Foreclosure fraud

[giandujakiss]

So as you know, during the frenzy of the mortgage boom - especially in 2006 and 2007 - mortgage mills were giving out loans like candy, using falsified paperwork, inflated property appraisals, accepting "liar's loans" (no documentation from the borrower), and so on. They could do this (so they thought) because they planned to simply sell the loans to be securitized in packages of thousands, and then sold to investors, so from the lender's perspective, it hardly mattered if the loans defaulted.

Today, borrowers are delinquent, with underwater mortgages, and the country is facing a wave of foreclosures. This has created a nightmarish backlog for the courts - which, in turn, creates a nightmare for borrowers. In Florida, for example, the system is so backlogged that they set up special foreclosure courts, headed by retired judges who know nothing about mortgage law, to push the foreclosures through, according to Yves Smith:

The problem is that an accelerated process runs roughshod over due process and allows banks to foreclose when they may not be the right party, or worse, when the foreclosure is the result of servicing error.

Let’s look at one example of banana republic faux justice in the US, via a speech by foreclosure court Judge Roger Colton to his court on how the day was going to go. It’s simply breathtaking. He says that if the bank is foreclosing, he’s not going to consider any evidence that the foreclosure is in error (servicing errors, plaintiff can’t provide proof it owns the note, which means it might not be the right party and procedurally, means it lacks standing to take action). He says he has already heard everything, there is a lot of unemployment in the area; he is going to schedule a court date, but that is merely a deadline for negotiation. In other words, he makes it abundantly clear he has no interest in hearing evidence. When he gets to seeing a defendant after his speech to the court (p. 13), he rubber stamps what the bank wants without even considering the evidence.... The summary from an attorney who was representing a client before him that day:

On 8/30, I had a Summary Judgment Foreclosure hearing on Palm Beach County’s “Rocket Docket”. The judge spoke for 14 minutes to the crowd, of mostly pro se defendants, about how they should just agree to the summary judgment and the plaintiffs, (whose attorneys (Shapiro & Fishman had a dedicated courtroom and to whom he referred to as “my attorneys”) would be gracious (Ha!) enough to allow them to stay in their homes for 120 days if needed (even though the statute says he only has to give them 30). When it came to hearing arguments which were fully briefed and provided to the court (pursuant to the instructions of the Divisions head judge) he only allowed 30-60 seconds for argument, failed to read any of the papers, failed to review the plaintiff’s foreclosure package,flatly ignored the Affidavit filed in Opposition, ignored my plea for a trial, signed the judgment and dismissed me. I never was permitted to even read the proposed judgment or to examine the “newly discovered” allonge which Shapiro’s counsel said I had no right to see.

Yves Smith quotes another email she received from Florida:

I went with a family member to court in attempts to stop a foreclosure sale….we were there sitting in court waiting….I heard this judge take on other cases….Regardless of their issue this judge just kept on denying every motion that he was hearing. Not even taking the time not even a minute or a second to even glance at the documents these poor homeowners were bringing to him.

People were telling him that they have been approved and/or were being considered for a modification under HAMP and that they were there to ask to have the sale of their home stopped because apparently the plaintiffs attorneys were not aware of this information. As you may all know, most of these attorneys DO NOT maintain constant contact with their clients, therefore servicers even though they may place in their system for a sale to be postponed based on loss mitigation approval, still, it doesn’t reach their attorneys in time to actually stop the sale. So homeowners are being told by the servicers to actually try and contact the attorneys because they are not able to. Unbelievable but true….

Once the homeowner left the court room the judge asked… “what is this HAMP that these people keep claiming they are approved for?”... then after denying a few more cases in less than 2 minutes he said… “WOW… and i got paid to do this everyday 5 days a week?… this is easy.”

HAMP is Obama's mortgage plan to allow borrowers to modify the terms of their mortgage so they can make the payments.

Smith also quotes an attorney who reports that he got an order from the judge approving a foreclosure before the scheduled hearing, and then writes:

Moreover in Florida, the public is being barred from observing these trials. In Duval County, Palm Beach County, and Hillsborough County (and this is not a full list), police are refusing entry, claiming safety issues (overcrowding) when lawyers and defendants report there are plenty of open seats. The First Amendment Foundation has urged concerned parties to write letters of protest to judges denying access, including camera access. That battle has not yet been escalated.

Lest you think that these judges are simply legitimately skeptical of dubious evidence put forth by delinquent homeowners:

Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced his office has launched three new investigations into allegations of unfair and deceptive actions by Florida law firms handling foreclosure cases. The Attorney General’s Economic Crimes Division is investigating whether improper documentation may have been created and filed with Florida courts to speed up foreclosure processes, potentially without the knowledge or consent of the homeowners involved.

Because many mortgages have been bought and sold by different institutions multiple times, key paperwork involved in the process to obtain foreclosure judgments is often missing. On numerous occasions, allegedly fabricated documents have been presented to the courts in foreclosure actions to obtain final judgments against homeowners. Thousands of final judgments of foreclosure against Florida homeowners may have been the result of the allegedly improper actions of the law firms under investigation.

Wait, there's more:

Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.

MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere “nominee” — an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear — while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword.

GMAC recently had to halt foreclosure proceedings in 23 states when it was discovered that it could not substantiate its ownership of the loans in question. As it turns out, a single employee was signing thousands of foreclosure affidavits attesting, under oath, that he examined the documents and had verified that GMAC had the right to the loan. Eh, not so much:

In December 2009, a GMAC Mortgage employee said in a deposition that his team of 13 people signed “a round number of 10,000” affidavits and other foreclosure documents a month without verifying their accuracy. The employee said he relied on law firms sending him the affidavits to verify their accuracy instead of checking them with GMAC’s records as required. The affidavits were then used to complete the process of repossessing homes and evicting residents.

In August, Florida Circuit Court Judge Jean Johnson blocked a Jacksonville foreclosure brought by Washington Mutual Bank N.A. and JPMorgan Chase Bank, which had purchased the failed bank’s assets, and Shapiro & Fishman, the companies’ law firm. Documents eventually showed that the mortgage on the house was in fact owned by Washington-based Fannie Mae.

WaMu and the law firm “committed fraud on this court,” Johnson wrote. JPMorgan had presented a document prepared by Shapiro showing the mortgage was sold directly to WaMu in April 2008.

The result?:

The Waters case offers an example of how wrong things can go in complex foreclosure cases.

While AmTrust, a failed Ohio bank that is now a division of New York Community Bank, said it owned the note and could foreclose, Mr. Waters’s lawyer produced documents showing that Fannie Mae, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giant, was really the owner.

In spite of the conflicting evidence, Aaron Bowden, the retired judge overseeing the case, made a summary judgment on Aug. 3, ruling that the property should go back to AmTrust.

When contacted by a reporter on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Fannie Mae confirmed that it owned the note.

David Tong, the lawyer representing AmTrust in the case, declined to comment on the matter. But on Friday, he did an about-face, filing papers with the court acknowledging that Fannie Mae owns the note.

[I]t is paradoxical, say lawyers representing homeowners in the cases, that Florida’s attorney general acknowledges problems in the cases while retired judges, intent on reducing caseloads, seem unconcerned about those same problems — like flaws in the banks’ documentation of ownership.

“The most shocking thing of all is the A.G.’s office understands the problem and yet the court system turns a blind eye to the fact that mortgage servicers are the problem,” says Margery Golant, a lawyer in South Florida and a former executive at Ocwen, a large mortgage servicing company. “In the meantime, neighborhoods are being destroyed, homeowners’ associations are being destroyed, and the tax base is being clobbered.”

Lauderdale man's home sold out from under him in foreclosure mistake:

When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home in December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.

Grodensky knew nothing about the foreclosure until July, when he learned that the title to his home had been transferred to a government-backed lender.

Bank of America has acknowledged the error and will correct it at its own expense, said spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens.

Grodensky's story and other tales of foreclosure mistakes started popping up recently across South Florida.

In Florida courts, which have been swamped with foreclosure cases for several years, mistakes "happen all the time," said foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner in St. Petersburg. "It's just not getting reported."

And the legal efforts required to resolve a foreclosure mistake are complicated. "Unwrapping it is like unwrapping Fort Knox," said Carol Asbury, a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure attorney. "It's very difficult."

Grodensky said he spent months trying to figure out what happened but said his questions to Bank of America and to the law firm Florida Default Law Group that handled the foreclosure have not been answered. Florida Default Law Group could not be reached for comment, despite several attempts by phone and e-mail. Grodensky said he has filed a claim with his title insurance company, but that, too, has not resulted in any action.

It wasn't until last week, when Grodensky brought his problem to the attention of the Sun Sentinel, that it began to be resolved.

And, by the way, Census finds record gap between rich and poor:

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.
A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.