Matt Weidner – Fighting For The American People

Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure cases’

The fact is foreclosure will happen anyway, no matter who holds the note, Passidomo said. The reality is the borrower borrowed something from someone, and didn’t pay his debt, she said.

The most offensive thing about this quote is it’s coming from someone who wants to give away homes to banksters who are far more guilty than the homeowners they wan to throw into the street…

MORE HERE

From Abigail Field:

A shocking aspect of the proposed foreclosure fraud settlement among Bailed-Out Banks, the state attorneys general, and the Feds has rightly gotten a lot of attention, namely the Bailed-Out Banks’ ability to use other people’s money to pay their “penalty.” I confess, when I first heard about it, I figured it was a testament to the federal government’s craven capitulation to the Bailed Out Banks. (Let’s call them the B.O.B.s, rhymes with S.O.Bs.) But now I know it’s much worse than that, thanks to excellent reporting by David Dayen. The federal government really wants the B.O.Bs to use pension fund money to pay their “penalty.”

Now, readers know I’m not exactly a Pollyanna, but I feel like one now. See, I thought our federal government understood that the right way to penalize someone with a fine was to actually make them pay the bill. I thought the feds realized the best way to punish the banks was to have them cough up cash into a BP spill-type fund, and have 50 special masters (one per state) use it to pay down mortgages, thereby punishing banks and helping homeowners. I just figured the Feds had rushed things so much, doing essentially no investigation, that they didn’t have the goods to leverage a better deal. But no. The Feds see the banks’ ability to spend firefighters’, teachers’ and cops’ money as a design feature, not a flaw.

ABIGALE FIELD

Attorneys General from all across the country have been under intense pressure by the Obama Administration to accept the terms of the Very Bad Bank Bailout by tomorrow, February 6, 2012.

Word on the street is that there was a conference call scheduled this weekend between all of them to hammer out the details, twist arms, make promises, blackmail and extort.

It is also confirmed that the Obama Administration’s key man i the deal Shawn Donovan, aka Napolean Dynamite had a conference call with activist groups where he explained that the money to pay for the bank bailout bill would come not from the banks but from the investors in the mortgages, which means the 401ks, retirement and investment accounts of little folks like me and you.

HUH? Come again?

Wait just a cotton pickin’ minute here. How can ReTHUGliCON attorney generals like Florida’s Pam Bondi be screaming at other attorney generals like California’s Kamela Harris a Democrat to take a deal that amounts to nothing more than a federal taking of private property with no compensation?

Huh?  Come again?

I checked my “Being a Republican For Dummies” book and being opposed to things like that were covered in the first chapter.  Well, go ahead and read along here folks, cause this is really, really ugly….

In case you had any doubts about what the mortgage settlement was really about and why banks that were so keenly opposed to it are now willing to go ahead, the news of the last two days should settle any doubts.

As we had indicated earlier, one of the many leaks about the settlement showed that there had been a major shift its parameters. Of the $25 billion that has been bandied about as a settlement total for the biggest banks, comparatively little (less than $5 billion) is in cash. The rest comes in the form of credits for principal modifications of mortgages.

Originally, that was originally to come only from mortgages held by banks, meaning they would bear the costs. The fact that this meant that whether a homeowner might benefit would be random (were you one of the lucky ones whose mortgage had not been securitized?) was apparently used as an excuse to morph the deal into a huge win for them: allowing the banks to get credit for modifying mortgages that they don’t own.

The first rule of finance (well, maybe second, “fees are not negotiable” might be number one) is always use other people’s money before your own. So giving the banks permission to modify loans they don’t own guarantees that that is where the overwhelming majority of mortgage modifications will take place, ex those the banks would have done anyhow on their own loans. And the design of the program, that securitized loans will be given only half the credit towards the total, versus 100% for loans the banks own, merely assures that even more damage will be done to investors to pay for the servicers’ misdeeds.

Let me stress: this is a huge bailout for the banks. The settlement amounts to a transfer from retirement accounts (pension funds, 401 (k)s) and insurers to the banks. And without this subsidy, the biggest banks would be in serious trouble

Why? As leading mortgage analyst Laurie Goodman pointed out in a late 2010 presentation, just over half of the private label (non Fannie/Freddie) securitizations have second liens behind them (overwhelmingly home equity lines of credit). Moreover, homes with first liens only have far lower delinquency rates than homes with both first and second liens. Separately, various studies have found that defaults are also correlated with how far underwater a borrower is. If a borrower is too far in negative equity territory, it makes less sense for them to struggle to stay current, no matter how much they love their home.

FROM NAKED CAPITALISM

So here’s the thing.  A foreclosure trial should be a simple matter.  An easy case for a big shot foreclosure firm….right?  Let’s take a hypothetical example.  The Plaintiff (or some version of the Plaintiff…we’ll get to that later) filed the Original Note years ago. They’ve got an Original, wet ink note that was taken out with American Broker’s Conduit in 2007.  The note file with the court in 2009 is endorsed in blank so any old person can come in court, file the lawsuit and throw my client out into the street…..right?

Well, hold on there Nellie. Slow down a bit.  Let me take you for a little trip down the rabbit hole.  First a little date to keep in mind.  American Home Mortgage filed for bankruptcy in August 2007, just a few days after my loan was closed.  According to pleadings filed in court, shortly after the filing 6,500 people were fired all across the country.  So a first question I have is just how did my little ole loan get endorsed by some employee of AHMSI in the few short days between when it closed and when AHMSI filed bankruptcy?  (More on that later too.)  You know how things are when the ship is sinking….I’d imagine everyone knew the ship was going down so were all these folks really Johnnie on the Spot and really dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s? I mean while the building was on fire and everyone was running up and down the hallway screaming, was my particular girl sitting there calmly endorsing away millions of dollars in promissory notes?(Stamp, sign; Stamp, sign; Stamp, sign)  I just don’t picture that and, as I’ll get to later, this probably was not happening.

AHMSI and CA case details – GOOD ref-2

AHMSI-1

American Home Mortgage bankruptcy questions and court filing

AHMSI-2

Next, I started carefully examining all these bankruptcy filings and litigation cases related to the AHMSI bankruptcy and it seems there’s real questions about whether and when and what parts of loans of these bankrupt companies actually were transferred out. You see the loans were like pigs that were sent off to slaughterhouses. Pieces and parts were chopped up and sent off to different places…the loans themselves were sold off to one group of investors (who knows if they were double sold?), then the rights to service or collect the payments on the loans were either retained by related entities, or those rights were sold off to other companies.  In subsequent lawsuits filed in federal bankruptcy court all sort of allegations are made about the improper transfer of these parts of the pig.

Another key part of this case comes in the name of the Plaintiff that sued my client to foreclose, American Home Mortgage Servicing.  Well, when they first filed the suit in 2009, I didn’t like the way the name was all loose and not pled in a proper legal fashion, so I demanded they give me the details that our pleading rules require….tell me what state of incorporation, tell me you’re in good standing, tell me there are no other competing entities….and well, here we are three years later and it seems like those questions I raised right at the beginning were well founded and justified.  You see, as the litigation shows, there were in fact two versions of AHMSI, pre-bankruptcy and the fire-sale rising from the ashes, post bankruptcy.  I challenged capacity and it seems that challenge was well-taken at the time….but that was never disclosed to me or the court in my case. (More on that later)

Me being a curious type, I sent detailed, painstaking discovery pointed at AHMSI asking all kinds of questions, the who, what, when, where and hows of every aspect of this loan and the litigation…and guess what responses I got?  NOTHING.  Not a single question answered.  And how did they pull this trick off?  Well, they went behind my back and told the court in an ex-parte motion that the loan had sold and that AHMSI now had nothing to do with this loan. I objected but the court denied my objection, letting AHMSI slither away not answering a single damn question.  For two years now, I’ve kept pointing back to the fact that I was denied those questions, filing motions to compel, trying to take depositions, but the new plaintiff’s attorneys (same as the old plaintiff’s attorneys) scream that the old plaintiff isn’t their client and they cannot be made to answer any questions.  They maintained this position until right up at the eve of trial when they told the court they were going to call their former client as a witness in order to answer questions and get in information they need in order to prove their case.

Well, along comes another interesting thing about this case.  You see, the Plaintiff’s attorney files a “Notice of Non-Reliance on Assignment”.  You see, AHMSI had apparently contracted with a company LPS or DOCS, LLC to generate the documents it needs to foreclose.  Now AHMSI and LPS Docs are in a good old fashioned legal war, AHMSI is suing LPS accusing its old friend of doing shady things as part of its document creation operation.  Nothing like a little fratricide to spice my case up a little bit.  Now, I’m not sure what a “Notice of Non-Reliance” is…I checked the rule books and there’s no mention of such a motion in all of legal history, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing out on something new and exciting so I filed a “Notice of Reliance on Assignment”.  You see, I wanted to bring to the court’s attention the fact that the Plaintiff had produced a document , filed it with the court and were now trying to run away from it like a frat boy runs away from a girl with….well, you fill in the blank.

READ THIS DOCUMENT VERY CAREFULLY

Well, the “Notice of Non-Reliance” brings us to another interesting point in this little saga called, “The Importance of Being Earnest”.  You see, the Florida Bar issued an ethics opinion which dealt with exactly the kind of situation presented here.  How do I know this is the situation.  Well, I just received documents that were sealed as part of the Nevada Attorney General’s Lawsuit against Lender Processing Service.  In this lawsuit is a document that explains exactly how LPS employees are supposed to forge the signatures of other employees, but they don’t call it forgery, they call it “Surrogate Signing”.  The explain it in great detail…really, you just gotta read it here, complete with a picture perfect example of Linda Greene’s signature that everyone is supposed to copy.  It’s just mind blowing that they would make all this so clear and write it down as policy….apparently no one considered that this was called forgery and that if the signature was notarized it was notary fraud.  You see, I in fact have a Linda Greene signature in my case.  Now, as I read the Bar ethics opinion along with the just-released Nevada lawsuit, I believe my opposing counsel has an obligation to bring this directly to the court for consideration….after which I believe the court would have no choice but to dismiss the case and potentially sanction those parties involved. But that hasn’t happened yet.  I’ve asked my friend, the attorney on the other side just when she might make this meeting, but all my pestering emails just get ignored.

Which brings us back to another interesting subject, the promissory note at issue in this case.  I have well founded reason to believe the note at issue in this case was not in fact endorsed by the person whose name appears on the face of the document.  How?  Well, remember the whole picture of the building burning and people running around on fire because 6,500 people are about to get fired in the days just after my loan closed?  That’s certainly part of it, but there’s more.  Much, much more.  The other side knows it and I know it, but they are stuck in some kind of a dangerously delusional world where they think the judge ain’t gonna care about the pleadings I have filed.  Maybe they’re right, maybe the judge will just ignore all of this.

Now, here’s the thing. I can’t just stand up in court and blather on like I can here and make this case.  In court, I can’t just stand up and start making all these wild, accusatory statements and expect the judge to take them into consideration.  Even if the judge wanted to , our rules of procedure require me to go through a painstaking process to make sure the evidence is properly presented and before the court.  And so while it’s just taken me  bit over an hour to tell parts of this story here, preparing then presenting this story in court will take many, many, many hours.  Collecting the evidence, organizing the evidence, then getting it into a form for the court to consider over the screaming objections of my opponents.  This truly sets up as a battle royale.  Will justice prevail?  You just never know until the very last minute.

Drink it all in, folks. Things are bad and only getting worse.  No commentary necessary here, no need to read between any lines.  You can all read the black and white.

The rapid descent into a very dark place has only been hastened as it becomes more and more certain and definite that this nation and especially this state are governed not by people or by laws or by any real justice, but by corporations supported and driven as they are by collision of corruption and cash.

The only real question remains is what happens after the full breadth and depth of the tyranny is fully expressed?  What will this world look like when the corporatacracy apparatchik has ground down and spit out every last bit of law and liberty?  What will we the serfs, the peasants, the prisoners do when clamp is tightened down just a few more screws deeper?

That truly is what terrifies me most. What the masters of the machine fail to realize is the profound danger they are placing all of us in by accelerating this descent into lawlessness.

This nation, these people will only be pushed so far.  The real problem is, the masters will not recognize they’ve pushed too far until it’s too late and there is no turning back.

From The Palm Beach Post:

Florida’s once-heralded foreclosure mill investigations have fizzled as the attorney general’s office has failed to find the right strategy to continue its pursuit and three law firms call for the cases to be dismissed.

This week, an attempt to have the Florida Supreme Court weigh in on whether the state has the authority to subpoena the Law Offices of David J. Stern was denied by the 4th District Court of Appeal.

The decision effectively ends the investigations into complaints that the firms doctored court paperwork in an attempt to speed foreclosures.

FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL

UPDATE: BUT NOW HERE’S A REAL CONFLICT THAT’S DEVELOPING…

 What are we dear people, citizens of a United States of America to make of the fact that one state (that would be Florida) has affirmed a very real wild, dangerous environment of lawlessness while other states, that would be New York, California, Nevada, Michigan, just to name a few have said,

WE WILL OPERATE UNDER A SYSTEM OF EQUAL LAWS THAT BIND PEOPLE AND CORPORATIONS

That’s right, just read the lawsuit that was recently filed in Nevada here and another bombshell, read the lawsuit that was just released a few minutes ago from New York here.

It’s kinda setting up a sort of civil war type situation where on the one hand we’ve got states that are enforcing laws while another state sticks out like a downward sticking thumb, thumbing the nose at the rule of law……

This very weekend, attorney generals from all 50 states are under the most intense pressure from the Obama administration to sign off on a settlement with the big banks.  As the AGs are being twisted, blackmailed, extorted into signing whatever this very bad deal is, they and all of us, need to consider the bigger picture and the law of unintended consequences.  The most recent example of this is Florida-based Lender Processing Services using text from the Florida Inspector General’s report in their Motion to Dismiss a lawsuit that was filed against them by the Nevada attorney general.

It’s an absurd argument and the Florida Inspector General Report is nothing but a corporate-sponsored bit of propaganda, but the text gives a foothold and who knows, judges looking to find some way to affirm a system that has gone wildly out of control might just grab that foothold. In the midst of this, we should also consider that there is a lawsuit pending between a big mortgage servicer, American Home Mortgage Servcing and LPS for some of the same issues addressed in the AG suit.

The bottom line is vast areas of both our nation and our federal and state jurisprudence will be altered forever if the AGs sign onto this deal with the devil. Entire subject areas of the law will be altered with no input from legislators, judges or The People.  This would be corporate-sponsored lawmaking of the most gross and corrupt manner.  The deal is being pushed by Iowa attorney general Tom Miller, who first said he was going to put banksters in jail, then changed his tune after receiving campaign contributions. Pam Bondi is screaming at other attorney Generals, namely California attorney general Kamela Harris , to sign onto the deal claiming that it is the best thing for California….um, maybe Harris is in a better position to make this call?

It should be noted that even the Attorney Generals themselves do not now exactly what the terms of the deal are.  This fact is evidenced by Nevada Attorney General Masto’s recent letter to the feds where she rolled out her list of questions….kind of like Martin Luther King’s 95 Thesis, Masto’s questions should be discussed publicly, openly and there should be firm and binding answers to every single question.  But those answers will not come.  The AGs are being told to trust, and some are ignoring that basic precept, “Trust But Verify”, just follow the pied piper and the Song of Siren. (Much more on that here)

Negotiations are happening and deals are being cut in secret chambers, far away from the prying eyes of the public, of judges, of journalists and all very far away from the antiseptic properties of sunlight and full disclosure.  This fact in and of itself is a violation of the most basic aspects of our nation’s former bedrock principles and law, but it’s a perfect illustration of how we have descended from a government of the people to a government by the corporations.  Secrecy, campaign contributions and side deals are the hallmarks of corrupt government, keep that in mind. The next part of the equation is that corrupt government is not entitled to the assent of the people.

If the AGs sign onto any deal without a full examination of all the facts, they will, both directly and indirectly, be affirming and condoning a whole universe of heretofore illegal and improper conduct and will, by consent, be partners in the madness and lawlessness.  No one is talking about the long-term consequences, the destruction of our nation’s Rule of Law and the human toll in all of this madness. The discussion about the deal and its terms has gotten so antiseptic and mechanical, and most are losing sight of the fact that signing this deal is signing onto a deal with the devil….hastening our nation’s decent into a pit of darkness, evil and lawlessness.

I think we all are resigned, on some level, to some deal going forward….what these people don’t get is that when they sign this deal, that is not the end…in fact it’s just the beginning of the Faustian Bargain…..the devil always wants more.