transaction in which they always made a large profit (15%-30%). The brokerage house took the bundle of loans created by the aggregator with an inflated rate of return caused by including toxic mortgages with 15% interest rates, and SOLD those loans to itself in “street name” for fair market value which was inflated because of the toxic loans being part of the package. Yes, that is right. The brokerage house created a fictional transaction in which it pretended the bonds were issued and then sold the bundle of mortgages at a fictions profit. They sold the mortgages to themselves and then booked the transaction as a “proprietary trading” profit which is one of many pieces of compensation that was never disclosed to the borrower.

Under law that compensation is due back to the borrower along with treble damages, interest, and all other payments plus attorney fees and costs. The proprietary trading profit reported by the banks was fictional just as all the other elements of the transaction were fictional. It is called a yield spread premium which is the difference in the fair market value of the same loan at two different interest rates. YSPs are common at ground level with the borrower and his mortgage broker etc., but never before present in any large scale operation up at the lender level, where you are, since you have given the brokerage house money to execute a transaction, to wit: purchase mortgage backed bond from a particular trust.

WHAT HAPPENED TO TITLE? It was defective from the start. Neither the originator nor MERS or anyone else had an actual interest in the proceeds of payments on that mortgage. They were just play-acting. But here in the real world they got away with playing with real money (so far). If your money had gone into the trust with the trustee managing the trust assets (because there were trust assets), then the name of the trust should have been placed on the note as payee because the trust made the loan. And the name of the trust should have been on the mortgage as mortgagee or beneficiary under a deed of trust because the trust made the loan. Instead, the brokerage firms set up an elaborate maze of companies under cover or sponsorship from the big banks all pretending to be trading a loan for which both the note and mortgage were known to be defective.

And then the banks claimed to have taken a loss on the bonds (never issued to begin with) for which they were richly rewarded by receiving payments of insurance and credit default swaps, bailout and of course the Federal Reserve program of buying $85 billion PER MONTH in bonds that the Board of Governors knows were never issued from a trust that never existed. And instead of giving you your money back with interest they said “see, there is the huge loss on these bonds and the underlying loans” and they to,d you to eat the loss. But you responded with “Hey. I gave you money to buy those bonds. You were my agent. I don’t care how complex the exotic maze, if you were the agent who took my money then you were the agent who diverted my money and then said it is all the same thing. You brokers owe me my money back.

Meanwhile the aggregators who are really the same brokerage companies are being sued by Fannie, Freddie, investors and other state and federal agencies for selling worthless paper whose value dropped to pennies on the dollar despite the value of the underlying mortgages. And the aggregators are being forced to buy back the crap they sold. So we have the trust, the trustee and you, the investor who never had any investment of value, and the instrument you were supposed to get (mortgage backed bonds) paid off in a dozen different ways.

Which leaves you with the question of every investor in these bogus bonds. What is the value or even the utility of a worthless bond which even if it had been real, has already been aid off? How can the note provisions survive to be enforced on a debt that has been paid off several times over? Why are courts allowing lawsuits, including Foreclosures, on bogus claims where the creditor, the alleged lender, and the alleged trustee of the issuer have no interest in the outcome of litigation and have given warning to all Servicers NOT to use their names in the foreclosure suits — because they have no trust account, they have no account receivable, they have no bond receivable and they have no note receivable?

And why are the courts ignoring the fact that even if the bonds were real, the Federal Reserve now owns most of them. The short answer is that nothing happens to the bond or the loan because they were never connected the way they were supposed to be. The signature of the borrower did not give rise to any debt. The loan from the brokerage house did not give rise to any debt because the broker got paid. And if the principal debt was extinguished at the loan closing (most cases) or after the loan closing, there is no amount due. And even if the insurance and other payments were not enough to any off the loans, the receipt of even one nickel should have reduced the amount due to you the investor and you would have expected a nickel less from the borrower.

HBC,FNMA.OB,FMCC.OB,BAC,JPM,

RBS | Tue, Aug 6

HSBC faces $1.6B payout over mortgage bonds • HSBC (HBC) faces having to pay $1.6B in a lawsuit from the Federal Housing Finance Agency over soured mortgage bonds that the bank sold to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB). The bank made the disclosure yesterday. • The figure is well above the $900M that analysts at Credit Suisse had estimated. • In total the FHFA has sued 18 banks over mortgage bonds; should HSBC’s calculations for its liabilities be applied to some of the defendants with the largest exposure, including Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan (JPM) and RBS (RBS), they would have to pay over $7B each. Should these banks make payments in proportion with a recent UBS deal, the bill would above $4B.

Full Story: http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/1194872?source=ipadportfolioapp

Filed under: AMGAR, CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage | Tagged: AGGREGATOR, borrower, facts, Investor, mortgage-backed bond, originator, securitization, THEORY | 82 Comments »

“Conversion” of the Note to a Bond Leaves Confusion in the Courts

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Neil Garfield

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our South Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. In Northern Florida and the Panhandle call 850-765-1236. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

The selection of an attorney is an important decision and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Brent Bentrim, a regular contributor to the dialogue, posed a question.

I am having some trouble following this. The note cannot be converted any more than when a stock is purchased by a mutual fund (trust) it becomes a mutual fund share.

You’re close and I understand where you seem to be going…ie, the loans were serviced not based on the note and closing documents, but on the PSA. What I do not understand is the assumption that the note was converted. From a security standpoint, it cannot.

You are right. When I say it was “converted” I mean in the lay sense rather a legal one. Of course it cannot be converted without the borrower signing. That is the point. But the treatment of the debt was as if it had been converted and that is where the problem lies for the Courts — hence the diametrically opposed appellate decisions in GA and MA. Once you have pinned down the opposing side to say they are relying on the PSA for their authority to bring the foreclosure action, and relying on the “assignment” without value, the issue shifts —- because the PSA and prospectus have vastly different terms for repayment of interest and principal than the note signed by the borrower.There are also different parties. The investor gets a bond from a special purpose vehicle under the assumption that the money deposited with the investment bank goes to the SPV and the SPV then buys the mortgage or funds the origination. In that scenario the payee on the note would either be the SPV or the originator. But it can’t be the originator if the originator did not fulfill its part of the bargain by funding the loan. And there is no disclosure as to the presence of other parties in the securitization chain much less the compensation they received contrary to Federal Law. (TILA).

Under the terms of the PSA and prospectus the expectation of the investor was that the investment was insured and hedged. That is one of the places where there is a break in the chain — the insurance is not made payable to either the SPV or the investors. Instead it is paid to the investment bank that merely created the entities and served as a depository institution or intermediary for the funds. The investment bank takes the position that such money is payable to them as profit in proprietary trading, which is ridiculous. They cannot take the position that they are agents of the creditor for purposes of foreclosure and then take the position that they were not agents of the investors when the money came in from insurance and credit default swaps.

Even under the actual money trail scenario the same holds true — they were acting as agents of the principal, albeit violating the terms of the “lender” agreement with the investors. Here is where another break occurred. Instead of funding the SPV, the investment bank held all investor money in a commingled undifferentiated mega account and the SPV never even had any account or signatory on any account in which money was placed.

Hence the SPV cannot be said to have purchased the loan because it lacked the funding to do it. The banks want to say that when they funded the origination or acquisition of the loan they were doing so under the PSA and prospectus. But that would only be true if they were following the provisions and terms of those instruments, which they were not. The banks funded the acquisition of loans directly with investor money instead of through the SPV, hence the tax exempt claims of the SPV’s are false and the tax effects on the investors could be far different — especially when you consider the fact that the mega suspense account in the investment bank had funds from many other investors who also thought they were investing in many different SPVs.

The reality of the money trail scenario is that the SPV can’t be the owner of the note or the owner of the mortgage because there simply was no transaction in which money or other consideration changed hands between the SPV and any other party. The same holds true for all the parties is the false securitization trail — no money was involved in the assignments. Thus it was not a commercial transaction creating a negotiable instrument.

In both scenarios the debt was created merely by the receipt of money that is presumed not to be gift. The question is whether the note, the bond or both should be used to re-structure the loan and determine the amount of interest, principal, if any that is left to pay.

The further question is if the originator did not loan any money, how can the recording of a mortgage have been proper to secure a debt that did not exist in favor of the secured party named on the mortgage or deed of trust?

And if the lender is determined by the actual money trail then the lenders consist of a group of investors, all of whom had money deposited in the account from which the acquisition of the loan was funded. And despite investment bank claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that there was any attempt to actually segregate funds based upon the PSA and prospectus. So the pool of investors consists of all investors in all SPVs rather just one — a factor that changes the income and tax status of each investor because now they are in a common law general partnership.

Thus the “conversion” language I have used, is merely shorthand to describe a far more complex process in which the written instruments were ignored, more written instruments were fabricated based upon nonexistent transactions, and no documentation was provided to the investors who were the real lenders. That leaves a common law debt that is undocumented by any promissory note or any secured interest in the property because the recorded mortgage or deed of trust was filed under false pretenses and hence was never perfected.

The conversion factor comes back in when you think about what a Judge might be able to do with this. Having none of the documentation naming and protecting the investors to document or secure the loan, the Judge must enter judgment either for the whole amount due, if any (after deductions for insurance and credit default swap proceeds) or in some payment plan.

If the Judge refers to the flawed documentation, he or she must consider the interests and expectation s of both the lender (investors) and the borrower, which means by definition that he must refer back to the prospectus and PSA as well as the promissory note.

The interesting thing about all this is that homeowners are of course willing to sign new mortgages that reflect the economic reality of the value of their homes, and the principal balance due, as well as money that continued to be paid to the creditor by the same same servicer that declared the default (and was therefore curing the default with each payment to the creditor).

The only question left is where did the money come from that was paid to the creditor after the homeowner stopped making payments and does that further complicate the matter by adding parties who might have an unsecured right of contribution against the borrower for money advanced advanced by an intermediary sub servicer thereby converting the debt (or that part that was paid by the subservicer from funds other than the borrower) from any claim to being secured to a potential unsecured right of contribution from the borrower.

To that extent the servicer should admit that it is suing on its behalf for the unsecured portion of the loan on which it advanced payments, and for the secured portion they claim is due to other parties. They obviously don’t want to do that because it would focus attention on the actual accounting, posting and bookkeeping for actual transfers or payments of money. The focus on reality could be devastating to the banks and reveal liabilities and reduction of claimed assets on their balance sheets that would cause them to be broken up. They are counting on the fact that not too many people will understand enough of what is contained in this post. So far it seems to be working for them.Remember that as to the insurance and credit default swaps there are express waivers of subrogation or any right to seek collection from the borrowers in the mortgages. The issue arises because the bonds were insured and thus the underlying mortgage payments were insured — a fact that played out in the real world where payments continued being made to creditors who were advancing money for “investment” in bogus mortgage bonds. This leaves only the equitable powers of the court to fashion a remedy, perhaps by agreement between the parties by which the lenders are made parties to the action and the borrowers are of course parties to the action but he servicers are left out of the mix because they have an interest in continuing the farce rather than seeing it settled, because they are receiving fees and picking up property for free (credit bids from non-creditors).

This is precisely the point that the courts are missing. By looking at the paperwork first and disregarding the actual money trail they are going down a rabbit hole neatly prepared for them by the banks. If there was no commercial transaction then the UCC doesn’t apply and neither do any presumptions of ownership, right to enforce etc.

The question of “ownership” of the note and mortgage are a distraction from the fact that neither the note or the mortgage tells the whole story of the transaction. The actions of the participants and the real movement of money governs every transaction.

Whether the courts will recognize the conversion factor or something similar remains to be seen. But it is obvious that the confusion in the courts relates directly to their ignorance of the the fact that the actual money transaction is not brought to their attention or they are ignoring it out of pure confusion as to what law to apply.

Now UCC Me, Now You Don’t: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Ignores the UCC in Requiring Unity of Note and Mortgage for Foreclosure in Eaton v. Fannie Mae
http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/20/now-ucc-me-now-you-dont-the-massachusetts-supreme-judicial-court-ignores-the-ucc-in-requiring-unity-of-note-and-mortgage-for-foreclosure-in-eaton-v-fannie-mae/

High court rules in favor of bank in Suwanee foreclosure case
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2013/may/20/high-court-rules-in-favor-of-bank-in-suwanee/

Wells Fargo slows foreclosure sales, BofA not so much
http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2013/05/wells-fargo-slows-foreclosure-sales.html

Filed under: CDO, CORRUPTION, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: Conversion of note to bond, DEED OF TRUST, foreclosure, money trail, Mortgage, originator, paper trail, Pooling and Servicing Agreement, Prospectus, securitization, SPV, UCC | 39 Comments »

Deny and Discover Strategy Working

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Neil Garfield

For representation in South Florida, where I am both licensed and familiar with the courts and Judges, call 520-405-1688. If you live in another state we provide direct support to attorneys. call the same number.

Having watched botched cases work their way to losing conclusions and knowing there is a better way, I have been getting more involved in individual cases — pleading, memos, motions, strategies and tactics — and we are already seeing some good results. Getting into discovery levels the playing field and forces the other side to put up or shut up. Since they can’t put up, they must shut up.

If you start with the premise that the original mortgage was defective for the primary reason that it was unfunded by the payee on the note, the party identified as “Lender” or the mortgagee or beneficiary, we are denying the transaction, denying the signature where possible (or pleading that the signature was procured by fraud), and thus denying that any “transfer” afterwards could not have conveyed any more than what the “originator” had, which is nothing.

This is not a new concept. Investors are suing the investment banks saying exactly what we have been saying on these pages — that the origination process was fatally defective, the notes and mortgages unenforceable and the predatory lending practices lowering the value of even being a “lender.”

We’ve see hostile judges turn on the banks and rule for the homeowner thus getting past motions to lift stay, motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment in the last week.

The best line we have been using is “Judge, if you were lending the money wouldn’t you want YOUR name on the note and mortgage?” Getting the wire transfer instructions often is the kiss of death for the banks because the originator of the wire transfer is not the payee and the instructions do not say that this is for benefit of the “originator.”

As far as I can tell there is no legal definition of “originator.” It is one step DOWN from mortgage broker whose name should also not be on the note or mortgage. An originator is a salesman, and if you look behind the scenes at SEC filings or other regulatory filings you will see your “lender” identified not as a lender, which is what they told you, but as an originator. That means they were a placeholder or nominee just like the MERS situation.

TILA and Regulation Z make it clear that even if there was nexus of connection between the source of funds and the originator, it would till be an improper predatory table-funded loan where the borrower was denied the disclosure and information to know and choose the source of a loan, thus enabling consumers to shop around.

In order of importance, we are demanding through subpoena duces tecum, that parties involved in the fake securitization chain come for examination of the wire transfer, check, ACH or other money transfer showing the original funding of the loan and any other money transactions in which the loan was involved INCLUDING but not limited to transactions with or for the fake pool of mortgages that seems to always be empty with no bank account, no trustee account, and no actual trustee with any powers. These transactions don’t exist. The red herring is that the money showed up at closing which led everyone to the mistaken conclusion that the originator made the loan.

Second we ask for the accounting records showing the establishment on the books and records of the originator, and any assignees, of a loan receivable together with the name and address of the bookkeeper and the auditing firm for that entity. No such entries exist because the loan receivable was converted into a bond receivable, but he bond was worthless because it was based on an empty pool.

And third we ask for the documentation, correspondence and all other communications between the originator and the closing agent and between each “assignor” and “assignee” which, as we have seen they are only too happy to fabricate and produce. But the documentation is NOT supported by underlying transactions where money exchanged hands.

The net goals are to attack the mortgage as not having been perfected because the transaction was and remains incomplete as recited in the note, mortgage and other “closing” documents. The “lender” never fulfilled their part of the bargain — loaning the money. Hence the mortgage secures an obligation that does not exist. The note is then attacked as being fatally defective partly because the names were used as nominees leaving the borrower with nobody to talk to about the loan status — there being a nominee payee, nominee lender, and nominee mortgagee or beneficiary.

The other part, just as serious is that the terms of repayment on the note do NOT match up to the terms agreed upon with the institutional investors that purchased mortgage bonds to which the borrower was NOT a party and did not issue. Hence the basic tenets of contract law — offer, acceptance and consideration are all missing.

The Deny and Discover strategy is better because it attacks the root of the transaction and enables the borrower to deny everything the forecloser is trying to put over on the Court with the appearance of reality but nothing to back it up.

The attacks on the foreclosers based upon faulty or fraudulent or even forged documentation make for interesting reading but if in the final analysis the borrower is admitting the loan, admitting the note and mortgage, admitting the default then all the other stuff leads a Judge to conclude that there is error in the ways of the banks but no harm because they were entitled to foreclose anyway.

People are getting on board with this strategy and they have the support from an unlikely source — the investors who thought they were purchasing mortgage bonds with value instead of a sham bond based upon an empty pool with no money and no assets and no loans. Their allegation of damages is based upon the fact that despite the provisions of the pooling and servicing agreement, the prospectus and their reasonable expectations, that the closings were defective, the underwriting was defective and that there is no way to legally enforce the notes and mortgages, notwithstanding the fact that so many foreclosures have been allowed to proceed.

Call 520-405-1688 for customer service and you will get guidance on how to get help.

Do we agree that creditors should be paid only once?
Do we agree that pretending to borrow money for mortgages sand then using it at the race track is wrong?
Do we agree that if the lender and the borrower sign two different documents each containing different terms, they don’t have a deal?
Can we agree that if you were lending money you would want your name on the note and mortgage and not someone else’s?
Can we agree that banks who loaned nothing and bought nothing should be worth nothing when the chips are counted in mortgage assets?

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: beneficiary, Broward COunty. Collier COunty, Dade County, Deny and Discover, lender, mortgagee, NEIL GARFIELD, originator, place-holder, pool, Regulation Z, REMIC, South Florida, SPV, TILA, trust, trustee | 39 Comments »

A USEFUL PRIMER OF TERMS FROM O. MAX GARDNER AND RICHARD D. SHEPARD

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Neil Garfield

Your Client’s Securitized Mortgage: a Basic Roadmap Part 1 [2009-11-19]

Your Client’s Securitized Mortgage: A Basic Roadmap

PART 1: The Parties and Their Roles

The first issue in reviewing a structured residential mortgage transaction is to differentiate between a private-label deal and an “Agency” (or “GSE”) deal. An Agency (or GSE) deal is one involving Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae, the three Government Sponsored Enterprises (also known as the GSEs). This paper will review the parties, documents, and laws involved in a typical private-label securitization. We also address frequently-occurring practical considerations for counsel dealing with securitized mortgage loans that are applicable across-the-board to mortgages into both private-label and Agency securitizations.
The parties, in the order of their appearance are:

Originator. The “originator” is the lender that provided the funds to the borrower at the loan closing or close of escrow. Usually the originator is the lender named as “Lender” in the mortgage Note. Many originators securitize loans; many do not. The decision not to securitize loans may be due to lack of access to Wall Street capital markets, or this may simply reflect a business decision not to run the risks associated with future performance that necessarily go with sponsoring a securitization, or the originator obtains better return through another loan disposition strategy such as whole loan sales for cash.

Warehouse Lender. The Originator probably borrowed the funds on a line of credit from a short-term revolving warehouse credit facility (commonly referred to as a “warehouse lender”); nevertheless the money used to close the loan were technically and legally the Originator’s funds. Warehouse lenders are either “wet” funders or “dry” funders. A wet funder will advance the funds to close the loan upon the receipt of an electronic request from the originator. A dry funder, on the other hand, will not advance funds until it actually receives the original loan documents duly executed by the borrower.

Responsible Party. Sometimes you may see another intermediate entity called a “Responsible Party,” often a sister company to the lender. Loans appear to be transferred to this entity, typically named XXX Asset Corporation.

Sponsor. The Sponsor is the lender that securitizes the pool of mortgage loans. This means that it was the final aggregator of the loan pool and then sold the loans directly to the Depositor, which it turn sold them to the securitization Trust. In order to obtain the desired ratings from the ratings agencies such as Moody’s, Fitch and S&P, the Sponsor normally is required to retain some exposure to the future value and performance of the loans in the form of purchase of the most deeply subordinated classes of the securities issued by the Trust, i.e. the classes last in line for distributions and first in line to absorb losses (commonly referred to as the “first loss pieces” of the deal).

Depositor. The Depositor exists for the sole purpose of enabling the transaction to have the key elements that make it a securitization in the first place: a “true sale” of the mortgage loans to a “bankruptcy-remote” and “FDIC-remote” purchaser. The Depositor purchases the loans from the Sponsor, sells the loans to the Trustee of the securitization Trust, and uses the proceeds received from the Trust to pay the Sponsor for the Depositor’s own purchase of the loans. It all happens simultaneously, or as nearly so as theoretically possible. The length of time that the Depositor owns the loans has been described as “one nanosecond.”

The Depositor has no other functions, so it needs no more than a handful of employees and officers. Nevertheless, it is essential for the “true sale” and “bankruptcy-remote”/“FDIC-remote” analysis that the Depositor maintains its own corporate existence separate from the Sponsor and the Trust and observes the formalities of this corporate separateness at all times. The “Elephant in the Room” in all structured financial transactions is the mandatory requirement to create at least two “true sales” of the notes and mortgages between the Originator and the Trustee for the Trust so as to make the assets of the Trust both “bankruptcy” and “FDIC” remote from the originator. And, these “true sales” will be documented by representations and attestations signed by the parties; by attorney opinion letters; by asset purchase and sale agreements; by proof of adequate and reasonably equivalent consideration for each purchase; by “true sale” reports from the three major “ratings agencies” (Standard & Poors, Moody’s, and Fitch) and by transfer and delivery receipts for mortgage notes endorsed in blank.

Trustee. The Trustee is the owner of the loans on behalf of the certificate holders at the end of the securitization transaction. Like any trust, the Trustee’s powers, rights, and duties are defined by the terms of the transactional documents that create the trust, and are subject to the terms of the trust laws of some particular state, as specified by the “Governing Law” provisions of the transaction document that created the trust. The vast majority of the residential mortgage backed securitized trusts are subject to the applicable trust laws of Delaware or New York. The “Pooling and Servicing Agreement” (or, in “Owner Trust” transactions as described below, the “Trust Indenture”) is the legal document that creates these common law trusts and the rights and legal authority granted to the Trustee is no greater than the rights and duties specified in this Agreement. The Trustee is paid based on the terms of each structure. For example, the Trustee may be paid out of interest collections at a specified rate based on the outstanding balance of mortgage loans in the securitized pool; the Master Servicer may pay the Trustee out of funds designated for the Master Servicer; the Trustee may receive some on the interest earned on collections invested each month before the investor remittance date; or the Securities Administrator may pay the Trustee out of their fee with no charges assessed against the Trust earnings. Fee amounts ranger for as low as .0025% to as high as .009%.

Indenture Trustee and Owner Trustee. Most private-label securitizations are structured to meet the Internal Revenue Code requirements for tax treatment as a “Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (“REMIC”). However some securitizations (both private-label and GSE) have a different, non-REMIC structure usually called an “Owner Trust.” In an Owner Trust structure the Trustee roles are divided between an Owner Trustee and an Indenture Trustee. As the names suggest, the Owner Trustee owns the loans; the Indenture Trustee has the responsibility of making sure that all of the funds received by the Trust are properly disbursed to the investors (bond holders) and all other parties who have a financial interest in the securitized structure. These are usually Delaware statutory trusts, in which case the Owner Trustee must be domiciled in Delaware.

Primary Servicer. The Primary Servicer services the loans on behalf of the Trust. Its rights and obligations are defined by a loan servicing contract, usually located in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement in a private-label (non-GSE) deal. The trust may have more than one servicer servicing portions of the total pool, or there may be “Secondary Servicers,” “Default Servicers,” and/or “Sub-Servicers” that service loans in particular categories (e.g., loans in default). Any or all of the Primary, Secondary, or Sub-Servicers may be a division or affiliate of the Sponsor; however under the servicing contract the Servicer is solely responsible to the Trust and the Master Servicer (see next paragraph). The Servicers are the legal entities that do all the day-to-day “heavy lifting” for the Trustee such as sending monthly bills to borrowers, collecting payments, keeping records of payments, liquidating assets for the Trustee, and remitting net payments to the Trustee.

The Servicers are normally paid based on the type of loans in the Trust. For example, a typical annual servicing fee structure may be: .25% annually for a prime mortgage; .375% for an Alt-A or Option ARM; and .5% for a subprime loan. In this example, a subprime loan with an average balance over a given year of $120,000 would generate a servicing fee of $600.00 for that year. The Servicers are normally permitted to retain all “ancillary fees” such as late charges, check by phone fees, and the interest earned from investing all funds on hand in overnight US Treasury certificates (sometimes called “interest earned on the float”).

Master Servicer. The Master Servicer is the Trustee’s representative for assuring that the Servicer(s) abide by the terms of the servicing contracts. For trusts with more than one servicer, the Master Servicer has an important administrative role in consolidating the monthly reports and remittances of funds from the individual servicers into a single data package for the Trustee. If a Servicer fails to perform or goes out of business or suffers a major downgrade in its servicer rating, then the Master Servicer must step in, find a replacement and assure that no interruption of essential servicing functions occurs. Like all servicers, the Master Servicer may be a division or affiliate of the Sponsor but is solely responsible to the Trustee. The Master Servicer receives a fee, small compared to the Primary Servicer’s fee, based on the average balance of all loans in the Trust.

Custodian. The Master Document Custodian takes and maintains physical possession of the original hard-copy Mortgage Notes, Mortgages, Deeds of Trust and certain other “key loan documents” that the parties deem essential for the enforcement of the mortgage loan in the event of default.

This is done for safekeeping and also to accomplish the transfer and due negotiation of possession of the Notes that is essential under the Uniform Commercial Code for a valid transfer to the Trustee to occur.
Like the Master Servicer, the Master Document Custodian is responsible by contract solely to the Trustee (e.g., the Master Document Custodial Agreement). However unlike the Master Servicer, the Master Document Custodian is an institution wholly independent from the Servicer and the Sponsor.
There are exceptions to this rule in the world of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (“GSE”) securitizations. The GSE’s may allow selected large originators with great secure storage capabilities (in other words, large banks) to act as their own Master Document Custodians. But even in those cases, contracts make clear that the GSE Trustee, not the originator, is the owner of the Note and the mortgage loan.
The Master Document Custodian must review all original documents submitted into its custody for strict compliance with the specifications set forth in the Custodial Agreement, and deliver exception reports to the Trustee and/or Master Servicer as to any required documents that are missing or fail to comply with those specifications.
In so doing the Custodian must in effect confirm that for each loan in the Trust there is a “complete and unbroken chain of transfers and assignments of the Notes and Mortgages.”
This does not necessarily require the Custodian to find assignments or endorsements naming the Depositor or the Trustee. The wording in the Master Document Custodial Agreement must be read closely. Defined terms such as “Last Endorsee” may technically allow the Custodian to approve files in which the last endorsement is from the Sponsor in blank, and no assignment to either the Depositor or the Trustee has been recorded in the local land records.
In many private-label securitizations a single institution fulfills all of the functions related to document custody for the entire pool of loans. In these cases, the institution might be referred to simply as the “Custodian” and the governing document as the “Custodial Agreement.”

O Max Gardner, III and Richard D. Shepherd
October, 2009

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: AGGREGATOR, custodian, Depositor, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, Indenture trustee, Master Document Custodian, Master Servicer, Mortgage, mortgage meltdown, originator, OWNER TRUSTEE, PRIMARY SERVICER, RESPONSIBLE PARTY, securitization, servicer, Sponsor, trustee, WAREHOUSE LENDER | 1 Comment »

WAREHOUSE LENDING SHUFFLE: DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE SCAM

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Neil Garfield

ONE ON ONE WITH NEIL GARFIELD

DOUBLE DUTY

EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of the pattern of obfuscation and confusion, the securitizers intentionally create entire patterns of infrastructure that mimic the loan transaction — except with entirely different people or entities. Brian Davies dug up this Warehouse Lending agreement. It’s like picking a bank from which you will write checks. When you write a check on your account, the bank is not part of the deal that you are funding with that check. It is a conduit or facilitator. So here we are, with a BORROWER, SERVICER AND ORIGINATOR — none of which match up with the entities meeting that description in the loan transaction with the homeowner.

So there are two BORROWERS, two SERVICERS and two ORIGINATORS — all performing different tasks, all creating layers of confusion to enable the participants to claim plausible deniability. But how do you you REALLY deny something that happens 20 million times?

Now here comes the big question for investors. If they advanced money (called “selling forward” on Wall Street) for the purchase of a bond (same as a note), who was the payor and who was the payee? That is the essence of the question of identifying the real creditor, with standing. And it defines the essence of what documentation describes the payor? On the other end the same questions apply. Since the deal with the investor took place before the loan with the homeowner, the question of of the identity of the payor on the obligation due to investors must be answered first.

The payor to the investor is described in the documents setting up the securitization infrastructure. It includes many potential sources of revenue of channels of money for guarantees, cross collateralization, over-collateralization, guarantees and credit default swaps with insurance. AND it includes payments from a borrower who is NOT YET Identified. Thus the documentation does not describe a loan on a home between the owner of that home and the source of funds, it describes a transaction, part of which is being funded now, and part of which will be funded later whenever a borrower with a home shows up.

So now turn to the homeowner’s transaction which takes place without any disclosure of the above, contrary to the requirements of Federal and State law. The money comes from what is left of the investor’s money who advanced his funds for the purchase of the “bond” with multiple payors, one of which was not yet known. The payee is unknown and undisclosed. The fees generated from the transaction are undisclosed. AND the status of the people at the table is misrepresented. A note and mortgage (or deed of trust) is prepared introducing a totally new entity (that the banks call “bankruptcy-remote”) as the payee and the secured party, but which has no actual participation in the transaction except what is recited on paper.

Thus neither the investor nor the homeowner sees any paperwork that actually describes the transaction that they were induced to enter under obviously false pretenses. Neither of them has a fully documented transaction. And neither of them is the party to any instrument purporting to be security for the homeowner’s obligation because neither of them has signed or even seen the transaction that actually occurred. The paperwork is fatally defective in that it describes a transaction that did not occur while the real transaction goes without any paperwork at all.

The investor is owed money and the homeowner may owe money but neither one knows the other and neither is in privity with the other for contract purposes. In equity there might be a claim from the investor against the homeowner but the real claim, and the one the investors are pursuing is against the investment bank who duped them into purchasing a holographic image of a paper bag.

SUBMITTED BY BRIAN DAVIES

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48033689/Amended-and-Restated-Loan-Agreement-Lennar-Sept-26-2006-by-uamc-captial-llc

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE WAREHOUSE LENDING SHUFFLE HERE IS A GOOD AGREEMENT.

BORROWER UAMC CAPITAL
ORIGINATOR UAMCC
SERVICER UAMC LLC

NOW THE TRANSFER TO THE BUYER FROM THE WAREHOUSE LINE OPTEUM FINANCIAL SEE NEXT POST–PURCHASE THE LOAN PACKAGE OF $13MM FROM UAMCC/UAMC AFTER THESE ORIGINATORS PURCHASED THE LOANS BACK FROM UAMC CAPITAL LLC. SEE THIS AGREEMENT AND COMPARE TO THE PAGE 3 AND 4 OF THE PURCHASE AGREEMENT.

NOW THE MERS AUDIT TRAIL SAYS INVESTOR UAMC LLC. THE GESTATIONAL WAREHOUSE BANK ONE. WELL BANK ONE IN 2004 BECAME JP MORGAN. THE AGREEMENT SAY TO WIRE TO AN UNKNOW ACCOUNT AT JP MORGAN THE PAYMENTS FOR THE $13MM LOANS. THE LETTER IS FROM RESIDENTIAL FUNDING CORP. THIS IS INTERTWINED INTO ANOTHER AGREEMENT CALLED A THIRD AMENDED AND RESTATED WAREHOUSE LINE.

THE LOAN THEREFORE GOES UAMCC—>>UAMC CAPITAL LLC [BORROWER FROM JP MORGAN]—>>BACK TO UAMC LLC TO SELL TO OPTEUM. THE SERVICER UAMC LLC WHO IS ALSO THE SERVICER TO THE HOMEOWNER IS ALSO THE TRUSTEE OF THE DEED OF TRUST. THE INSURANCE IS PMI BY THE SUBSIDIARY OF THE BUILDER LENNAR, THE HAZARD INSURANCE IS THE SUBSIDIARY OF THE BUILDER. ESCROW AND TITLE IS A SUBSIDIARY OF THE BUILDER. UAMC LLC IS A SUBSIDIARY OF THE BUILDER. UAMCC IS A SUBSIDIARY OF THE BUILDER AND UAMC LLC. 67% OF ALL LENNAR HOMES WERE STEERED TO USE THEIR PREFERRED LENDER UAMCC. THAT THE DISCOUNTS OF $20,000 IN UPGRADES ARE ONLY WITH THEIR PREFERRED LENDER. THAT THE BUILDER, LENDER AND ALL SALES STAFF HAD WEEKLY MEETINGS. DOES THIS SEEM TO BE A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP. NOW THE BUILDER HAS A BUYING GROUP RIALTO CAPITAL WHICH JUST DID A PRIVATE PUBLIC DEAL WITH THE FDIC TO BUY LOANS. WOW, SEEMS LIKE ALOT OF OVERSIGHT.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: borrower, originator, rialto, servicer, UAMC CAPITAL, UAMC LLC | 29 Comments »

Shack; JPM, Trustee Lacks Standing, Vacates Foreclosure

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Neil Garfield

The true answer is that securitization is a process that is still on going and not an event.The Real Party in Interest (and the real amount of principal due, if any) is in a state of flux hidden by obscure, hidden or “confidential documentation.” Don’t make it your problem to unravel it. Use your strength to force THEM to prove their claim whether it is in a judicial or non-judicial proceeding.

Editor’s Comment: In case you haven’t noticed, this case, along with some others I’ve heard about but not received, closes the loop. The Pretender Lenders have now tried to use all the major parties and some of the minor parties in foreclosures and when tested have failed to prove standing. standing is a jurisdictional matter and it basically boils down to “You don’t belong here, you have no rights to enforce, you have no interest in this litigation, so get out of here and don’t come back.”

They tried MERS, Servicers, Foreclosure Specialty processors, Trustees, originating “lenders” and they come up empty. why because they are all intermediaries and as Judge Holloway put it, the note is not payable to them, the mortgage does not secure them, the obligation is not due to them and therefore they can’t proceed. In non-judicial states they get around this requirement unless the homeowner brings suit.

So who is the real party in interest? See the Fordham Law Review article posted on this blog more than two years ago “Will the Real Party in Interest Please Stand Up.”

The answer isn’t easy, but the strategy is very simple — don’t accept responsibility for the narrative or you will be taking on the burden of proof in THEIR case. They have the information and you don’t. The true answer is that securitization is a process that is still on going and not an event. The Real Party in Interest (and the real amount of principal due, if any) is in a state of flux hidden by obscure, hidden or “confidential documentation. Don’t make it your problem to unravel it. Use your strength to force THEM to prove their claim whether it is in a judicial or non-judicial proceeding.

The real reason for them NOT simply bringing in the investors who at least WERE parties in interest is multifold:

The meeting of the investor with the borrower will result in comparing notes and the fact that not all the money advanced by investors was actually invested in mortgages will be “problematic” for the investment bankers who put this scheme together.

The meeting of the investor and borrower could result in an alliance in litigation in which the shell game would be impossible.

The meeting of the investor and the borrower could result in a settlement that cuts the servicers and other intermediaries out of the gravy train of servicing fees, foreclosures with rigged bids, etc.

The conflict of interest between the intermediaries and the investors might become evident, and lead to further litigation both from the investors and the SEC, state attorneys general and Department of Justice.

The investment vehicle (the “trust” or Special Purpose Vehicle) might have been dissolved with the investors paid off and/or with the “assets” resecuritized into a new BBB rated vehicle. This could lead to the nuclear question: what if any, is the balance due in principal on this OBLIGATION. Warning: If you let the narrative shift to the NOTE (which is merely evidence of the obligation) you risk being entrapped by the simple question “Did you make your payments under this note?” This immediately puts you on the defensive BEFORE they have established THEIR case. Since THEY are the party seeking affirmative relief, THEY should establish the foundation first.

And the last thing that comes to my mind is the last thing anyone wants to hear — was this obligation satisfied in whole or in part by third party payments through credit enhancements or federal bailout?

Hon. Arthur M. Schack does it again!

JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v George

2010 NY Slip Op 50786(U)
Decided on May 4, 2010

Supreme Court, Kings County
Schack, J.

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.

Decided on May 4, 2010
Supreme Court, Kings County

JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., AS TRUSTEE FOR NOMURA ASSET ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2004-AR4, Plaintiff,

against

Gertrude George, IVY MAY JOHNSON, GMAC MORTGAGE CORPORATION, DANIEL S. PERLMAN, et. al., Defendants.

10865/06

Plaintiff– JP Morgan Chase Bank
Steven J Baum, PC
Amherst NY

Defendant– Gertrude George
Edward Roberts, Esq.
Brooklyn NY

Defendant– Ivy Mae Johnson
Precious L. Williams, Esq.
Brooklyn NY

Arthur M. Schack, J.

_______________________________________________

Accordingly, it is
ORDERED, that the order to show cause of defendant IVY MAE JOHNSON, to vacate the January 16, 2008 judgment of foreclosure and sale for the premises located at 47 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn, New York (Block 4600, Lot 55, County of Kings), pursuant to CPLR Rule 5015 (a) (4), because plaintiff, JP MORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., AS TRUSTEE FOR NOMURA ASSET ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2004-AR4, lacked standing to commence the instant action and thus, the Court never had jurisdiction, is granted; and it is further

ORDERED, the instant complaint of plaintiff JP MORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., AS TRUSTEE FOR NOMURA ASSET ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2004-AR4 for the foreclosure on the premises located at 47 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn, New York (Block 4600, Lot 55, County of Kings) is dismissed with prejudice.

This constitutes the Decision and Order of the Court.

ENTER

___________________________

Hon. Arthur M. SchackJ. S. C..

Filed under: CASES, CORRUPTION, Eviction, expert witness, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, GTC | Honor, HERS, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motion Practice and Discovery, securities fraud, Servicer, STATUTES, trustee | Tagged: Arthur M. SchackJ. S. C, Fordham Law Review, George, GMAC MORTGAGE CORPORATION, JPM, lender, loan originator, MERS, NOMURA ASSET ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, non-judicial, originator, Precious L. Williams, REAL PARTY IN INTEREST, SERIES 2004-AR4, servicer, shack, standing, Steven J Baum, trustee, vacate, Vacate foreclosure judgment | 43 Comments »

Sample Interrogatories

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Neil Garfield

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

CHANCERY DIVISION – ESSEX VICINAGE

——————————————————————X Civil Action

Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, As Trustee Of

Argent Securities, Inc. Asset Backed Pass Through Certificates, Series 2004-PW1

Docket Number: XXX

REQUEST FOR

INTERROGATORIES

Plaintiff(s),

vs.

XXX; John Doe,

Husband Of XXX XXX Avenue

Rosedale, NY 11422

Defendant(s)/Pro Se ——————————————————————X

REQUEST FOR DISCOVERY: INTERROGATORIES

i). Defendant, XXX, serves these interrogatories on Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as authorized by Case Management Order dated September 30, 2009, and by the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33. Deutsche Bank National Trust Company must serve an answer to each interrogatory separately and fully, in writing and under oath within 30 days after service to: XXX, XXX Ave., Rosedale, NY 11422.

INSTRUCTIONS

ii). These requests for interrogatories are directed toward all information known or available to Deutsche Bank National Trust Company – not its lawyer, Ralph F. Casale, Esq. – including information contained in the records and documents in Deutsche Bank National Trust Company’s custody or control or available to Deutsche Bank National Trust Company upon reasonable inquiry.

iii). Each request for interrogatory is to be deemed a continuing one. If, after serving an answer, you obtain or become aware of any further information pertaining to that request, you are requested to serve a supplemental answer setting forth such information.

iv). As to every request for interrogatory which an authorized officer of Deutsche Bank National Trust Company fails to answer in whole or in part, the subject matter of that request will be deemed confessed and stipulated as fact to the Court.

v). Kindly attach additional sheets as required identifying the Interrogatory being answered. You have a continuing obligation to update the information in these Interrogatories as you acquire new information. If no such update is provided in a reasonable period of time that you acquired such information, it may be excluded at trial or hearing.

DEFINITIONS

vi). “You” and “your” include Deutsche Bank National Trust Company and any and all persons acting for or in concert with Deutsche Bank National Trust Company.

vii). “Document” is synonymous in meaning and equal in scope to the usage of this term in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(a) and includes computer records in any format. A draft or non-identical copy is a separate document within the meaning of this term. The term “document” also includes any “tangible things” as that term is used in Rule 34(a).

viii). Parties. The term “plaintiff” or “defendant”, as well as a party’s full or abbreviated name or a pronoun referring to a party, means the party and, where applicable, (his/her/its) agents, representatives, officers, directors, employees, partners, corporate parent, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

ix). Identify (person). When referring to a person, “identify” means to give, to the extent known, the person’s full name, present or last known address, telephone number, and when referring to a natural person, the present or last known place of employment. Once a person has been identified in compliance with this paragraph, only the name of that person needs to be listed in response to later discovery requesting the identification of that person.

x). Identify (document). When referring to a document, “identify” means to give, to the extent known, the following information: (a) the type of document; (b) the general subject matter of the document; (c) the date of the document; (d) the authors, address, and recipients of the document; (e) the location of the document; (f) the identity of the person who has custody of the document; and (g) whether the document has been destroyed, and if so, (i) the date of its destruction, (ii) the reason for its destruction, and (iii) the identity of the person who destroyed it.

xi). Relating. The term “relating” means concerning, referring, describing, evidencing, or constituting, directly or indirectly.

xii). Any. The term “any” should be understood in either its most or its least inclusive sense as necessary to bring within the scope of the discovery request all reasons that might otherwise be construed to be outside of its scope.

REQUEST FOR INTERROGATORIES

1. Please identify each person who answer these interrogatories and each person (attach pages if necessary) who assisted, including attorneys, accountants, employees of third party entities, or any other person consulted, however briefly, on the content of any answer to these interrogatories.

ANSWER:

2. For each of the above persons please state whether they have personal knowledge regarding the subject loan transaction.

ANSWER:

3. Please state the date of the first contact between Deutsche Bank National Trust Company and the borrower in the subject loan transaction, the name, address and telephone number of the person(s) in your company who was/were involved in that contact.

ANSWER:

4. Please identify every potential party to this lawsuit.

ANSWER:

5. Please identify the person(s) involved in the underwriting of the subject loan. “Underwriting” refers to any person who made representations, evaluations or appraisals of value of the home, value of the security instruments, and ability of the borrower to pay.

ANSWER:

6. Please identify any person(s) who had any contact with any third party regarding the securitization, sale, transfer, assignment, hypothecation or any document or agreement, oral, written or otherwise, that would effect the funding, closing, or the receipt of money from a third party in a transaction that referred to the subject loan.

ANSWER:

7. Please identify any person(s) known or believed by anyone at Deutsche Bank National Trust Company who had received physical possession of the note and allonges, the mortgage, or any document (including but not limited to assignment, endorsement, allonges, Pooling and Servicing Agreement, Assignment and Assumption Agreement, Trust Agreement, letters or email or faxes of transmittals including attachments) that refers to or incorporates terms regarding the securitization, sale, transfer, assignment, hypothecation or any document or agreement, oral, written or otherwise, that would effect the funding, or the receipt of money from a third party in a transaction, and whether such money was allocated to principal, interest or other obligation related to the subject loan.

ANSWER:

8. Please identify all persons known or believed by anyone in Deutsche Bank National Trust Company or any affiliate to have participated in the securitization of the subject loan including but not limited to mortgage aggregators, mortgage brokers, financial institutions, Structured Investment Vehicles, Special Purpose Vehicles, Trustees, Managers of derivative securities, managers of the company that issued an Asset-backed security, Underwriters, Rating Agency, Credit Enhancement Provider.

ANSWER:

9. Please identify the person(s) or entities that are entitled, directly or indirectly to the stream of revenue from the borrower in the subject loan.

ANSWER:

10 Please identify the person(s) in custody of any document that identifies the loan servicer(s) in the subject loan transaction.

ANSWER:

11. Please identify any person(s) in custody of any document which refers to any instruction or authority to enforce the note or mortgage in the subject loan transaction.

ANSWER:

12. Other than people identified above, identify any and all persons who have or had personal knowledge of the subject loan transaction, underwriting of the subject loan transaction, securitization, sale, transfer, assignment or hypothecation of the subject loan transaction, or the decision to enforce the note or mortgage in the subject loan transaction.

ANSWER:

13. Please state address, phone number, and employment history for the past 3 years of Tamara Price, Vice President, Argent Mortgage Company, LLC, “designated as the Assignor” of the mortgage loan to Deutsche Bank National Trust Company (Assignment of Mortgage recorded in Essex County Register’s Office on June 25, 2008).

ANSWER:

14. Please state the date on which Argent Mortgage Company, LLC (originator) sold the mortgage loan to Ameriquest Mortgage Company (Seller and Master Servicer).

ANSWER:

15. Please state the date on which Ameriquest Mortgage Company (Seller and Master Servicer) sold the mortgage loan to Argent Securities, Inc. (Depositor).

ANSWER:

16. Did Argent Mortgage Company, LLC (originator) or previous servicers of this account receive any compensation, fee, commission, payment, rebate or other financial considerations from Ameriquest Mortgage Company (Seller and Master Servicer) or any affiliate or from the trust funds, for handling, processing, originating or administering this loan?

ANSWER:

17. If yes, please describe and itemize each and every form of compensation, fee, commission, payment, rebate or other financial consideration paid to Argent Mortgage Company, LLC, the originator or previous servicers of this account by Ameriquest or any affiliate, or from the trust fund.

ANSWER:

18. Please identify any party, person or entity known or suspected by Deutsche Bank National Trust Company or any of your officers, employees, independent contractors or other agents, or servants of your company who might possess or claim rights under the subject loan or mortgage and/or note.

ANSWER:

19. Please identify the custodian of the records that would show all entries regarding the flow of funds for the subject loan transaction prior to and after closing of the loan. (Flow of funds, means any record of money received, any record of money paid out and any bookkeeping or accounting entry, general ledger and accounting treatment of the subject loan transaction at your company or any affiliate including but not limited to whether the subject loan transaction was ever entered into any category on the balance sheet at any time or times, whether any reserve for default was ever entered on the balance sheet, and whether any entry, report or calculation was made regarding the effect of this loan transaction on the capital reserve requirements of your company or any affiliate.)

ANSWER:

20. Please identify the auditor and/or accountant of your financial statements or tax returns.

ANSWER:

21. Please identify any attorney with whom you consulted or who rendered an opinion regarding the subject loan transaction or any pattern of securitization that may have effected the subject loan transaction directly or indirectly.

ANSWER:

22. Please identify any person who served as an officer or director with Deutsche Bank National Company or Argent Mortgage Company LLC commencing with 6 months prior to closing of the subject loan transaction through the present. (This interrogatory is limited only to those people who had knowledge, responsibility, or otherwise made or received reports regarding information that included the subject loan transaction, and/or the process by which solicitation, underwriting and closing of residential mortgage loans, or the securitization, sale, transfer or assignment or hypothecation of residential mortgage loans to third parties.)

ANSWER:

23. Did any investor/certificate holder approve or authorize foreclosure proceedings on XXX’s property?

ANSWER:

24. Please identify the person(s) involved or having knowledge of any insurance policy or product, plan or instrument describing over-collateralization, cross-collateralization or guarantee or other instrument hedging the risk of default as to any person or entity acting as an issuer of any securities or certificates. (Such instrument(s) relate to the composition of a pool, tranche or other aggregation of assets that was created, included or referred to the subject loan and the pool or aggregation was transmitted, transferred, assigned, pledged or hypothecated to any entity or buyer. A person who “transmitted, transferred, assigned, pledged or hypothecated” refers to any person who suggested, approved, received or accepted the composition of the pool or aggregation made or confirmed representations, evaluations or appraisals of value of the home, value of the security instruments, ability of the borrower to pay.)

ANSWER:

25. Please identify the person(s) involved or having knowledge of any credit default swap or other instrument hedging the risk of default as to any person or entity acting as an issuer of any securities or certificates. (Such instrument(s) relate to the composition of a pool, tranche or other aggregation of assets that was created, included or referred to the subject loan.)

ANSWER:

Submitted by: XXX

XXX Ave

Rosedale, NY 11422

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I, I, XXX certify that on this 29th day of the month of October, 2009.

1. A true copy of the 10-page Request for Interrogatories was served on The New Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division – Essex Vincinage, at 212 Wasington Street, Eighth Floor, Newark, New Jersey.

2. A copy of the foregoing was mailed on October 28, 2009 to

Dated: Queens New York

This _________ day of ___________ 2009 XXX

XXX Ave

Rosedale, NY 11422

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: ability to pay, accounting records, Ameriquest Mortgage Company, Appraisal, Argent Mortgage company, Assignment and ASsumption Agreement, certificate holder, Depositor, Deutsch Bank, disocvery, Essex County, forensic analysis, FRCP 34(a), interrogatories, Master Servicer, National Trust Company, originator, pooling, PSA, receipt of money, Servicing, Tamara Price, third party payments, underwriting | 12 Comments »

DISCOVERY TIPS: Thieves Guild: Bank of America Flubs Foreclosure, Seizes Wrong House — AGAIN

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Neil Garfield

In virtually all cases you will not find a person with any relationship to the creditor, investor, or pool. This is because servicers, trustees and other firms in the securitization chain are proceeding on their own initiating foreclosures without instructions, knowledge or any documentation from the creditor, investor or pool.

Editor’s Note: Greyhawk is of course right. But his assumption that this doesn’t happen very often is wrong. We have seen Wells Fargo foreclose on the wrong house and Wells Fargo sue itself because it securitized the first mortgage into one pool and securitized the second mortgage into another pool.

The central importance of these articles is NOT that the banks are stupid or negligent. For the litigator, the central importance is EVIDENCE. Think about it. Work backwards from the event. What would need to be absolutely true for a firm to seize a house in which it had no interest? And how can that help you in other cases where the facts are not quite as clear?

Well, for one thing it would require a belief on the part of someone without any personal knowledge of their own (witness is not competent to testify, plausible deniability thus given a layer of support to other firms in the securitization chain) that they DO have an interest. How could that be? It could only be true if they were using documents and a chain of possession of documents that were either falsified (fabricated) or incomplete (in which case they made assumptions that turned out to be false).

In order for them to make those assumptions they would have had to receive the instructions OR the documents from a “Trusted Source”. Find out the identity for the trusted source and work your way back to the person who actually wrote the document, the person who actually signed the document and the person who gave instructions concerning the creation of that documentation along with any written evidence contemporaneous with those events.

In virtually all cases you will not find a person with any relationship to the creditor, investor, or pool. This is because servicers, trustees and other firms in the securitization chain are proceeding on their own initiating foreclosures without instructions, knowledge or any documentation from the creditor, investor or pool.

The reason we know that documents are falsified and that it is not only common practice but institutionalized pattern of conduct to fabricate documents is simple: when you have a mortgage that is still “performing” (i.e., payments are up to date) and you ask for the the documentation, they don’t have it.

It is ONLY when the “loan” becomes delinquent, or in default or the notice of sale is issued or there is a challenge to the notice of sale that the documents finally show up. And usually it takes 6-12 weeks to get all the documents. Why? If they started foreclosure proceedings, they would have needed those documents ahead of time.

Trustees routinely pull up a title report before starting a non-judicial sale. You shoudl ask for that and anything else the Trustee had at the time of the initiation of foreclosure proceedings and the date of receipt or creation (under oath in interrogatories as to the date of creation of the documents).

Plaintiffs routinely pull up a title report before they file a foreclosure lawsuit in judicial states. Yet when you ask for them, it takes weeks to produce them and when finally produced and examined and investigated, you will often find that the signature was not authorized, the witnesses were in a different state, the notary was in a a different state from either the witnesses or the signatory or that the signatures are forged (i.e., don’t match the normal signatures of the people who signed.

As for the “negligence” theory, here is the problem for them. How could they think they have something when it doesn’t exist. ANSWER: Because it does exist (or WILL exist when they get around to it) and it was thus fabricated and forged.

But it also means something else when you drill down on these transactions. The pressure to get these loans moving in the securitization chain was immense. Many mortgage brokers or originators took the MORTGAGE APPLICATION, changed it and completed the rest of the closing documents by forgery or simply described the loan as completed when they sent data to the first pool, the aggregator, who then took that description and attached it as an exhibit to his “assignment” to the second pool, the SPV pool.

This is precisely what probably happened in the case reported below. Somebody signed a loan application, never went through with the closing but the loan description went up through the securitization chain and so the originators had to treat it as real even though it didn’t exist. And when its number came up, which was fast because if you don’t have any borrower it isn’t hard to imagine that the “loan” went into default immediately due to non-payment from the non-existent borrower, they foreclosed.

This is where April Charney’s “Produce the Note” fame has been misused and misapplied by those who do not understand the rules of evidence as she does. It’s not just the note she’s after. She wants the Plaintiff in Florida and other judicial states, to prove their case and not be permitted to fake it. Those who report negative results using her material have not mastered the basics, applied a non-existent magic bullet and falsely concluded that April and others are wrong. Those who are too lazy to learn the whole story should withhold their judgment. April Charney is right and what she teaches is correct.

Thieves Guild: Bank of America Flubs Foreclosure, Seizes Wrong House — AGAIN

Sun, 01/17/2010 – 14:46 | GreyHawk

Hat-tip Consumerist.

For some, the slogan “practice makes perfect” is a motto of encouragement to try again, try harder and achieve perfection. For Bank of America, it should be taken as a strong hint to try and do the right thing the first time, not to try and find a better way to seize the wrong house and then attempt to abstain from any recognizable responsibility.

It should be, but it’s not.

BoA has apparently attempted to foreclose on the wrong house once again, according to an article by Laura Elder in the Galveston County Daily News:

GALVESTON — A West End property owner is suing Bank of America Corp., asserting its agents mistakenly seized a vacation house he owns free and clear, then changed the locks and shut the power off, resulting in the smelly spoiling of about 75 pounds of salmon and halibut from an Alaska fishing trip and other damages.

Agents working for Bank of America cut off power to the property by turning off the main switch in the lower part of the house, according to the lawsuit. They also changed the locks, so Schroit was unable to reach the switch to turn the power back on, according to the lawsuit.

“The property sustained water damage, potential mold contamination arising from the standing freezer residue, water, heat and high humidity conditions during the time the electrical power was off,” according to the lawsuit.

This marks the second time known this has known to occur. The Wheelright, Ky, homeowner in that incident filed a lawsuit against the bank for a similar incident: the locks were changed, and the bank refused to pay any damages other than replacement locks.

Accidents happen, but the bank’s responsibility for its actions doesn’t cease to exist simply because it’s a corporate behemoth. If an average person had “accidentally” shut off power to someone else’s home, changed the locks and caused untold damage, that person would be held liable in both criminal and civil court for the actions — amends and liability would most certainly be assigned.

Bank of America’s incapacity to deal responsibly with “errors” that significantly impact the public should be a wake-up call that the bank has other serious issues that need to be addressed, and that the rights and liberties of “corporate personhood” should not ever exceed the rights and liberties of real living people.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage | Tagged: April Charney, assignment, Bank of America, creditor, evidence, fabrication, Florida, forgery, Greyhawk, LOAN APPLICATION, notary, note, originator, pool, produce the note, Signatures, trustee, Wells Fargo, witnesses | 3 Comments »

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