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Foreclosure Fraud | April 11, 2011 at 12:29 PM | Categories: bankruptcy, cdo, cds, Corruption, Fannie Mae, foreclosure, Foreclosure Fraud, Foreclosuregate, freddie mac, MERS, mortgage electronic registration system, Mortgage Fraud, securities fraud | URL:

Re: EXPOSING THE LAW FIRMS AND BANKS IN THE DOCX SCHEME (and then the many others)

Dear Friends,

After the 60 Minutes Segment on Foreclosure Fraud on April 3, 2011, I was contacted by over 2,000 individuals, seeking help or wanting to help.
FOR ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO HELP RESEARCH THE DOCX FORGERY SCHEME:

1. Search the official records of your county and find all the Mortgage Assignments filed by Docx in 2009. Search by bank: Deutsche Bank, Bank of NY Mellon, U.S. Bank, HSBC, Wells Fargo, etc.

These are very recognizable. On each form, in the left hand corner, there is a statement that the Assignment was prepared by Docx in Alpharetta, GA.

For examples, click on the word PLEADINGS on the Home Page of www.frauddigest.com (my online magazine) – then click on the second entry – 10 Versions of Linda Green signatures on mortgage documents.

Print each example you find in your county Official Records. Identify and circle the name of the borrorwer/homeowner on each record.

2. Go Back to the Official Records. Search the name of each homeowner on the Docx Assignments for Lis Pendens.

Print the Lis Pendens that corresponds to the Assignment and staple these together.

Note that there will not be a Lis Pendens for every Assignment – many homeowners will have already handed over the keys or agreed to a short sale to avoid litigation.

3. Sort by Law Firm Preparing the Lis Pendens.

In Florida, for example, the firms using these Assignments will include Law Offices of David Stern, Law Offices of Marshall Watson, Shapiro & Fishman, Florida Default Law Group, Law Offices of Daniel Consuegra, Akerman & Senterfitt, Gladstone Law Group and many others.

These are the firms that continued to use the forged documents, never “noticing” that:

(1) the signatures varied so significantly that forgeries were likely;

(2) the same individuals used so many different job titles that the validity was unlikely;

(3) the dates of the Assignments indicated a fraudulent document because the Assignments came after the Lis Pendens.

4. Compile a report of these findings – LAW FIRMS USING FORGED AND FABRICATED DOCUMENTS TO FORECLOSE.

State plainly which law firms used these documents and attach the documents supporting your conclusions.

5. Send your reports to the following:

(1) your local State Attorney;

(2) the Disciplinary Committee of the Bar Association in your state;

(3) the FBI/attention: Mortgage Fraud Taskforce;

(4) the U.S. Attorney for your district;

(5) the Attorney General for your state;

(6) your country recorder;

(7) your area newspaper/television investigative reporter.

6. You may also sort by the BANK that used these fraudulent documents to take homes, and include that information in your reports.

Please send a .pdf file of your letter (without attachments) to szymoniak@mac.com.

If you are very ambitious, you may also add the face value of all of the Docx Assignments you locate so that you can report the total amount that banks took or tried to take using these forged and fabricated documents in 2009.

WHEN WE ALL COMPLETE THIS PROJECT, WE WILL MOVE ON TO FORGED AND FABRICATED ASSIGNMENTS PREPARED BY LAW FIRMS (such as David Stern in Florida and Baum in NY) AND OTHER SERVICERS.

Thank you for joining this effort.

Best regards,

LYNN E. SZYMONIAK

Think about it folks? Who really owns your mortgage? YOU? THE BANK thats SERVICING your account?

Do you know who really owns your mortgage? As Scott Pelley reports on “60 Minutes” this week, that question has become a nightmare for many homeowners since the invention of mortgage-backed securities. Yes, those were the exotic investments that sparked the financial collapse in this country. And the’re still causing problems.

As it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it bundled homeowners’ mortgages into securities that were traded from investor to investor. Now that banks are foreclosing on people, they’re finding that the legal documents behind many mortgages are missing. So, what do the banks do? As Pelley explains in this video, some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork in what looks like a nationwide epidemic.

Even if you’re not at risk of foreclosure, there could be legal ramifications for a homeowner if the chain of title has been lost. Watch the “60 Minutes” report and listen to Pelley’s discussion with “60 Minutes Overtime” editor Ann Silvio about the findings of his reporting team.

Watch this report on 60 Minutes and blow your mind away…

By Lorraine Woellert – Mar 11, 2011 10:36 AM MT

The U.S. House voted 242-177 to cancel a loan program for homeowners who have lost their jobs as Republicans move to eliminate funding for President Barack Obama’s anti-foreclosure efforts.

Today’s vote to end the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program was the second of four planned by House lawmakers, who approved a bill yesterday to end the Federal Housing Administration Short Refi Option for people who owe more than their homes are worth.

The $1 billion emergency loan program, which provides interest-free money to help borrowers keep their houses, was funded by a Democrat-led Congress before Republicans took control of the House. Because it is still in the design phase, no money has been spent on it.

“This is about programs that aren’t working,” said Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, before today’s vote.

“This is a good-sense cut.” Representative Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat, said the Republican measure is “mean-spirited.”

“These are working people who had jobs, fell on hard times,” Watt said. “All we’re saying is give them a break for 12 months and an opportunity to go back into the marketplace and find a job.”

The House is scheduled to vote next week on a bill that would eliminate Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which pays banks to modify borrowers monthly mortgage payments.

To become law, the bills must clear the Democrat-controlled Senate and be signed by the president.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at lwoellert@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net

A link to this report can be found at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-11/u-s-house-votes-to-cancel-emergency-homeowner-loan-program.html

Further more this just tells me that the Politicians just can’t seem to agree with anything because they are voting on politcal aspects of the subject and not on the true nature of the system.

The Politicians are discussing ways of helping the banks come up with the right steps to go about foreclosing on the homeowners and have forgotten that the reason they are in this situation is that the banks wrote the procedures on how to financially underwrite a mortgage and their entire process got us into this mess. Why would you want to ask the banks to come up with a solution to help the homeowners at all, instead all they are trying to do is to make a simplified version of how they can restart the foreclosure process again…

By Dan Levy and John Gittelsohn – Mar 9, 2011 10:00 PM MT

Default notices in February slid 41 percent from a year earlier to 63,165, the lowest monthly total in four years, according to RealtyTrac. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg
U.S. foreclosure filings fell last month to the lowest level in three years as lenders under legal scrutiny struggled to process a backlog of defaults and put new systems in place for home seizures, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

A total of 225,101 U.S. properties received notices of default, auction or repossession, down 14 percent from January and 27 percent from February 2010, the Irvine, California- based data seller said today in a statement. The number was the lowest since February 2008, and the year-over-year decrease was the biggest since the company began keeping records in 2005.

Loan servicers are moving slowly in resuming foreclosures amid a five-month-old investigation by the state attorneys general into flawed paperwork and improper procedures. Delays in processing defaults are creating a clogged pipeline that may postpone home prices from reaching a bottom, according to Celia Chen, and economist for Moody’s Analytics Inc.

“ It’s clearly taking the lenders and servicers longer than anyone had anticipated,“ Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president, said in an email, “Beyond that, the industry itself is in a state of dysfunction. “

For more information from this report you may follow this link to Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-10/foreclosure-filings-drop-to-3-year-low-as-u-s-servicers-in-dysfunction-.html

Here is a post from our friends at Consumer Defense Program:

The case below is from an actual case heard in 1/7/11 where the judge rules that because the bank didn’t have ownership of the actual mortgage at the time of foreclosure and that the bank is responsible to make sure that before foreclosing on any property they must first be sure that they got the proper assignment from the previous owner of the mortgage before proceeding with any and all foreclosures.

This points a few things out about the process of foreclosures… First and foremost you have to understand what is happening throughout your process and in no way am i saying that you dont need an attorney or I am not saying that you need an attorney, What I am saying is that you MUST UNDERSTAND the process and if you dont understand the process than by all means either get educated or find the correct facts before you try any process.

Many people have come to the realization that just because the Jones’s did that certain process and won doesn’t mean that you are going to try the same process and win also. There are those of us out there that have tried that process by which we follow someone who has done it ONE TIME and thinks they know better, and what we have found is that the process will work if any and all possible situation can be accounted for and then and only then can you proceed with any and all process.

Simply put if you attorney doesnt know what to do or if he/she doesnt understand what the process is you are better off not trying anything at all. Same goes for learning the process, if you are not able to find a process that takes into account any and all senarios then you should not attempt to do any of these processes yourself.

Case points from U.S. Bank v. Ibanez, 10694, Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts:

“We have long held that a conveyance of real property, such as a
mortgage, that does not name the assignee conveys nothing and is
void,”the Supreme Judicial Court said

“the court ruled that an otherwise valid confirmatory assignment was not
sufficient to prove right to foreclose.”

The banks argued, as does the securitization industry, that the right to
a mortgage follows the sale of the promissory note it secures, and since
they held the notes, they should be deemed to have the right to the
mortgage.

The court disagreed.

“where a note has been assigned but there is no written assignment of
the mortgage underlying the note, the assignment of the note does not
carry with it the assignment of the mortgage,”

** This not only applies to Massachusetts.

“This decision affirms our belief that the onus should be on the banks
and other holders of notes to follow proper procedures before initiating
foreclosure on any Massachusetts homeowner,” state Attorney General
Martha Coakley

“there must be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself
held the mortgage,” the court said

The court rejected the banks’ request to apply the decision only to
future foreclosures.

“All that has changed is the plaintiffs’ apparent failure to abide by
those principles and requirements” in the law “in the rush to sell
mortgage-backed securities,” …. They broke the law and in so doing
committed FRAUD.

Justice Robert J. Cordy said he was struck by “the utter carelessness
with which the plaintiff banks documented the titles to their assets.”

This link below will take you to the actual case and you can read for yourself the outcome of the case.

http://www.ma-appellatecourts.org/display_docket.php?dno=SJC-10694

Newport Beach, CA  February 23, 2011

A recent verdict by a New York Judge that Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) does not have the right to file foreclosures on behalf of lenders is a victory for homeowners facing foreclosure throughout the nation that will have far reaching impact, according to Vito Torchia, Jr. managing attorney of Brookstone Law.

“This decision is important because it protects homeowners from the type of wrongful foreclosures MERS was perpetrating against thousands of families throughout the country,” said Vito Torchia, Jr. “The Court’s ruling that MERS does not have the authority they claimed makes their foreclosure actions illegal and gives those families the relief they need and deserve.”

The ruling last week by Judge Robert Grossman that MERS does not have the authority to act on behalf of its members and the actions of the company are illegal stated: “This court does not accept the argument that because MERS may be involved with 50 percent of all residential mortgages in the country, that is reason enough for this court to turn a blind eye to the fact that this process does not comply with the law.” The case is Ferrell L Agard Case No. 810-77338-Reg In Us Bankruptcy Court Eastern District Of New York.

“MERS may be finally on the way out of the national mortgage scene for good, and for the good of us all,” said Vito Torchia, Jr.

MERS has recently been under fire for the practice, and claimed borrowers are required sign documents agreeing to allow MERS to assume rights and responsibilities on behalf of creditors. Mortgage banking firms have been foreclosing on homes in the name of MERS as the nominee even though the electronic registry does not actually own the loan. As a result of the ruling MERSCORP, the electronic mortgage registry system, said it will propose a rule to stop its members from foreclosing in its name.

“Homeowners facing foreclosure throughout the US now have one less enemy to deal with in the battle to keep their homes,” said Vito Torchia, Jr. “The problems caused by banks and lenders in the foreclosure crisis are too numerous to count, so not having MERS to add to the crisis is going to have a positive, long-term impact on thousands of homeowners.”

According to the company’s Web site, “MERS was created by the mortgage banking industry to streamline the mortgage process by using electronic commerce to eliminate paper.” That role has changed in recent years, with MERS taking foreclosure actions on behalf of lenders and servicers nationwide, even becoming embroiled in the robo-signing scandal. MERS is the nominee for roughly half of the 60 million outstanding residential loans in the U.S.

“This is the beginning of a trend of greater judicial review of MERS, which will continue to benefit homeowners,” said Vito Torchia, Jr. “In addition to its illegal foreclosure practices, because MERS has such sloppy record keeping in its electronic database it has placed the mortgages of millions of homes into question, so that is likely to be another aspect of MERS that could soon be addressed.”

According to Torchia, when homeowners search public records to determine who actually holds their mortgage, records show MERS as the owner. But because MERS is a shell corporation with no real employees and not a servicer, homeowners cannot make mortgage payments to the purported owner. As a result of the design of MERS, banks have no idea who owns what which potentially compromises the ownership of residential real estate throughout the country.

MERS has received extensive recent national media coverage, including stories in The New York Times and on MSNBC and others, about financial fiascos such as payments sent to the wrong servicers, servicers credited on the wrong accounts, servicers claimed delinquencies on homeowners who never missed payments, late fees and delinquencies applied to the wrong borrowers and, recently sheriffs sent to break down the doors of the wrong houses, throwing belongings out on the street in front of homes on which there was no mortgage at all.

Established in 1997, MERS is a privately held company that operates an electronic registry designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States. MERS was created by the mortgage banking industry including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association to allow banks and lenders to circumvent the centuries-old custom that protected property rights by requiring every sale of property to be publicly recorded, and requiring that any creditor claiming a right to foreclose to demonstrate clear title. By providing a central source of information and tracking for mortgage loans, MERS was portrayed as a way to lower costs for lenders and consumers.

The ruling continues a trend of dozens of decisions against MERS resulting from lawsuits by homeowners and others exposing the illegalities inherent in the MERS system that have beleaguered homeowners and caused countless problems in determining foreclosures and ownership of mortgages throughout the nation including:  The Boyko Decision: in which Federal District Judge Christopher Boyko of the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Ohio Federal Court overturned 14 foreclosure actions based on failure of the foreclosing party to prove standing (Case 1:07-cv-02282-CAB) Landmark National Bank v Kesler: Kansas State Supreme Court decision in which MERS was found to have no standing to foreclose and is a “straw man” (Case No. 98,489);

JP Morgan Chase v New Millenial et. al.: Florida Appellate decision on the chaos which ensues due to a failure to register changes of ownership at the county recorder’s office that profits lenders at the expense of borrowers (Case Fla.App. 2 DNo. 2D07-5937);

In Re: Walker, Eastern District of CA Bankruptcy court decision that found MERS has no legal or actionable interest in title (Case No.10-21656-E-11); Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. v. Saunders: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine decision that that MERS is not in fact a mortgagee therefore had no standing to institute foreclosure proceedings (Case 2010 ME 79 Docket: Cum-09-640).

“The MERS paperless system was created in the boardrooms of the most powerful and controlling members of the American financial institutions, a gigantic scheme that completely ignored the fundamental, long-standing laws of commerce relating to mortgage lending and which those individuals carried out for their own personal gain at the expense of America’s homeowners.” said Vito Torchia, Jr. “The impact of this system and their greed has led to a catastrophic meltdown of the American and global economies and ruined the lives of millions of people.”

ABOUT BROOKSTONE LAW, PC Headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif., and with offices in Los Angeles, Calif., and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Brookstone Law, PC is a law firm comprised of attorneys with experience and success in business, corporate and personal finance, employment, entertainment and media, art and museum, intellectual property and real estate law. The firm has a network of more than 40 affiliate attorneys nationwide and employs highly trained specialists, paralegals, paraprofessionals and administrative staff dedicated to serving clients. For information, call (800) 946-8655 or visit Brookstone-Law.com (http://www.brookstone-law.com).

http://www.toptenrealestatedeals.com/real-estate-news/brookstone-law-pc-mers-ruling-is-major-victory-for-homeowners-facing/

By Prashant Gopal – Feb 23, 2011 2:09 PM MT

Arizona may become the first state to require lenders to prove they have the right to foreclose by providing a complete list of any previous owners of the mortgage, under a bill passed yesterday by its Senate.

The legislation, which is headed to the House after being approved 28-2 in the Republican-dominated Senate, would allow foreclosure sales to be voided if lenders that didn’t originate the loan can’t produce the full chain of title. Arizona permits non-judicial foreclosures, meaning property can be seized from the homeowner without a court order.

Lawmakers in states including New York, Oregon and Virginia  also have proposed legislation to address concerns among consumer advocates that lenders or mortgage servicers are using incomplete or false paperwork to repossess properties in default. The attorneys general of all 50 states are jointly investigating how the mortgage-servicing industry operates.

“If you foreclose on somebody you should have to tell them who owns the property,” Michele Reagan, who sponsored Senate Bill 1259, said in a telephone interview. “People have the right in this country to face their accusers.” The Republican lawmaker is in litigation with her mortgage servicer, which she said won’t identify the owner of the loan.

The bill is opposed by the Arizona Bankers Association; the Arizona Trustees Association, which represents the trustees that conduct foreclosure auctions on behalf of lenders; and Merscorp Inc., an industry-owned company that operates a database with more than half of all U.S. mortgages. Matthew Benson, a spokesman for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, said she doesn’t comment on legislation until it reaches her desk.

Names, Addresses

The bill would require lenders to provide a document attached to the notice of foreclosure sale with the name and address of every beneficial owner of the deed of trust in chronological order, along with the date, recordation number and a description of the instrument that “conveyed the interest of each beneficiary.”

Anyone with an interest in the property could file an action to void the sale for failure to comply and be entitled to an award of attorney fees and damages, according to the bill, which wouldn’t affect past foreclosures.

“If Arizona passes this, it will be the only state in the union that will require a production of chain of title,” said Paul Hickman, chief executive officer of the Arizona Bankers Association in Phoenix. “States that pass these types of laws will be riskier environments to lend in and more difficult environments to get a loan in.”

Foreclosure Crisis

Arizona had a foreclosure filing rate of one in 175 households in January, the second-highest among states, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of real estate data. Nationally, a record share of mortgages were in the foreclosure process at the end of 2010 as lenders such as Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. temporarily delayed seizures to review allegedly improper documents. The state attorneys general and federal regulators are investigating the practice of using assembly lines of employees to sign thousands of affidavits and other documents without reading them, a practice known as robo-signing.

The Arizona proposal was suggested to Reagan by her attorney, Beth Findsen, who said she also helped write the bill. Reagan and her husband, David Gulino, were sued by their servicer, Fort Worth, Texas-based Colonial Savings FA, after they told the bank in a July 2009 letter that they were rescinding the loan because it failed to disclose certain fees and that its underwriter inflated their income by 12 percent in violation of the federal Truth in Lending Act.

To contact the reporter on this story: Prashant Gopal in New York at pgopal2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net.

For more information on this report please follow the link:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/arizona-bill-would-void-home-foreclosures-without-complete-title-history.html

Countrywide Accused in Lawsuit of ‘Massive Fraud’

 By Karen Freifeld – Jan 25, 2011

Bank of America Inc.’s Countrywide Financial unit, acquired by the bank in 2008, was accused of “massive fraud” in a lawsuit by investors who claim they were misled about mortgage-backed securities.

 TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Co., New York Life Insurance Co. and Dexia Holdings Inc. are among a dozen institutional investors who filed the complaint yesterday in New York state Supreme Court.

 The investors claim they bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Countrywide mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007 because they wanted conservative, low-risk investments. They said they relied on term sheets, prospectuses and other materials provided by the firm that were recklessly or knowingly false.

 “Countrywide was an enterprise driven by only one purpose — to originate and securitize as many mortgage loans as possible into MBS to generate profits for the Countrywide defendants without regard to the investors that relied on the critical, false information provided to them with respect to the related certificates,” according to the complaint.

 The suit follows other fraud actions against Countrywide related to alleged misstatements to investors regarding the company’s mortgage-loan underwriting standards.

Angelo Mozilo

The complaint names more than 20 defendants, including Countrywide Home Loans Inc., Bank of America, Countrywide co- founder and former Chief Executive Officer Angelo Mozilo and other former executives.

“We will review the suit, but on first glance this sounds like a large, sophisticated investor who now wants to blame someone for the fact that the declining economy caused its investment to lose value,” Shirley Norton, a spokeswoman for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, said in an e- mail.

Countrywide Accused in Lawsuit of ‘Massive Fraud’ – Bloomberg Page 1 of 2

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-01-24/countrywide-sued-by-investors-in mor… 1/27/2011

“The lawsuit against Mr. Mozilo has no basis in law or fact,” said David Siegel, an attorney for Mozilo, in an e- mailed statement. “We expect to prevail against these plaintiffs as we have against other disgruntled, sophisticated MBS investors.”

In October, Mozilo agreed to pay a record $67.5 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he misled investors.

Former Chief Financial Officer Eric Sieracki and former Chief Operating Officer David Sambol also reached settlements with the SEC. None of the men admitted wrongdoing.

The SEC sued the three in June 2009, saying they publicly reassured investors about the quality of Countrywide’s loans while knowing that the mortgage lender was fueling its growth at least since the beginning of 2005 by letting its underwriting guidelines deteriorate and originating an increasing number of risky subprime loans.

The case is Dexia Holdings v. Countrywide Financial Corp., 650185/2011, New York state Supreme Court Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Freifeld in New York at kfreifeld@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.

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