Tag: Foreclosures

The Scary TRUTH About Fukushima (Fukushima Exposed Full Documentary: Deception/End Times 2015)

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, Alaska, American-Mexico border, americium, beaches, brains eaten away, California, Canada, cell cycle arrest, Censorship, cesium, cobalt 60, confiscation, contaminated, contamination, Danger, dead, death, death dead, decommissioning, degenerative brain disorder, disarmament, disaster, DNA, DNA Damage, dying, fallout, Feds, Fish, fishermen, fission, food chain, Fukushima, geoengineered, gun ban treaty, Hanford, hazard, heart breaking, inonizing radiation, Iodine 131, Japan, Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, killing us, Mainstream News Media, mass die offs, Nuclear, nuclear catastrophe, Nuclear Chemistry, nuked, Pacific Ocean


If you don’t do anything else productive this week, do me one small favor, go here:

watch this youtube video, and learn the truth. I have been trying to tell people for the last 5 years, and cannot get enough people to listen, or believe the truth.
The US govt., the Japanese govt., are not going to tell you the truth. Every time I see someone letting their kids play in the rain, I want to walk up and slap them for their stupidity, then have to remember that no one has told them the truth. The news media, the govt, they all know the truth. Let’s just go about our daily lives, and ignore the situation.
Cancer has already been running rampant, the statistics show that it will take 15-17 years from March 11, 2011 to hit most people in the US. So much time will have passed since the triple – 100% meltdowns, that most peopel will not put 2 + 2 together to make 4. 2 + 2 by then, will be equal to 5.

Watch:
The Scary TRUTH About Fukushima (Fukushima Exposed Full Documentary: Deception/End Times 2015)

So along with the chemtrails dumbing people down, helping them stay asleep, together with the deadly fluoride in the water, keep IQs that of a snail, and vaccines causing autism, all the more to black and hispanic males, most peopel in the US will contract cancer and never put it all together. Their children born with autism, their reproduction possibilities deteriorated, and never know what hit them.

Wake up you bunch of idiots, and smell the cesium, the strotium, tritium, and all the other radiations taking hold of your bodies. You cannot see radiation, you cannot smell it, you cannot feel it. It bioaccumulates in your bodies, and is a slow and horrible death.

How many people continued eating seafood? Wow! How many continued eating vegetables grown in California? How many people continued living on the California Coast? How many people go surfing in the Pacific? It only took 3-6 days from the March 11, 2011 triple melt down to reach the California coast.

Has anyone bothered to look at some of the pix of dead whales that have washed up on California beaches? How can the govt not tell these people living along the Pacific Ocean that their kids have been conaminated to the point that their grandchildren will not look anything like a human? The extent of our exposure is sickening, and no one cares, they won’t even listen.

No wonder they want to start confiscating our guns now. They know that when people learn the truth, some of the people are going to rebel. I watched a video recently that showed Hillary Clinton had the March 11, 2011 emails to her telling her to stay inside for the next three days. She knew all about what had happened and the extent of contamination. Japan passe secrecy laws to keep the people from talking about it. Media personnel that spoke of it, disappeared.

The births of the next couple of generations will be heartbreaking, horrors fit for horror movies. God Help Us All!

Wells Fargo Agrees to pay $1.2 Billion (yes, with a B) to resolve claims by Justice Dept. & other federal agencies for the origination of “shoddy loans” insured by FHA

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, A Billion Dollars, above the law, Banksters, corruption, Court Cases, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Housing Bubble, law, Lawyers, Legal


Compliance & Regulation
Why Wells Fargo Blinked in Its FHA Fight with the Government
Kate Berry
By Kate Berry
February 3, 2016
http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/compliance-regulation/why-wells-fargo-blinked-in-its-fha-fight-with-the-government-1071213-1.html?utm_medium=email&ET=nationalmortgage:e4010451:a:&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=-feb%205%202016&st=email

The long arm of the government is tough to elude, even if you are the nation’s largest home lender.

Wells Fargo stunned the mortgage industry Wednesday by tentatively agreeing to pay $1.2 billion to resolve civil claims by the Justice Department and other federal agencies that it originated shoddy loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

The proposed settlement could prove a bellwether for other banks that have outstanding investigations of FHA loans including PNC Financial Services Group, Regions Financial and BB&T.

Wells had been the lone big bank holdout willing to go to trial as a potential test of the government’s pursuit of banks for violations of the False Claims Act. That Civil War-era law allows the government to collect triple damages for fraud against the government. The law also has been a lightning rod for banks, causing some to pull out of FHA lending entirely.

Some observers said they were surprised at the size of the deal. Wells had put up a fight, claiming it has always been a prudent and responsible FHA lender. But some observers said the risk to its reputation and the cost of continuing the litigation was just too great.

“Nobody’s put [the government] to the test like Wells,” said Allen Jones, an independent mortgage consultant who managed Bank of America’s FHA business from 2005 to 2009. “They definitely made a run like no one else has. But there comes a point in time where you add it up and have to quantify the downside risk.”

The $1.8 trillion-asset bank reached an “agreement in principle” on Monday to resolve the FHA claims but could not provide any additional details until the deal is finalized, said Catherine Pulley, a Wells spokeswoman.

The agreement is forcing Wells to shave $134 million, or three cents a share, off its previously reported net income for 2015, the bank said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Wells said its revised profit for 2015 is $22.9 billion, or $4.12 a share.

The San Francisco bank had to provide for an additional legal accrual because of the settlement, which increased its operating losses within noninterest expense by $200 million, the filing said.

The deal appears to provide Wells some future protections. It would resolve “other potential civil claims relating to the company’s FHA lending activities for other periods,” the filing said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Wells “engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its retail FHA loans” from 2001 to 2010.

Theoretically lenders are required to indemnify FHA for loans that contain mistakes or are defective, essentially self-insuring the loan so taxpayers are not on the hook for potential losses. In this case, Wells not only failed to report material violations to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but HUD also paid insurance claims on thousands of defaulted loans that it later found had significant violations, the lawsuit alleged.

Last year the government added a Wells executive in charge of quality control, Kurt Lofrano, as a defendant to the lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2012. Lofrano was responsible for reporting loans with material defects to HUD, which oversees the FHA.

Prosecutors were preparing to use Wells’ own internal quality control reports to prove that executives knew some loans were of poor quality but did nothing about it. Wells failed to report the errors or change its practices because of pressure to fund more loans, the government claimed.

Patricia McCoy, a professor at Boston College Law School who specializes in banking law, said that because details of the settlement have not yet been released, there is no way to gauge the severity of Wells’ lending errors.

“Part of the problem is, there is a continuum of different types of conduct that would have led to a False Claims Act claim, and depending on the lender it could have been really bad, or a mixture with innocuous errors that slipped through,” McCoy said. “We don’t know where Wells Fargo fell along that continuum. At worst, it was a mix, some bad and probably a lot of innocuous errors.”

A bigger problem, McCoy said, is that the Justice Department has used the False Claims Act and its potential for treble damages for each violation as a tool to get banks to settle FHA violations. That threat has caused many to flee the program, she said.

“It’s a very heavy sledgehammer, and that’s not a constructive approach because in the course of underwriting innocent mistakes can happen and often they can be cured or fixed,” she said. “If the FHA is saying as a condition of a lender doing FHA loans, they have to be 100% perfect or else they are automatically going to face this threat of treble damages — that’s not a viable lending program.”

The Bank With the Most Homes in the End Wins!!!!!

City of Springfield Banned all Foreclosures! How Will The Supreme Court Rule On That?

by nootkabear, posted in Alert, Attorneys, Banksters, Censorship, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, globalists, Health, Injustice, Japan, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, Radiation, Raidoanalytical, US Bank
 

BOSTON – A group of Western Massachusetts banks argued before the state’s highest court on Thursday that the city of Springfield’s anti-foreclosure ordinances should be overturned.

The banks say the local ordinances contradict state laws, and a bond levied on lenders constitutes an illegal tax. “It’s not that banks are opposed to mortgage laws and reform, but to how it’s being done,” said Craig Kaylor, general counsel for Hampden Bank, one of the banks that brought the lawsuit. “These are for the state to decide, not city by city.”

But the city disagrees and says the laws are necessary to avoid blight and protect neighborhoods that have high rates of foreclosure.

“This is the city’s response to the foreclosure crisis,” said Springfield Assistant City Solicitor Thomas Moore, who argued the case before the Supreme Judicial Court. “It’s a response from the city council and mayor based on what they see every day in the city. They’ve taken the strongest stance to protect homeowners and the city itself.”

The city of Springfield passed two anti-foreclosure ordinances in 2011 as the city was being hit hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. One ordinance requires a bank that forecloses on a home to pay for a $10,000 bond, which can be used by the city to maintain the foreclosed properties, if the bank fails to do so.

The other ordinance requires the establishment of a mandatory mediation program to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The bank would be responsible for paying most of the cost of the mediation.

Springfield is among the top cities in the state in the number of distressed properties it has. The city says high rates of foreclosures lead to health and education problems for children in families that lose their homes, and high rates of blighted or vacant properties lead to crime and violence in those neighborhoods.

Six western Massachusetts banks, with Easthampton Savings Bank as the lead plaintiff, challenged the ordinances. A U.S. District court judge upheld the ordinances. However, on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals issued a stay preventing Springfield from enforcing them. The federal court then asked the Supreme Judicial Court, the state’s highest court, to answer two questions related to state law before the federal court makes its ruling. The case is Easthampton Savings Bank and others vs. City of Springfield.

The SJC must decide whether the local foreclosure ordinances are preempted by existing state foreclosure laws. The court must also decide whether the $10,000 bond is a legal fee or an illegal tax. Cities and towns cannot create taxes without legislative approval.

The banks also argue that the ordinances violate the contract clause of the U.S. Constitution by impairing the contract between the homeowner and the mortgage-holder, a question that remains before the federal court.

During Thursday’s arguments, Tani Sapirstein, an attorney representing the banks, argued that the bond is a tax because banks do not get any particular benefit from paying it – which is the criteria for calling something a fee. The way the bond works is when a foreclosed property is sold, if the city did not have to use the bond money to maintain it, $9,500 would be returned to the bank and $500 is kept by the city as an administrative fee, used to maintain blighted properties and implement the foreclosure laws.

Chief Justice Ralph Gants questioned Sapirstein on whether the bank does not actually receive benefits. “You have an interest in preserving the value of your property,” Gants said. “If there are foreclosed properties going to hell all around your property, it diminishes the value of your property and diminishes the value of what you receive on the foreclosure. Why is this concern about avoiding blight not something that would benefit the bank as well as the city?”

Sapirstein replied that eliminating blight would benefit the bank “as well as the city and other property owners in the neighborhood.” “How is that a particularized benefit?” she said.

Moore argued that the bond is a fee, which the city needs to hire code inspectors and create a database of who controls foreclosed properties.

But Justice Geraldine Hines said if she pays for a copy of her birth certificate, she gets a document in return for the fee. “Here I don’t see that,” she said. “The property owners, the mortgagees, don’t have something tangible.”

Moore said the banks get a “well-regulated industry” and preservation of their property values. In addition, when a bank registers ownership in the database, the city knows who is responsible and problems can be resolved more easily.

Sapirstein also argued that local law cannot require more than state law in an area that is regulated by the state or the result would be “a patchwork of ordinances.”

Gants indicated that the court may move to narrow the ordinances – for example, applying them only to a bank that has taken possession of a house, not a bank that is in the process of foreclosure when the homeowner is still living there. Gants said the ordinance as written could fine a bank for not maintaining a property where the homeowner still lives. As a homeowner, Gants said, “I’d say I’m still living here. This is my home. How can they be punished for not invading what’s still my home just because they happen to be foreclosing on it?” Gants said.

Moore acknowledged that the ordinance may be overbroad and said the city does not anticipate pursuing a violation in a case like that. Moore said the lenders’ lawsuit is premature because there is no information yet about how the city will enforce the laws. “We have the lenders essentially saying the sky will be falling, we are worried about x, y, z happening. None of that has happened and none of that may happen,” Moore said.

Moore said the city is still writing the regulations for the ordinances and if they are upheld, “The city is ready to go forward with implementation within a period of weeks.”

Similar foreclosure ordinances were established in Lynn and Worcester, and local banks challenged those as well. That lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Worcester. The case involving Lynn and Worcester could be affected by the SJC’s ruling in the Springfield case.

Several activists supporting homeowners came in from Lynn and Springfield to hear the arguments. Candejah Pink, a Springfield homeowner and community organizer battled foreclosure for four years before reaching an agreement to keep her home. She helped write the Springfield ordinances. Pink said the bond is there to ensure that homes are maintained, which keeps crime and violence down. The mediation program, she said, is important to help homeowners come to an agreement with lenders. “We’re not asking to live in our homes for free. We’re asking for some mediation,” she said.

SHEEPLE AWAKEN!!!

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, big brother, BLM, Bundy's Ranch, Censorship, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Fukushima, globalists, Health, Japan, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, malitia, manifest injustice, nuked, Radiation, radiation poisoning, the web, Tsunami, US Bank

Once Upon a Time…. I Thought the Worst We Had To Face Was Foreclosure Hell, I WAS WRONG!

Posted on June 28, 2014 by nootkabear

Ya know, I used to think that Foreclosure Hell was the worst thing we in this Country had to face.  Wow, Was I Wrong!

I didn’t realize that just like in Japan, they will cook us to death with radiation, and not even bother to tell us.  I have condemned the Japanese for nuking the world and not telling us the truth about it, but fuck me, this country is doing the same thing.

While most people go about their daily business, they never think about the fact, that a pleasure of getting rained on is killing them.  We are the walking dead, and being asleep to the fact is just fucking us up more.

I would apologize for my slang, no, crude language, but something needs to wake these sleeping zombies up!

So, they are not only going to take every house they can get their grimy paws on, but they are going to continue the slow kill of humankind from the planet.  

It is not the kids growing up now that will suffer so much, it is like the butterfly test in Fukushima.  It is the children’s children that will be riddled with deformities. 

No matter what they try to tell us, we cannot be stupid, and believe that radiation is ok.  The thought of believing that, well, it is, stupid.  The sheeple that make up this country now, is amazing.  If the government says the radiation is not hurting us, we’ll just believe them.  Because the government says so?  Yall need to get out from under the rock, and out of the sun, cause damn!  You been drinking too much water with fluoride in it, for too long, and it has made you dumb!  I take that back, it has made you dumber than dirt!

For years, they have been doing things with the weather, with our food, with our prescriptions, our health!  They have taken healthy human beings and turned them into out of shape, fat slugs that have lives that are meant for cattle.  Chemtrails is no lie either.  What about HARP?  I guess that you also believe that 911 was not an inside job.

No, I am not a conspiracy theorist, I believe in taking what is put before me, studying it, seeing it for what it is, listening to scientists, listening to experts, and deducing my own opinion.  You see, we woke up.  We quit drinking the tap water.  We quit watching the regular news.  The news media is brainwashing you sheeple, which is not hard for them to do.

Terrorists are here, they are going to get you, so we have to militarize the Police forces.  These false flag shootings, are to outrage you sheeple, so that you will agree that guns are bad, and they can confiscate our guns.  We are told that our rights have to be taken, so that we can be protected from the terrorists, etc.,

If you are so blind you cannot see your nose on your face, you will not notice that Fannie Mae, and the banks are throwing our elderly out on the street.  Right now, in Goodyear, Arizona, an 83 year old woman and her 86 year old husband are being thrown out of their home.  No one cares.  In Colorado Springs, CO, an 82 year old woman is being thrown out of her home.  No one cares.

What the hell is wrong with you sheeple?  It’s not you, so it is Ok?  The Bank With the Most Homes in the End Wins, Get Used to It!!!

Sheeple Awaken!

Neil Garfield Telling It As It Is…”Bullying As An Acceptable Way of Life – Covered By A Corporate Shell Game!

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, globalists, Injustice, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, US Bank

Never Ending Foreclosures

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, globalists, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, US Bank

      Foreclosure filings were reported on 124,419 U.S. properties in January 2014, an 8 percent increase from December but still down 18 percent from January 2013.  Foreclosure filings were reported on 1,361,795 U.S. properties in 2013, down 26 percent from 2012 and down 53 percent from the peak of 2.9 million properties with foreclosure filings in 2010.  But still, 9.3 million U.S. residential properties were deeply underwater representing 19 percent of all properties with a mortgage in December 2013, down from 10.7 million homes underwater in September 2013.[1] 

            In 2006 there were 1,215,304 foreclosures, 545,000 foreclosure filings and 268,532 Home Repossessions.  By 2007 foreclosures had almost doubled – up to 2,203,295 with 1,260,000 foreclosure filings and 489,000 Home Repossessions.  2008 saw an even further increase to 3,019,482 foreclosures, 2,350,000 Foreclosure filings and 679,000 Home Repossessions.  In 2009 – 3,457,643 foreclosures, 2,920,000 foreclosure filings, and 945,000 Home Repossessions.  2010:  3,843,548 foreclosures, 3,500,000 foreclosure filings, and 1,125,000 Home Repossessions.  2011:  3,920,418 foreclosures, 3,580,000 foreclosure filings, and 1,147,000 Home Repossessions.  Then January to September 2012:  1,616,427 foreclosures 1,382,000 foreclosure filings and 572,844 Repossessions.  The remainder of 2012 – September through December saw an additional 2,300,000 foreclosures, 2,100,000 foreclosure filings and 700,000 Repossessions.  In other words, from 2006 through 2012, there were a total of  21,576,117 foreclosures; 17,637,000 foreclosure filings; 5,926,376 Home Repossessions.  The foreclosures added to the repossessions is equal to:  27,502,493[2].  The numbers are staggering.

            Many of the homes have been wrongfully foreclosed upon, where either the party had not been in default, or the foreclosing party lacked standing to foreclose.  It has become almost as lawless as the wildwest, or comparable to a shark feeding frenzy.

[1] All of the foreclosure figures came from RealtyTrac:  http://www.realtytrac.com/content/foreclosure-market-report

[2] http://www.statisticbrain.com/home-foreclosure-statistics/Statistic Verification  Source: RealtyTrac, Federal Reserve, Equifax

New Legal Issues – Jeff Barnes Esq., Foreclosure Defense Nationwide

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, US Bank

NEW LEGAL ISSUES COMING UP IN TRIAL AND APPELLATE COURTS

DECEMBER 16, 2013

December 16, 2013

With the release of the US Bank admissions per our post of November 6, 2013; the issuance of the opinions from the Supreme Courts of Oregon and Montana holding that MERS is not the “beneficiary”; and recent opinions from various jurisdictions which are now, finally, holding that securitization-related issues are relevant in a foreclosure, a host of new legal issues are about to be litigated in the trial and appellate courts throughout the country. It has taken six (6) years and coast-to-coast work to get courts to realize that securitization of a mortgage loan raises issues as to standing, real party in interest, and the alleged authority to foreclose, and that the simplistic mantra of the “banks” and servicers of “we have the note, thus we win” is no longer to be blindly accepted.

One issue which we and others are litigating relates to mortgage loans originated by Option One, which changed its name to Sand Canyon Corporation and thereafter ceased all mortgage loan operations. Pursuant to the sworn testimony of the former President of Sand Canyon, it stopped owning mortgage loans as of 2008. However, even after this cessation of any involvement with servicing or ownership of mortgage loans, we see “Assignments” from Option One or Sand Canyon to a securitization trustee bank or other third party long after 2008.

The United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire concluded, with the admission of the President of Sand Canyon, that the homeowner’s challenge to the foreclosure based on a 2011 alleged transfer from Sand Canyon to Wells Fargo was not an “attack on the assignment” which certain jurisdictions have precluded on the alleged basis that the borrower is not a party to the assignment, but is a situation where no assignment occurred because it could not have as a matter of admitted fact, as Sand Canyon could not assign something it did not have. The case is Drouin v. American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. and Wells Fargo, etc., No. 11-cv-596-JL.

The Option One/Sand Canyon situation is not unique: there are many originating “lenders” which allegedly “assigned” mortgages or Deeds of Trust long after they went out of business or filed for Bankruptcy, with no evidence of post-closing assignment authority or that the Bankruptcy court having jurisdiction over a bankrupt lender ever granted permission for the alleged transfer of the loan (which is an asset of the Bankruptcy estate) out of the estate. Such a transfer without proof of authority to do so implicates bankruptcy fraud (which is a serious crime punishable under United States criminal statutes), and fraud on the court in a foreclosure case where such an alleged assignment is relied upon by the foreclosing party.

As we stated in our post of November 6, the admission of US Bank that a borrower is a party to any MBS transaction and that the loan is governed by the trust documents means that the borrower is, in fact, a party to any assignment of that borrower’s loan, and should thus be permitted to seek discovery as to any alleged assignment and all issues related to the securitization of the loan. We have put this issue out in many of our cases, and will be arguing this position at both the trial and appellate levels beginning early 2014.

Jeff Barnes, Esq., http://www.ForeclosureDefenseNationwide.com

Thoughts on Foreclosures

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice

James and I were working outside, and he called me over and we began talking about that which occupies most of out time…  

Foreclosures.  

Many people don’t realize it, but there are many unseen reasons that people are foreclosed on.  After putting people into  toxic loans, and putting those toxic loans into pools with numerous other toxic loans, there was just a matter of time before the loans would go default, we all know that, the payments would become unmanageable.  

But many people, those who came to a better standing than they had been before, and being more prosperous, and even those who were not,  would have gone on to refinance those loans.  That could not be allowed to happen, because the loans would be paid off and the loans dissolved.  How do you stop someone from refinancing their loan?  Foreclose before they can.

They could not have anyone pulling the loans out of the Trusts that the loans had allegedly gone into, there was no money in the Trusts anyway.  The Banksters have a way of turning everything into a matter of profit.

Foreclosure Defense Nationwide – Jeff Barnes, Esq

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Banksters, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, Feds, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, globalists, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, U, US Bank

 

Jeff Barnes, Esq. On the Ball! 

http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?p=533

US BANK ADMITS, IN WRITING FROM THEIR CORPORATE OFFICE, THAT THE BORROWER IS A PARTY TO AN MBS TRANSACTION; THAT SECURITIZATION TRUSTEES ARE NOT INVOLVED IN THE FORECLOSURE PROCESS; HAVE NO ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE OF WHEN A LOAN HAS DEFAULTED; THAT THE “TRUE BENEFICIAL OWNERS” OF A SECURITIZED MORTGAGE ARE THE INVESTORS IN THE MBS; AND THAT THE GOAL OF A SERVICER IS TO “MAXIMIZE THE RETURN TO INVESTORS”                                                                                                                                                                                                 November 6, 2013

 We have been provided with a copy of U.S. Bank Global Corporate Trust Services’ “Role of the Corporate Trustee” brochure which makes certain incredible admissions, several of which squarely disprove and nullify the holdings of various courts around the country which have taken the position that the borrower “is not a party to” the securitization and is thus not entitled to discovery or challenges to the mortgage loan transfer process. The brochure accompanied a letter from US Bank to one of our clients which states: “Your account is governed by your loan documents and the Trust’s governing documents”, which admission clearly demonstrates that the borrower’s loan is directly related to documents governing whatever securitized mortgage loan trust the loan has allegedly been transferred to. This brochure proves that Courts which have held to the contrary are wrong on the facts. 

The first heading of the brochure is styled “Distinct Party Roles”. The first sentence of this heading states: “Parties involved in a MBS transaction include the borrower, the originator, the servicer and the trustee, each with their own distinct roles, responsibilities and limitations.” MBS is defined at the beginning of the brochure as the sale of “Mortgage Backed Securities in the capital markets”. The fourth page of the brochure also identifies the “Parties to a Mortgage Backed Securities Transaction”, with the first being the “Borrower”, followed by the Investment Bank/Sponsor, the Investor, the Originator, the Servicer, the Trust (referred to “generally as a special purpose entity, such as a Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (REMIC)”), and the Trustee (stating that “the trustee does not have an economic or beneficial interest in the loans”). 

The second page sets forth that U.S. Bank, as Trustee, “does not have any discretion or authority in the foreclosure process.” If this is true, how can U.S. Bank as Trustee be the Plaintiff in judicial foreclosures or the foreclosing party in non-judicial foreclosures if it has “no authority in the foreclosure process”? 

The second page also states: “All trustees for MBS transactions, including U.S. Bank, have no advance knowledge of when a mortgage loan has defaulted.” Really? So when, for example, MERS assigns, in 2011, a loan to a 2004 Trust where the loan has been in default since 2008, no MBS “trustee” bank (and note that it says “All” trustees) do not know that a loan coming into the trust is in default? The trust just blindly accepts loans which may or may not be in default without any advanced due diligence? Right. Sure. Of course. LOL. 

However, that may be true, because the trustee banks do not want to know, for then they can take advantage of the numerous insurances, credit default swaps, reserve pools, etc. set up to pay the trust when loans are in default, as discussed below. 

The same page states that “Any action taken by the servicer must maximize the return on the investment made by the ‘beneficial owners of the trust’ — the investors.” The fourth page of the brochure states that the investors are “the true beneficial owners of the mortgages”, and the third page of the brochure states “Whether the servicer pursues a foreclosure or considers a modification of the loan, the goal is still to maximize the return to investors” (who, again, are the true beneficial owners of the mortgage loans). 

This is a critical admission in terms of what happens when a loan is securitized. The borrower initiated a mortgage loan with a regulated mortgage banking institution, which is subject to mortgage banking rules, regulations, and conditions, with the obligation evidenced by the loan documents being one of simple loaning of money and repayment, period. Once a loan is sold off into a securitization, the homeowner is no longer dealing with a regulated mortgage banking institution, but with an unregulated private equity investor which is under no obligation to act in the best interest to maintain the loan relationship, but to “maximize the return”. This, as we know, almost always involves foreclosure and denial of a loan mod, as a foreclosure (a) results in the acquisition of a tangible asset (the property); and (b) permits the trust to take advantage of reserve pools, credit default swaps, first loss reserves, and other insurances to reap even more monies in connection with the claimed “default” (with no right of setoff as to the value of the property against any such insurance claims), and in a situation where the same risk was permitted to be underwritten many times over, as there was no corresponding legislation or regulation which precluded a MBS insurer (such as AIG, MGIC, etc.) from writing a policy on the same risk more than once. 

As those of you know who have had Bloomberg reports done on securitized loans, the screens show loans which have been placed into many tranches (we saw one where the same loan was collateralized in 41 separate tranches, each of which corresponded to a different class of MBS), and with each class of MBS having its own insurance, the “trust” could make 41 separate insurance claims AND foreclose on the house as well! Talk about “maximizing return for the investor”! What has happened is that the securitization parties have unilaterally changed the entire nature of the mortgage loan contract without any prior notice to or approval from the borrower. 

There is no language in any Note or Mortgage document (DOT, Security Deed, or Mortgage) by which the borrower is put on notice that the entire nature of the mortgage loan contract and the other contracting party may be unilaterally changed from a loan with a regulated mortgage lender to an “investment” contract with a private equity investor. This, in our business, is called “fraud by omission” for purposes of inducing someone to sign a contract, with material nondisclosure of matters which the borrower had to have to make the proper decision as to whether to sign the contract or not. 

U.S. Bank has now confirmed, in writing from its own corporate offices in St. Paul, Minnesota, so much of what we have been arguing for years. This brochure should be filed in every securitization case for discovery purposes and opposing summary judgments or motions to dismiss where the securitized trustee “bank” takes the position that “the borrower is not part of the securitization and thus has no standing to question it.” U. S. Bank has confirmed that the borrower is in fact a party to an MBS transaction, period, and that the mortgage loan is in fact governed, in part, by “the Trust’s governing documents”, which are thus absolutely relevant for discovery purposes. 

Jeff Barnes, Esq.,

http://www.ForeclosureDefenseNationwide.com

From Living Lies – On Stopa’s Courage, and Appellate Court’s Bias

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, Injustice, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice

Attorney Mark Stopa Shows Guts Confronting Appellate Court Bias

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Neil Garfield 

http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/attorney-mark-stopa-shows-guts-confronting-appellate-court-bias/ 

I have just received a copy of a daring and tempestuous motion for rehearing en banc filed by the winner of the appeal. The homeowner won because of precedent, law and common sense; but the court didn’t like their own decision and certified an absurd question to the Florida Supreme Court. The question was whether the Plaintiff in a foreclosure case needs to have standing at the commencement of the action. Whether it is jurisdictional or not (I think it is clearly jurisdictional) Stopa is both right on the law and right on his challenge to the Court on the grounds of BIAS. 

The concurring opinion of the court actually says that the court is ruling for the homeowner because it must — but asserts that it is leading to a result that fails to expedite cases where the outcome of the inevitable foreclosure is never in doubt. In other words, the appellate court has officially taken the position that we know before we look at a foreclosure case that the bank should win and the homeowner should lose. The entire court should be recused for bias that they have put in writing. What homeowner can bring an action or defend an action where the outcome desired by the courts in that district have already decided that homeowners are deadbeats and their defenses are quite literally a waste of time? Under the rules, the Court should not hear the the motion for rehearing en banc, should vacate that part of the decision that sets up the rube certified question, and the justices who participated must be recused from hearing further appeals on foreclosure cases. 

Lest their be any mistake, and without any attempt to step on the toes of Stopa’s courageous brief on an appeal he already won, I wish to piggy back on his brief and expand certain points. The problem here might be the subject of a federal due process action against the state. Judges who have already decided foreclosure or mortgage litigation cases before they even see them are not fit to hear them. It IS that simple.

The question here was stated as the issue of standing at the commencement of the lawsuit. Does the bank need to have a claim before it files it? The question is so absurd that it is difficult to address without a joke. But this is not funny. The courts have rapidly evolved into a position that expedited decisions are better than fair decisions. There is NOTHING in the law that supports that position and thousands of cases that say the opposite is true under our system of law. Any judge who leans the other way should be recused or taken off the bench entirely. 

In lay terms, the Appellate Court’s certified question would allow anyone who thinks they might have a claim in the future to file the lawsuit now. And the Court believes this will relieve the clogged court calendars. If this matter is taken seriously and the Supreme Court accepts the certified question for serious review it will merely by acceptance be making a statement that makes it possible for all kinds of claims that anticipate an injury. 

It is bad enough that judges appear to be ignoring the requirement that there must be an allegation that a loan was made by the originating party and that the Plaintiff actually bought the loan. This was an obvious requirement that was consistently required in pleading until the courts were clogged with mortgage litigation, at which point the court system tilted far past due process and said that if the borrower stopped paying there were no conditions under which the borrower could win the case. 

It is bad enough that Judges appear to be ignoring the requirement that the allegation that the Plaintiff will suffer financial damage unless relief is granted. This was an obvious requirement that was consistently required in pleading until the mortgage meltdown. 

Why is this important? Because the facts will show that lenders consistently violated basic and advanced protections that have been federal and State law for decades. These violations more often than not produced an unenforceable loan — as pointed out in law suits by federal and state regulators, and as pointed out by the lawsuits of investors who were real lenders who are screwed each time the court enters foreclosure judgment in favor of the bank instead of the investor lenders. 

It is not the fault of borrowers that this mess was created. It is the fault of Wall Street Bankers who were working a scheme to defraud investors by diverting the real transaction and making it appear that the banks were principals in the loan transaction when in fact they were never real parties in interest. Nobody would seriously argue that this eliminates the debt. But why are we enforcing that debt with completely defective mortgage instruments in a process that confirms the fraud and ratifies it to the damage of investors who put up the money in the first place? The courts have made a choice that is unavailable in our system of law. 

This is also judicial laziness. If these justices want to weigh in on the mortgage mess, then they should have the facts and not the stories put forward by Wall Street that have been proven to be pure fiction, fabrication, lies and perjury. That the Court ignores what is plainly documented in hundreds of thousands of defective mortgage transactions and the behavior of banks that resulted in “strangers to the transaction” being awarded title to property — that presents sufficient grounds to challenge any court in the system on grounds of bias and due process. If ever we had a mass hysteria for prejudging cases, this is it. 

Neil Garfield | October 4, 2013 at 9:26 am | Tags: bias, Mark Stopa, motion for rehearing en banc, recusal, removal of judge, standing | Categories: CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motions, Pleading, politics, securities fraud, Servicer | URL: http://wp.me/p7SnH-5GX

Why Does No One Do Anything?

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, big brother, Censorship, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, the web

Protesters Turned Into Those Whom They Were Protesting SUX!

BY NOOTKABEAR ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

You know, I have been thinking a lot lately about why it is that the Protesters from the 60′s and early 70′s are really pissing me off nowadays.   They act like a bunch of sheep or cattle.  The whole country is running amock and nobody says a damned thing about it.  IT SUX!  

I have come to the realization that the Protesters from the 60′-70′s turned into the very thing they were protesting, except even more so.  It SUX!

You would have thought that those protesters would have gone on to make a difference, and that there would not be all of this corruption that we deal with on a daily basis.  The flower children, peace – love and rock & roll.  What the hell happened?  Those people forgot everything about why they were protesting in the first place.  They forgot “let’s love one another”, forgot about “live and let live”.  Hell they are worse than the people they were protesting, because they are hypocrites.  

Now, they go sludging along, fuck it if everyone is being foreclosed upon, even if they paid for the property in full.  Fuck it if we have WWIII because our president is a fuck up.  Fuck it if Russia nukes us.  Fuck it if the Japanese have ended life on earth with their meltdown problem.  Fuck it if Russia’s Putin now speaks when the United States should have been speaking.  Fuck it if the Christians are being slaughtered.   Fuck it if there are no jobs.  Fuck it if Obamacare causes all of us to be denied healthcare we are entitled to.

Fuck it, Fuck it, fuck it.  THIS SUX!  This is not who we are.  This is not what are forefathers would have accepted.  This is not how we got to where we were.

So this week, the Protesters, turned cattle, sheep and couch potatoes are what SUX!!!

From the Very Well Known Foreclosure Defense Attorney, Stopa

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, Injustice, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice

Foreclosure Court: The Erosion of the Judiciary

http://www.stayinmyhome.com/foreclosure-court-the-erosion-of-the-judiciary/                                                                                                           Posted on September 2nd, 2013 by Mark Stopa 

I’m a big believer in the justice system.  In fact, that’s part of why I became a lawyer.  I believe in every litigant’s right to obtain a fair hearing and trial before a neutral judge and/or impartial jury.  It sounds cliché, but that’s what I do – help people navigate the judicial system in their time of need. 

In recent months, though, the judiciary in many parts of Florida (not all, but many) has turned into something I don’t recognize.  The change has been so sudden and so extreme that it’s altering the face of the judiciary and hindering that which I hold so dear – the right to fair hearings and due process.  Yes, what I consider the “core” of a fully-functioning judicial system is eroding. 

If you’re a Florida lawyer but you don’t handle foreclosure cases, you likely have no idea what I’m talking about.  After all, outside of foreclosure-world, Florida’s courts are operating like normal, business as usual.  Sure, the down economy has brought some minor changes, but all in all, our courts are functioning in a normal way. 

Foreclosure cases, though, are a totally different animal. 

I was chatting with a colleague the other day, an attorney who doesn’t handle foreclosure lawsuits, and he was shocked as I described the things I see in foreclosure court on a daily basis.  This is a seasoned attorney who was SHOCKED at what I see every day.  That made me realize … I’m not doing a good enough job of explaining the travesties I see every day in foreclosure-world. 

It’s a tough line to toe, frankly.  Bar rules prohibit me from disparaging any particular judge, so it’s sometimes difficult to explain what’s happening in foreclosure court without crossing that line.  In this blog, though, I’m going to toe that line.  Don’t misunderstand – I’m not criticizing anyone in particular.  Rather, my critique – and that’s what I see this as, a constructive critique, coupled with a hope that everyone will realize just how flawed our system has become – is aimed at the entire institution.  My concerns aren’t with any particular judge or any one ruling – they lie with the entire judicial system, the way the entire judiciary is operating right now, at least as it pertains to foreclosure cases. 

I know what you’re thinking.  I’m just a self-interested, foreclosure defense attorney who’s trying to delay foreclosures and let people live for free.  I’m upset because the courts are making that more difficult.  Right?

Before you blow off my concerns in that manner, you tell me.  Are my concerns legitimate?  Is this how a judicial system should operate?  You tell me … 

As a foreclosure defense lawyer, I’ve seen pro se homeowners attend hearings in their cases and not be allowed to speak.  Not one word.  It wasn’t that the judge didn’t hear the homeowner or didn’t realize he/she was present, either – the homeowner asked the judge to speak at a duly-noticed hearing and was not permitted to do so.  Homeowner loses, yet couldn’t say one word.  Isolated incident, you say?  I’ve personally seen it more than once. 

Not being permitted to speak has not been limited to pro se homeowners.  I have personally been threatened with criminal contempt – criminal contempt – for moving to disqualify a judge after striking my defenses without letting me say one word about those defenses.  Your defenses are stricken, you can’t talk, and if you complain about it, I’ll throw you in jail. 

In many parts of Florida, attorneys are not permitted to attend foreclosure hearings by phone – regardless of how insignificant or short the hearing may be.  Never mind that the Florida Supreme Court created a rule of judicial administration which requires phone appearances be permitted for hearings that are 15 minutes or less absent “good cause” – in many parts of Florida, attendance by phone is simply not permitted. 

I’ve heard some justify this procedure by explaining how it’s difficult to deal with phone appearances in foreclosure cases.  Really?  How is it any more difficult than in other types of cases?  Frankly, I can’t help but wonder if the prohibition on phone appearances is designed to make it harder for defense lawyers to appear in cases for homeowners, enabling the courts to push through those cases faster.  (Prohibiting phone appearances obviously makes it harder and more expensive to attend hearings, often making the difference in a homeowner’s ability to afford counsel.) 

That’s an absurd proposition, though, right?  Why would our courts care how quickly foreclosure lawsuits are litigated?  Judges are neutral arbiters – they don’t care how quickly the cases are adjudicated.  Do they? 

The answer to that question is at the heart of the problem.  In recent months, the Florida legislature has been putting immense pressure on Florida judges to clear the backlog of foreclosure lawsuits.  How much pressure?  Well, the legislature controls the amount of funding that goes to our courts – funding that is needed to retain new judges, senior judges, court staff, and clerks (basically, the funding necessary to keep all judges and JAs from being totally overwhelmed).  Unfortunately, the legislature has been giving these judges an ultimatum, kind of like parents do to their children regarding allowance.  Basically, it works like this … “if you don’t finish these foreclosure cases, we won’t give you more funding.”  As such, the legislature holds the judiciary hostage … if the judiciary doesn’t clear cases, then the legislature doesn’t give the judiciary the funding necessary to manage the many thousands of foreclosure lawsuits pending before it. 

Perhaps worse yet, and to my sheer disgust, I’m told the legislature recently cut the pay of Florida judges (for the first time in years), and the clear understanding was that it was done as a way to punish/blame the judges for not clearing up the backlog of foreclosure cases faster.  “You won’t enter judgments fast enough for our liking … we’ll cut your pay.” 

(The pay of Florida judges is public record, right?  Why is nobody talking about this?) 

The judicial system shouldn’t operate this way.  We all learned it in elementary school, how the three branches of government exist as “separate but equal” branches of government, employing a system of “checks and balances” to ensure a fully-functioning government.  But that’s not what’s happening right now, certainly not in foreclosure court.  In foreclosure-world, the legislature is king. 

You might think this is conjecture and speculation on my part.  It’s not.  I can’t go a week without hearing how the legislature is forcing judges to move cases.  Judges discuss it openly in open court, and not just to me – to everyone.  As a result of this dynamic – judges wanting to move cases – I see all sorts of crazy things I’d never see in any other area of law. 

I’ve mentioned the homeowners who can’t speak, the threats of incarcertaion, and the prohibition on phone appearances, but let’s get to some more egregious concerns. 

Judges sua sponte set trials in foreclosure cases (without a Notice of Trial having been filed, without a CMC or pretrial conference, and without discussing/clearing the date with an counsel).  This is now routine, virtually everywhere in the state. 

Judges sua sponte set trials in foreclosure cases where a motion to dismiss is outstanding and the defendant has not filed an answer. 

Judges sua sponte set trials with less than 30 days’ notice (such that, as defense counsel, you randomly receive a trial Order in the mail, reflecting you have a trial in 2 weeks). 

The sua sponte setting of trials dominates the landscape of foreclosure-world.  Banks often don’t want trials in foreclosure cases, but the judges will set them anyway.  Then, even when the plaintiffs are vocal about not wanting a trial in that particular case, judges often insist they go forward anyway.  Even stipulated/agreed Orders to continue a trial or vacate a trial Order often go unsigned. 

Sometimes, where trial has been set in violation of Rule 1.440, judges will recognize the error and fix it.  (The judges in Pinellas and Hillsborough in particular are good about this, striving to follow the law.)  In many others cases, though, judges will proceed with trial anyway.  In foreclosure circles, one county has become known for using a stamp – DENIED – right on the motion to vacate trial Order, without a hearing.  Case not at issue?  Doesn’t matter.  Less than 30 days’ notice?  Doesn’t matter.  Bank doesn’t want a trial?  Doesn’t matter.  We’re going to trial! 

Often, judges won’t proceed with trial where the defendant hasn’t filed an Answer but will essentially force the Answer to be filed forthwith.  How is this accomplished?  Easily – either deny the motion to dismiss (often without a hearing), or sua sponte set a CMC to ensure the case gets at issue.   Some courts use CMCs as a way to, in my view, browbeat parties into settling.  One county, for example, has started setting three CMCs at once – one per week for three consecutive weeks, requiring in-person attendance, at mass-motion calendars that last an hour or more, with no input from counsel on when the CMCs are scheduled.  You’re not available?  Too bad.  You don’t need a CMC three weeks in a row?  Yes, you do.  Your case will get at issue and it will be set for trial. 

Oh, and if you want to set a hearing in this county, you have to mail in a form – MAIL IN A FORM – and wait for them to respond to you, by mail, with a form that gives you a set hearing date, without any input from you on when that hearing takes place. 

What dominates the thinking from the judiciary – again, not my speculation, but something the judges openly discuss – is their desire to “close” cases.  That’s the monster that the legislature has created – evaluating the performance of judges not based on their work as judges but based on the results set forth in an Excel spreadsheet.  How many foreclosure lawsuits were filed in that county?  How many judgments have been entered?  If the ratio of judgments entered to cases filed is high enough, then the judges in that county are doing a good job and deserve more funding from the legislature.  If not, then those judges and JAs can all suffer through the many thousands of cases without more help. 

The dynamic is so perverse that I’ve seen judges refuse to cancel foreclosure sales even when both sides ask them to. 

Plaintiff’s lawyer:  “We don’t want this foreclosure sale to go forward, judge.” 

Defendant’s lawyer:  “We are living in this house.  We don’t want this foreclosure sale to go forward, judge.” 

Judge:  “Foreclosure sale will go forward as scheduled.” 

Huh? 

This dynamic is particularly difficult to take when the parties have reached a settlement.  For example, loan modifications sometimes happen after a judgment but before a sale.  That means, essentially, that both sides are willing to forego foreclosure with the homeowner resuming monthly mortgage payments.  Incredibly, based partly on their desire to “close” a case, some judges will force a foreclosure sale to go forward even when both parties don’t want it to, having settled their dispute via a loan modification. 

Plaintiff’s lawyer:  “We have agreed to a loan modification.  We want the foreclosure sale cancelled.” 

Defendant’s lawyer:  “We have agreed to a loan modification.  We want the foreclosure sale cancelled.” 

Judge:  “Foreclosure sale will go forward as scheduled.” 

Huh? 

Even when both sides are able to resolve disputes before trial, even then they sometimes can’t escape a dress-down from the judiciary.  For instance, I’ve watched judges threaten Bar grievances against lawyers – yes, Bar grievances – where they settled the lawsuit by consenting to a foreclosure judgment with a deficiency waiver and extended sale date.  Mind you, that’s a perfectly legitimate way to compromise and settle a foreclosure lawsuit – bank gets the house, homeowner avoids any further liability and gets to stay in the house longer so as to pack up and move – but the prospect of the sale date getting pushed out 4-5 months angers some judges.  “No, you can’t settle that way.  The sale has to happen sooner.”  Yes, I’ve seen settlements like this rejected with the sale set sooner than the parties agreed.

Huh? 

There’s absolutely no rule or law that requires a sale to happen sooner where the parties agree.  Unfortunately, the judges are motivated by having that case “closed” so the numbers on the spreadsheet look better for the legislature. 

My natural response is to lament the unfairness of it all.  After all, that homeowner gave up the chances of winning at trial predicated on getting more time in the house.  I find it terribly unfair that the homeowner gave up a right to trial in exchange for an extended sale date that the judge took away … right?  Some judges would scoff at that notion.  After all, I’ve heard several times, in open court, ”there is no defense to foreclosure,” or “I’ve never seen a valid defense to foreclosure,” or words of that ilk.  Never mind that I’ve had many dozens of foreclosure cases dismissed throughout Florida, including several at trial (25 different judges have dismissed a lawsuit of mine on paragraph 22 noncompliance, for example) … there is no valid defense to foreclosure and, hence, no reason for an extended sale date. 

Another county has become known for punishing any defendants who force a trial to proceed.  I personally observed the judge begin every hearing by telling the homeowners and their counsel that they “better” accept a 120-day extended sale date, as if that “offer” was rejected then it would be “off the table” after the trial.  The implication here was obvious to everyone in the room … You want to show up and force the bank to prove its case?  You’ll lose, and I’ll punish you by ruling against you and forcing you to move out sooner. 

Some would say that the way to deal with this madness is to appeal.  Easier said than done.  Homeowners facing foreclosure are often in no position to fund an appeal.  I’ve taken some appeals for free, but there’s only so many I can handle that way.  Oh, and even if you get beyond the issue of funding, go look for published decisions that are pro-homeowner in the First DCA, Third DCA, or Fifth DCA.  Many thousands of foreclosure cases have been adjudicated in those areas in the past several years.  How many favorable rulings do you think have come out of those jurisdictions during that time?  I’ll give you a hint – not many.  In many ways, appealing in those parts of the state is like standing at the bottom of Mount Everest and being told “climb.” 

Dealing with this dynamic has been very difficult in recent months.  It’s a hard pill to swallow.  It’s difficult to watch the judicial system bend at the direction of the legislature.  It’s tough to know the concept of “separation of powers” that we all learned in elementary school is being cast aside.  It’s hard to feel like the most fundamental concepts of due process are being sacrificed to push lawsuits faster when even the plaintiffs in those lawsuits don’t so desire.  It’s hard to feel like these procedures have made it impossible for me to help homeowners in certain parts of the state.  It’s frustrating that many reading this will be upset at the entire judiciary, not realizing there are many circuit judges – particularly in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and other areas within the ambit of Florida’s Second District – who are striving to be fair and follow the law notwithstanding all of the pressure from the legislature. 

Mostly, though, I’m disappointed.  I’m disappointed that such perverse procedures are happening in our courts every day yet nobody is talking about it – and many don’t even realize it’s happening.  I’m disappointed that the justice system I knew is eroding.  I’m not going to find a dictionary definition, but that’s what erosion is – a slow process of deterioration such that, before too long, that thing which previously existed is no more. 

I hope everyone shares this blog.  I hope my friends, colleagues, attorneys and homeowners all understand what’s happening in our courts.  I hope everyone stands up to the legislature and demands it stop this madness.  Most of all, I hope the erosion of our judiciary stops … soon.

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice, the web

 

Another Great Article From Living Lies, Telling It Like It Is!

 

LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Neil Garfield

“We are still in the death grip of the banks as they attempt to portray themselves as the bulwarks of society even as they continue to rob us of homes, lives, jobs and vitally needed capital which is being channeled into natural resources so that when we commence the gargantuan task of repairing our infrastructure we can no longer afford it and must borrow the money from the thieves who created the gaping hole in our economy threatening the soul of our democracy.” Neil Garfield, livinglies.me

We all know that dozens of people rose to power in Europe and Asia in the 1930′s and 1940′s who turned the world on its head and were responsible for the extermination of tens of millions of people. World War II still haunts us as it projected us into an arms race in which we were the first and only country to kill all the people who lived in two cities in Japan. The losses on both sides of the war were horrendous.
Some of us remember the revelations in 1982 that the United States actively recruited unrepentant Nazi officers and scientists for intelligence and technological advantages in the coming showdown with what was known as the Soviet Union. Amongst the things done for the worst war criminals was safe passage (no prosecution for war crimes) and even new identities created by the United States Department of Justice. Policy was created that diverted richly deserved consequences into rich rewards for knowledge. With WWII in the rear view mirror policy-makers decided to look ahead and prepare for new challenges.

Some of us remember the savings and loans scandals where banks nearly destroyed everything in the U.S. marketplace in the 1970′s and 1980′s. Law enforcement went into high gear, investigated, and pieced together the methods and complex transactions meant to hide the guilt of the main perpetrators in and out of government and the business world. More than 800 people went to jail. Of course, none of the banks had achieved the size that now exists in our financial marketplace.

Increasing the mass of individual financial institutions produced a corresponding capacity for destruction that eclipsed anything imagined by anyone outside of Wall Street. The exponentially increasing threat was ignored as the knowledge of Einstein’s famous equation faded into obscurity. The possibilities for mass destruction of our societies was increasing exponentially as the mass of giant financial service companies grew and the accountability dropped off when they were allowed to incorporate and even sell their shares publicly, replacing a system, hundreds of years old in which partners were ultimately liable for losses they created.

The next generation of world dominators would be able to bring the world to its knees without firing a shot or gassing anyone. Institutions grew as malignancies on steroids and created the illusion of contributing half our gross domestic product while real work, real production and real inventions were constrained to function in a marketplace that had been reduced by 1/3 of its capacity — leaving the banks in control of  $7 trillion per year in what was counted as gross domestic product. Our primary output by far was trading paper based upon dubious and fictitious underlying transactions; if those transactions had existed, the share of GDP attributed to financial services would have remained at a constant 16%. Instead it grew to half of GDP.  The “paradox” of financial services becoming increasingly powerful and generating more revenues than any other sector while the rest of the economy was stagnating was noted by many, but nothing was done. The truth of this “paradox” is that it was a lie — a grand illusion created by the greatest salesmen on Wall Street.

So even minimum wage lost 1/3 of its value adjusted for inflation while salaries, profits and bonuses were conferred upon people deemed as financial geniuses as a natural consequence of believing the myths promulgated by Wall Street with its control over all forms of information, including information from the government.

But calling out Wall Street would mean admitting that the United States had made a wrong turn with horrendous results. No longer the supreme leader in education, medical care, crime, safety, happiness and most of all prospects for social and economic mobility, the United States had become supreme only through its military strength and the appearance of strength in the world of high finance, its currency being the world’s reserve despite the reality of the ailing economy and widening inequality of wealth and opportunity — the attributes of a banana republic.

All of us remember the great crash of 2008-2009. It was as close as could be imagined to a world wide nuclear attack, resulting in the apparent collapse of economies, tens of millions of people being reduced to poverty, tossed out of their homes, sleeping in cars, divorces, murder, riots, suicide and the loss of millions of jobs on a rising scale (over 700,000 per month when Obama took office) that did not stop rising until 2010 and which has yet to be corrected to figures that economists say would mean that our economy is functioning at proper levels. Month after month more than 700,000 people lost their jobs instead of a net gain of 300,000 jobs. It was a reversal of 1 million jobs per month that could clean out the country and every myth about us in less than a year.

The cause lay with misbehavior of the banks — again. This time the destruction was so wide and so deep that all conditions necessary for the collapse of our society and our government were present. Policy makers, law enforcement and regulators decided that it was better to maintain the illusion of business as usual in a last ditch effort to maintain the fabric of our society even if it meant that guilty people would go free and even be rewarded. It was a decision that was probably correct at the time given the available information, but it was a policy based upon an inaccurate description of the disaster written and produced by the banks themselves. Once the true information was discovered the government made another wrong turn — staying the course when the threat of collapse was over. In a sense it was worse than giving Nazi war criminals asylum because at the time they were protected by the Department of Justice their crimes were complete and there existed little opportunity for them to repeat those crimes. It could be fairly stated that they posed no existing threat to safety of the country. Not so for the banks.

Now as all the theft, deceit and arrogance are revealed, the original premise of the DOJ in granting the immunity from prosecution was based upon fraudulent information from the very people to whom they were granting safe passage. We have lost 5 million homes in foreclosure from their past crimes, but we remain in the midst of the commission of crimes — another 5 million illegal, wrongful foreclosures is continuing to wind its way through the courts.

Not one person has been prosecuted, not one statement has been made acknowledging the crimes, the continuing deceit in sworn filings with regulators, and the continuing drain on the economy and our ability to finance and capitalize on innovation to replace the lost productivity in real goods and services.

We are still in the death grip of the banks as they attempt to portray themselves as the bulwarks of society even as they continue to rob us of homes, lives, jobs and vitally needed capital which is being channeled into natural resources so that when we commence the gargantuan task of repairing our infrastructure we can no longer afford it and must borrow the money from the thieves who created the gaping hole in our economy threatening the soul of our democracy. If the crimes were in the rear view mirror one could argue that the policy makers could make decisions to protect our future. But the crimes are not just in the rear view mirror. More crimes lie ahead with the theft of an equal number of millions of homes based on false and wrongful foreclosures deriving their legitimacy from an illusion of debt — an illusion so artfully created that most people still believe the debts exist. Without a very sophisticated knowledge of exotic finance it seems inconceivable that a homeowner could receive the benefits of a loan and at the same time or shortly thereafter have the debt extinguished by third parties who were paid richly for doing so.

Job creation would be unleashed if we had the courage to stop the continuing fraud. It is time for the government to step forward and call them out, stop the virtual genocide and let the chips fall where they might when the paper giants collapse. It’s complicated, but that is your job. Few people lack the understanding that the bankers behind this mess belong in jail. This includes regulators, law enforcement and even judges. but the “secret” tacit message is not to mess with the status quo until we are sure it won’t topple our whole society and economy.

The time is now. If we leave the bankers alone they are highly likely to cause another crash in both financial instruments and economically by hoarding natural resources until the prices are intolerably high and we all end up pleading for payment terms on basic raw materials for the rebuilding of infrastructure. If we leave them alone another 20 million people will be displaced as more than 5 million foreclosures get processed in the next 3-4 years. If we leave them alone, we are allowing a clear and present danger to the future of our society and the prospects for safety and world peace. Don’t blame Wall Street — they are just doing what they were sent to do — make money. You don’t hold the soldier responsible for firing a bullet when he was ordered to do so. But you do blame the policy makers that him or her there. And you stop them when the policy is threatening another crash.

Stop them now, jail the ones who can be prosecuted, and take apart the large banks. IMF economists and central bankers around the world are looking on in horror at the new order of things hoping that when the United States has exhausted all other options, they will finally do the right thing. (see Winston Churchill quote to that effect).

But forget not that the ultimate power of government is in the hands of the people at large and that the regulators and law enforcement and judges are working for us, on our nickle. Action like Occupy Wall Street is required and you can see the growing nature of that movement in a sweep that is entirely missed by those who arrogantly pull the levers of power now. OWS despite criticism is proving the point — it isn’t new leaders that will get us out of this — it is the withdrawal of consent of the governed one by one without political affiliation or worshiping sound sound biting, hate mongering politicians.

People have asked me why I have not until now endorsed the OWS movement. The reason was that I wanted to give them time to see if they could actually accomplish the counter-intuitive result of exercising power without direct involvement in a corrupt political process. They have proven the point and they are likely to be a major force undermining the demagogues and greedy bankers and businesses who care more about their bottom line than their society that gives them the opportunity to earn that bottom line.

New Fraud Evidence Shows Trillions Of Dollars In Mortgages Have No Owner
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/13/2460891/new-fraud-evidence-shows-trillions-of-dollars-in-mortgages-have-no-owner/

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Bank of America whistle-blowers By David Dayen Great Story!

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, Legal, manifest injustice, the web

(Credit: Sashkin via Shutterstock/Salon)

Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification – but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.

“Bank of America’s practice is to string homeowners along with no apparent intention of providing the permanent loan modifications it promises,” said Erika Brown, one of the former employees. The damning evidence would spur a series of criminal investigations of BofA executives, if we still had a rule of law in this country for Wall Street banks.

The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which gave banks cash incentives to modify loans under certain standards, was supposed to streamline the process and help up to 4 million struggling homeowners (to date, active permanent modifications numberabout 870,000). In reality, Bank of America used it as a tool, say these former employees, to squeeze as much money as possible out of struggling borrowers before eventually foreclosing on them. Borrowers were supposed to make three trial payments before the loan modification became permanent; in actuality, many borrowers would make payments for a year or more, only to find themselves rejected for a permanent modification, and then owing the difference between the trial modification and their original payment. Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner famously described HAMP as a means to “foam the runway” for the banks, spreading out foreclosures so banks could more readily absorb them.

These Bank of America employees offer the first glimpse into how they pulled it off. Employees, many of whom allege they were given no basic training on how to even use HAMP, were instructed to tell borrowers that documents were incomplete or missing when they were not, or that the file was “under review” when it hadn’t been accessed in months. Former loan-level representative Simone Gordon says flat-out in her affidavit that “we were told to lie to customers” about the receipt of documents and trial payments. She added that the bank would hold financial documents borrowers submitted for review for at least 30 days. “Once thirty days passed, Bank of America would consider many of these documents to be ‘stale’ and the homeowner would have to re-apply for a modification,” Gordon writes. Theresa Terrelonge, another ex-employee, said that the company would consistently tell homeowners to resubmit information, restarting the clock on the HAMP process.

Worse than this, Bank of America would simply throw out documents on a consistent basis. Former case management supervisor William Wilson alleged that, during bimonthly sessions called the “blitz,” case managers and underwriters would simply deny any file with financial documents that were more than 60 days old. “During a blitz, a single team would decline between 600 and 1,500 modification files at a time,” Wilson wrote. “I personally reviewed hundreds of files in which the computer systems showed that the homeowner had fulfilled a Trial Period Plan and was entitled to a permanent loan modification, but was nevertheless declined for a permanent modification during a blitz.” Employees were then instructed to make up a reason for the denial to submit to the Treasury Department, which monitored the program. Others say that bank employees falsified records in the computer system and removed documents from homeowner files to make it look like the borrower did not qualify for a permanent modification.

Senior managers provided carrots and sticks for employees to lie to customers and push them into foreclosure. Simone Gordon described meetings where managers created quotas for lower-level employees, and a bonus system for reaching those quotas. Employees “who placed ten or more accounts into foreclosure in a given month received a $500 bonus,” Gordon wrote. “Bank of America also gave employees gift cards to retail stores like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond as rewards for placing accounts into foreclosure.” Employees were closely monitored, and those who didn’t meet quotas, or who dared to give borrowers accurate information, were fired, as was anyone who “questioned the ethics … of declining loan modifications for false and fraudulent reasons,” according to William Wilson.

Bank of America characterized the affidavits as “rife with factual inaccuracies.” But they match complaints from borrowers having to resubmit documents multiple times, and getting denied for permanent modifications despite making all trial payments. And these statements come from all over the country from ex-employees without a relationship to one another. It did not result from one “rogue” bank branch.

Simply put, Bank of America didn’t want to hire enough staff to handle the crush of loan modification requests, and used these delaying tactics as a shortcut. They also pushed people into foreclosure to collect additional fees from them. And after rejecting borrowers for HAMP modifications, they would offer an in-house modification with a higher interest rate. This was all about profit maximization. “We were regularly drilled that it was our job to maximize fees for the Bank by fostering and extending delay of the HAMP modification process by any means we could,” wrote Simone Gordon in her affidavit.

It is a testament to the corruption of the federal regulatory and law enforcement apparatus that we’re only hearing evidence from inside Bank of America now, in a civil class-action lawsuit from wronged homeowners, when the behavior was so rampant for years. For example, the Treasury Department, charged with specific oversight for HAMP, didn’t sanction a single bank for failing to follow program guidelines for three years, and certainly did not uncover any of this criminal conduct. Steven Cupples, a former underwriter at Bank of America, explained in his statement how the bank falsified records to Treasury to make it look like they granted more modifications. But Treasury never investigated. Meanwhile, the Justice Department joined with state Attorneys General and other federal regulators to essentially bless this conduct in a series of weak settlements that incorporated other bank crimes as well, like “robo-signing” and submitting false documents to courts.

These affidavits, however, should return law enforcement to the case. William Wilson, the case management supervisor, alleges in his statement that this “ridiculous and immoral” conduct continued through August of 2012, when he was eventually fired for speaking up. That means Bank of America persisted with these activities for at least six months AFTER the main, $25 billion settlement to which they were a party. So state and federal regulators could sue Bank of America over this new criminal conduct, which post-dates the actions for which they released liability under the main settlement. Attorneys general in New York and Florida have accused Bank of America of violating the terms of the settlement, but they could simply open new cases about these new deceptive practices.

They would have no shortage of evidence, in addition to the sworn affidavits. According to Theresa Terrelonge, most loan-level representatives conducted their business through email; in fact, various email communications have already been submitted under seal in the Massachusetts civil case. State Attorneys General or US Attorneys would have subpoena power to gather many more emails.

And they would have very specific targets: the ex-employees listed specific executives by name who authorized and directed the fraudulent process. “The delay and rejection programs were methodically carried out under the overall direction of Patrick Kerry, a Vice President who oversaw the entire eastern region’s loan modification process,” wrote William Wilson. Other executives mentioned by name include John Berens, Patricia Feltch and Rebecca Mairone (now at JPMorgan Chase, and already named in a separate financial fraud case). These are senior executives who, if this alleged conduct is true, should face criminal liability.

Bank accountability activists have already seized on the revelations. “This is not surprising, but absolutely sickening,” said Peggy Mears, organizer for the Home Defenders League. “Maybe finally our courts and elected officials will stand with communities over Wall Street and prosecute, and then lock up, these criminals.”

Sadly, it’s hard to raise hopes of that happening. Past experience shows that our top regulatory and law enforcement officials are primarily interested in covering for Wall Street’s crimes. These well-sourced allegations amount to an accusation of Bank of America stealing thousands of homes, and lying to the government about it. Homeowners who did everything asked of them were nevertheless pushed into foreclosure, all to fortify profits on Wall Street. There’s a clear path to punish Bank of America for this conduct. If it doesn’t result in prosecutions, it will once again confirm the sorry excuse for justice we have in America.

Update: Read the full affidavits from the active court case here.

David Dayen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.MORE DAVID DAYEN.

Chase is defending 10,000 lawsuits. Find out more and join the party.

by nootkabear, posted in Court Cases, Courts, Disasters, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Judicial Rulings, Legal, manifest injustice, the web

 

May God Help Us All

by Mark Stopa, Florida attorney

Wanna Buy a Government-Foreclosed Home? OK. Just Bring $10,000,000.00

Posted on June 29th, 2012 by Mark Stopa

I’ve often expressed my disgust at how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac frequently pay banks 100% of their judgment amounts in foreclosure cases. It’s an appalling dynamic in foreclosure-world, one where banks often have no incentive to modify mortgages because "our" government will pay the banks in full once the foreclosure is over (and all the banks have to do is convey title to Fannie and Freddie). Incredibly, just when I thought I couldn’t be any more appalled, somehow, my disgust with "our" government reached a new level today.

I have it on good information (directly from someone personally involved) that Fannie and Freddie are selling foreclosed homes in bulk to third-party investors. Not one at a time, not several – dozens – at heavily discounted rates. In other words, many of the homes in Florida and elsewhere that have been foreclosed, with lower and middle-class homeowners thrown onto the streets and title transferred to Fannie or Freddie, are being sold to third-party investors in bulk.

If you think that sounds like an interesting investment opportunity, a chance to purchase a new home after you were foreclosed, let me stop you. Fannie and Freddie aren’t making these investments available to just anyone. To qualify, to even get inside the door to the auction room, you must have at least $10,000,000.00 in assets, and you must be able to prove the existence of those assets via bank statements and the like.

Ten million bucks, just to get in the door.

Is this what America has become? Throwing Americans onto the streets so "our" government pays the banks to foreclose and "our" government sells those houses in bulk at discounted rates to third-party investors with an eight-figure net worth?

Apparently so.

Sigh.

You know what’s arguably even worse? Nobody is even talking about this. No news stories. No media coverage. Nothing. Would you have known about this if Mark Stopa – basically a nobody in the scope of national news and politics – hadn’t blogged about it?

Why such secrecy? Where is the media coverage? Where’s the outrage? Who is running our government, exactly? This is as big an issue as Obamacare – thousands of homeowners getting foreclosed and their homes being sold in bulk to the mega-wealthy. Why is nobody even talking about it? Is America really a land where our government takes houses from the poor and middle class and sells them in bulk at discounted rates to the mega-wealthy – and it does so completely in secret? Does anyone care?

This is why I consider this the biggest post I’ve ever written. This is what is driving the whole foreclosure crisis, and nobody knows about it. Nobody’s even talking about it. Change is not possible without awareness, and right now, all Americans are totally in the dark about this dynamic. Well, all Americans except those who have $10,000,000.00.

May God help us all.
Mark Stopa

Chase is defending 10,000 lawsuits. Find out more and join the party.

L. Randall Wray: The $7 Trillion Question That Haunts Banks

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, big brother, Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal, manifest injustice

 

L. Randall Wray

Professor of Economics and Research Director of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, University of Missouri–Kansas City

 

The $7 Trillion Question That Haunts Banks

Posted: 03/16/2012 4:09 pm

I’ve been writing about the MERS monster since 2010. Here is one of my early pieces.

I suppose it is now safe to reveal that a staffer of Representative Marcy Kaptur put me on the trail of this fraud — in dollar terms it has to be the single biggest fraud in human history. In sheer utter disregard for law, it is certainly the most audacious fraud in Western history. To tell the truth, I had never heard of MERS until she called. If you recall the Michael Moore movie, Rep. Kaptur stood on the steps and told homeowners facing foreclosure to stay in their homes. She was right: the banksters have no legal claim on the homes they are foreclosing. Foreclosure is theft. Any bank that used MERS has no legal claim on property — there are 65 million such mortgages to which no bank has a legal claim to foreclose.

And, to be sure, even those mortgages that were not run through MERS are suspect if they are handled by any of the five biggest servicers. These servicers keep such shoddy records that they cannot be trusted to accurately credit payments. They’ve been adding on fees and penalties that were unwarranted since they cannot keep track of records.

Folks, there are $7 trillion of securitized mortgages. It was (mostly) the securitization process that demanded fraud. Securitization could never have been profitable — it was a flawed way to go about financing homeownership. It was simply too expensive to compete with Jimmy Stewart thrifts. It required fraud to show profits. (As Bill Black always says: fraud is a sure thing. It is always the most profitable way to run a business — until you get caught.)

In addition to the MERS monster, we also know the securities did not meet the "reps and warranties" claimed. The banks that did the securizations will continue to get sued to take back bad mortgages. They are trying to shovel as many of these back to Fannie and Freddie as they can so that Uncle Sam will take the losses — as discussed in my previous blog they are now doing it through sale of servicing rights.

And of course Uncle Ben has helpfully put a lot of them on the Fed’s balance sheet. This is all part of the cover-up to avoid the obvious: all these big banks are massively insolvent as soon as the courts wake up to the fact that the whole damned real estate finance onion is layer upon layer of fraud.

But let us stick to the MERS fraud.

There should be an immediate and complete halt to all foreclosures in the US, and all foreclosures that have been completed over the past decade should be nullified. Yes that will get messy. But continuing with foreclosures will make the mess immeasurably worse. This foreclosure crisis is not going to stop.

No one should buy any bank-owned real estate because it is probable that eventually the US will return to the rule of law. The property will be returned to the rightful owners — those who were illegally kicked out of their houses.

Now that might be a pipe dream, but if the US is not going to be a nation ruled by law then it will not survive.

The biggest banks — including the GSEs — created MERS and proceeded to destroy our nation’s real estate property law. That is not an overstatement. Robo-signing is just one small and inevitable consequence of the fraud. The truth is that foreclosure cannot go through without fraud because the banks do not have the documents to show clear title.

Banks don’t have them because they do not exist.

There are no records because that was MERS’s business model: destroy all records of ownership while speeding the securitization process.

And since the mortgages themselves were often frauds (designing "affordability products" that homeowners could not afford), many would end in delinquency. So MERS was designed to speed the foreclosure process — it would be so much easier to foreclose if you didn’t bother with documents, records, and property law. Just kick the owners out, take the home, sell it, and reboot the whole scam again.

Another whistleblower has come forward, this one from CBO. Lan Pham was fired because she refused to get with the program: the government is supposed to help the banksters cover up their frauds, NOT expose them! She refused. So she was fired. Now she tells her story.

I won’t repeat her entire story — you can read it at Zerohedge. Here are a few quotes from Lan Pham, the CBO whistle-blower:

I was repeatedly pressured by the CBO Assistant Director, Deborah Lucas… to not write nor discuss issues in the banking sector and mortgage markets that might suggest weakness in these sectors and their consequences on the economy and households…

…Issues at the heart of the foreclosure problems pertain to securitization….and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), which purports to have legal standing on electronic records of ownership on about 65 million…mortgages… MERS…facilitated Wall Street’s ability to expedite the pooling of subprime mortgages into MBSs by bypassing standard ownership transfer procedures as the housing bubble escalated…

The implications have profound financial and economic consequences that would be of compelling interest to Congress and the public, but the CBO sought to silence a discussion of such risks, that in reality have been materializing. These risks put into question the ability of investors or bondholders to make claims on the collateral (the homes) that underlies trillions of dollars in MBSs, the bulk of which are now guaranteed by …Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This affects $10 trillion in residential mortgage debt outstanding, of which $7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs)…

The CBO dismissing such issues prevents an analysis of the risks, so that the public may be forced again to shoulder the consequences for which they have not been a given a voice or a choice.

Essentially, the chain of title on securitized mortgages appears broken, whether or not there is a foreclosure. This would pertain to most homebuyers in the past 10 years as most mortgages were securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac providing the guarantees, and the largest banks ("The $7 Trillion MBS Problem – Foreclosure Problems and Buybacks"). Recall that these same entities founded MERS, which expedited securitization and purported to have foreclosure authority from its electronic records of ownership on about 65 million mortgages. "Robo-signing" emerged as fraudulent or defective documents were used or created to establish the legal authority to foreclose as MERS faced legal challenges; as of July 22, 2011, foreclosures could no longer be initiated in MERS’ name. At last year’s pace, some figures suggest it could take lenders in New York 62 years to clear their foreclosure inventory, 49 years in New Jersey and a decade in Florida, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

It is unclear how the recent State attorney generals’ agreement to a proposed yet unpublished terms of the $25 billion robo-signing settlement would repair the chain of title issues that continue to mutate. In January 2011, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the foreclosure actions of two banks for lacking proof of clear title, followed by a decision in October 2011 that a buyer who purchased a house that was improperly foreclosed upon does not make the buyer the new owner of the house; the sale does not transfer the property.

A striking little mention fact of the Massachusetts foreclosure case was that the lenders could not show that the two mortgages were part of the securitization pool. Let’s consider a thought exercise. Others have the raised the question: if the entity that has been taking the homeowners’ mortgage payments is not the real owner, what happens when the true owner(s) of the mortgage shows up? Are homeowners on the hook again for those ‘missed’ mortgage payments? It was not uncommon for mortgages to be sold multiple times, and it is my understanding that loans were intentionally not given unique identifiers as it moved from origination or purchase through to securitization.

This is what I’ve been arguing since 2010. This will not go away — no matter how much the Administration, the Congress, and the banks try to cover it up.

Cross-posted from EconoMonitor

L. Randall Wray: The $7 Trillion Question That Haunts Banks

New York sues banks over foreclosures – Feb. 3, 2012

by nootkabear, posted in Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, law, Legal

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/03/news/economy/banks_sued/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

New York sues banks over foreclosures

  • By Jennifer Liberto@CNNMoneyFebruary 3, 2012: 3:15 PM ET

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sued the big banks over their use of an electronic mortgage registry.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sued the big banks over their use of a private electronic mortgage registry.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — The New York attorney general sued some of the nation’s biggest banks on Friday, accusing them of unlawful and deceptive practices for relying on a private electronic registry that tracks mortgages.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Friday sued Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), as well as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System Inc. (MERS) in New York state court.

Schneiderman says that the banks created the electronic registry as an "end-run" around the public property recording system to help them more quickly buy and sell parts of mortgages. He said the system helped banks create "deceptive and fraudulent court submissions" and improperly foreclose on homeowners.

"Our action demonstrates that there is one set of rules for all — no matter how big or powerful the institution may be — and that those rules will be enforced vigorously," said Attorney General Schneiderman in a statement.

Foreclosure settlement could be coming

MERS runs a database created in the 1995 to digitize and centralize the paperwork surrounding the bundling and selling of the loans. MERS members include most of the large banks in the mortgage industry. More than 70 million loans are registered in the MERS system, including 30 million that are active, according to the New York attorney general’s office.

The New York suit alleges that the database was used by the big banks to transfer ownership of mortgage debt without paying government registration fees and properly recording the transactions. The system also concealed the identities of the holders of mortgage debt from borrowers, the suit claims.

"MERS’ conduct, as well as the servicers’ use of the MERS System, has resulted in the filing of improper New York foreclosure proceedings, undermined the integrity of the judicial process, created confusion and uncertainty concerning property ownership interests, and potentially clouded titles on properties throughout the State of New York," according to a statement by the New York Attorney General.

MERSCORP, parent company for Mortgage Electronic Registration System Inc., said the company refutes the attorney general’s claims, adding that federal and state courts nationwide have already upheld the MERS’ business model, according to a statement.

One Washington research analyst notes that the New York charges are similar to past cases brought against MERS, and that so far, "the industry has won most of those challenges," said Jaret Seiberg, of Guggenheim’s Washington Research Group "The ones they lost tend to be on narrow issues.

In December the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit against the same banks, as well as Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and GMAC Mortgage, alleging similar complaints. That case is still pending.

Schneiderman is also leading a working group of federal and state officials that the president put together to investigate mortgage securities fraud.

At the same time, Schneiderman is also considering whether New York should sign on to a mortgage servicing settlement agreement that federal officials and state attorneys general have been negotiating for a year with the nation’s largest banks that service mortgages. To top of page

New York sues banks over foreclosures – Feb. 3, 2012

Foreclosure Fallout: Robo-Signing deal falls flat

by nootkabear, posted in Injustice, Legal, manifest injustice

Oppenheim Law,

This was shared by Tiffany Arthur in Foreclosure Prevention:  Real Estate Agents, Investors, Bankruptcy Attorneys, Mortgage/Lending Agents @ LinkedIn

Will Obama Target Housing Crisis During State Of The Union? 

Obama and the State of the Union — a Political Jekyll and Hyde?

President Obama is likely to talk about this in tonight’s State of The Union Address, but we’re not going to wait that long.

With details of the proposed $25 billion settlement with the nation’s largest banks over the robo-signing fiasco now out in the public eye thanks to the Associated Press, we feel a large sense of disappointment.

There’s no question that this deal will change the mortgage industry for the better. Some homeowners will even have a much better chance of being able to restructure their loans when facing foreclosure under this deal.

No One’s Getting Their Keys Back

Yet, there are many out there who are going to feel little comfort with this agreement. Here’s what the deal is NOT going to do. It’s not going to put people who’ve lost their homes (again because of deceptive foreclosure practices) back in those houses, or give them any real financial security.

According to the deal, about 750,000 Americans, which by the way is about ½ of the people who are eligible for help under this settlement, may get a check for about $1,800. That’s the equivalent of one of those parting gifts they’d give contestants when they lose on Wheel of Fortune. In other words, it does them very little good.

Now it’s true that about a million current homeowners will supposedly get their loan balances reduced by an average of 20 thousand dollars. That’s great, and something we here at the South Florida Law Blog have been begging for. But when you consider their are about 11 million out there with underwater mortgages, A LOT of people will be no better off.

Banks Still On Easy Street

And here’s the other thing this deal doesn’t do. It doesn’t hold the banks accountable. Why after the mountains and mountains of evidence of wrong-doing, is the government still playing nice-nice with the nation’s lenders?

The funny thing about this settlement, despite the fact that it’s long overdue, it feels rushed. There hasn’t been a full investigation into the banks’ conduct, no discovery, yet here this deal is, as if they are trying to push it through before anyone notices. It’s feels as if they are trying to avoid the investigation in the first place!

Red Flags Already Raised

Several politicians, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, are already raising concerns over a lack of a proper investigation. We should also point out that the attorneys general in New York and California, a state with one of the highest foreclosure rates, have split from the federal government to pursue their own investigations. The ink on this deal isn’t dry and yet it’s already raising red flags.

“Wall Street is again trying to pass the buck,” Brown told the Associated Press, “Instead of criminal prosecutions, we’re talking about something that’s not more than a slap on the wrist.”

The banks have dragged their feet, in order to escape any real punishment. The perception still remains that the banks are too big to be punished, there is nothing in this deal that invalidates that notion. While we agree this deal should be and is about fixing the system, there is a call for retribution from homeowners that this deal simply doesn’t address.

“This is not vengeance against the banks,” Brown told HousingWire about the deal.

But shouldn’t it be?

Tags: Associated Press, barack obama, fallout, foreclosure, foreclosure practices, foreclosures, Harriet Johnson Brackey, large banks, mortgage, mortgage industry, mortgage practice, Oppenheim Law, personal finance, President Obama, Real Estate, robo, settlement, sherrod brown, South Florida Law Blog, wheel of fortune

Nye Lavalle, We Applaud You for Your Efforts to Expose Robo-Judges Signing Robo-Orders!!!

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Courts, foreclosure, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal

 

Message for My Friends & Colleagues –From: Nye Lavalle

Sent: Friday, October 28, 2011 3:50 PM
Please Read Entire Email

NOTE: to all blogs!!!

     Please post the email to the AGs, I wrote last week that I did not send you. I wrote them in confidence.       

       However, since they have failed to act and respond I think the way to get to them AND GET RESPONSES AND ACTION is to publicly publish all my warnings and my letters so there is a VERY public record of notices and warnings to them.

    They may wish to ignore me again, but I and hopefully each of YOU, won’t let them! So, please read You may also publish and post, separately, my letter attached to FHFA’s OIG.

Dear friends,

I am taking the gloves off, its that time! Attorney General Beau Biden did us all proud and right yesterday, despite the political reality that he faces in a state that hosts as corporations, the banks, Wall St. firms, and system he is attacking. I would ask that each of you kindly read the entirety of this letter and to assist me help each of you and this nation of ours and force the other AGs and elements of our government and the media to be as bold and brave as Beau Biden!

Beau knows MERS! LOL He certainly not only vindicated me and my decade-old fight against MERS and my predictions, but all of us, especially Max, April, Judges Logan and Gordon (would love to interview each now) and let me not forget our favorite jurist, Judge Schack!

Let us not forget the crooked judges too, like Craig Schwall and Louis Levenson in Fulton Co who will be getting their comeuppance next month in both courts of law and public opinion (the media). We need to have media focus on the Judges who get it and the judges we have evidence of corruption on. (including our tapes) This will be one of our new objectives. We also need to expose Robo-Judges™ who issue Robo-Orders™!

We’re starting a new movement in America. Our new movement will complement the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the Internet movements by assisting those trying to help or most importantly IGNORING TO HELP our nation and states. That is the media who is trying to help and some in government like Beau Biden. The other AGs and regulators that ignore us will be publicly noticed and later publicly embarrassed if they fail to act, since a "record" of notices, warnings, and actions or inactions will be publicly displayed now and for the years to come that anyone can access. We shall begin with Names!!

The name for these new movements shall be Occupy The Government & Occupy The Media! As for the media, we shall and I request that you respect their time and their space.

The first step is that I want each of you to provide me, Lisa, Michael, Matt and everyone of our colleagues and comrades in arms with an email list of ALL media and government contacts you have in two separate email address books for Outlook or AOL. We will then discuss content to send by each of us to these contacts. For the media, we will target great story ideas for each journalist and editor we have befriended and has supported the cause. We will also provide a host of information, facts, and evidence for their investigative needs. The media is not only our friend, but our greatest ally in this movement, next to the Internet!

For government, we will create letters and petitions and forward to them in masse! Also, we will document and forward complaints, and evidence of fraudulent bank behavior. They are either with us, or against us! They get to choose and so do we, by a vote. It’s time to stop picking leaders by social issues, but real life issues. You’re either a bank bitch and for them or you’re not (like Beau).

I want to do to the AGs, all regulators, and politicians, what I did to CEOs and boards years ago, paper them and "put them on notice" to act. Let’s see if they ignore our warnings this time around since doing so, will surely jeopardize their political and/or professional aspirations. As they move up the political food chain, we will have a record of what they were warned of and what they did or didn’t do so that their prior actions can be judged by voters and regulators alike.

I am reminded of Gandhi’s quote "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." We’re now winning, so it’s time to pile in on as the bankster’s lawyers would say. Over the years, I have created a "hit list" and "target list" of enemies and foes and have guarded carefully very personal information about them. While information is power, knowledge of what to do with that information, and the wisdom to know when its right to use, is key. I suggest you each do the same!

Next, I will begin writing more letters and more warnings based on my experience and I will start doing some polling with the help of supporters and sponsors I will seek from law firms. This will accomplish a few goals. First, it will bring national media attention and coverage to the issues and second, media attention, business and leads to the law firms than sponsor my research. My research has traditionally garnered national media attention and the front pages of virtually every newspaper as well as television and radio. It will once more, do so again.

As for Beau Biden, his complaint is a masterpiece and must read and pins the tail on the ASS (sorry, Donkey was way too kind) so to speak in MERS. In effect, he is not only seeking to shut down every MERS foreclosure in DE, but seeking to foreclose on MERS itself! I wonder what ASSet protection MERSCORP and its enablers have in place.

I have previously called the racketeering acts of the servicers the "default servicing enterprise." However, Beau kept it simple and called it the "foreclosure enterprise." I agree. From this day forward, when we discuss or refer to this racketeering enterprise, let’s all agree to call it and refer to it as the FORECLOSURE ENTERPRISE! Let’s get that mantra up and explain it for what it is, an enterprise which is key for RICO actions, both state and federal, which is where we will be going next with the evidence we have all uncovered. Make Foreclosure enterprise as widely known and accepted as robo-signing and fraudclosure!

In his complaint and his exhibits, Beau Biden has laid the foundation for attacking MERS and every lender. In every case where MERS is ANYWHERE in the chain (current or prior loans) you must file his complaint and exhibits with the court with a notice for the Court to take "judicial notice" of the complaint. Next, you must also file all of the county recorder lawsuits. Remember, building a record is the most important thing you can do in a case. This is how we will also expose the corrupt judges we have evidence on. An analysis of their record and rulings will assist media and also how we vote them out. We shall approve and disprove of judges and politicians and make our voices known, regardless of party affiliation. We will make them sign pledges and contracts, so we know where stand.

We will get our friends in person, email, and on Facebook, to work with us, petition, send emails, make phone calls and focus attention on issues and those who fight and oppose us. We will gather lists of names too and personal and email addresses for protesters.

Our first petition will be the abolishment of MERS and I am drafting Lisa Epstein to create the first draft using the relief that Beau seeks in his lawsuit to be the first petition of our group. Lisa, please copy me, Jacqs, April, Dan, and Max on it and we’ll get out soon!

Friends, its time! 2012, the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world "as we know it!" I’m reminded of the song "its the end of the world as we know it, its the end of the world as we know it. If we believe and act, we can do it! I know we can and i know we will!

It’s time my friends, time to get immediate attention and use the legal strategy the the banks and foreclosure mills created called "piling on" after football piling on. Let’s get to the media, get to the government, get to judges, and get to the people. Let’s Occupy Government and The Media and take control of the destiny God has given each of us! 2012 is upon us. The Mayans were right, its the end of the world as we know it, and the start of a new world, not new world order, as we desire and want it to be free of banks, political influence, and corruption!

Nye

Foreclosure Hell…

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Court Cases, Courts, foreclosure, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal

                                                                Important Evidence & Affidavit in Foreclosure Law Firm, Robo-Signing, & MBS Investigation          

From Nye Lavalle

Thu, Oct 20, 2011 1:18pm                                                                             
From Nye Lavalle

Dear Attorneys General:

Recently, the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency released reports about a special counsel investigation by Fannie Mae and that a shareholder had warned and provided Fannie Mae and others as far back as 2003 about robo-signing and foreclosure abuses. This story was picked up by the NY Times’ Gretchen Mogenson and a plethora of other news media. While Gretchen and the FHFA didn’t name me, I was nonetheless ousted since she and many others, including some of you, knew this shareholder was me.

I have been working hard behind the scenes to warn and stop the catastrophic events of the past few years which I first forecast in 1996! I have spent almost $1 million and spent over 40,000 hours since 1994 investigating, researching, and documenting these frauds. I have millions of pages of documents and a history like a bear in the woods who has left a trail all the way up to personally warning and communicating to the CEOs of virtually every bank, servicer, and Wall Street firm of these abuses. I took shares in each of these companies in the late 90s to warn them. Jaime Dimon, William Harrison, Kerry Killinger, Ace Greenberg, and James Cayne are just a few. However, the ratings agencies were warned as well as law firms and accounting firms, especially Deloitte!

As the shareholder that in 2003 warned Fannie Mae and worked with the independent counsel they appointed, Mark Cymrot, of Baker Hostetler in Washington DC, I have a unique perspective as well as set of facts that each of you could never obtain due to the cost and time limitations, that I have accumulated since 1993, almost 20-years!

However, as you will see by the attached letter to FHFA and links to reports and warnings I have authored since the mid-nineties, many were warned, including some of your offices since the mid to late nineties. I am also the individual that first discovered robo-signing and foreclosure fraud in the mid-nineties and authored reports documenting such abuses starting in the mid-nineties, until a "visiting judge" in Dallas, TX gagged me from telling this story.

It wasn’t until 2000, at the National Consumer Law Center conference in Colorado when I released reports on these frauds and abuses. Some of your lawyers were in attendance and were provided two reports. Only Max Gardner, a bankruptcy lawyer from North Carolina, took the reports to heart and began a decade-old fight to expose this corruption.

Robo-signing and foreclosure fraud and the intentional fraudulent filing of lawsuit complaints, advertisements of sale, assignments of mortgage, satisfactions of mortgage, and affidavits, as you will see from my well-documented reports, are not a recent phenomenon or the result of the securitization craze that swept America and the world from the late nineties to mid-2000’s.

They were carefully planned and orchestrated after the RTC debacle in the late 80s wherein a select group of "special servicers," commonly referred to in the industry as the industry’s "toxic waste dumps," were created to push these newly developed and even "patented" foreclosure factory processes that the four major special servicers "tested" and then "perfected" for the rest of the industry. These special servicers are known to many of you, but their names were EMC Mortgage, SPS f/k/a Conti-Fairbanks Capital, Ocwen, and Litton Loan.

Through "partnerships" with firms like the Barrett Burke operation in Texas, the LOGs group (Shapiro) out of Illinois, the McCalla Raymer group in Georgia and many others, they created an automated foreclosure machine that threw all caution to the wind when it not only came to ethics, but the law. In a newly expanding "virtual" world, they, along with vendors and third parties such as title insurers Fidelity National and First American created patented and marketable "cradle-to-grave" systems and processes to expand the housing and mortgage markets and cover-up and conceal the known fraud to all of them perpetrated mostly by aggressive loan brokers and occasionally borrowers and factored such losses and circumstances into their system. I can provide each of you with mens rea and scienter to prosecute for frauds.

As they tested these systems and perfected their fraud via such practices as intentionally concealing the real ownership of a promissory note and first foreclosing in the names of servicers who claimed to "own" the notes and then MERS, they really were double and multi-pledging the promissory notes to themselves and others to obtain servicing advances as well as take gain on sale accounting treatments on the notes they originated with no risk to them, since they had already forward sold the notes to our respective mutual, trust, and pension funds.

As you each take your own collective and individual approaches towards your investigations, I would whole-heartedly agree with Attorneys General Scheiderman, Biden, Harris, and others who want to continue this investigation. If you don’t continue and right the wrongs, I will boldly predict that each of you will have blood on your hands. I say this as no threat of any means whatsoever, but as a warning based on my understanding as a social scientist and advocate of the human psyche that for some is weak, but for others is broken. If you look at my forecasts and predictions over the years, I have one heck of a batting average in getting it right. As my former partner, Dr. Roy Stout who was featured in the book Blink, would say, I see things and data that others want to ignore. For the first time in my life, I am scared – – scared, not for me, but for our nation and our nation’s youth and those who might have to endure the consequence of the excesses of my generation.

Today, its mortgages, but when these young students, like an ex-girlfriend who at 22 left school with $150,000 in student debt realize what has occurred, all bets will be off. Today, they are peaceful – – tomorrow, they may be vengeful! The Occupy Wall Street movement is only the start. The American public and world, want to see accountability. They want to see perps walk. They want the intentional bankers, hedge funds, and Wall Street executives who intentionally created and manipulated this world-wide financial debacle prosecuted. If you don’t do it, I fear as the nation and the world’s economy suffers even more, there will be total anarchy in the streets as well as assaults and even "non-political" assassinations against banking CEOs, Wall St executives, and foreclosure lawyers, by para-military right and left wing extremists that were former Army Rangers and Navy Seals who are not only disenchanted with the current situation, but disenfranchised. Living in Savannah, GA last year, I met many Rangers each evening who were angry, very angry for fighting a war that they realized was not for Americans, but for other interests. The discussions I would have in the evenings were illuminating and gave me a great respect for our nation’s military men and women.

However, as they lose more friends, limbs, spouses, their sanity and now their homes, a combustible mixture that is not only flammable, but toxic is spreading. You can see it in the OWS movement and some of the videos. I say these things not to scare you, but to warn you once again and most importantly, to EMPOWER EACH OF YOU, collectively or individually.

You have each been give a god-given opportunity at a vital point in our nation and the world’s history. Each of you, if you do your jobs and ignore the politics, political influence, and lobbying from both banks and the federal government, have a special moment in time to leave a mark. A mark that historians will one day write was the day America and the world decided to be free of political and banking influence and truly helped create a world democracy.

The money now, whether it is $20 billion or $50 billion in the scheme of trillion dollar losses is really not what the people are angry at. They was to see accountability and those who not only created the situation, but manipulated it or ignored it to their personal gain be prosecuted. I hear their voices each day and that’s why I am coming out of the closet, so to speak, despite the threats against my family and I to offer my help and assistance in doing what is right for this nation, our people, and those youths protesting for what they know, that many in our generation simply ignored as they drove their BMWs, put dope up their noses, and lived it up at the expense of their children and grand children.

Now is the time. I can give you the goods on many of these if you want to really follow the patented fraud. Have you all read the patents as yet of all these so-called "processes?" The most human element in the entire automated factory were the actual ignorant robo-signers! In fact, when I discovered and reported on robo-signing, I did so just to give one "minor example of the overall fraudulent scheme that was designed not to defraud borrowers who were only pawns in the "game" as it was called, but our respective pension funds and extraction of our so-called excess wealth.

Think about it, for a moment if you will. Robo-signing is such an elementary fraud, so simple, so stupid, so petty! The real fraud and why the banks want to settle with you so quickly is the securitization and the fact that none of these deals were "true sales," but the financing of receivables whereby investors were defrauded and multi-pledging of paid off notes occurred to inflate their earnings, stock prices, and bonuses.

How many of you have had your original wet-ink promissory note returned to you canceled and paid in full upon its payoff or refinancing? Ask around the office? Then, check your lien release or satisfaction and see if it was robo-signed? Who is your real lender?

Open the black Pandora’s box of financial alchemy in securitization and you will find the multi-pledging and sale of paid off notes, the same notes, and even "ghost notes" that were created with Photoshop and never even executed by a real live borrower. I will save the death threats, break-ins, arsons, computer hacks, and millions of dollars of vexatious litigation by the banks and its foreclosure lawyers against my family, myself, our trusts, and the select group of advocates who were the first to take the baton from my hand for another day. I will even save the bribery of judicial officers, court reporters, and local judges for another day. All I ask is for each of you to think long and very hard, before letting the banks, their servicers, vendors, and lawyers off the hook.

I’ll come to see any of you and give any of you my deposition as well as access to whatever I possess in terms of evidence. I would also suggest that you ask each bank you are investigating and law firm to preserve all evidence and provide to you everything they have in their possession that contains my name "Nye Lavalle" or "Aneurin Lavalle" or this email address that I have had since the mid-nineties. <mortgagefrauds@aol.com>                                                                                                              I am also more than willing to take polygraph exams, should you find that necessary.  In essence, all I personally want is the real and true story told by a real and true investigation and the subsequent civil and criminal prosecution of those responsible for this nation’s morass.

I pray some, or all of you, will take me up on my offer. Please feel free to call or email me at any time if I can be of assistance to you or any of your collective or respective investigations!

Nye Lavalle

FANNIE AND FREDDIE OF FORECLOSURE ABUSES

by nootkabear, posted in Court Cases, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Injustice, Judges, Judicial Corruption, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal

Original Message—–
From: Nye Lavalle

To: OIGhotline <OIGhotline@fhfa.gov>; DeputyDirector-Enterprises <DeputyDirector-Enterprises@FHFA.gov>;                      Director <Director@FHFA.gov>; DeputyDirector-FHLBanks <DeputyDirector-FHLBanks@FHFA.gov>;                    GeneralCounsel<GeneralCounsel@FHFA.gov>; Ombudsman <Ombudsman@FHFA.gov>
                                                                        Sent: Sat, Oct 8, 2011 10:28 pm
Subject: I AM THE FANNIE SHAREHOLDER NAMED IN YOUR OIG REPORTS THAT WARNED FANNIE AND FREDDIE OF FORECLOSURE ABUSES IN 2003 AND AFTER

Gentlemen,

By way of introduction, my name is Nye Lavalle and I am the shareholder/investor, referenced in your recent OIG reports that warned Fannie Mae’s board and CEO of foreclosure and legal abuses almost a decade ago. For over a year, I worked closely with Fannie Mae and Mark Cymrot of Baker Hostetler, who was the independent counsel appointed by Fannie Mae, to investigate allegations contained in my 2004 report. I also warned Freddie Mac and its board as well.

The attached letter will provide you more information and hopefully open a dialogue between us that will help us find solutions for our nation and its citizens as well as hold those responsible, accountable for their actions.

To that end, I stand ready and able to assist you each in your respective duties at FHFA and the OIG for FHFA.

Sincerely,

Nye Lavalle

Utah Supreme Court

by nootkabear, posted in Attorneys, Court Cases, Courts, Judges, Judicial Rulings, law, Legal
Pyper v. Bond

http://law.justia.com/cases/utah/supreme-court/2011/20091025-11.html

Docket: 20091025
Opinion Date: July 29, 2011

Judge: Durrant

Areas of Law: Commercial Law, Consumer Law, Trusts & Estates

David Pyper hired attorney Justin Bond to represent him in a probate matter. Bond’s law firm subsequently sued Pyper to obtain payment of the attorney fees. The district court entered a judgment in favor of the law firm for $10,577. To satisfy the judgment, Bond filed a lien against a house owned by Pyper that was worth approximately $125,000. Bond was the only bidder at the sheriff’s sale auctioning Pyper’s home and purchased Pyper’s home for $329. Pyper later communicated his desire to redeem his property to Dale Dorius, another attorney at the firm, but was unable to speak to Bond after several attempts. After the redemption period expired, the deed to Pyper’s home was transferred to Bond. Pyper subsequently filed a petition seeking to set aside the sheriff’s sale of his property. The district court set aside the sheriff’s sale. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding the court of appeals did not err in (1) concluding that gross inadequacy of price together with slight circumstances of unfairness may justify setting aside a sheriff’s sale and (2) affirming the district court’s conclusion that Bond and Dorius’s conduct created, at least, slight circumstances of unfairness.

http://j.st/cZN

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