Read this Final Judgment entered against disbarred Florida Foreclosure King David Stern. Finally, after all these years, there is some real and tangible relief for consumers who were battered and abused ground into the foreclosure abuse process.
And while this judgement is certainly good, there was and remains so much more abuse out there. The consumers and citizens of this state need to ask why it is that government has failed them so dramatically…allowing gross and systemic abuses to go completely unpunished.
It’s not just consumers who have been abused, and who continue to be abused. In many cases, it’s actually taxpayers as a whole who continue to foot the bill for long term and persistent abuses….not just those who are in foreclosure, but every single taxpayer…at the federal, at the state and at the local level. The federal government pays billions of dollars for the improper processing of loans and conduct in foreclosure cases….a fact demonstrated by the National Mortgage Settlement. State government suffers because our court system is the playground of the banks, taking up hundreds of millions of dollars to process foreclosure files that have been wrecked and abandoned by the likes of David Stern…a fact demonstrated by the fact that he just abandoned his files…he was ultimately disbarred, but paid nothing back to taxpayers who wasted millions cleaning up the mess he left when he walked out. But what about the local government impact? Well, there’s not yet been any real attempt to collect from the local governments who suffer millions in losses related to abandoned and destroyed homes….or the systemic losses when entire communities die.
This judgement is just a start…and it should be just that…only a start.
Prominent foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner said the judgment itself is landmark because it was won under the unfair trade practices act and is the “first sign of any real consequence against people who have done so much harm.”
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to investigate Florida’s large foreclosure mills using the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, but was ultimately told by the courts that she couldn’t pursue the firms under the act.
– See more at: https://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/realtime/2014/01/27/class-action-win-against-foreclosure-king-stern/#sthash.bHd6SfM5.8CjUEy6X.dpuf
