Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure mill’
Hey Foreclosure Mill….Just Who Are You Representing?
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
My friend Mark Stopa is questioning the very same thing that I’ve been thinking about in his latest post…
POWERFUL- RACHEL MADDOW ON EVICTION PROTECTION
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
Fraudclosure Mill Mocks and Makes Fun of Foreclosure Defendants….
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
Apparently the fine (I could be more honest and forthright about how such a payment should be characterized) that it takes to resolve allegations of widespread wrongdoing, destruction of civil rights and due process, flagrant disregard of court rules and procedures and outright disregard for the Rule of Law is a mere $2 million dollars.
That’s the fine that the law firm Steven Baum recently agreed to pay, the same amount foreclosure mill in Florida Marshall Watson recently agreed to pay to Florida’s Attorney General.
Paltry fines like are no kind of a deterrent. They’re not even really so much as a bump in the road….
It’s beyond disgusting or tragic or treasonous….it’s beyond diabolical and frankly is in the category of biblical. Biblical in the sense that it’s just more evidence of a full scale breakdown of our country. We’ve gone past the point where the foundation is cracked or crumbling…the whole structure has sunk into a pit of darkness, deceit and evil.
Here in Florida, as usual, the unspeakable nature of the things moves way past absurd….I mean, what words or commentary can be used to comment on a Chief Judge moving directly from the bench and into a job for a notorious Foreclosure Mill, allegedly under an alleged “investigation”, allegedly? How can it get more mind boggling than that?
Former Broward Chief Judge Victor Tobin moderated a panel on the state of foreclosures in the courts. Tobin resigned from the bench in May to work for the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, which paid $2 million to settle a state attorney general’s investigation into its foreclosure practices this year. Tobin said he wouldn’t call his new job “fun,” but said it was a natural evolution.
“My job is to oversee the operation as best I can,” he said. “That was my job in the courthouse also.”
How can people have any confidence in any level of government when this occurs and it’s not even questioned? Can we slip any further into truly Kafkaesque/Orwellian/StarChamber reality?
Huh? A former Chief Judge now working deeper in the belly of the beast moderates a panel on Fraudclosure that includes current judges…Florida is clearly on one of the lower levels of the descent into hell. More on that here: Palm Beach Post
But, I digress. That’s old news. Long forgotten, no one cares anymore. Move along, nothing here to see. I was going to talk about Halloween. Oh, our beloved national holiday Halloween.
Halloween is not a holiday, it’s a powerful and timely reminder of what a monstrously evil country we have become. Halloween is a celebration and glorification of the occult, of the devil, of evil. And the celebration has been elevated in recent years in this country into a national holiday. And why not? It’s kind of an accurate expression of our current national identity….
If you’re not already disgusted by what you see happening in the ugly space that is Fraudclosure, Please read the article in today’s New York Times to see how one Fraudclosure firm chooses to glorify their segment and unique contribution into this national tragedy…
Next, read a little bit about the teensy weensy fine paid:
The agreement between the Baum firm and the U.S. attorney’s office resolves an investigation into Baum’s mortgage foreclosure-related practices, specifically whether the firm, on behalf of its lender clients, filed misleading pleadings, affidavits and mortgage assignments in state and federal courts in New York, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
“In mortgage foreclosure proceedings, there are no excuses for sloppy practices that could lead to someone mistakenly losing their home,” Bharara said. “Homeowners facing foreclosure cannot afford to have faulty paperwork or inadequate evidence submitted.” The agreement will help “minimize that risk,” he said.
Bevilaqua v. Rodriguez-Toxic Titles, “innocent” homeowners OUT OF LUCK- The Real Cost of Fraudclosure.
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
You’d have to be out of your mind to by a home after a foreclosure sale. Courts can ignore issues like standing and capacity and fraud and abuse of homeowners, but at the end of the line if the process is so corrupted and fatally flawed that the market will not purchase the properties, what’s the point of continuing with all this slop?
Well, for any brave investor or soul that thinks they might want to jump into the toxic stew that is fraudclosure and make their killing buying REO property, read the cautionary tale that is Bevilacqua. The question before the Supreme Court was this:
Whether a person who holds title to property by
virtue of a recorded deed, but whose title is clouded
by a possihle adverse claim due to deficiencies in a
prior foreclosure in his chain of title, has standing
to bring a petition to invalidate the claims of prior owners?
In English:
If a foreclosure mill or bank committed fraud or otherwise engaged in improper conduct (like robosigning) to get a foreclosure and I purchase the home, am I safe from claims by the prior owner?
The answer is…..NO. If you buy a home and anyone played games or cut corners along the way, you’re out of luck. Or as the headline from Bloomberg Screams:
Buyers Can’t Sue After Bad Foreclosure Sale!
A Massachusetts man who bought property in a faulty foreclosure sale isn’t the true owner and so doesn’t have the right to sue over it, the state’s high court ruled.
The Supreme Judicial Court, which in January found that banks can’t foreclose on a house if they don’t own the mortgage, went one step further in a closely watched case and said a sale after that foreclosure doesn’t transfer the property. Therefore, the buyer couldn’t bring his court action against a previous owner, the court ruled. (Full Bloomberg Article Here)
SJC-10880_01_Appellant_Bevilacqua_Brief
California AG Kamala Harris, Pam Bondi, David Stern and Occupy Wall Street
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
This nation is collapsing under the weight of a flawed, fraudulent and criminal economic and political system. The epicenter is indeed Wall Street, that den of sin and inequity where the wealth and wages of an entire nation are sucked in and concentrated then swirled around before it all goes disappearing down some drain and flushed into a world unknown.
We don’t know where the money goes or why because the traders and the bankers and the hedge fund managers and executives consistently used a portion of their ill-earned gains to pay off the elected and appointed “leaders” and convince them either not to inquire where the money was going or to accept absurd and/or complex explanations that defy our understanding. Geithner, Paulson, Bernake, Johnson, Bush, Bush, Clinton and every elected member of Congress and every elected official who sits in any seat in this country. They are all responsible. At some point in time perhaps some of them understood where this was going and what they were doing. Hank Paulson spent his entire career at Goldman Sachs and Geithner was born, bred and baptized by the banks…no surprise that their worldview is entirely focused on supporting these institutions.
And what’s going on closer to home, down where all this trouble manifests itself in our daily lives? More unemployment, extraordinary inflation, a further collapsing economy and all of this laid on top of a seething anger and discontent that is bubbling all across this country. It is beyond dispute now that extraordinary abuses of our financial, economic and legal system were occurring all across this state….we see some people taking to the streets in New York. But Florida? It’s been years now since the public first learned of all the investigations. And what has come of those investigations? Nothing. They all still walk free….it’s time to wake up.
A former colleague, friend and top manager of fallen foreclosure titan David J. Stern complains in a new deposition that she was laid off via email, lied to about her position in the law firm and ignored when she voiced concerns about the feverish pace at which foreclosures were processed.
Cheryl Samons, the former second-in-command of Stern’s Plantation-based firm, was deposed in April in relation to a class-action lawsuit filed by former Stern employees. The suit alleges workers were terminated last fall without the 60 days notice required by federal law .
A Miami federal judge approved class-action status for the case Monday.
The deposition, which was posted on a foreclosure defense attorney’s blog Thursday, offers some insight into how the firm grew to become the largest so-called “foreclosure mill” in the state before falling apart amid allegations of robo-signing and the announcement of the Florida attorney general’s investigation. Palm Beach Post
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris pulled out of settlement negotiations with the nation’s biggest banks over alleged foreclosure abuses, calling the proposed deal “inadequate for California homeowners.”
The decision by Ms. Harris delivers a serious blow to efforts by the Obama administration and 50 state attorneys general to forge a $25 billion settlement with the nation’s largest banks over “robo-signing” and other questionable foreclosure practices.
Her actions follow the withdrawal of New York from the talks. Without the participation of California and New York in the negotiations, banks will be far less likely to agree to the multibillion dollar settlement that federal and state officials have spent months pursuing.
California remained a critical constituent for any deal because it has more borrowers who are underwater, or owe more than their homes are worth, than any other state. California also has more borrowers that are behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure than any other state but Florida. Wall Street Journal
Florida Fraduclosure Investigations: A Snuff Film
Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
For an instant, a brief moment in time, Floridians and consumers across this country had public officials and fighters who were standing up to the banks and institutions and fighting for the good of the American people. But all of that has changed now. The fighters are getting snuffed out, one by one.
The most dramatic example is firing of two attorneys who worked for Florida’s Attorney General, Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson. No one knows just how far their investigations took them, but what we do know is they had issued countless subpoenas to the foreclosure mills, the process servers and other companies and parties that are responsible for Fraudclosure. Who knows just how much information they had collected, how many crimes were documented? What we do know is that these investigations did not sit well with the people that are now in power in this state. In the wake of the disclosures of wrongdoing, one Senator (Joe Negron-R) had the gall and audacity to suggest that “foreclosure mill” was not a bad term at all, it merely meant that the law firm was fast and efficient.
Well all of that is done now, I’m sure the investigations are dead. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer dollars are wasted now because these promising investigations were just snuffed out? These attorneys and fighters, shown to the door? But the facts and the information they uncovered cannot hide forever. If you’re in the Broward County area, and you’re in foreclosure, you should hire these two attorneys to fight for you….they know where the skeletons are buried. As for Florida’s Attorney General, I just hope voters have a decent memory and that this whole stinking episode becomes a big nail in the coffin of her young political career….from the Washington Post:
Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson had headed up investigations on behalf of the Florida attorney general’s office for more than a year into the fraudulent foreclosure practices that had become rampant in the Sunshine State. They issued subpoenas and conducted scores of interviews, building a litany of cases that documented the most egregious abuses.
That is, until the Friday afternoon in May when they were called into a supervisor’s office and forced to resign abruptly and without explanation.
“It just came out of nowhere,” said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s economic crimes section for more than three years. “We were completely stunned.”
Less than a month before they were forced out, a supervisor cited their work as “instrumental in triggering a nationwide review of such practices.” Now, Edwards is convinced their sudden dismissals will have “a chilling effect” on those probes into the shoddy foreclosure practices that caused national outrage when they made headlines last fall.
