This is Rep. Alan Grayson explaining the crisis of foreclosure fraud and how it links to the entire securitization chain of Wall Street.

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One of My First Videos 2/10/2010

This is what made plenty of noise!

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This is the actual “BOGUS ASSIGNEE” that was found…then came many.

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The recent announcements by J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial that they were freezing some foreclosures because of paperwork irregularities raises a key question: How many more mortgage companies employed “robo-signers?”

In a sworn deposition in July, Erica Johnson-Seck, an Austin, Tex.,-based vice president for bankruptcy and foreclosure for OneWest Bank, said she and her team of seven others sign 6,000 documents a week or about 24,000 a month without reading all of them.

Johnson-Seck estimated that she spent no more than 30 seconds to sign each document.

She explained that while she does not check everything, she does check some information, “which is why I said 30 seconds instead of two seconds.”

Continue reading…WASHINGTON POST

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“Unfortunately, concerns have been raised that Ally’s practices are not an anomaly in this industry, and that these bad practices are used by numerous other companies as well,”

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THANK YOU OHIO!!!!!

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – An outcry over questionable foreclosures by GMAC Mortgage and other lenders is likely to hit some states more than others because of major differences in real estate law across the nation.

But ramifications for federal taxpayers and investors will depend on the costs of clearing up the problem, the latest fallout from the bursting of the U.S. real estate bubble.

GMAC Mortgage announced last week that it had suspended evictions and post-foreclosure closings in 23 states due to concerns over paperwork. In order for a lender to foreclose on a property, it must prove that it actually checked the borrower’s loan agreements, and that the homeowner defaulted.

But the unit of Ally Financial, which is 56.3 percent owned by the U.S. government after a $17 billion bailout, said employees preparing foreclosures had submitted affidavits to judges containing information they did not personally verify.

“It’s a real mess,” said Justice Arthur Schack, a jurist on foreclosure issues who sits on the New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

GMAC’s announcement has raised doubts about whether some people lost their homes without good reason. Attorneys general in several states, including California, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio, are investigating.

“The law demands that lenders prove their case in foreclosure actions,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last week.

But Ally characterizes the problem as merely technical, arguing that the underlying facts in each foreclosure are accurate.

“We are confident that the processing errors did not result in any inappropriate foreclosures,” it said in a statement last week.

GMAC landed in its predicament after one of its employees testified in a December 2009 deposition that he signed off on tens of thousands of affidavits containing information he did not verify.

The company said it has “substantially increased” the number of employees to verify documents, provided additional training, and suspended evictions out of an “abundance of caution.”

Ally isn’t the only firm under the microscope.

JPMorgan Chase & Co is delaying its current foreclosure proceedings and has begun to systematically re-examine related documents after discovering that some employees may have signed affidavits in some cases without personally reviewing the files.

Lawyers in Florida are questioning JPMorgan’s practices after discovering one of its executives did not check the details of its claims against a homeowner.

The executive said she had been part of an eight-person team that signs 18,000 documents a

Continue reading… REUTERS

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North American Title Complaint to California–Fraudulent Documents

From: Brian Davies

Complaint to the State of California on title and escrow fraud. Security interest not perfected. Married sole and separate. Not single. Never can a married man ever be listed as single. Let alone I was married and they never got a quit claim release.

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I feel this is the beginning of this as well.

Hat Tip to a subscriber on this:

Erika Herrera CA Notary Public No. 1290845 Revocation Cert 9-29-10,

If Erika Herrera Notarized your foreclosure documents the foreclosure is illegal!!

Employed by Washington Mutual and acting as a Notary was not a legal Notary in California where she worked and notarized thousands of foreclosure documents. Please see attached and inform all of your members nationwide!

She has notarized documents including affidavits and assignments.

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For Immediate Release

SECRETARY BRUNNER OUTLINES TWO LINES OF ATTACK IN FIGHTING HIGH OHIO FORECLOSURE RATES

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s chief elections officer and the state officer responsible for licensing notary publics, today issued a directive to boards of elections that foreclosures cannot be used without further investigation to disqualify voters and revealed that she has referred specific instances of notary abuse occurring at Chase Home Mortgage in Columbus and by the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) to a federal prosecutor for investigation.

DIRECTIVE ON VOTERS FACING FORECLOSURES: Secretary Brunner, in Directive 2010-66, instructed Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections that they may not cancel an Ohioan’s voter registration based solely on the fact that the person is involved in the foreclosure process.  The filing of a foreclosure action does not affect a voter’s right to vote until there is a final judgment entry, including the passage of at least 30 days from the date of the entry because of the right of appeal, and verification that the person no longer resides at the property. Ohio continues to experience high residential foreclosure rates.

Those who lose their homes because of foreclosure may wait until Election Day to update their address. Boards are instructed in the directive how to help voters displaced because of foreclosure, based on whether they move (1) within the same precinct, (2) within the same county but to a different precinct, or (3) to a different county in Ohio.  Voters facing foreclosure may use their current location of residence as their residence for the purposes of voting.

REFERRAL OF CHASE HOME MORTGAGE AND MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC. TO FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Secretary Brunner, in two letters dated Aug. 11, 2010 and Sept. 1, 2010, referred matters of alleged notary abuse in thousands of home mortgage foreclosures by Chase Home Mortgage and the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. to U.S. District Attorney Steven Dettelbach in Cleveland. Citing two depositions, (one & two) of Chase employee Beth Cottrell, taken in Columbus in May of 2010, and a deposition of MERS Secretary and Treasurer, William Hultman taken in New Jersey in April of 2010.  These depositions contain sworn testimony that at Chase Home Mortgage, 18,000 documents per month are executed and notarized per month by eight people, with admissions that:

1. it is the notary and not the document signer who gives an oath who fills in numbers in the affidavits used in court ordered foreclosures,
2. no oath is administered for the signing of each document,
3. notarized documents are not verified by the person signing and giving oath that they have personal knowledge of the contents of the documents, but rather, signers are relying on verification by others,
4. documents are signed in bulk and notarized in bulk separately,
5. notaries know this at the time they notarize documents in this process.

The MERS deposition of William Hultman demonstrates that after corporate status changes occurred for MERS, new designations of authority were not executed, leaving one or more individuals for the former MERS corporation continuing to delegate authority on behalf of the new corporation without authorization by the new corporation.

According to its website: “MERS was created by the mortgage banking industry to streamline the mortgage process by using electronic commerce to eliminate paper…MERS acts as nominee in the county land records for the lender and servicer. Any loan registered on the MERS® System is inoculated against future assignments because MERS remains the nominal mortgagee no matter how many times servicing is traded. MERS as original mortgagee (MOM) is approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA and VA, California and Utah Housing Finance Agencies, as well as all of the major Wall Street rating agencies.”
MERS was created by the mortgage lending industry to:

1. eliminate frequent re-recording of liens,
2. avoid paying county recorder fees and other local taxes as mortgage loans are assigned as backing or securitization for derivatives trading by banks and other financial institutions,
3. monitor and facilitate the transfer of original mortgage notes in the trading of mortgage-backed securities,
4. foreclose on mortgage notes for unnamed note holders, even though it is not the real financial party in interest and does not hold the original note for the mortgage.

Currently, over half of all new residential mortgage loans in the U.S. are registered with MERS and recorded in county recording offices in MERS’ name, reducing transparency, leaving consumers unable to determine who actually holds the note on their homes.

Secretary Brunner made the following statement on the situation:
“Mortgage foreclosure documents must be notarized according to the law. Requiring this is not an afterthought or an exercise of form over substance—the law must be followed when taking away someone’s home, regardless of the circumstances.

For too long thousands of homes have been taken from consumers without proof that the foreclosing party actually has that right. Our courts must be cautious and require absolute adherence to the law. As the officer in Ohio who licenses notaries, I cannot stand idly by and watch financial institutions concoct a chain of title they never had by abusing the notary process.

It’s not fair to consumers or to the employees who by virtue of their jobs, are signing these documents. I urge the U.S. Department of Justice to take up this investigation with vigor and purpose to protect consumers and hold financial institutions to the standards of scrutiny and exactitude required by law, even if it means prosecuting some of our largest corporations. These apparent violations of state law point to schemes that merit federal investigation of large institution lending practices and use of the U.S. Postal Service.”

Last week, GMAC Mortgage announced it had suspended evictions and post-foreclosure closings in 23 states over concerns about employees preparing foreclosures with affidavits submitted to judges containing information they did not personally verify. Yesterday it was announced that JPMorgan Chase and Co hired external counsel to review its affidavit process based on the depositions of Beth Cottrell and is delaying approximately 56,000 current foreclosure proceedings.

OLD REPUBLIC TITLE:

The Company will not insure title to any property which has been foreclosed by Ally Financial, Ally Bank or GMAC until further notice.

Short and sweet.

Source: MARKET TICKER

The Honorable Judge
County Court of Common Pleas

Re: Foreclosure Affidavits

Dear Judge XXXXX, I write you, and the other presiding and administrative judges of the Ohio Courts of Common Pleas, to draw your attention to an issue that may be of interest to you.

As you are aware, when a plaintiff in a foreclosure case moves for default or summary judgment, it will attach an affidavit from the lender or mortgage servicer attesting to the ownership and default status of loan. During the last week, questions have arisen about the validity of the foreclosure affidavits filed by a large servicer, GMAC Mortgage. GMAC (also operating as “Ally Financial”) issued a press release on September 20, 2010 announcing that it had directed certain of its vendors to suspend evictions and REO closings because of “a potential issue that was raised in a number of existing foreclosures challenging the internal procedure we used for executing one or more judicially required forms.”

A number of media outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, reported on this statement. The news articles suggest that GMAC’s actions are related to a Florida deposition and a Maine deposition given by one of its employees, Jeffrey Stephan. Mr. Stephan signed thousands of foreclosure affidavits for GMAC, but in his depositions stated that he does not have knowledge of how the information in the affidavit is determined (Deposition of Jeffrey Stephan, June 7, 2010, p 30), does not know how the accuracy of the information is verified (Id.), does not review the exhibits attached to the affidavit (Id., p 54), does not read every paragraph of the affidavit (Id. p 61), and does not have the affidavit notarized in his presence (Id., p 56).

The depositions were not taken by my office, so I do not opine on their accuracy, but I wanted to draw your attention to this issue. At least one court has found that filing affidavits that falsely claim personal knowledge is a violation of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act when filed in connection with consumer transactions. Midland Funding, LLC v. Brent, 644 F. Supp. 2d 961, 977 (N.D. Ohio, 2009).

More broadly, I urge you as administrators to share this letter with your colleagues and urge them to exercise caution when approving any foreclosure orders involving GMAC. Further, I encourage you to consider whether additional administrative procedures need to be established to protect homeowners who are facing the threat of foreclosure. Issues similar to those surrounding GMAC have arisen in Ohio. For example, my office filed an amicus brief in an appellate case where a foreclosure affidavit averred that it was executed in Florida but the jurat and notarization stated that it was executed in New Jersey. The 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by striking the faulty affidavit. HSBC Bank USA v. Thompson, 2010-Ohio-4158.

Please feel free to contact me or my Consumer Protection Section Chief, Susan Choe, at 614.466.1305, if we can be of any assistance regarding this letter.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Richard Cordray
Ohio Attorney General

CC:
Sarah Lynn, Deputy Chief Counsel, Ohio Attorney General
Susan Choe, Consumer Protection Section Chief, Ohio Attorney General

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Mortgage Fraud

Chase Home Finance, LLC
Whitney Cook
Beth Cottrell
Margaret Dalton
JPMorgan Chase
Lender Processing Services
Long Beach Mortgage
Stacy Spohn
Christina Trowbridge
Washington Mutual Bank

Action Date: September 30, 2010
Location: New York, NY

On September 29, 2010, financial giant JP Morgan Chase announced it was suspending 56,000 foreclosures because its documents may have been “submitted without proper review.” To assist JPMorgan Chase, Fraud Digest suggests that it dismiss those actions where the Affidavits or Mortgage Assignments were signed by the following robo-signers: Beth Cottrell, Whitney Cook, Christina Trowbridge and Stacy Spohn from the Chase Home Finance office in Franklin County, OH; Margaret Dalton and Barbara Hindman from the Jacksonville, FL office of JPMorgan Chase; and any of the Lender Processing Services robo-signers from the Dakota County, MN office including Christina Allen, Liquenda Allotey, Christine Anderson, Alfonzo Greene, Laura Hescott, Bethany Hood, Cecelia Knox, Topako Love, Jodi Sobotta, Eric Tate, Amy Weis and Rick Wilken. In particular, JP Morgan Chase should look at those cases where the bank has supposedly assigned mortgages to WaMu, WMALT, Long Beach Mortgage Company and NovaStar trusts years after the closing dates of these trusts. The number of questionable or fraudulent documents is likely to be much closer to 560,000 than to 56,000, and that will only be a good beginning.

Sample Of The Work

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It was a very sad day for Floridians yesterday when the Florida Supreme Court issued a statement that it does not have authority to intercede while a fraud investigation is pending. Although we may not agree with the decision, we must respect procedures that must be followed.

Florida, do not quit what you are doing because there are many states that we must continue to focus on. Judges need to put themselves in the homeowners situation and understand we cannot make these fraudulent documents up. These documents are sworn statements, under perjury of law and notarized. As officers of the court they must be held accountable. No ifs, ands, buts or suppose here. These are not errors.

Rest assured that The Florida Bar still has many pending investigations with these foreclosure firms and they have authority overseeing the misconduct of their members.

I am your voice, America. I share your fears, read your concerns and do try my best to reach out to you.

DinSFLA

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I have to apologize to Mr. Martinez as I normally do not post full content unless it is one of those post that you must read without being navigated to another place or distracted. Please visit the link below as it is a great source from an insider stand point.

FORECLOSURE DEFENSE ATTORNEYS…TIME TO TAKE OFF THE GLOVES!!!

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Ok I get it… ….Attorney’s are to hold themselves to a higher standard…professionalism…professional courtesy…courtroom edicate…yada yada yada!  I get it I really do!  But my fellow legal advocates…it really is time to take off the gloves.

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In hearing after hearing I’m seeing these defense attorneys walk in with the same timid attitude of sorts trying to be nice, trying to maintain their professionalism while across the table I’m seeing these foreclosure mill runners (I call them runners because they’re not even the attorney on the case just the runner appearing before the judge on behalf of the foreclosure mill) being extremely flagrant, arrogant and flat-out bully like to a large degree.  And what I’ve noticed is that the moment they get tripped up by the more aggressive defense lawyer, they tend to quickly tell the judge how they’re not the attorney assigned to the case and how they’re just present for the hearing and will have to check back or ask for a continuance or make the defense feel like they’ve won something by postponing the sale.  Amazing how on the fly these runners are making decisions for their clients about postponements without making a call.

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Quite frankly for those who know me personally I give you what you dish out.  If you act like a bully I’m going to treat you like a bully.  I personally don’t like these foreclosure mills and what they stand for on a moral and ethical front.  I believe that any attorney that can stomach putting families in masses in the street for money is morally challenged and any lawyer that’s willing to commit fraud upon the court doesn’t deserve my professional courtesy.  Defense attorneys need to stop treating these foreclosure mill attorneys as their equal brothers and sisters of the profession and start treating them like enemies of the state.  That may seem a bit harsh but for every homeowner that seeks our assistance does so with a passion unseen or felt by our profession.  We need to harvest that same passion, translate it into legal argument and bring it right into the courtroom.  We cannot allow for families to lose their home as a matter of course through runners!  RUNNERS!!! Are you kidding me!  We should be kicking their ass’s right out the courtroom down out to the street and we aren’t.  We are giving them professional courtesy.

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I think it’s time to get aggressive and outright scary in these courtrooms.  Why should a judge take us seriously when we’re not bringing the passion and seriousness of the issues to the forefront?  I walk into courtrooms and see judges laughing, I see lawyers talking while waiting their turn and a hearing is going on.  I see judges making jokes and then saying your motion to dismiss is denied.  I am nothing short of AMAZED at how unimportant kicking a family out of their home is.  Let me tell you that it’s one thing to see an adult client in front of you but it is something completely different to visit their home and see a child 4 or 5 holding a toy or a 12-year-old ask you if you’re going to save his family.  I recently traveled to New York on another case and let me tell you that in these judges courtroom, intimidation is not the word.  NO ONE is talking in the courtroom.  These judges in New York are not playing and neither are the defense attorneys.  I see great passion and argument and I see judges looking squarely at the merits of the case.  So why is this not happening in Florida courts?

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When I see my legal associates like Matt Weidner put up a post of frustration and fear that we are losing the battle I get angry and begin calling members of my legal team to have a strategy session and figure out new ways to take back the momentum.  Defense attorneys need to silence the courtroom with their passion and sound legal arguments.  They need to create the platform in which judges and other defense attorneys stay quiet to learn.  We need to own the room when we’re in it and speaking and we need to spank these little foreclosure mill runners and make them run back to daddy Stern or daddy Watson.  Walk into court every time knowing they’ve committed fraud.  Stop being so scared to say it and use every other word you know to describe it.  Say it loud…FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD!!!  Move for sanctions!  They’re crooks…treat them like it!  Stop treating them like your equal, stop giving them professional courtesy and start treating them like they deserve to be treated!

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TIME TO TAKE OFF THE GLOVES!!!

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Source: DISCOVERY TACTICS

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SUPREME COURT – STATE OF NEW YORK
I.A.S. PART XIII SUFFOLK COUNTY

HON. MELVYN TANENBAUM
Justice

US BANK N.A.,
-against-
ORLANDO BORJA ET AL.,

ORDERED that this motion by plaintiff seeking an order granting summary judgment, amending the caption of the action and appointing a referee to compute the sums due and owing to plaintiff in this mortgage foreclosure action is granted.

The Court has repeatedly directed plaintiffs counsel, Steven J. Baum, P.c., to submit proposed orders of reference in proper form and counsel’s office has repeatedly failed to comply.

Accordingly, plaintiff’s counsel is hereby directed to submit a proposed order for the appointment of a referee in the forn required by this Court. Any further failure to comply with this order shall be deemed wilful.

Dated: July 30, 2010

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