Every week, I am contacted by consumers presenting odd, creative and sometimes off the wall foreclosure defenses. Occasionally, some of these creative defenses have some kind of merit, but more often than not, especially in the case of most of the quiet title, copyright, admiralty and other bizarre concepts that are being sold to consumers, they are simply scams.
I have seen consumers that have been convinced to record all sorts of documents in the public records, things like, “notice of name copyright” or “notice of revocation of trustee power” or “satisfaction of mortgage” and all kinds of things that sound too good to be true and in fact are because they are not real.
Well, Florida’s Legislators, who have made it entirely clear that they will not do one single thing to punish the banks for all their fraud, their lies, their surrogate signing and robosigning and just plain old fraud, are instead turning their attention to the kinds of things that I mentioned first….while clearly ignoring all the big bank and institutional fraud. The bill they will pass this legislative session, (a bill entirely different than Florida’s new (un)Fair Foreclosure bill, could make a whole lot of pro se filings felonies.
Here’s the text:
Prohibits certain actions relating to filing of certain false or fraudulent documents affecting real or personal property; prohibits certain actions done with intent to intimidate or harass any person in connection with any license, authorization, claim, demand, or account; provides for reclassification of certain offenses; provides that certain offenders forfeit gain-time or early release credits; provides that adjudication of guilt or imposition of sentence for violations may not be suspended, deferred, or withheld; provides for injunctions prohibiting violators from filing certain documents; provides for actions to obtain sealing of certain records; provides for ex parte injunctions; provides for hearings; provides for maintaining certain records under seal; provides legislative intent relating to provisions prohibiting certain actions under color of law against persons or property.