You really gotta hand it to our friends at Bank of America.  They’ve drafted up a downright sexy nifty little magazine the explains to all of America just how easy it is to solve your family’s foreclosure problem…all you gotta do is pull up a chair with your friendly bankster and they’ll work everything out.

Like so much of the other propaganda produced by the industry, like the Florida Fair Foreclosure Act of 2012, this little beaut of a piece of the unlicensed practice of law ignores some of the most important legal aspects of foreclosure.  But hey, they’re the banks right, I mean they can do and get away with whatever they want…right?

Check out the section on Deed in Lieu.  It’s just a teensy bit vague on the real important issue about the Deed in Lieu, i.e., “If I give you the deed in lieu, are you going to pursue me for a deficiency judgment?”

And curiously, throughout the entire document, the helpful folks at Bank of America fail to give the one piece of advice that any reasonable person should recognize when dealing with things of a say, legal nature. You know, the one thing you should do when confronted with a legal question.  I’ll give you a hint.  Let’s play a game.  If you are feeling sick, you should go see a……(doctor).  And if your car won’t start, you should go see a…….(mechanic).  When you are facing a legal problem you should….(call Bank of America at 877.447.3994)

Wait a minute, that’s not the answer to that question.  You all know that maybe, just maybe consulting a lawyer when confronted with a legal question is the right answer…..right?  I mean, I’m a really trusting person (not really, this whole economic collapse thing has sort of shaken my trust in everyone and everything.) and even though I’m generally really, really trusting I’m just not feeling really trusty towards banks and anyone in the financial services industry. (or in government, or from any corporate interest)  In fact, my whole sphere of trust has kinda been whittled down to a few close allies, and my dog. (And lately I’ve starting to really look closely at my dog and all his advice, but that’s a whole other story.)

Just Google, “Bank of America, Customer Home Transition Guide” to find this document….she’s a real beauty, a thing to read……

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal, found here reports that Congress is getting real serious about forcing banks to work with homeowners (taxpayers) in foreclosure.  They are so serious, that Rep. Barney Frank wrote a letter!  He wrote a letter.  See apparently, banks aren’t working with homeowners and the foreclosure problem continues to slog on.  Not to worry though, once the lenders get THE LETTER things are bound to get better.

• Many second liens have little value because of the plunge in home prices, Rep. Frank wrote, adding: “Yet because accounting rules allow holders of these seconds to carry the loans at artificially high values, many refuse to acknowledge the losses and write down the loans.”

• Most first-lien home loans are held by the government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or by other investors in mortgage securities. By contrast, banks hold most of the seconds and other junior-lien mortgages.

• About $1.05 trillion of junior-lien home mortgages were outstanding as of Sept. 30, according to the Federal Reserve. Of those, $766.7 billion were held by commercial banks; most of the rest were owned by savings banks and credit unions.

Courts Are Overwhelmed With Foreclosures

Across the country, circuit court judges and their staff are becoming overwhelmed and frustrated by the total avalanche of foreclosure cases that have been dumped in their courtrooms.  In Pinellas County, Circuit Court judges who used to handle like 400 foreclosure cases are now handling something like 3,000.These judges still have one judicial assistant and the same limited resources the had before the crisis.  When the judge’s loan JA sits down to start the day, they are bombarded with phone calls and mail and people in their face every single second….it’s chaos, its a burden and it is completely untenable for the long run.

I know, Let’s Throw All The Rules Out The Window

Many of the Plaintiff’s attorneys that are working so hard to throw borrowers out of their home cannot rely on good, solid, honest legal work to accomplish their job.  As an attorney who sees the work of these firms every day, I am just astonished that the Courts continue to allow such horrendous practice to continue unchecked, but there seems to be little desire to try and force a correction of the behavior.  Just in case you think I’m overstating the problem, here is an excerpt from the Florida Supreme Court’s Task Force Report on Residential Mortgage Foreclosures

• Finally, it is critical that these firms be candid, clear, and truthful and accurate in connection with pleadings and affidavits filed with the Courts.  A leading plaintiff’s lawyer and a major plaintiff’s law firm have been the subject of a public reprimand and sanctions due to untruthful filings with the courts.  Judges continue to see affidavits of amounts due and owing signed by law firm employees, and cost affidavits charging very high service of process fees for process serving firms owned by the law firm principals.  To some extent, it is fair to be concerned whether the press of the case load is interfering with a judge’s ability to police the conduct of the firms before them in these usually uncontested, unopposed foreclosure cases.

The full report can be found here but the bottom line is this, the lenders and their law firms are lying, lying, lying.  They’re committing fraud on the courts on an unprecedented scale.  The report of the Supreme Court is a bit sanitized, but the firms are whipping out foreclosure cases so quickly that they’re not even bothering to get the proper documents that prove they have a correct basis to file a suit from the outset.  Some firms have ownership interests in the process servers who are supposed to personally hand the lawsuit to a defendant and they’re both charging exorbitant fees for this service and lying about whether proper service has been obtained or even attempted.  And finally, the biggie….they’re lying, lying, lying about the evidence they’re submitting to the court, these come primarily in the forms of Affidavits and Assignments submitted to support Summary Judgments of Foreclosure.

Affidavits and Assignments in Foreclosure, Liars Re-Telling Lies Re-created From Fiction

There are several areas where the lying is reduced to black and white and submitted to the court.

Assignment of Mortgage

First, when the foreclosing Plaintiff is not the original lender, there must be a formal Assignment of Mortgage executed which says, “The Original Lender Assigns This Mortgage to the Plaintiff in This Case.”  This document is needed to give the Plaintiff the proper legal basis to be suing the Defendant. Many of the originating lenders are no longer operating so getting a real assignment from a dissolved corporation would be difficult.  In other cases, the Plaintiff introduces an Assignment of Mortgage executed by “MERS” a shadowy, shifty, shady backroom dealer of mortgages.   The Assignment of Mortgage issue is problematic even when a mortgage was only assigned from an originating lender to the foreclosing Plaintiff, but in cases where a mortgage has changed hands many times, there should be an unbroken chain of properly executed assignments from originating lender straight through to foreclosing Plaintiff.  (In fact, this requirement of an unbroken chain of assignments was originally part of the foreclosure procedures in Pinellas County, but this requirement was stripped.)  The problem is these assignments are frequently fraudulent.  The lenders know this, their attorneys know this and the courts know this, but they’re all just going ahead and pretending like it’s not an issue. IT IS AN ISSUE!

Affidavit of Amounts Due and Owing

The second area of Affidavit Fraud is the Affidavit of Amounts Due and Owing which states, “Your Undersigned Affiant is an employee of the Plaintiff and I SWEAR Based on my PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE that the Plaintiff is Owed, $150,000″.   In a case where the original lender is the foreclosing Plaintiff, an employee of that lender could sign such an affidavit based on their review of the company’s accounting records.  In most of the foreclosure cases currently pending in courts around the country, the mortgages have changed hands many times and there is simply no basis whatsoever for any person to sign an affidavit stating that they have any knowledge whatsoever of who is owed any money whatsoever.  These affidavits are legally insufficient, they’re false and fraudulent.

Affidavit of Lost Note

The third area of Affidavit Fraud is the Affidavit of Lost Note which states, “Your Undersigned Affiant is an employee of the Plaintiff who had posession of the note when it was lost and while we looked long and hard to find the note, it’s just plain disappeared and we just will never find it.”  In cases where the Plaintiff cannot locate the original note, this Affidavit is required in order to “Re-establish The Lost Note”, a technical process which must be followed in order to successfully and honestly proceed with a foreclosure case.  There are two problems here.  First, in many cases, the Affidavit does not include the correct language wherein the Plaintiff asserts that it was in possession of the note when it was lost.  The affidavit states, “the note was in possession of someone (we don’t know who) when it was lost”.  The other variation of this is when the Plaintiff is in possession of the note but they don’t bother disclosing this to the court.

Laws and Rules Just Don’t Matter Anymore, Everyone Hop On Board The Fraud Train!

So if the Plaintiffs and their attorneys are engaging in massive and systemic fraud and the courts are totally aware of this and yet it’s going totally unpunished and unanswered why doesn’t everyone just get on the fraud train? I mean why not?  Well here’s one way that consumers and anarchists could engage in fraud that would totally throw the system into chaos.  If rebels and anarchists and people who just don’t care executed and recorded Satisfactions of Mortgages across the country, it would send the entire foreclosure system into collapse.  A Satisfaction of Mortgage is a one page document that costs $8.50 to record.  It can be produced on a home computer, filled out correctly then sent in along with a money order or cashier’s check.  The Clerk of Court is required to record it and there would be no way of ever knowing where these fraudulently produced satisfactions were coming from.   While the lenders were trying to figure out how to deal with this massive problem, they would have no choice but to stop the pursuit of the foreclosure cases.

Anarchy Is a Crime- Revolution is a Crime.

Make no mistake, doing this is wrong.  It is a crime. A serious crime.  I would not do it and I’m not seriously suggesting anyone should, especially for their own mortgage.  But what if? I mean what if some modern day Robin Hood or Paul Revere set out with a few hundred bucks and a few hours on a computer and started just sending in satisfactions?  And what if, at the same time these same band of anarchist Robin Hoods also filed with the courts “Notice of Voluntary Dismissal and Release of Lis Pendens”?  I mean when the law firms that are prosecuting these cases are so out of touch that they have no idea what’s happening with their files and they have no contact whatsoever with the lenders they claim to represent, it would take them months to figure out if their law office or their client really did dismiss the case or whether this was another one of those Anarchist Dismissals.

But if the system is so broken down that judges are engaging in systematic denial of a defendant’s rights and if the Supreme Court of Florida is acknowledging in writing

that they are aware of widespread and systemic fraud being perpetrated on courts across the country and they’re doing nothing to stop it,

isn’t a little bit of anarchy in order?

The Fat Cat Bankers have chosen to title their anti-consumer bill the Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act.

I woke up this morning just furious at that name.  The name suggests that somehow consumers will benefit from something in it or that their credit will somehow be, “rehabilitated”.  Make no mistake, there is nothing, I mean not one thing about this bill that will benefit any Floridian.  The full text of the proposed bill can be found here. I challenge any person to find one thing in this bill that will do anything good for any citizen…..there’s just nothing in the bill that does anything except trying to give the fat cat bankers an end run around judges and the court system which is not doing things their way.

Bottom line is the lies, fraud and deception that the banks and lenders perpetrated on citizens and consumers is coming back to haunt them.  Judges are increasingly skeptical of the bankers claims and they’re not just giving them a blank check.  Rather than try and fix the problems they’ve created, the banks are trying to opt out of the judicial system and just strip a homeowner’s rights–important constitutional rights. The very name of the bill is an insult.  It suggests that by merely calling something exactly the opposite of what it is, legislators and citizens will be fooled into believing the lie.  I’m betting our legislature and citizens are smarter than that!

I am hopeful that the Florida Legislature will see this bill for what it is and that they will be sensitive to the rising consumer sentiment against the fat cat bankers and lending institutions.  I predict a big kill for this bill!

The banks and lenders that caused the American economy to collapse and then were rescued with Bajilliions of our tax dollars have caused themselves such problems and have engaged in such widespread fraud and conspiracy that they can no longer rely on courts of justice to help them extract ill-gotten profits from consumers and taxpayers through foreclosure. In recognition of this increasingly apparent fact, the bankers and mortgage companies that caused the collapse are now working hard to remove their disputes from court systems where judges and attorneys can force them to account for their actions. A bill that will be introduced in the 2010 session of the Florida Legislature called the  Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act would remove foreclosures from the circuit court systems and would allow lenders to throw a homeowner out of their home without the due process of law.  Normally I wouldn’t be too fearful that such a violation of a consumer’s rights would occur, but in these economic times when the banks and lenders run the country, to the detriment of taxpayers and citizens, anything is possible. The full text of the bill can be found here.

Click here to find your Florida Representative or Senator.  Contact their office and make sure they know you’re opposed to consumer rights being trampled.

I was wondering what the response would be to the backlog of foreclosures and now it has reared its ugly head in the name of The Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act.

A review of this bad, anti-consumer bill can be found in the St. Petersburg Times here. If it passes it will be bad news for consumers…some of the lowlights:

• If you’re a financially strapped Florida homeowner — 62,719 Tampa Bay properties got foreclosure notices last year — the 53-page bill contains worrisome signs.

• Non-judicial foreclosures must conclude in no less than three months and no more than a year. Most Florida foreclosures take a year to 18 months to work through the courts these days, longer if a lawyer fights a successful rear guard action. So in 90 days banks can theoretically auction the home out from under you.

• The Florida Supreme Court’s newly endorsed mandatory mediation for lenders and homeowners would effectively go bye-bye. The bill provides only for informal meetings between creditors and debtors.

• Even after homeowners are evicted, banks can still pursue them for unpaid mortgage debt. But banks will waive that right if homeowners avoid trashing or stripping the house before the new owner takes over.

With the strong anti Wall Street, anti banker, anti fat cat sentiment on the street, this will be a hard bill to pass, but something will come of it and I’ll keep watching.