Vulture Firms: The Last Step in a Chain of Illegal Paper, with the Debt Long Gone

Posted on February 28, 2018 by Neil Garfield

The key element of the paper strategy has been to create the illusion of transfers of assets, thus supporting the erroneous narrative that with all those parties purchasing the loans, a lot of due diligence MUST have been done and therefore the screaming defense of homeowners (attacking ownership) is nothing but a dilatory stall tactic.

What is consistently missed, even by people who are completely fed up with the banks and regulatory agencies that have given a wink and nod at plainly fraudulent practices, is that the only “asset” is the paper, and that the debt itself has never moved. In a true securitization the debt would indeed be transferred. But all claims of securitization of debt that are based upon CLAIMS of ownership rather than the ownership itself are groundless. Thus neither Vulture Firms nor any of their predecessors ever owned the debt.

This is why we have lawyers go to law schools. Such convoluted schemes are not easily deciphered without experts and lawyers. Lawyers understand the distinction between the debt, the note and the mortgage. But lawyers forget and lay people never knew about the distinction. It isn’t technical. It is all about keeping transactions on paper honest.

And right now nearly all of the hundreds of millions of documents are being used around the world to foreclose, or support the sale of the paper note and mortgage and derivatives based upon the value of those millions of documents containing false recitations and inferences of fact.

So borrowers, whether their payments (to the wrong party) are “current” or not, like the one in the story found in the link below are stuck in the very place that legislators and regulators have said could never happen in a legal mortgage lending situation: no knowledge about the identity of the obligee of the debt. Foreclosure defense lawyers who win cases punch holes in the foreclosure case simply by knowing they are not dealing with anyone who owns the debt nor anyone who is representing the obligee in the underlying debt (i.e., the real world).

Let us help you plan your discovery requests and defense narrative: 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult.
Purchase now Neil Garfield’s Mastering Discovery and Evidence in Foreclosure Defense webinar including 3.5 hours of lecture, questions and answers, plus course materials that include PowerPoint Presentations. Presenters: Attorney and Expert Neil Garfield, Forensic Auditor Dan Edstrom, Attorney Charles Marshall and and Private Investigator Bill Paatalo. The webinar and materials are all downloadable.
Get a Consult and TEAR (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 202-838-6345. The TEAR replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).
https://www.vcita.com/v/lendinglies to schedule CONSULT, leave message or make payments. It’s better than calling!
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
—————-

Hat tip Eric Mains and Bill Paatalo

see Vulture Firms Must Clean Up the Mess

So people ask me the obvious question, to wit: “If the paper didn’t transfer the debt because the seller, assignor or endorser never owned the debt, where is the debt now?”

The answer is simpler than you might imagine. The only two parties are the obligor (the person who took the money) and the obligee (the person who gave the money). The current obligee (owner of the debt) in most instances is a group of investors who are beneficiaries of multiple paper trusts that have never existed nor been active. THAT is why you never see any assertion that the debt has been purchased.

No money has exchanged hands in any of the transfers except in the case of vulture firms who pay fractions of a cent on the dollar for the paper. They don’t buy the debt because the seller of the paper doesn’t own the debt.

The one simple law school issue taught repeatedly in several classes — Contracts, Bills and Notes etc. — is that the debt arises no from paper but from action. There is no debt if there is no money exchanged between the parties claiming to be part of the transaction.

The debt arises by operation of law without  and even despite the existence or nonexistence of any written instruments — virtually all of which are subject to hearsay objections and lacking in factual foundation, to wit: an actual transaction in the real world in which reciprocal consideration was exchanged between the obligor and the obligee.

If the written instrument recites or assumes that the parties to the instrument are in fact identical to the parties to the real world transaction, then the parties to the debt would be identical to the parties on the written instrument. So keep this in your bonnet while you are planning defense strategy: at some point, usually at origination, a debt was created, separate and distinct from the recitals on the note and mortgage.

If the written instrument recites or assumes that the parties to the instrument are in fact identical to the parties to the debt, but the recital or assumption is untrue. Assumptions and presumptions are based upon one singular doctrine — they are used for judicial economy only where the the presumption clearly is true and where no contest to the presumption is introduced by the defense.

If the defense asserts and gives some argument or evidence that is inconsistent with the presumed “fact,” then the burden shifts back to the party who claimed the benefit of the presumption — i.e. they must prove the real world transaction that was being presumed. There is no prejudice to forcing such a party to prove the fact that they wished to be presumed — unless they were lying to begin with.

 

Filed under: burden of persuasion, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, evidence, expert witness, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, forensic investigation, forgery, hearsay, Investor, legal standing, Mortgage, Trail Objections | Tagged: , , , , , | 8 Comments »

No. Carolina Appeals Court Approves Dismissal of Foreclosure With Prejudice

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Neil Garfield

For Further information or assistance please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

————————————–

see 13-450 N Carolina Appellate Decision on Holder, PETE, HDC and Owner of the Debt 2013 Decision

There are several interesting features to this appellate case, not the least of which is that it comes from North Carolina which has not been particularly friendly to borrowers. What is interesting is that the court was looking at the substance of the transaction and finding that the the bank was playing games and now wanted to play more. The trial court said no, and then the appellate court said no. The decision is one year old but was recently brought to my attention of a litigant who is confronting the “bank” that claims rights to collect, enforce and foreclose.

This was a case in which the foreclosing party never established any of the conditions under which it was (a) the owner of the debt, (b) the payee on the note or (c) the PETE — party entitled to enforce the note. The Court considered the situation and dismissed the foreclosure WITH PREJUDICE —a trial court decision that is highly unusual looking back 7 years but not so unusual looking back 12 months.

The appellate decision looks first where I said to look — the payee on the note. If the foreclosing party IS the payee on the note then it need not allege how it became the “holder” but it probably has some burden of proving the loan. We will see about that. SO if you are the Payee most of the case is presumed. The problem is that most courts having been applying that universally accepted presumption to cases in which the foreclosing party is NOT the payee on the note. And, as pointed out by this court, that is wrong.

The trial court correctly dismissed the case with prejudice because dismissal was mandatory and in the absence of any action by the bank, the dismissal must be with prejudice. The bank can’t come back later and assert a right to amend when they could have voluntarily dismissed, moved to amend, or taken some action that would put the issue of amendment before the court. As this court states, it is not up to the trial judge, sua sponte, to provide a path to amendment. Hence the same rules that have cooked borrowers for years because they admitted or waived defenses unintentionally now comes back and bite the bank.

And most importantly, when you look to the DEBT, it is the substance of the claim that counts not just the paperwork.

Neither the trial court nor the appellate court liked the fact that the affidavit submitted was so vague that it said nothing — particularly about the acquisition of the DEBT, and nothing about how it was a PETE. This simple statement in the body of the opinion, might represent a sea change in judicial attitude. After all, the point of commercial paper, negotiable instruments, foreclosures etc is that they are all about the same thing — MONEY. The laws (UCC etc) were never meant to facilitate theft from innocent parties (investors, borrowers etc.).

The bank argued that it should not have been dismissed with prejudice and that it should have been given an opportunity to amend, citing to laws, cases and rules that permit liberal amendment. But here the court turned the same indifference to consequences that has plagued borrowers and used it against the bank. You might call it blind justice in practice. The court found that the failure of the bank to do anything to protect its right to amend was sufficient to uphold the trial court’s dismissal with prejudice. The bank argued that this was an extreme remedy implying a windfall fro the borrower. But the appellate court said, quite correctly, how do we know that?

The court was clearly implying that a subsequent action by a real party in interest could theoretically be brought against the homeowner either on the debt, the note the mortgage or all of those. They clearly thought that the party who was bringing the action in this case was a sham party filing a sham action. And they obviously wanted to stop that practice.

It remains to be seen how many cases we will see that discuss the foreclosure the way this court did. I am hopeful and ever optimistic that the courts will follow the money trail and not allow shuffling of paper to replace actual transactions. Every time we enforce an APPARENT transaction we take the risk of ignoring the real transaction. Each time foreclosure judgments are entered raises the probability that a second debt is being created.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

%d bloggers like this: