Matt Weidner – Fighting With The American People

Archive for September, 2010

Although the Florida Supreme Court has declined to take any affirmative action against the widespread fraud and abuse that is occurring in Florida courtrooms, all attorneys should be reminded that they have an obligation under the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar to report all potential ethical violations of other attorneys.

As reported in the attached article that appeared in the Florida Daily Business Review, I recently filed a complaint with the Florida Bar requesting that they look into the very unusual situation involving the Law Offices of David Stern and the non-legal component (whatever that is) of that practice, David J. Stern Enterprises.  I encourage everyone to read this article carefully (especially US Congressman Grayson) then stay tuned to see if the Florida Bar actually takes any interest in the very real issues that provoked the complaint…..

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For comprehensive reporting of many complex issues that relate to our courts and foreclosure in particular, please visit the website of the Daily Business Review Here.

While I’m certainly glad that national and statewide press have now picked up on the issues relating to foreclosure and foreclosure fraud, we cannot forget that the excellent regional press sources like Daily Business Review have been tracking and reporting on these issues for quite some time.  Please support their reporting and effort by subscribing to their excellent paper.

I’m going to come clean and admit to all of you that I have become increasingly fearful and anxious about the future of this country for a very long time.  My primary concerns center on the fact that unemployment continues to grow steadily while at the same time government debt and entitlements have likewise continued to grow exponentially.  The unemployment problem represents a fundamental threat to our national and economic security because none of the other insurmountable problems we face can be addressed without sufficient employment.  Such is the case with the foreclosure crisis. If people are not working, no programs will ever be enough to solve the problems.  And yet I held out naive hope that our courts might fashion some solutions which might foster an environment of compromise and resolution.

This hope has effectively died with the release of today’s letter from the Florida Supreme Court.  While the text of it alone is disturbing enough, the subtext is even more disturbing.  Please note that while a ranking member of the United States Congress took the initiative to write this letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it was not the Chief Justice or any justice for that matter that responded, but the Clerk of the Supreme Court.  Perhaps there is some formality involved here, but for the letter to come not from a peer, but from the administrative level is very telling.  To me the message is loud and clear….

HEY CONGRESS, BUTT OUT

We really are in a very bad way here and I frankly don’t hold out much hope now of any kind of reasonable solution to the crisis that has now reached up into the highest levels of our state government.  Our only hope now is persistent press attention and federal intervention…..our Florida courts are apparently not willing to address the crisis in our courts…..

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This just in.  The highest court in the State of Florida is powerless to do anything at all about the rampant fraud that burns through the courtrooms of this state.  No guidance.  No direction.  No sanctions.  The Supreme Court apparently won’t even do anything about it or look anymore into.

In one of the greatest legal “punts” of all times, the Supreme Court directs a ranking member of Congress to just call the Florida Bar.  WOW, talk about an insult.

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This represents a serious and worsening Constitutional crisis.  Anarchy prevails.

From the Palm Beach Post.

One of the many, many dirty secrets that will come out about all this foreclosure fraud that is burning across this country is the fact that the Good Old Uncle Sam is not only right smack dab in the middle of it, but that your federal government signed off and is in fact paying the massive profits the purveyors of all the fraud are making.

It’s no secret that the federal government, through Fannie and Freddie are the real owners of a huge percentage of the mortgages that are being foreclosed on.  The Plaintiff name may be Aurora or Litton or Bank of America or the IXIS 2003 Loan Trust, but when the Certificate of Title is issued or the bid assigned or the real interest in the property is conveyed, we will all be blown away when we discover just how many times the real party in interest is Uncle Sam.  I am convinced that this fact is concealed because what would this country (or the rest of the world) think about the federal government coming to take your home or 260,000 homes across the State of Florida? And yet that is exactly what is happening.

There is one other key fact in all of this.  The federal government largely determines what law firms will be responsible for filing the foreclosure lawsuits that have now choked our courts through their designation of the law firms that are permitted to institute the foreclosure actions.  Now that these firms are under investigation by the Florida Attorney General’s office, you’d think the federal government would step right up and take some action against these firms or at least look into their conduct right?  Wrong.

Have a look at the attached article that appears in Mother Jones.

Please read the letters that are attached to the request.  Think long and hard about what all this means.  I’ve given up hope that our judges and elected leaders have any motivation to address these problems on their own initiative.  Our only hope is that journalists will put the massive amount of time and resources that are necessary into researching and telling this story in a way that exposes all the levels of corruption that exist.

I really believe that only the press can save us now.  Please support those in our press who are telling this story by commenting and sharing the stories they are telling.  Please “share” the stories and links on Facebook and emails so that their editors can see that these issues are of interest to readers.

The Florida Rules of Civil Procedures require that all pleadings filed in a case be signed by a licensed Florida attorney.  I have started to examine files and am becoming increasingly suspicious that this important rule is not being followed by the foreclosure mills.

I am therefore starting to examine all my pleadings closely and I encourage each of you to do the same.  Ultimately I would like to build a database of these signatures to compare, so for those of you out there that are spending time looking at court filings, please start examining the signatures and making a cut and past document similar to the one I attach below.

My first example of gross irregularities in the signature of an attorney who makes filings in a court case comes from Ohio.  The document was prepared by a reader of this blog and it comes from an Ohio foreclosure mill attorney.  Please look at the sheet. There really is no commentary necessary regarding whether these were signed by the same person….

Given what we know about the foreclosure mills and their operations (particularly the offshore components of their practice) I cannot imagine that they are following this rule. (I mean the violate every other rule)

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