--- On Sun, 3/27/11, Private Attorney General <justice0927@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
From: Private Attorney General <justice0927@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Foreclosure Case Citations/Articles
To: "Private Attorney General" <justice0927@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sunday, March 27, 2011, 12:22 AM
National Class Action Below is a bibliography of the Mortgage Morass. I have found the following articles, opinions, and depositions to be informative. I have not been able to present a balanced debate between the two sides to the Mortgage Morass question, because no one is arguing publicly that the banks have not already sold the mortgages they are foreclosing, or that foreclosing on mortgages one does not own is legal, or that the convenience of the banks trumps the law. The Wall Street Journal and others hint at this latter position, but they are not so imprudent as to articulate it.
--RobertLStone@yahoo.com
June 11, 2009:
Click here for Prof. William K. Black, "The Great American Bank Robbery," Hammer Forum.
June 23, 2009:
Click here for Neil Garfield, "Securitization in a Nutshell," Living Lies.
September 19, 2009:
Click here for Ellen Brown, "Landmark Decision Promises Massive Relief for Homeowners and Trouble for Banks," Web of Debt.
The Kansas Supreme Court in Landmark Nat'l Bank v. Kesler, Case No. 98,489 (S.C. of Kansas, 31 August 2009), ruled that, where MERS is named in the mortgage as the original mortgagee's nominee, but there is no assignment of the mortgage Note to MERS, MERS has no interest in the mortgaged property and therefore cannot either foreclose or assign the right to do so.
In such situations, MERS is a mere "straw man" for the original mortgagee. "The real parties in interest concealed behind
MERS have been made so faceless . . . that there is now no party with standing to foreclose."
December 10, 2009:
Click here for Ice Legal, P.A., "Deposition of Jeffrey Stephan [GMAC Robosigner]" in GMAC Mortgage v. Neu, Case No. 50 2008
CA 040805xxxx MB (Circuit Court of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in and for Palm Beach County, Florida).
April 7, 2010:
Click here for Christine Springer, "Class Action Certification Granted in Illinois for FDCPA Violation: Codilis & Associates," Stop
Foreclosure Fraud.
April 14, 2009:
Click here for Joe Eaton, "The Appraisal Bubble: in Run Up to Real Estate Bust, Lenders Pushed Appraisers to Inflate Values,"
The Center for Public Integrity (14 April 2009).
March 12, 2010:
Click here for Alec Foege, "'Foreclosure Mill' Law firms Cash in Big on Homeowner Woes," Housing Watch.
April 29, 2010:
Click here for Law Office of Kenneth Eric Trent, "Deposition of Ms. Shannon Smith [David J. Stern's Notary]" in Citimortgage, Inc. v. Brown, Case No. CACE 08-011097 (Circuit Court of the 17th Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Florida).
June 1, 2010:
Click here for
August 1, 2010:
Click here for Lynn E. Szymoniak, "The Most Reviled Law Firm in Florida and the 'Unowned Mortgage Loans' Scheme,"
Fraud Digest.
September 23, 2010:
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha and Brady Dennis, "Amid Mountain of Paperwork, Shortcuts and Forgeries Mar Foreclosure Process," The Washington Post.
September 24, 2010:
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha,"Robo-Signer Linda Green Signed Documents that Let to Thousand of Foreclosures: Linda Green's Changing Signature," The Washington Post.
Click here for Attorney General Lisa Madigan, "Attorney General Madigan Demans Meeting with Mortgage Lender at Center of Foreclosure Controversy: GMAC Suspected of Submitting False Documents in Foreclosure Cases," Office of the Attorney General of Illinois.
September 26, 2010:
Click here for Lorraine Woellert and Dakin Campbell, "JPMorgan Based Foreclosures on Faulty Documents, Lawyers Claim,"
Bloomberg News.
Click here for Gretchen Morgenson, "Raters Ignored Proof of Unsafe Loans, Panel is Told," The New York Times.
"D. Keith Johnson, former president of Clayton Holdings, a company that analyzed mortgage pools for the Wall Street firms that sold them, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that half of the mortgages he sampled from the beginning of 2006 through June 2007 failed to meet crucial quality benchmarks that banks had promised to investors." Standard & Poor's, Fitch Rating, and Moody's Investors Service all ignored him. "It was against their business interests to be too critical of Wall Street."
September 27, 2010:
Click here for Yves Smith, "FUBAR Mortgage Behavior: Florida Banks Destroyed Notes; Others Never Transferred Them." Naked Capitalism.
September 30, 2010:
Click here for Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr., "Demand that JP Morgan Chase Halt Foreclosures in California," State of California, Department of Justice.
Click here for Attorney General Richard Cordray, "Ohio Asks Courts to Review GMAC Foreclosures," Reuters.
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha, "7 Major Lenders Ordered to Review Foreclosure Procedures," The Washington Post.
Click here for Representative Alan Grayson, "Fraud Factories: Rep. Alan Grayson Explains the Foreclosure Fraud Crisis," YouTube.
October 1, 2010:
Click here for Scot Paltrow and Jonathan Stempel, "GMAC Showed 'Bad Faith' in Maine Foreclosure: Judge," Reuters.
Click here for "Attorney General Asks CT Courts to Freeze Home Foreclosures 60 Days Because of Defective Docs,"
Office of the Attorney General of Connecticut.
Click here for Christopher Lewis Peterson, "Two Faces: Demystifying the Mortgage Electronic Registration System's Land Title Theory," Social Science Research Network.
Click here for Jonathan Stempel and Maria Aspan, "BofA Suspends Foreclosures, States Eye JP Morgan," Reuters.
October 2, 2010:
Click here for David Streitfeld, "Company Stops Insuring Titles in Chase Foreclosures," The New York Times.
October 3, 2010:
Click here for Karl Denninger, "See, I Told You So(Mass-Document Forgery?)," The Capital Markets. "The cure for the mortgage documents puts the loan out of eligibility for the trust. In order to cure, on a current basis, they have to argue that the loan goes retroactively back into the trust. This is the cure that the banks have been unwilling to do, because it is a big problem for the MBS. So instead they forge and fabricate documents."
Click here for Gretchen Morgenson, "Flawed Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis," The New York Times.
October 4, 2010:
Click here for Peter J. Henning, "The Gathering Storm over Foreclosures," The New York Times.
Click here for Greg Hunter, "Could Foreclosure Fraud Cause Another Banking Meltdown?," USA Watchdog. " Congressman Grayson says, 'It appears that on a widespread and probably pervasive basis they [the banks] did not take the steps necessary to own the Note . . . which means that in 45 out of the 50 states they lack the legal right to foreclose . . . . So they have simply created a system where servicers hire foreclosure-mill law firms whose business it is to forge documents showing or purporting to show they have a legal right to foreclose."
October 5, 2010:
Click here for the Attorney General of Texas, "Attorney General Abbott Calls for a Halt on Foreclosures While Loan Services Review Their Business Practices," Office of the Attorney General. .
October 6: 2010:
Click here for Margaret Cronin Fisk, "JPMorgan, Bank of America Face 'Hydra' of Foreclosure Probes," Bloomberg News.
Click here for Ben Schott, "Robo-Signers: Nickname for Those Who Processed Large Numbers of Foreclosure Affidavits,"
The New York Times.
October 7, 2010:
Click here for Brady Dennis and Ariana Eunjung Cha, "In Foreclosure Controversy, Problems Run Deeper than Flawed Paperwork," The Washington Post.
Click here for "Miller Requests Mortgage Companies to Halt Iowa Foreclosures," Office of the Attorney General of Iowa.
Click here for Michael Hudson, "Boiler Rooms, Foreclosure Mills: the Story of America's Mortgage Industry," The Center for Public Integrity.
October 8, 2010:
Click here for Ron Lieber, "After Foreclosure, a Focus on Title Insurance," The New York Times.
Click here for Dan Levine, "Homeowners May Gain Ground in Foreclosure Fights," IBN Live.
Click here for "Motion to Compel" in Robinson v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. (Case 2:08-CV-01563, W.D. Penn.), alleging use of non-lawyers as attorneys by foreclosure mill and seeking to reverse illegal foreclosures.
Click here for Mike Konczal, "Foreclosure Fraud for Dummies, 1: the Chains and the Stakes," Wordpress.
"[M]ortgage originators never sent the notes to the depositors . . . . It is a problem of systemic risk."
Click here for Ellen Brown, "Shock Therapy for Wall Street: JP Morgan Suspends 56,000 Foreclosures, GMAC, and BOA Many More," The Daily Mail.
October 10, 2010:
Click here for Zachary A. Goldfarb, "Government Had Been Warned for Months about Troubles in Mortgage Servicer Industry,"
The Washington Post.
October 11, 2010:
Click here for Alain Sherter, "Why Rampant Foreclosure Fraud Was Inevitable," CBS BNet. "What the [Wall Street] Journal blithely dismisses as 'sloppy work" by bank employees is nothing of the sort. Rather, such chicanery is a principle of design . . . ."
Click here for Mike Konczal, "Foreclosure Fraud for Dummies, 2: What is a Note,and Why Is It So Important?," Wordpress.
"[T]he note is the evidence of the debt. If it isn't properly in the trust then there isn't clear evidence of the debt existing. And
it can't be a matter of 'let's go find it now!' REMIC law, which governs the securitization, is really specific here. The
securitization can't get new assets after 90 days without a tax penalty, and it can't get defaulted assets at all without a
major tax penalty . . . . This is because these parts of the mortgage-backed security were supposed to be passive entities.
They are supposed to take in money through mortgage payments on one end and pay it out to bondholders on the other end, hence their exemption from lots of taxes; the tradeoff is that they can't be de facto managers of assets, and that's what 'going to find the notes' would require."
Click here for Mike Konczal, "Foreclosure Fraud for Dummies, 3: Why Are Servicers So Bad at Their Job?," Wordpress.
"[T]he first rule of mortgage lending is that you don't foreclose . . . . In the past, that was never at issue becuase the loan was always in the hands of someone acting as a fiduciary . . . . [N]ow . . . loans are not in the hands of a portfolio lender but in a security where structurally nobody is acting as the fiduciary."
Click here for Mike Konczal, "Foreclosure Fraud for Dummies, 4: How Could This Explode into a Systemic Crisis?,"
Click here for Liz Rappaport, "Wall Street Pay: A Record $144 Billion," The Wall Street Journal. "Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year."
October 12, 2010:
Click here for Barry Ritholz, "Why Foreclosure Fraud Is so Dangerous to Our System of Property Rights," Business Insider.
Click here for Peter G. Miller, "The Real Foreclosure Crisis: Who Owns the Mortgages?," The Huffington Post.
Click here for Diana Olick, "Foreclosure Fruad: It's Worse Than You Think." CNBC.
The mortgages are not properly assigned. "The mortgage is still owed, but there's going to be a problem figuring out who actually holds the mortgage, and they would be the ones bringing the foreclosure. You have a trust that has been getting payments from borrowers for years that it has no right to receive. So you might see borrowers suing the trusts saying give me my money back, you're stealing my money. You're going to then have trusts that don't have any assets that have been issuing securities that say they're backed by a whole bunch of assets, and you're going to have investors suing the trustees for failing to inspect the collateral files, which the trustees say they're going to do, and you're going to have trustees suing the securitization sponsors for violating their representations and warrantees about what they were transferring."
October 13, 2010:
Click here for Kurt McKee, "A Bombshell Has Dropped in Mortgage Land," Real Estate Mortgage News.
Click here for Judge Hazouri, "Opinion in Alejandre v. Deutsche Bank, Case No. 4DO9-2280," District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Fourth District. Requires trial where defendant alleges a genuine question of material fact.
Click here for David McLaughlin, "Florida's 30-Second Foreclosure Dash Hits Wall of Fraud Claims," The Washington Post.
Click here for the "Joint Statement of the Mortgage Foreclosure Multistate Group" issued by the National Association of Attorneys General.
Click here for "Ohio Joins Multi-State Investigation of Foreclosure Problems," Office of the Attorney General of Ohio.
Click here for Barry Harrell, "Texas Joins National Foreclosure Investigation," American-Statesman.
October 14, 2010:
Click here for Paul Krugman, "The Mortgage Morass," The New York Times. "This is very, very bad."
Click here for Alain Sherter, "Banks Are Stealing Homes: Why Won't Obama Stop It?" BNet. "You don't make up documents if you have the real ones, and if you don't have the real ones, you are really stuck. So the idea that the banks con somehow magically find documentatin the clearly don't have and get back to life as usual is a complete non-starter."
Click here for Joshua Rosner, "Why 'Blank Name' Matters and Trustee Obligations," GrahamFisher.
Click here for William D. Cohan, "How Wall Street Hid Its Mortgage Mess," The New York Times.
Click here for David Reilly, "Foreclosure Mess Could Be Taxing for Mortgage Investors," The Wall Street Journal.
October 15, 2010:
Click here for Ben Hallman et al., "Reform Roundup: What the Foreclosure Lawyers Did," The Center for Public Integrity.
Click here for John Carney, Senior Editor, CNBC News, "Sorry Folks, the Put-Back Apocalypse Ain't Gonna Happen," CNBC
News. "[T]he politicians will not let the financial stability of the largest banks in the nation be threatened by contractual rights. Not when there's an easy fix available that won't cost taxpayers a dime. Here's what is going to happen: Congress will pass a law called something like 'The Financial Modernization and Stability Act of 2010' that will retroactively grant mort-
gage pools the rights in the underlying mortgages that people are worried about. All the screwed up paperwork, lost notes, unassigned security interests will be forgiven by a legislative act."
October 16, 2010:
Click here for Kent Mallett, "Johnstown Man Sues GMAC Mortgage, Alleges Fraud in Foreclosure Process," The Newark Advocate.
Click here for George Gombossy, "Foreclosure Crisis Discovered through Modest $75K Maine Home," Connecticut Watchdog.
Click here for Federal and State Compliance Auditors, "Why Robo-Signatures Are Illegal in California and Other Non-Judicial Foreclosure States," Veritas.
October 17, 2010:
Click here for Louise Story, "Banks Shared Clients' Profits, but Not Losses," The New York Times.
October 18, 2010:
Click here for William K. Black, "When All Else Fails, Find the Foreclosure Facts," Benzinga.
Click here for Ryan McCarthy, "'Foreclosure Mill' Employees Got Gifts for Altering Documents, Witness Says, The Huffington Post.
Click here for Kathy D. Patrick Esq., Gibbs & Bruns LLP, "Holders' Notice to Trustee and Master Servicer of Failure of Master Servicer to Perform . . . ," Letter to Bank of America. The banks have not assigned the mortgage Notes to the trusts, have not notified the trusts of defects with the mortgages, and have not notified the trusts when mortgages go into default.
Click here for Floyd Norris, "Some Sand in the Gears of Securitizing," The New York Times.
Click here for Marian Wang, "Who's Who in the Foreclosure Scandal: A Primer on the Players," Pro Publica (18 October 2010).
Click here for Monty Pelerin, "Mauldin on Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis," Economic Noise.
Click here for Tom Eley, "Wall Street, White House Blame Homeowners in Foreclosure Crisis," Global Research.
October 19, 2010:
Click here for Zachary A. Goldbarb, "Task Force Probing Whether Banks Broke Federal Laws During Home Seizures,"
The Washington Post.
Click here for Don Babwin, "Chicago-Area Sheriff Halts Foreclosure Evictions," ABC News.
Click here for Steve Lash, "Maryland Court of Appeals Adopts New Foreclosure Rule," The Daily Record [Maryland].
Click here for Mike Konczal, "Foreclosure Fraud for Dummies, 2: What Is a Note, and Why Is It So Important?," Ritholtz.
Click here for Charles Toutant, "Class Action Foreclosure Lawsuit Filed against Bank of America," New Jersey Law Journal.
"Bank of American has been hit with a class-action suit on behalf of homeowners seeking damages for alleged disregard of
foreclosure process rules." The complaint, in Beals v. Bank of America, N.A., 10-cv-05427 (U.S.D.C., D. New Jersey, __ October 2010), alleges that B. of A. regularly files foreclosures without owning the mortgage Notes and with forged documenets.
Plaintiffs ask that the foreclosures be declared void and request damages for emotional distress, loss of credit, time lost from work, attorneys' fees, and punitive damages.
Click here for Arthur Delaney, "Lawsuits Reflect Widespread Frustration with Government's Mortgage Modification Program,"
The Huffington Post.
"A federal judicial panel recently consolidated class-action lawsuits from across the country alleging Bank of America treated homeowners with bad faith when they applied for mortgage modifications under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program." B. of A. accepted the money and then did not do the promised modifications. The complaint in In Re
Bank of America Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) Contract Litigation, MDL No. 2193 (D. Mass), alleges breach of contract, breach of duty of fair dealing, promissory estoppel, and violations of the Consumer Protection Act.
October 20, 2010:
Click here for Masaccio, "The Dog Ate My Note and/or Mortgage," Fire Dog Lake.
Click here for George Washington, "Foreclosure Expert Confirms Mortgages Pledged Multiple Times, Not Actually Securitized: Document Problem Is Really a System of 'Push-Button Fraud,'" Zero Hedge.
Click here for Gretchen Morgenson and Andrew Martin, "Battle Lines Forming in Clash over Foreclosures," The New York Times.
Click here for Masaccio, "Legal Issues on Enforcement of Promissory Notes," Fire Dog Lake.
Click here for Barry Meier, "Foreclosures Profit Some Equity Firms," The New York Times.
October 21, 2010:
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha, "Florida Activists Read Between the Lines on Foreclosure Paperwork," The Washington Post.
Click here for Judge Anthony Rondolino, "Order Dismissing First Amended Complaint" in Deutsche Bank v. Decker, Case No. 09-20548-CI-13 (Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in and for Penellas County, Florida.
Click here for Peter Coy, Paul M. Barrett, and Chad Terhune, "How Joseph Lents Dodge Foreclosure for Eight Years and Started a Movement," Bloomberg News.
Click here for Bill Chappell, "Foreclosure Defense: A Strategy Based on Banks Losing the Paper Trail," National Public Radio.
Click here for John Gittelsohn & Jody Shenn, "Banks Face Two-Front War on Bad Mortgages, Flawed Foreclosures," Bloomberg
News.
Click here for Peter Coy, Paul M. Barrett, and Chad Terhune, "Mortgage Mess: Shredding the Dream," Bloomberg Businessweek.
"When you say you lose a $1.5 million negotiable instrument--that doesn't happen." "What's incalculable is the psychic cost of a legal system that may well have let banks skirt the law. The whole financial system is becoming a lot less transparent."
October 22, 2010:
Click here for Grady Dennis, "Iowa Attorney General Lauches Foreclosure Probe Amid Fierce Public Outrage," The Washington
Post. "Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller says, . . . 'My first reaction was concern, and curiousness as to the extent of it . . . .
My second reaction was, "How in the h--l can they let this happen?""'
Click here for Chris Whalen, interview, "The Foreclosure Crisis Is a Cancer, and the MBS Investors Are Calling Their Lawyers,"
Business Insider.
Click here for Joe Nocera, "Big Problem for Banks: Due Process," The New York Times.
Click here for Elinor Comlay and Joe Rauch, "Wells Fargo Gambles on Foreclosures, Attorneys Say," Reuters.
October 23, 2010:
Click here for Brady Dennis, "Unraveling Foreclosure Mess," The Washington Post.
October 24, 2010:
Click here for the Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse, "Foreclosure Moratorium Would Help Recovery," Washington Post.
Click here for William K. Black and L. Randall Wray, "Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 2: Spurious Arguments against Holding the Fraudsters Accountable," The Huffington Post.
Click here for Michael Powell, "Short Sales Resisted as Foreclosures Are Revived," The New York Times. (The servicers are forbidden by the REMIC agreements from compromising with homeowners on their mortgages.)
October 25, 2010:
Click here for Greg Hunter, "The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime." USA Watchdog. "Professor Black . . . , Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri KC, . . . a former bank regulator and expert in crimes committed by CEO's, says . . . 'securitized mortgage instruments are all fraudulent.'" "It appears to me the entire mortgage/securitization industry is one giant criminal enterprise."
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha, "U.S. Probing Foreclosure Processing Firms," The Washington Post.
Click here for Masaccio, "Foreclosure Fraud Isn't Mere Paperwork," Fire Dog L ake. (Explains why the banks cannot fix their paperwork defects.)
Click here for Alain Sherter, "The Varnished Truth: Bernanke Whitewash Covers Up Foreclosure Crimes," CBS BNET. (As in the Great Depression, the States are helping the homeowners. The federal government is protecting the illegal foreclosures.)
October 26, 2010:
Click here for Allan Sloan, "Want to Get Away with Murder? Become a Bank," CNN Money.
Click here for Diane C. Lade "Stern Foreclosure Executive Resigns," Miami Herald.
Click here for Mike Hinshaw, "Foreclosure Fiasco Factors as a Potentially Systemic Risk as Mounting Lawsuits Filed."
Bankruptcy Home.
Click here for Editorial, "The Mortgage Morass," The New York Times, p. A-28.
Click here for Yves Smith, "How Did the Banks Get Away with Pledging Mortgages to Multiple Buyers?," Naked Capitalism.
(This may be why the mortgages were not assigned by the banks to the REMIC's. A negotiable instrument cannot be assigned to two persons at the same time.)
October 27, 2010:
Click here for Greg Hunter, "The Six Trillion Dollar Problem," USA Watchdog. "[T]here are a little more than 60 million homes mortgsages in the Mortgage Electronic Registry System. . . . In MERS there is no physical written record of a "Promissory Note." . . . That means in almost every single state, the banks cannot legally foreclose on your home without this document."
Click here for Andrew Martin and Motoko Rich, "Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Demand Recourse," The New York Times.
Click here for Brady Dennis, "Federal Bailout Oversight Panel Raises Alarms over Foreclosure Crisis," The Washington Post.
Click here for Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, "Amicus Curiae Brief in U.S. Bank v. Renfro (Case No. CV-10-716322,"
Court of Common Please, Cuyahoga County, Ohio). (Accuses GMAC of systematic fraud on the court. )
Click here for District of Columbia Attorney General Peter Nickles, "Attorney General Issues Statement on Foreclosures," Office of the Attorney General, News Room. ("The statement clarifies that a foreclosure may not be commenced against a DC home- owner unless the security interest of the current noteholder is properly supported by public filings with the Districts Recorder of Deeds.")
October 28, 2010:
Click here for John W. Schoen, "Foreclosure Mess Will Take Years to Clean Up," MSNBC.
Click here for Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, "Refiling Affidavits Is an Insult to the Justice System," Office of the Attorney General of Ohio. (Once fraud on the courts has been committed, the banks' fraudulent pleadings cannot be simply withdrawn without consequences.)
October 29, 2010:
Click here for Joe Nocera, "The States Take on Foreclosures," The New York Times. (The States are taking the side of the homeowners, just as during the Great Depression. The federal government is taking the side of the Banks.)
October 30, 2010:
Click here for Yves Smith, "How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater," The New York Times. (Best short summary of the Mortgage Morass and how it is the most important cause of the strangely prolonged Great Recession.)
Click here for Elaine Ramos, "U.S. Foreclosure Crisis Spreading," Top News Buzz. (There are more foreclosures than the system can handle. They are blighting neighborhoods and causing more foreclosures, spreading like a cancer in a body.)
October 31, 2010:
Click here for "History of the Turmoil," Bloomberg News.
November 1, 2010:
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha, "Foreclosure Processors Face Criminal Probes,"The Washington Post. ("Does this involve the CEO of a major bank?")
November 2, 2010:
Click here for Thomas Hart, "U.S. Home Ownership Rates Falling as Foreclosure Crisis Deepens," Personal Money Store.
November 3, 2010:
Click here for Nick Timiraos, "Fannie, Freddie Cut Ties to Law Firm," The Wall Street Journal. (Fannie and Freddie dispatch employees to the law offices of David J. Stern, attorney for Select Portfolio Servicing, to confiscate his files on their cases.)
November 5, 2010:
Click here for Peter Coy, Paul M. Barrett, and Chad Terhune, "Mortgage Mess: Shredding the Dream: the Foreclosure Crisis
Isn't Just about Lost Documents. It's about Trust---and a Clash over Who Gets Stuck with $1.1 Trillion in Losses," Bloomberg Businessweek.
Click here for Editorial, "Learning to Love Foreclosures," The New York Times.
November 6, 2010:
Click here for Benny L. Kass, "If You're Facing foreclosure in D.C., Relief Might Be Possible," Washington Post. (D.C. Attorney
General Nickels issued an enforcement statement forbidding foreclosures unless the security interest of the current note-holder is properly supported by public filings with the Recorder of Deeds.)
Click here for David Streitfeld, "Taking on a Second Mortgage to Pay the Foreclosure Lawyer, The New York Times.
November 7, 2010:
Click here for Joseph E. Stiglitz [Nobel Laureate in Economics], "One Law for the Rich, One Law for the Poor: the New Fore-closure Crisis Reveals the Shocking Unfairness in How the Law Treats Struggling Homeowners," Slate.
Click here for Dakin Campgell, Kathleen M Howley, and Danielle Kucera, "Modification System Prompts Foreclosures,"
Bloomberg News.
November 8, 2010:
Click here for Zachary A. Goldfarb, "Regulators Flawed in Foreclosure Oversight," The Washington Post.
Click here for Michael Riley, "GMAC Foreclosure Case May Set Anti-Bank Precedent," Bloomberg Businessweek.
Click here for Yves Smith, "The Mortgage Loan Foreclosure Mess: the Banks' Gluttony; Problems with MERS Sloppy Securitiza-tions," Naked Capitalism.
November 9, 2010:
Click here for Alain Sherter,"How Local Judges Are Putting the Feds to Shame in Halting Improper Foreclosures," CBS BNet.
"Courts in [New York City] are estimated to be dismissing upwards of 50 percent of foreclosure cases . . . because of slipshod --or outright fraudulent--paperwork filed by lenders."
Click here for "'Produce the Note' Success Story Featured in Media Report Describing Foreclosure Scandal as 'Clash over Who Gets Stuck with $1.1 Trillion in Loss,'" The Home Equity Theft Reporter Cases and Articles.
Click here for Thomas J. Sheeran, "Ohio Challenge to Foreclosure Papers Moving Ahead," ABC News.
Click here for David Benoit, "J.P. Morgan Faces Suits Alleging Foreclosure Fraud," The Wall Street Journal.
November 10, 2010:
Click here for David Dayen, "As Foreclosure Crisis Deepens, Another Servicer Scam Exposed," Fire Dog Lake.
Click here for Mike Hinshaw, "Slew of Foreclosure-Related Lawsuits already Filed with More Surely to Come," Bankruptcy Home.
November 11, 2010:
Click here for AOMID, "Foreclosure Cause Home Values to Decline 25% since 2006," AOMID News. ("Zillow report says the foreclosure crisis is spurring a decline in home values . . . . If current trends continue, it will easily eclipse the real estate downturn seen during the Great Depression.")
November 12, 2010:
Click here for Dan Levine, "Banks Escaping Big Foreclosure Class Actions," Reuters.
November 13, 2010:
Click here for William Alden and Ryan McCarthy, "The Most Shocking Statements from Alleged Foreclosure 'Robo-Signers'
(Video)," The Huffington Post.
Click here for editorial, "Insider Tips to Identify Wrongful Bank Robo-Signed Foreclosures," PR Log.
Click here for John Carney, "Matt Taibbi's Devastating Portrait of Florida's Rocker Docket Foreclosure Courts," CNBC.
November 15, 2010:
Click here for Prashant Gopal, "No Breaks for Robo-Signing Computer Stamping Mortgage Documents," Bloomberg News.
Click here for Feldman, "Bank of America to Freeze Home Foreclosures," Public 88.
Click here for "Sheriff Dart: 5% of Chicago's Foreclosures DON'T Have Problems," Empty Wheel.
November 16, 2010:
Click here for Matthew Jaffe, "Watchdog Warns of 'Potential Crisis' from Foreclosure Fraud: First Federal Report on
Documentation Problems Outlines Worst-Case Scenario for $6.4 Trillion Market," ABC News.
"Foreclosure fraud . . . could cause the U.S. housing market to collapse . . . . Clear and uncontested property rights are the foundation of the housing market. If these rights fall into question, that foundation could collapse."
Click here for Alain Sherter, "How Bank of America Twists the Record about Its Foreclosures," CBS BNet. "The company has . . . illegally seized people's homes."
Click here for Brady Dennis and Ariana Eunjung Cha, "Don't Underestimate Foreclosure Crisis, Watchdog Warns." The
Washington Post. ("A congressional oversight panel warned on Tuesday that . . . the fraudulent foreclosure paperwork could upend the housing market and undermine the nation's financial stability.")
Click here for Nelson D. Schwartz, "Voices of Foreclosure Speak Daily about Desperation and Misery," The New York Times.
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha, "CitiMortgage Admits to Foreclosure Paperwork Problems," The Washington Post.
"CitiGroup, which for almost two months has claimed its process for preparing foreclosure affidavits was sound, is reviewing about 14,000 documents . . . ."
Click here for Mary Ellen Podmolik, "Illinois AG Calls for More Foreclosure Transparency." Chicago Breaking Business.
"[L]egislation proposed by . . . Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan . . . is intended to prevent the practice of cutting corners and rubber-stamping foreclosure files as accurate as they head toward judgment, a practice that has drawn headlines and spawned an ongoing investigation into lenders' internal practices by the attorneys general of all 50 states."
November 18, 2010:
Click here for Professor Adam J. Levitin, Georgetown University, "Robo-Signing, Chain of Title, Loss Mitigation, and Other Issues in Mortgage Servicing," Written Testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, Georgetown Universitiy Law Center.
"If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever."
Click here for Tom Hals, "Ambac Says Banks Must Pay for RMBS Breaches," Reuters. In Ambac Assurance Corp v. DLJ Mortgage
Capital Inc., Case No. 600070/2010 (New York State Supreme Court, Manhattan), the plaintiff claims that DLJ "shoveled faulty loans into mortgage bonds . . . , [and] the cost t the banking industry from putbacks could be as high as $90 billion."
November 19, 2010:
Click here for Yves Smith, "Senate, House Hearing on Foreclosure Fraud Cast Doubt on Deadbeat Borrower Meme," Naked
Capitalism. "Ultimately the [Banks'] "No Harm, No Foul" argument is a claim that rule of law should yield to banks' convenience. To argue that problems in the foreclosure process are irrelevant because the homeowner owes someone a debt is to declare that the banks are above the law.""
Click here for Bubba Grimsley, "Top Questions from a Foreclosure Attorney," New Deal 2.0. "Q. How many of our clients have a servicing error, or are what we call 'servicer driven defaults'? A. All of them (187 +/- at press time)."
November 21, 2010:
Click here for Curt Anderson, "Foreclosure Class Actions Pile up against Banks," South Coast Today.
"Suits have been filed in Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts that target Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., HSBC PLC and JPMorgan-Chase & Co. In Florida and Maine, Ally Financial . . . is also being targeted. Perhaps an even bigger threat are the lawsuits that contend the banks' foreclosure machinery amounted to a racketeering enterprise."
Click here for Jack Fichter, "Lender's Poor Documentation Can Halt Foreclosure Proceedings," Cape May County Herald.
Click here for Yves Smith, "Foxes Now Minding Very Big Henhouse: Foreclosure Fraud Investigations Use Law Firm Deeply Involved with Major Servicer," Naked Capitalism.
November 22, 2010:
Click here for Andrew T. Berman, "Sheriff Who Refused to Evict Foreclosed Homeowners Forced to Resume," National Mortgage
Professional.
"We are going to be looking at you [lawyers] for criminal violations."
Click here for 4ClosureFraud, "Foreclosure Fraud Redo: How to Gloss over Perjury, Forgery,and Fraud upon an American Court and Expect to Come out Unjustly Enriched," Zero Hedge.
Click here for Toluse Olorunnipa, "Think You've Read the Worst about Foreclosures? Read This," Miami Herald.
November 24, 2010:
Click here for Joe Tyrrell, "N.J. Court Blocks Foreclosure over Lack of Documentation: Decision Could Have Multi-Billion-Dollar Implications," New Jersey Newsroom.
Click here for Brady Dennis, "Treasury Official: 'Inexcusable' Breakdowns in Basic Controls in Foreclosures," The Washington
Post.
" . . . potentially massive losses from lawsuits seeking to force banks to buy back bad mortgages."
Click here for Alain Sherter, "Why the Federal Foreclosure Probe Is a Sham," CBS BNet.
Click here for Peter Blumberg and Fred Strasser, "Bank of America, GMAC Suspend Foreclosures in Maine," Bloomberg News.
Click here for Toluse Olorunnipa, "With Alleged Misconduct All Around, Helpless Homeowner Awaits Foreclosure," The Kansas City Star. "All I do is work hard,and I get surrounded by thieves."
Click here for "Class Action Challenges Illegal Foreclosures in Chicago," CN. David L.Washington v. Wells Fargo alleges that all service of process in foreclosure cases in Cook County since June 22, 2007, have been void.
November 25, 2010:
Click here for Carolyn Said, "Family Faces Foreclosure after Following the Rules," San Francisco Chronicle and Bloomburg News.
"The pace of . . . modifications as slowed dramatically, dropping from about 55,000 a month early this year to just 28,000 in September . . . . "Citibank gave them a HAMP loan modification and took it way from them- because the house is worth more than the loan . . . ."
November 27, 2010:
Click here for Gretchen Morgenson, "Don't Just Tell Us. Show Us that You Can Foreclose." The New York Times.
"[W]hile banks may have booted a few robo-signers, . . . one question at the heart of the foreclosure mess refuses to go away: whether institutions trying to take back a property can prove they even have the right to foreclose at all."
November 28, 2010:
Click here for Editorial, "The Fed and Foreclosures," The New York Times.
"The banks have never acted as if they bear responsibility for the mortgage mess."
November 29, 2010:
Click here for BizSense Staff, "Foreclosures: 11.29.10," Richmond BizSense.
November 30, 2010:
Click here for Prashant Gopal and Jody Shenn, "BofA Mortgage Morass Deepens after Employee Says Notes Not Sent,"
Bloomberg News.
"Linda DeMartini, a team leader in [B. of A.'s] mortgage-litigation management division, said during a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Camden last year that it was routine for the lender to keep mortgage promissory notes even after loans were bundled by the thousands into bonds and sold to investors . . . ."
Click here for Yves Smith, "Servicer-Driven Foreclosures: the Perfect Crime," Naked Capitalism.
"[A] significant number of their clients facing foreclosure has made every single mortgage payment. Read that again."
Click here for Jim Kim, "Did Servicers Force Homeowners into Foreclosure?," Fierce Finance.
"Many borrowers, foreseeing financial difficulty ahead, were told by the mortgage servicers to miss payments in order to get a
loan modification. But after doing so, homeowners were served foreclosure papers instead of getting a modification . . . ."
December 1, 2010:
Click here for Greg Hunter, "Foreclosure Bombshell," USA Watchdog.
"A counterfeit or copy of a Promissory Note is not a financial instrument, just like a counterfeit or copy of a $100 bill is not a financial instrument."
Click here for Peter G. Miller, "Bankers Win: No Capitol Hill Action on Mortgage Foreclosure Protection for Two Years," The
Huffington Post.
"Stashed away in a drawer somewhere on Capitol Hill is a simple piece of legislation that would have done much to stop the mortgage mess, robo-signing, unfair foreclosure, and the growing claims against lenders. But Congress has not touched the Produce the Note Act since it was first introduced in February 2009--nearly two years ago."
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha and Zachary A. Goldfarb, "Panel's Focus: Foreclosures after Firms' Bad Advice," The
Washington Post.
"[M]any homeowners are being pushed into foreclosure because of errors or bad advice by the companies managing their loans . . . ."
Click here for Tom Deutsch, Testimony before the United Stated Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
"Hearing on Problems in Mortgage Servicing from Modification to Foreclosure, Part II," American Securitization Forum.
For rebuttal, see Prof. Adam Levitin, December 4 below.
December 2, 2010:
Click here for Lorraine Woellert, "Bank Regulators May Seek Penalties in Foreclosure Mess," Bloomberg Businessweek.
"U.S. bank regulators investigating foreclosure problems could impose fines or seek criminal penalties as soon as January . . . .
Judge F. Dana Winslow, . . . a New York State Supreme Court justice, said judges . . . have inadvertently contributed to the creation of the foreclosure crisis by accepting, without question, the submissions of lending institutions seeking foreclosure."
Click here for Cheryl Rosenblum and Matthew Cardinale, "Fulton Class Action Challenges Foreclosure Involving MERS," The Atlanta Progressive News.
"[A] class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of foreclosed homeowners in Fulton County who had their mortgage title transferred to MERS . . . ."
Click here for Preeti Vissa, "Real Foreclosure Relief Can't Wait," The Huffington Post.
"No less an expert than Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist and president-elect of the International Economic Association, has concluded that there is a real answer to the foreclosure crisis: principal reduction."
Click here for David Dayen, "Real Issues in Foreclosure Fraud Laid Out at House Judiciary Hearing," Fire Dog Lake.
"The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing today, the fourth in a few weeks on Capitol Hill . . . . Mortgage lenders and their servicers, by flooding courts with falsified foreclosure documents, have created chaos in the judicial system . . . ."
December 4, 2010:
Click here for Prof. Adam Levitin, "Fisking the American Securitization Forum's Congressional Testimony," Credit Slips.
Rebuttal to Tom Deutsch's testimony of December 1.
December 5, 2010:
Click here for Adam Levitin, "Fisking the American Securitization Forum's Congressional Testimony," Credit Slips.
The broken chains of title to most mortgage Notes violate the requirements of the operating agreements of the trusts that own the Notes.
Click here for Tim Cavanaugh, "Foreclosure Blocked on "Show Me the Note" Objection," Reason. " . . . Countrywide official
Linda DeMartini, . . . blew the lid off the practice of keeping mortgage notes in-house rather than delivering them to the trustees."
December 6, 2010:
Click here for Scot J. Paltrow, "Special Report: Legal Woes Mount for a Foreclosure Kingpin," Reuters.
"Lender Processing Services [a.k.a. DocX, Fidelity National, Default Solutions, and American Home Mortgage Solutions] . . . handles more than half of the nation's foreclosures . . . . [It] is under criminal investigations [and has] produced documents of dubious authenticity in far larger quantities than it has disclosed, and over a much longer time span."
Click here for John Lounsbury, "Daniel Tarullo: Problems in Mortgage Servicing," Market Playground.
"Federal Reserve Governor Daniel K. Tarullo before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate on
Decemer 1, 2010: . . . the problems are sufficiently widespread that they suggest structural problems in the mortgage servicing industry."
December 8, 2010:
Click here for Michelle Conlin, "Caught by Mistake in Foreclosure Web," Associate Press Impact.
"Diane Thompson, a lawyer with the National consumer Law Center, has defended hundreds of foreclosure cases. 'In virtually every case, I believe the homeowner was not in default when you looked at the surrounding facts. It is a widespread problem throughout the country."
December 9, 2010:
Click here for David Dayen, "TARP Funds for Legal Services for Foreclosure Victims Blocked by Treasury," Fire Dog Lake.
"Marcy Kaptur dropped a bill, HR 5510, to . . . allow TARP money to go to legal aid . . . . Sen. Sherrod Brown has a companion bill, S. 3979 . . . ."
December 10, 2010:
Click here for Susan Taylor Martin, "Nationwide Title Goes on Attack against Vocal Critics," The St. Petersburg Times.
"Nation-wide Title Clearing . . . , a company at the center of the nation's robo-signing controversy, . . . sued a St. Petersburg
foreclosure defense lawyer, Matthew Weidner, . . . and recently obtained an injunction, ordering Sarasota lawyer Christopher Forrest to remove videotaped depositions he had posted of three Nationwide Title employees describing an assembly-line process of signing mortgage-related documents . . . . The ACLU . . . has filed an emergency appeal of the . . . 'gag order.'"
December 11, 2010:
Click here for Yves Smith, "New Tactic to Silence Foreclosure Abuse Critics: Sue Them," Naked Capitalism.
"If you go by the Ghandi timeline, 'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,' opponents of bad foreclosure practices seem to have done enough damage as to now be worth fighting . . . . The first example is a lawsuit filed by National title against Matthew Weidner, a Florida attorney who blogs about foreclosure fraud . . . Weidner included a four-part You Tube video of a deposition of Crystal Moore, a robosigner at National Title.
Click here for Paul Owers, "Broward Homeowner Alleges Robo-Signer Wrongdoing in Foreclosure Case," Sun-Sentinel.
The Kachko family was foreclosed and evicted by Deutsche Bank, which had no legal interest in the foreclosed home. "'This
case is a symbol of the crisis,' said Roy Oppenheim, whose Weston law firm is representing the Kachkos. 'It's a system that's run amok. All the rules of civil procedure are being flushed down the toilet.'"
December 12, 2010:
Click here for The Des Moines Register, "Miller Says Foreclosure Investigation is Broad-Based."
"Tom Miller, Iowa's attorney general: . . . On affidavits, they're supposed to say we've looked through the records, and people owe this much, and they're in default, etc., and can verify that. Instead of doing that, they signed one affidavit after another
. . . . Once we got involved, it became clear that there were additional an similar problems with . . . the assignment process of mortgages from one entity to another . . . . It's Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan-Chase, Citibank and Ally Financial/GMAC."
Click here for Alejandro Lazo, "Bank of America Lifts Foreclosure Freeze," Los Angeles Times.
"[J]ust three weeks into the freeze, Bank of America began resubmitting the legal documents necessary for foreclosure in some 102,000 cases . . . ."
Click here for Aldo Svaldi, "Colorado's Foreclosure Rules Challenged," The Denver Post.
"Denver attorney John Prater sued the state of Colorado in federal court Friday, alleging that it is allowing lenders to seize properties without the due process required under the U.S.Constitution."
December 13, 2010:
Click here for "Distressed Homeowners Appeal to Third Circuit in Foreclosure Fraud Class Action against Countrywide, Wells Fargo, and PHelan Hallinan & Schmieg," PR Web.
"Rhodes v. Diamond, Case No. 10-3431 (3d. Cir.) . . . alleges that defendants systematically used fraudulent affidavits and bogus mortgage assignments to hastily prosecute mortgage foreclosure actions in the absence of any party with legal standing to sue . . . and . . . seeks relief . . . under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and state law."
Click here for Chris Arnold, "Woman's Foreclosure Nightmare: 'Like a Black Hole,'" National Public Radio.
"State prosecutors from all 50 states are investigating the country's largest banks . . . . [T]he homeowner in this case was actually the victim of a scam run by one of the bank's very own employees. But despite that, [Bank of America] moved to foreclose anyway."
December 14, 2010:
Click here for Kay Henderson, "Iowa May Bring Criminal Charges in Foreclosures Scandal," Reuters.
"'We will put people in jail,' Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said, referring to cases in his state he plans to prosecute with the U.S.attorney in southern Iowa."
Click here for Debra Cassens Weiss, "Next 'Huge Issue' in Foreclosures: Faked Lawyer Signatures," ABA Journal.
Click here for Zach Carter, "Geithner Blocking Legal Help for Foreclosure Victims," "The Obama administration's foreclosure relief plan, even when banks are wrongfully or fraudulently attempting evictions . . . had paid a total of $231.5 million to banks [and] nothing specifically for borrower's legal fees."
December 15, 2010:
Click here for Arthur Delaney, "2,500 Homeowners Put in Foreclosure While Awaiting Mortgage Modifications: Attorneys,"
The Huffington Post.
"Banks have started foreclosures on more than 2,500 homeowners still in the process of applying for mortgage modifica-tions . . . . [T]he unverified documentation is yet another symptom of a system that routinely seizes homes under false pretenses."
December 16, 2010:
Click here for Circuit Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Florida, Order.
"Any and all sales (auction) now set between December 20, 2010, and December 31, 2010, are hereby canceled; parties shall reset."
December 17, 2010:
Click here for Andrew Martin and Michael Powell, "Two States Sue Bank of America over Mortgages," The New York Times.
"Arizona and Nevada . . . . filed lawsuit[s] against Bank of America, accusing it of engaging in 'widespread fraud' by misleading customers with 'false promises' about . . . modifications."
Click here for Joseph Mason, "Three Years On, Lessons Not Learned in Mortgage Servicing," Foreclosure Blues.
"Predatory servicing was a common concern among regulatory officials and servicers in 2003 and 2004. In November 2003,
Select Portfolio Servicing . . . signed a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Housing and
Urban Development due to predatory servicing concerns."
December 20, 2010:
Click here for Abigail Field, "Why New York Foreclosures Are Grinding to a Halt," Daily Finance.
"On October 20, New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman ended robo-signing in New York state foreclosures by requiring a special affirmation from the banks' attorneys. They now must swear that they know the banks' documents are true . . . . [T]he rule has indeed choked off the filings."
Click here for Samanta Parks, "Foreclosure Disables You from Getting a Job," Foreclosure Data Online.
Click here for John Coutts, "Foreclosure Defense Lawyers Gaining Ground," I-news Connect.
December 21, 2010:
Click here for Andrew Martin, "In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks." The New York Times.
"Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings . . . [T]he foreclosure process is fundamentally flawed."
Click here for Zach Carter, "Federal Reserve Blocks New Foreclosure Regulations," The Huffington Post.
"Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department."
Click here for Julie Schmit, "Homeowners Use 'Show Me the Note' to Fight Foreclosure," USA Today.
"At the heart of their case is this question: Who owns their mortgage? They allege the investor trust that claims to doesn't
because there's no proper record of the mortgage's transfer to the trust. Their complaint also alleges that the mortgage didn't get to the trust until 18 months after the trust closed to new loans."
December 22, 2010:
Click here for Ash Benningon, "Possible Foreclosure Freeze in New Jersey," CNBC.
"Six mortgage lenders in New Jersey [Ally Financial (GMAC), Bank of America, JP Morgan-Chase, OneWest, Wells Fargo Bank,
and Citibank] have been ordered by the State Supreme Court to appear on January 19th--to demonstrate why the State should not suspend their foreclosure actions."
Click here for Associated Press, "More Falling from Foreclosure Relief Program."
"[A]bout 774,000 homeowners have dropped out of . . . the Obama administration's main foreclosure-relief program . . . ."
December 23, 2010:
Click here for Zachary A. Goldfarb and Ariana Eunjung Cha, "Rush to Foreclose by Fannie, Freddie helped Feed Problems with
Legal Paperwork," The Washington Post.
"Fannie executives . . . greenlighted working with a firm that they knew firsthand had engaged in legally questionable prac-tices . . . . Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is examining the relationship between law firms and Fannie and Freddie as part of a broad probe into possible illegalities in the foreclosure process."
Click here for Chris Arnold, "A Mistake that Stole Christmas? A Foreclosure Story," National Public Radio.
December 24, 2010:
Click here for Kimberly Miller, "Florida Expands Probe into Alleged foreclosure Misconduct by Law Firms." The Palm Beach Post.
"The Florida Attorney general's Office has expanded its investigation of alleged foreclosure misconduct by law firms . . . ."
Click here for George Gombossy, "Bank of America's Christmas Present: Foreclose Even Though Not a Payment Missed,"
Connecticut Watchdog.
"Bank of America is threatening to throw a . . . family out of their home even though the couple never missed a mortgage payments . . . . [F]oreclosure action will start today--Christmas eve--unless the couple agrees to put their home up for a forced sale."
December 27, 2010:
Click here for Star-Ledger Editorial Board, "Holding Banks Accountable," New Jersey Star-Ledger.
"New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner is holding the feet of mortgage lenders to the fire: Prove your foreclosure process is done right or it will be suspended."
Click here for Joan McCarter, "'Foreclosure Nation' and One More Foreclosure Fraud Horror Story," Daily Kos.
December 28, 2010:
Click here for Dan Levine, "New California AG Could Sue Banks on Foreclosures," Reuters.
December 29, 2010:
Click here for Chad Hemenway, "Allstate Sues Countrywide [Bank of America] over Mortgage-Backed Securities," P&C National
Underwriter.
"Allstate . . . filed a federal lawsuit against [Bank of America] seeking damages related to its purchases of more than $700 million in mortgage-backed securities . . . alleging misrepresented crucial information . . . and concealed material facts . . . .
In September, Ambac filed suit against Bank of America over . . . $658 million [in fraudulent mortgages]."
December 31, 2010:
Click here for David S. Hilzenrath, "Bank of America Hit with Setback in MBIA Insurance Mortgage Liability Lawsuit," The
Washington Post.
In MBIA Ins. Corp. v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., Index No.: 08/602825 (Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York) (Bransten, J.), "Bank of America had tried to set a high bar for plaintiff MBIA Insurance by requiring that the files for each of 368,000 or more disputed loans be evaluated individually. That process would have cost MBIA $75 million, and it would have taken a team of 24 people more than four years . . . . Instead, the New York State Supreme Court in late December declared that MBIA can pursue its case by focusing on a statistical sample of 6,000 disputed loans." Click here for
"Memorandum of Law in Support of Plaintiff's Motion in Limine Regarding Sampling" (30 April 2010).
January 1, 2011:
Click here for Ariana Eunjung Cha and Steven Mufson, "How the Mortgage Clearinghouse MERS Became a Villain in the Foreclosure Mess," The Washington Post.
The Missouri Court of Appeals [in Bellistri v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, Case No. ED 91369 (Missouri Court of Appeals,
Eastern District, Division Five, 3 March 2009] ruled that, where there is no assignment of the mortgage Note to MERS, MERS cannot assign the Note to a third party, and any attempt to do so is void. Likewise, the Kansas Supreme Court in Landmark
Nat'l Bank v. Kesler, Case No. 98,489 (S.C. of Kansas, 31 August 2009), ruled that, where MERS is named in the mortgage as the original mortgagee's nominee, but there is no assignment of the mortgage Note to MERS, MERS has no interest in the mortgaged property and therefore cannot either foreclose or assign the right to do so. In such situations, MERS is a mere "straw man" for the original mortgagee.
January 7, 2011:
Click here for Tonya Sams, "Cuyahoga County Juvenile Judge Peter Sikora Faces Foreclosure on His Lakefront Home," The
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The judge sought to refinance. "The bank advised me that the only way they would consider a loan modification would be if I fell behind on my payments. I took their advice and put the money aside." In the middle of negotiations, JP Morgan Chase filed the foreclosure lawsuit against him, seeking $999,000.
January 13, 2011:
Click here for Rudson Tren, "Banks May Not Have the Legal Authority to Foreclose," Real Estate Pro Articles.
In hearings last week before the Senate Banking Committee, Professor Christopher Peterson, University of Utah School of Law, testified that MERS pays employees of services, in lieu of the legally required parties, to sign foreclosure documents.
Also, the system used by MERS undermines State recording laws. New York State Supreme Court Justice Dana Winslow
testified that MERS and the REMIC trusts may not have the authority to foreclose.
January 14, 2011:
Click here for Richard Suttmeier, "Foreclosure Situation to Worsen in 2011; How We Got Here," Seeking Alpha.
January 15, 2011:
Click here for Christine Stapleton, "Tracing the Signs of Foreclosure Traps," Palm Beach Post.
Robo-Signer Linda Green's signature appears on hundreds of thousands of questionable mortgage documents. "Linda Green has an impressive resume. She has been a vice president of at least 14 banks and mortgage companies, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America . . . . It's obvious to anyone that many people are signing for Linda Green . . . . Lender Process Services, Inc. , confirmed that Green worked for its subsidiary, Docx LLC." Green signed assignments months after cases were filed, and she notarized affidavits with a stamp that would not be issued until five months in the future.
January 18, 2011:
Click here for David Benoit, "JP Morgan Wrongly Foreclosed on Military Families," The Wall Street Journal.
"J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. wrongly foreclosed on . . . active-service families and overcharged thousands more on their mortgages."
January 19, 2011:
Click here for Dina El-Boghdady and Ariana Eunjung Cha,"Ally Financial to Withdraw Maryland Foreclosures Signed by Jeffrey Stephan," The Washington Post.
All Financial (GMAC) is withdrawing all of its foreclosures in Maryland that were approved by employee Jeffrey Stephan, the robo-signer who admitted he signed off on thousand of files every month with little or no review. "What they're doing is triage," said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer AAdvocates, "They're thinking: we've got a problem in Maryland. Let's get in front of it. But they're naive if they think that what ther're doing in Marland is going to shut the door on their troubles elsewhere."
January 20, 2011:
Click here for order of Judge Robert Lane, in North v. Bank of America Corp., CV31506, Fifth Judicial District, Nevada, Nye County. entering a TRO and preliminary injunction enjoining ReconTrust, a subsidiary of Bank of America, from attempting to foreclose without ownership of the mortgage Note.
January 21, 2011:
Click here for Kate Berry, "New Point of Foreclosure Contention: Default Notice," American Banker.
"Every notice of default has a signature on it. But just like the infamously ruber-stamped affidavits in the robo-signing cases, default notices . . . have been signed by employees who did not verify the information in them [and] worked for companies that did not have standing to foreclose . . . . Attorneys are arguing that this is grounds to stop a foreclosure."
January 24, 2011:
Click here for Scot J. Paltrow, "Judge Temporarily Delays Loan Document Shredding," Reuters.
In a hearing Monday before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Peter J. Walsh, a representative from the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office said that prosecutors and FBI offices around the country have requested that the court deny the motion of Mortgage Lenders Network to destroy the documents in 50,000 mortgages it originated, because the documents are needed for criminal investigations. The judge granted a 30-day delay. In a separate case, Judge Christopher Sontchi allowed American Home Mortgage to destroy 12,000 loan files.
January 25, 2011:
Click here for opinion of Supreme Court of New York, App. Div., in U.S. Bank v. Madero (Case No. 2010-02046), holding that a plaintiff banks have standing to foreclose only if they are "both the holder of the mortgage and the holder of the underlying Note at the time the action is commenced." Also, once the defendant has alleged broken chain of title and lack of standing, summary judgment for plaintiff is no longer available.
Click here for Sewell Chan, "Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds," The New York Times.
The federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, in a 576-page book, concluded that "the 2008 financial crisis was caused by . . . packaging and sale of mortgage loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans."
January 26, 2011:
Click here for Tracy Hope Davis, "United States Trustee's Motion for Rule 2004 Examination of Representative(s) of Deutsche Bank," filed in In Re Tiffany M. Kritharakis, Debtor (Case No. 10-51328 [AHWS], U.S. Bankruptcy Court for District of Connecticut, Bridgeport Division), alleging that it is the general practice of the bank falsely to assert that it is a creditor when the chain of title to the Note was broken and to forge documents to deceive the courts by giving the impression that it is the holder of the mortgage Note when it is not. Jane Limprecht, spokesman for the U.S. Trustee's office confirmed that the examination was part of a nationwide effort begun by the office in recent months to investigate suspected improper actions by banks and servicers in foreclosure cases.
January 27, 2011:
Click here for Gus Lubin, "A Frightening Satellite Tour of America's Foreclosure Wastelands," Business Insider.
Click here for Alex Veiga, "Foreclosure Activity up across Most U.S. Metro Areas," AP News.
"The foreclosure crisis is getting worse." Houston is up 26 percent, Seattle is up 23 percent, and Chicago is up 16 percent.
January 30, 2011:
Click here for Rudson Tren, "Wings of Justice Chase Foreclosure Kingpin," Real Estate Pro Articles.
Lender Processing Services (LPS), which handles more than half of all foreclosures in the U.S., and especially its Default
Solutions unit, is the subject of a federal criminal investigation for filing false documents. LPS shifted the fraudulent signing to several companies, including law firms, with which it has close business relations and sent its personnel to do the signing tasks in those firms.
January 31, 2011:
Click here for John Futty, "Local Judges Get Tough on Foreclosure Documents," The Columbus Dispatch.
Franklin County, Ohio, judges are requiring lawyers either to verify, on behalf of their clients, that all of the documents they file in residential-foreclosure actions are valid or to prove their validity at trial. Affected lawyers are suing the judges, arguing that verifying that the documents they file are valid would violate the attorney-client privilege. The New York State court system began requiring certificates of accuracy in October.
February 1, 2011:
Click here for Juile Creswell and Barry Meier, "Bet on Foreclosure Boom Turns Sour for Investors," The New York Times.
David J. Stern, the Florida foreclosure-mill attorney under investigation by the attorney general's office for filing falsified documents, sold his back-office operations, calling it DJSP Enterprises, to investors, through a Wall Street bank headed by Gen. Wesley K. Clark, for $60 million. This is a common practice among foreclosure mills. The back-office firm provides services to its law firm for a fee. Courts could decide that this practice is illegal fee-splitting.
February 2, 1011:
Click here for David Streitfeld, "Foreclosed Homeowners Go to Court on Their Own," The New York Times.
Saving you home from foreclosure is increasingly a do-it-yourself project. Layers are scarce, and free legal assistance is overwhelmed." Louis McDonald, the chief judge for New Mexico's 13th Judicial District, welcomes the influx of pro se defendants. "They really want to stay in their houses. Some of them have fairly legitimate defenses."
February 6, 2011:
Click here for Michelle Conlin, AP, "The Rise and Fall of a Foreclosure King." ABC News.
"David Stern was Florida's top foreclosure lawyer, and he lived like an oil sheik . . . . What Stern represents is an industry that was completely unrestrained, unchecked, unpunished, and unsupervised." Stern's employees churned out bogus mortgage assignments, faked signatures, falsified notarizations and foreclosed on people without verifying their identities, the amounts they owed , or who owned their loans." "There's a David Strn in every state, sometimes more than one."
February 14, 2011:
Click here for Martha Neil, "Judge Axes Foreclosure, Bans Do-Over, Holds Lawyer in Contempt; Fannie Mae Pulls Files from Firm," ABA Journal.
Miami-Dade Circuit Jude Maxine Cohen Lando held in contempt attorney Marc Ben-Ezra and his foreclosure-mill firm, Ben-Ezra and Katz, although Mr. Ben-Ezra himself had not signed the fraudulent documents. And Fannie Mae pulled all files from the firm. The firm had filed mortgage documents that were improperly signed and notarized, constituting a fraud on the court.
Click here for Nick Timiraos, "U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Questions Legal Claims of MERS," The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Grossman in In Re Ferrel Agard, Debtor, Case No. 10-77338 (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of New York, Central Islip, 10 February 2011), whose home had been taken by Select Portfolio Servicing, a unit of Credit Suisse. At issue was whether U.S.Bank had legal standing to foreclose. The loan was originated by First Franklin, and MERS attempted to transfer it to Aurora Bank and later to U.S. Bank. The judge concluded that MERS does not have authority to assign the mortgage to U.S. Bank without having "specific written directions" from First Franklin. "The theory that MERS can act as a 'common agent' for undisclosed principles is not supported by the law."
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