Magic Bullet? Maybe this: the foreclosure “team” are all witnesses, not claimants

The fact that the foreclosure players know — or even witnessed — the fact that you refused to make any further payments makes them a witness, not a claimant. 
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The investment banks say they are not liable as lenders for noncompliance with lending laws. OK. A good lawyer can make a powerful argument for estoppel — the investment banks cannot take one position — that it wasn’t a loan in terms of regulation of lenders   — and then that it is a loan so they can foreclose without a creditor.
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Two wrongs don’t make something right. The fact that they used a shill as the originator doesn’t mean they are allowed or should be allowed to use another shill to falsely invoke foreclosure laws and procedures. You can’t foreclose on a debt that does not exist.
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Most homeowners take out their frustration by attacking the judge or the opposing lawyer. This is a mistake on many levels.
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My concern here is that you are far too interested in two subjects that have the least probability of you achieving anything. The object of your ire is understandable. But you may be playing into the hand of the banks if you continue.
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The Judge, even if he or she is the most reprehensible person on Earth, is simply untouchable without very specific evidence that links the Judge to a corrupt scheme in which the decision of the Judge is directly tied to the scheme and where the Judge receives a  specifically identified reward for a corrupt decision. This does not exist in your case and it rarely exists in any case. So attacks on the Judge’s integrity or intelligence will provoke what they would when you attack anyone for anything. They get defensive and antagonistic — just the opposite of what you need.

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The foreclosure mill, even if they too consist of the most reprehensible human beings on the planet, is considered immune from liability for misrepresenting things in court. You don’t need to agree with this for it to be true. And railing against that fact will get you nowhere. I have tried to go after the lawyers and the result has been consistently negative — claim dismissed because of “litigation immunity.”
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So going after the Judge and the lawyers is a waste of valuable time, money and energy — something that the banks need you to do because they are sitting on a plan that claims money due when there is no money due to them, if at all. That is foreclosure.
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So if you are addressing the Judge for example, you first do what you must do whenever you are attempting to establish rapport with anyone — find common ground. You talk about obvious things about which you all agree so you are perceived as reasonable.
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THEN you move on to your argument about how this situation does not lead to the same result as the conventional case of foreclosure where an actual creditor is actually claiming a right to payment of an actual debt that is actually carried on its books as an asset receivable, which means that nonpayment did in fact cause it financial injury.
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Under our laws and just plain common sense, if you see someone rob a bank for example, then you, as a witness, have no right to sue the robber for the money they stole; true simply because they didn’t steal it from you. Why should you get any money that was stolen from the bank? And that is your point. The fact that the foreclosure players know — or even witnessed — the fact that you refused to make any further payments makes them a witness, not a claimant. 
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And yet…. if you do make the claim against the robber and the bank failed to press its own claim, you could get a judgement especially if the robber failed to raise any defenses. After all he knows he stole the money. [I am not equating homeowners with robbers. I am equitating banks with a unscrupulous version of you, making a claim to which you and  they are not entitled to receive any redress under law or common sense.]
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The question is not whether you owed the money or had any reason to pay or not to pay. The question is why are they appearing as claimants instead of witnesses in a claim by someone who actually did suffer some financial loss caused by your alleged nonpayment.
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And the question is why isn’t such a person (creditor) present in the foreclosure? Where are they? Who are they? Do they exist? If they don’t exist, was the transaction with the homeowner actually a loan transaction or was it something else entirely that was disguised as a loan transaction? 
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So you START with the premise that all legal debts should be paid to the obligee — the person to whom the debt is owed. Everyone agrees with that. And you follow with the premise, under the U.S. Constitution, that only people who have been injured can seek redress in court. You get the judge to agree that everyone agrees that if someone fails to pay a mortgage debt to someone who owns it, they should be subject to foreclosure, forced sale of their home, no matter how long it has been in the family, and evicted if they try to stay anyway.
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You talk about it as though you are in favor of foreclosure because that is where every judge starts. You don’t talk about foreclosure as though it is a new scheme that doesn’t have any support in logic or law because foreclosure has existed for centuries. It must exist because if someone parts with their money to give you a loan, they must be able to force repayment if you are unable or unwilling to make repayment. But that does not mean that a witness to nonpayment can make a claim.
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And you must take the time to study and understand the true nature of what has been really been going on. Securitization is by definition the issuance of securities. While it can be a source of financing it is just as often a means to distribute risk. The reason why thinly capitalized companies like DiTech and Quicken Loans were given hundreds of millions of dollars to sell trillions of dollars of low interest loans was not because the investment banks had come up with a new formula to squeeze profit out of low interest payments.
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It was because the return of principal and interest payments was irrelevant to their plan. The “failure” of such repayment plans was a centerpoint of the plan and they bet on it, making more and more money as each “loan” “failed.” Their plan was to sell securities. And the more securities they sold the more money they made because unlike all other securitization plans, they were not selling securities from an independent legal entity (client) that was going into business and using the proceeds to conduct or grow its business.
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Instead they were selling securities for themselves, taking the money and using as little of it as possible to cover the scheme. The money used to create the illusion of loans was a cover for the real scheme.
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The money, if any, that was sent to closing agents to close a transaction that was inaccurately described as a loan transaction was not delivered by the banks with the intent of creating a conventional loan product subject to lending laws. That would have made the investment bank a lender and they would have been named as such on the note and mortgage.
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Quite the contrary. It was designed to evade lending laws in a scheme that had has its hallmark claims by the investment banks, who were running the show, that the scheme did not subject them to lending laws and was not a loan. 
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By designating a false flag “originator” who was contractually unrelated to the investment bank and who received fees and bonuses from acting as though it was a lender, the banks now claim that they are not regulated by lending laws.
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My position is take them at their word and stop fighting them.
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OK, you are right but the only reason you are not subject to lending laws is that you did not engage in lending. So the money that arrived at the closing table was disguised conditional payment in exchange for a the homeowner’s signature on documents that could be used to fill in data on a spreadsheet.
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It was that data (not the loans) that was sold dozens of times thus relieving the investment bank from any risk of loss. The money was a fee paid to homeowners who were lured into transactions that were fraudulently disguised as loans but were in fact part of a plan to steal money and homes.
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Foreclosure is sought because it represents still more revenue and because by not foreclosing the banks would be admitting this wasn’t a loan in the first place. The money that went to homeowners or which was paid on their behalf was not a loan — it was only part of payment of a fee to which the homeowner was entitled (under quantum meruit) but knew nothing about and never had any opportunity to engage in free market negotiation.
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The reason why (a) there is no creditor and the reason why (b) all the documents are fabricated and (c) all this testimony is pre-scripted for perjury is simply that it wasn’t a loan to begin with — and nobody now is carrying the loan as an asset receivable on their books. NOBODY! The loan does not and never did exist. And that is because the money received was not a loan, it was payment for signature and implied consent to use private data for resale.
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The most basic law of contract is that there must be, at the outset, a meeting of the minds. The homeowner went into the transaction believing the false assertions that the money was a loan — instead of consideration for use of his or her private financial information and his or her signature.
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The investment bank went into the transaction through a myriad of sham conduits posing as “lenders” for exorbitant fees. The investment banks were not lending money. They were paying money so they could issue and profit from the sale of securities in “securitization.” Without that there would have been transaction at all. Refer to the “Step Transaction Doctrine” and “Single Transaction Doctrine” for support in case decisions and statutes. You’ll find multiple references on this blog from the early days (2007–2008) of this blog.
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The investment banks say they are not liable as lenders for noncompliance with lending laws. OK. A good lawyer can make a powerful argument for estoppel — the investment banks cannot take one position — that it wasn’t a loan in terms of regulation of lenders   — and then that it is a loan so they can foreclose without a creditor.
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But to get the judge to even consider such an apparently ridiculous assertion you need to demonstrate, step by step, relentlessly, that the foreclosure team has nothing. That doesn’t happen in one pleading or one hearing. It ONLY happens if you know and consistently use and apply the rules and laws relating to court procedure, discovery and trial objections.
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PRACTICE NOTES:
This argument can be made directly where the transaction was originated by the investment banks. Don’t get lost in the “warehouse lender” thickets — they were just one of many steps in a the circuitous process by which investment banks gave money to homeowners.
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But where a real loan was actually made by a real lender and then acquired by investment banks through what they called “securitization” then the argument shifts to the idea that the debt was extinguished at acquisition. this is because when all was said and done there was no creditor who was holding the debt as an asset receivable on its books.
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The fundamental point here, which can be corroborated with any knowledgeable person in the world of finance, is that neither the delivery of money to homeowners nor the acquisition of the debt after a real loan was originated was related to securitization as it had ever been done in the past.
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Securitization is simply the process of dividing up an asset into shares and selling them. This was never done in connection with these transactions. Nobody ever received a share of any loan. Securitization in this context consisted solely of the issuance of securities by the securities brokerage firm (investment bank) posing as an underwriter for a “trust name” that was merely a fictitious name of the the underwriter itself. That is not securitization. The job of the litigator is to gently and relentlessly lead the judge to conclude that this might indeed be the case and thus deny the foreclosure.
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Neil F Garfield, 73, is a Florida licensed attorney. He has received multiple academic and achievement awards in business and law. He is a former investment banker. securities analyst, and financial analyst.

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FORECLOSURE DEFENSE IS NOT SIMPLE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF A FAVORABLE RESULT. IN FACT, STATISTICS SHOW THAT MOST HOMEOWNERS FAIL TO PRESENT THEIR DEFENSE PROPERLY. EVEN THOSE THAT PRESENT THE DEFENSES PROPERLY LOSE, AT LEAST AT THE TRIAL COURT LEVEL, AT LEAST 1/3 OF THE TIME. IN ADDITION IT IS NOT A SHORT PROCESS IF YOU PREVAIL. THE FORECLOSURE MILLS WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO WEAR YOU DOWN AND UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE. ALL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT NO MEANINGFUL SETTLEMENT OCCURS UNTIL THE 11TH HOUR OF LITIGATION.
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Financial Industry Caught with Its Hand in the Cookie Jar

Like the infamous NINJA loans, the REMICs ought to be dubbed NEITs — nonexistent inactive trusts.

The idea of switching lenders without permission of the borrower has been accepted for centuries. But the idea of switching borrowers without permission of the “lender” had never been accepted until the era of false claims of securitization.

This is just one example of how securitization, in practice, has gone far off the rails. It is significant to students of securitization because it demonstrates how the debt, note and mortgage have been separated with each being a commodity to sell to multiple buyers.

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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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see https://asreport.americanbanker.com/news/new-risk-for-loan-investors-lending-to-a-different-company

Leveraged loan investors are now concerned about whether they are funding a loan to one entity and then “by succession” ending up with another borrower with a different credit profile, reputation, etc. You can’t make this stuff up. This is only possible because the debt has been separated from the promissory note — the same way the debt, note and mortgage were treated as entirely separate commodities in the “securitization” of residential mortgage debt. The lack of connection between the paper and the debt has allowed borrowers to sell or transfer their position as borrower to another borrower leaving the “lender” holding a debt from a new borrower. This sounds crazy but it is nevertheless true. [I am NOT suggesting that individual homeowners try this. It won’t work]

Keep in mind that most certificates issued by investment bankers purportedly from nonexistent inactive trusts (call them NEITs instead of REMICs) contain an express provision that states in clear unequivocal language that the holder of the certificate has no right, title or interest to the underlying notes and mortgages. This in effect creates a category of defrauded investors using much the same logic as the use of MERS in which MERS expressly disclaims and right, title or interest in the money (i.e., the debt), or the mortgages that reregistered by third party “members.”

Of course those of us who understand this cloud of smoke and mirrors know that the securitization was never real. The single transaction rule used in tax cases establishes conclusively that the only real parties in interest are the investors and the borrowers. Everyone else is simply an intermediary with no more interest in any transaction than your depository bank has when you write a check on your account. The bank can’t assert ownership of the TV you just paid for. But if you separate the maker of the check from the seller of the goods so that neither knows of the existence of the other then the intermediary is free to make whatever false claims it seeks to make.

In the world of fake securitization or as Adam Levitin has coined it, “Securitization Fail”, the successors did not pay for the debt but did get the paper (note and mortgage or deed of trust). All the real monetary transactions took place outside the orbit of the falsely identified REMIC “Trust.” The debt, by law and custom, has always been considered to arise between Party A and Party B where one of them is the borrower and the other is the one who put the money into the hands of the borrower acting for its own account — or for a disclosed third party lender. In most cases the creditor in that transaction is not named as the lender on the promissory note. Hence the age-old “merger doctrine” does not apply.

This practice allows the sale and resale of the same loan multiple times to multiple parties. This practice is also designed to allow the underwriter to issue investors a promise to pay (the “certificate” from a nonexistent inactive trust entity) that conveys no interest in the underlying mortgages and notes that supposedly are being acquired.

It’s true that equitable and perhaps legal rights to the paper (i.e., ownership) have attached to the paper. But the paper has been severed from the debt. Courts have inappropriately ignored this fact and stuck with the presumption that the paper is the same as the debt. But that would only be true if the named payee or mortgagee (or beneficiary on a Deed of Trust) were one and the same. In the real world, they are not the same. Thus we parties who don’t own the debt foreclosing on houses because the real parties in interest have no idea how to identify the real parties in interest.

While the UCC addresses situations like this Courts have routinely ignored statutory law and simply applied their own “common sense” to a nearly incomprehensible situation. The result is that the courts apply legal presumptions of facts that are wrong.

PRACTICE NOTE: In order to be able to litigate properly one must understand the basics of fake securitization. Without understanding the difference between real world transactions and paper instruments discovery and trial narrative become corrupted and the homeowner loses. But if you keep searching for things that ought to exist but don’t — thus undercutting the foundation for testimony at deposition or trial — then your chances of winning rise geometrically. The fact is, as I said in many interviews and on this blog as far back as 2007, they don’t have the goods — all they have is an illusion — a holographic image of an empty paper bag.

One Step Closer:It’s Impossible to Tie Any Investors to Any Loan

The current talking points used by the Banks is that somehow the Trust can enforce the alleged loan even though it is the “investors” who own the loan. But that can only be true if the Trust owns the loan which it doesn’t. And naming the “investors” as the creditor does nothing to clarify the situation — especially when the “investors” cannot be identified.

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 http://4closurefraud.org/2016/06/07/unsealed-doj-confirms-holders-of-securitized-loans-cannot-be-traced/

I know of a case pending now where US Bank allegedly sued as Trustee of what appears to be named Trust. In Court the corporate representative of the servicer admitted that the creditor was a group of investors that he declined to name. I knew that meant two things: (1) neither he nor anyone else knew which investor was tied to the subject loan and (2) the “Plaintiff” Trust had never acquired the loan and therefore had no business being in court.

The article in the above link demonstrates that not even the FBI could figure out the identity of the investors. And as we have seen across the country whenever the homeowner asks for discovery of the identity of the creditor it is met with multiple objections and claims that the information about the identity of the debtor’s credit is proprietary. This is an absurd claim and it seeks to have the court rubber stamp a blatant violation of Federal and State lending laws which require the disclosure of the identity of the “lender.”

The only thing the article gets wrong is the statement that the loans were sold into a trust. That is obviously false. If the investors are the creditors, then their money was used to fund the origination or acquisition of the loan — without the Trust. Otherwise the Trust would be the creditor. And if the Trust is not the owner of the loan as specified by the Prospectus and Pooling and Servicing Agreement, then it follows that it has no status at all, which means that neither the Trustee nor the servicer have any authority to manage, service or otherwise enforce the alleged loan. The entire strategy of asserting the Trust is a holder of the note is thus unhinged when it is confronted with reality. The whole “standing” argument revolves around this point — that no loan actually made it into any Trust. Many cases have been won by borrowers on that point without the extra step of saying that the creditor is completely unknown.

So the upshot is that there is no known, presumed or identified creditor. Although that seems implausible and counter-intuitive, it is nonetheless true. That doesn’t mean that theoretically there couldn’t be an unsecured claim from the investors to collect from the homeowner under a theory of unjust enrichment, but it does mean that the investors are neither named on the note and mortgage nor are they the current owners of any paper instruments that purport to be evidence of the “debt” — i.e., the note and mortgage. If they are not the current owners of the “debt” originated at closing nor the owners of the paper instruments signed at the alleged closing, then there is no evidence of any contract or privity between the investors and the Trustee or servicer at all. The PSA was ignored which means the entity of the Trust was ignored.  And THAT means lack of standing and lack of any ability to cure it.

Which brings me to one of my earliest articles for this Blog that announced “You Don’t Owe the Money.” Using the step transaction doctrine and single transaction doctrines arising mostly out of tax courts, it was plain as day to me back in 2007 and 2008 that there was no “debt.” And until someone stepped up with an equitable unsecured claim against the homeowner, there wasn’t even a liability. But nobody ever steps up. The banks tell us that is because the whole securitization scheme is to prevent and even prohibit the investors from even making an inquiry into any specific “loans.”

But the real reason is simple and basic — the Trusts were ignored, which means that investor money was deposited with investment banks under false pretenses — the falsehood being that the investors were buying into a specific Trust (which never received any proceeds of sale of the Trust securities) with a specific Mortgage Loan Schedule. The Mortgage Loan Schedule was therefore a complete illusion as an attachment to the Trust because the Trust never had the money to pay for the “pool” of loans. That is why the Mortgage Loan Schedule shows up mainly in litigation in order to confuse the Judge into thinking that somehow it is “facially valid” instead of being the self-serving fabrication of a stranger to the transaction who is engaged in stealing the loans after they already stole the money from investors.

In fact, the “pool” was an ever widening dark dynamic pool of money in which all the money of all investors was commingled with all the other investors of all the alleged Trusts. As I have previously stated the result can be compared to taking an apple, an orange and a banana and setting a food processor on Puree. At the end of that simple process it is impossible for the chef to produce the original apple, orange or banana.

If securitization was real, the banks could have easily done two things that would have completely knocked out any borrower defenses except payment. The first was to show the money chain and the second would be produce the proof that the Trust owned the debt, not the investors. The current talking points used by the Banks is that somehow the Trust can enforce the alleged loan even though it is the “investors” who own the loan. But that can only be true if the Trust owns the loan which it doesn’t. And naming the “investors” as the creditor does nothing to clarify the situation — especially when the “investors” cannot be identified.

As it stands now, the investors continue to allow the banks to act like they are really intermediaries, stealing both the money and the loans that should have been executed in favor of the investors and even allowing claims for collecting “servicer advances” that were not advances (they were return of investor capital) and never came from the servicer. It was and remains a classic PONZI scheme that government is too scared to do anything about and investors are too ignorant of the false securitization (or unwilling to admit human error in failing to do due diligence on the securitization package).

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9th Circuit Circular Logic: Medrano v Flagstar

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Editor’s Note: If a Court wants to come to a certain conclusion, it will, regardless of how it must twist the law or facts. In this case, the Court found that a letter that challenges the terms of the loan or the current loan receivable is not a qualified written request under RESPA.

The reasoning of the court is that a challenge or question about the real balance and real creditor and real terms of the deal is not related to servicing of the loan and therefore the requirement of an answer to a QWR is not required.

The Court should reconsider its ruling. Servicing of a loan account assumes that there is a loan account that the presumed subservicer has received authorization to service. The borrower gets notice often from companies they never heard of but they assume that the servicing function is properly authorized.

The “servicer” is used too generally as a term, which is part of the problem. The fact that there is a Master Servicer with information on ALL the transactions affecting the alleged loan receivable from inception to the present is completely overlooked by most litigants, trial judges an appellate courts.

The “servicer” they refer to is actually the subservicer whose authority could only come from appointment by the Master Servicer. But the Master Servicer could only have such power to appoint the subservicer if the loan was properly “securitized” meaning the original loan was properly documented with the right payee and the lien rights alleged in the recorded mortgage existed.

If the party asserts itself as the “Servicer” it is asserting its appointment by the Master Servicer who also has other information on the money trial. It should be required to answer a QWR and based upon current law, should be required to answer on behalf of all parties including the Master Servicer and the “trustee” of the loan pool claiming rights to the loan. If there are problems with the transfer of the loan compounding problems with origination of the loan, the borrower has a right to know that and the QWR is the appropriate vehicle for that.

The servicer cannot perform its duties unless it has the or can produce the necessary information about the identity of the real creditor, the transactions by which that party became a creditor and proof of payment or funding of the original loan and proof of payment for the assignments of the loan, along with an explanation of why the “Trustee” for the pool was not named in the original transaction or in a recorded assignment immediately after the “closing” of the loan transaction.

The 9th Circuit, ignoring the realities of the industry has chosen to accept the conclusion that the “servicer” is only the subservicer and that information requested in a QWR can only be required from the subservicer without any duty to provide the data that corroborates the monthly statement of principal and interest due. The new rule from the Federal Consumer Financial Board stating that all parties are subject to the Federal lending laws underscores and codifies industry practice and common sense.

The Court is ignoring the reality that the lender is the investor (pension funds etc.) and the borrower is the homeowner, and that all others are intermediaries subject to TILA, RESPA, Reg Z etc. The servicer appointed by the Master Servicer is a subservicer who can only provide a snapshot of a small slice of the financial transactions related to the subject loan and the pool claiming to own the loan.

They are avoiding the clear premise of the single transaction doctrine. If the investors did not advance money there would have been no loan. If the borrower had not accepted a loan, there would have been no loan. That is the essence of the single transaction doctrine.

Now they are opening the door to breaking down single transactions into component parts that can change the contractual terms by which the lenders loaned money and the borrower borrowed money.

It is the same as if you wrote a check to a store for payment of a TV or groceries and the intermediary banks and the financial data processors suddenly claimed that they each were part of the transaction and there had ownership rights to the TV or groceries. It is absurd. But if the question is one of payment they are ALL required to show their records of the transaction. This includes in our case the investment banker who is the one directing all movements of money and documents.

If the Court leaves this decision in its current form it is challenging the law of unintended consequences where no transaction is safe from claims by third party intermediaries. Even if Flagstar had no authority to service the account, which is likely, they were acting with apparent authority and must be considered an intermediary servicer for purposes of RESPA and a QWR.

PRACTICE TIP: When writing a QWR be more explicit about the connections between your questions, your suspicion of error as to amount due, payments due etc. Show that the amount being used as a balance due is incorrect or might be incorrect based upon your findings of fact. Challenge the right of the “servicer” to be the servicer and ask them who appointed them to that position.

9th Circuit Medrano v Flagstar on Qualified Written Request

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