Matt Weidner – Fighting For The American People

Posts Tagged ‘florida foreclosure crisis’

The banks don’t want it….and they make the rules….

The Florida Supreme Court should end its landmark mandatory foreclosure mediation program, a judicial committee concluded Friday.

Despite acknowledging the state’s foreclosure crisis is ongoing, the counsel of five judges and a court administrator said obstacles including homeowner mistrust of the mediation program and lender resistance marred its success.

Palm Beach Post

Earlier this week I took a whole lot of heat from friends and colleagues who thought the quote attributed to me was a bit over the top.  The problem with my critics is they just don’t get it.  They’re living in a delusional fantasy world. They are naive and misinformed….and the issues are just too far under their pay grade.  But just read a quote from an expert high up on the food chain and compare his quote to mine…..dead on the same….right?

“You’re not talking about improperly stapling together two documents; you’re talking about systematic fraud in the system,” said Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. “What this shows is that before the financial crisis, the banks were essentially lying to the purchasers of the mortgages about the quality.” (Barofsky Article)

“What you are seeing is chaos in the entire financial system,” said Matthew Weidner, a St. Petersburg attorney who helped shed light on unethical acts by bankers and lawyers to speed foreclosure processing. “The robo-signing crisis is just a symptom of that. Banks have not yet figured out a way to undo the wrongs they caused by failing to follow their own underwriting guidelines and rules back in the boom.  (St. Petersburg Times)

While Florida’s Attorney General is in a love fest with the banks and institutions and appears to have completely forgotten about the pesky little annoyances of things like “THE LAW” and ‘THE PEOPLE”, attorneys general in states all across this country are standing up for consumers and holding the banks accountable.  States like California, and New York and today, Nevada.

Still not a peep out of Florida’s Attorney General.  Yep, Florida, the epicenter of this crisis that seems to have the attention of attorneys general all across this formerly great nation that has been gutted and destroyed by the banks, and with the loyal and dedicated assistance of those in power.  Read on from ProPublica:

Nevada’s attorney general charges that Bank of America and the now-defunct mortgage giant Countrywide acquired by the bank in 2008, deceived borrowers and investors at almost every stage of the process.

“Taken together and separately, [Bank of America's] deceptive practices have resulted in an explosion of delinquencies and unauthorized and unnecessary foreclosures in the state of Nevada,” the suit alleges.

Pro Publica

Log on here to see the video clip…THE BANKS ARE JACK-BOOTED THUGS…I wish the press would cover the full story, but I’m at least satisfied that the Bank Burglary stories get their attention…please view the story, click on and leave comments.

(SEARCH FOR “MORTGAGE BULLIES” ON THE SEARCH SCREEN)

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT

We’re all acutely aware that there is a foreclosure crisis across this country and in the State of Florida in particular.  It has been widely reported that there are 33,000 active foreclosure cases pending in Pinellas County, Florida.  I actually think the number of foreclosures that could be filed would be closer to double or triple that number if the banks and lenders filed foreclosures on all the homes in Pinellas County that were sixty or ninety days behind in payment…but suffice it to say the 33,000 number far understates the magnitude of the economic troubles in Pinellas County alone…and the troubles are even greater elsewhere.

So what if every lawyer and homeowner and advocate that was fighting cases in Pinellas County just gave up.  Threw in the towel and said to the banks….YOU CAN HAVE THIS STINKING HOME.  I can’t afford the insurance, taxes, repairs.  I’ve lost my job so I couldn’t even really pay half the mortgage that currently exists on the property.  If the AC goes or the roof blows off, I don’t have the money to pay it, so I tell you what…I can rent a comparable house or apartment for much less that the best and most unheard of modification would ever provide.

Forget about who really owns the mortgage or who has a right to foreclose or who is owed the debt or what non-registered trust or foreign corporation claims the right to own the home….anyone come and get it…What would become of the 33,000 homes that have now reverted back to the shadowy entities that are now trying to take the homes?  Who would purchase them?  Who could qualify for the mortgage?  Who would move in and take care of the grass and fix the problems?

The answer to the question is, there are not 33,000 people in Pinellas County that could step in and purchase these properties….there’s probably not even half that.  It will be very interesting to see what becomes of all the properties that are reverting back to banks in the new  Rocket Docket procedures that have now been implemented.  If there are 300 summary judgment hearings held a week in Pinellas County….well even if every one of them isn’t granted that’s still hundreds of homes reverting back to the lenders when the foreclosure sales start happening 30-90 days from now.

Forget about the abuse of court process, the fraud, the mistakes the faulty titles that this mess of a foreclosure crisis has dumped in our courtrooms….just think about the very real and practical impact of all this faulty inventory flooding the real estate marketplace….

WHAT’S THE POINT OF ALL THIS FAST FOOD FORECLOSURE ANYWAY?

The BP Oil spill is a tragedy of epic proportions and, according to a variety of credible sources, the tragedy was a result of known and preventable failures by BP.  There is also a growing body of evidence, again from credible sources, reporting that the cleanup efforts have been delayed and solutions denied for a variety of political considerations and just plain old incompetence….(See Wall Street Journal article here.)

Bottom line is regulations should have been in place and enforced to prevent it from happening, BIG OIL should have been required to practice for such failures and equipment should have been in place to clean up the damage….but none of this was done.  Skimming ships in use and available all around the world have been senselessly denied access to the Gulf of Mexico due to archaic law, the Jones Act, that Obama and the feds have refused to waive.

So what’s this got to do with foreclosures?  Well, there is more than enough evidence out there that widespread fraud and fundamental breakdowns created the mortgage madness that led to the surge in new mortgages in 200-2006.  These are the mortgages that have brought us to the Great Foreclosure Crisis we now find ourselves in. The same frauds and breakdown in fundamental systems has now infected our court systems but many of our elected circuit court judges refuse to recognize the long-term consequences of allowing this unprecedented infection of fraud and abuse of their courts to continue.  Circuit court judges must stop and recognize that they cannot allow fraud and abuse of court rules and laws to continue unchecked.

Foreclosure defense attorneys and advocates need to continue to document the fraud and abuses that are occurring in courthouses all across the country…I particularly applaud the websites Foreclosure Hamlet and 4ClosureFraud.com for the good work they’re doing.  We must all keep shining bright spotlights on the frauds and abuses being perpetrated by the foreclosure mills….keep looking out for examples of Florida Default Law and the Law Offices of David J. Stern (wait strike that, I mean David J. Stern Enterprises and it’s blank check holding company, Chardan 2008)

While we’re all focusing on the frankly small number of homes that are making it to sales on the courthouse steps there are a variety of very troubling issues that we all need to be focusing on:

Exparte Substitutions of Party Plaintiff- The rules that permit a party to be substituted are being abused and employed to perpetuate dramatic frauds on the court…fight them every time you see them.

Assignments of Bid- After final judgment, the judgment is “assigned” to another party…there are just too many of these occurring.  The numbers suggest something improper is occuring.

Certificates of Title- We all need to watch to see if the name the Certificate of Title is being issued to is in the name of the Plaintiff.  I have the sense that these are being “slipped” in.

Failure of Capacity- There are far too many cases being pursued by Plaintiffs that either lost the capacity or authority to pursue somewhere along the way or who never had it from the outset of litigation.

Cases that Stall or Die- I am in the middle of researching the surprisingly high number of foreclosure cases that were filed in 2008 and 2009 that were filed and that just did not proceed.  Many of these cases were not defended in any way.  Judges and some parties believe that the homeowners are in modification, but in the majority of cases I’ve found, no modification or deal is in place.    The homeowner continues to live in the home with no payment and no communication from any debt collector, whether phantom or real.  Did the law firm or party that filed the case ever have any business filing that case?

Our elected circuit court judges need to be carefully considering all of this and especially the new senior judges that are presiding over Rocket Dockets.  We just cannot sit aside and allow all this to continue.  I have faith that our senior judges, who are not under the same improper pressures as our elected judges, will quickly become incensed by the practices we see every day and that they will push back against what they see. Having said that, it is our job to educate them.  Let’s make sure elected judges and senior judges are reminded that a fundamental and key element of our system of government is separation of powers.  They should not continue to be pressured or bullied by the legislative branch to throw away laws, ethics and rules in a mad rush to plow through this crisis.

JUDGES- PUSH BACK AGAINST THIS MADNESS!