Housing Wire-

The Ingham County Board of Commissioners in Michigan approved up to $60,000 in Legal Aid funding to represent borrowers affected by allegedly improper foreclosures and possible documentation fraud.

The county’s Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel Jr. uncovered potential fraudulent documents in his office calling into question hundreds of foreclosures. Hertel told HousingWire Wednesday he found 400 cases with possible fraudulent documentation involving Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems and another 100 involving DocX, a division of Lender Processing Services (LPS: 24.44 -1.89%).

Mortgage Fraud

Lender Processing Services/DocX

Action Date: June 8, 2011
Location: Guilford County, NC

An Open Letter to Jeff Thigpen, Guilford County, NC Register of Deeds and John O’Brien, Southern Essex County, Massachusetts Register of Deeds

Dear Jeff and John,

I want to remind you exactly who you stood up for yesterday. I get emails – hundreds each week – from sick, unemployed, elderly people, young families and veterans who are frightened, too broke to afford a lawyer, and being foreclosed by banks that are using badly forged documents to claim their homes.

This week, judges across the country will grant foreclosures – based on mortgage assignments signed by Linda Green, Korell Harp, Tywanna Thomas and others like them who were following orders from the banks.

A Miami judge said to me “I know who you are – you’re that woman who thinks she can stop a foreclosure because the notary signed her name upside-down.”

The hostility in the courtrooms is really amazing. I expect I will get thrown in jail in Miami some day for contempt for even suggesting a bank committed fraud.

Most days, it is my ragtag, never-say-die colleagues in foreclosure (wonderful people) and some non-bank-owned journalists who are willing to speak the truth about the bank documents used to steal homes.

You two were the first two public officials in the country who were willing to do more than “investigate” – who actually took action.

You will never know how much your act gave me encouragement when I needed it most.

Thank you from me, and on behalf of thousands of people across the country who doubted any public official would ever stand up, speak the truth and take action.

With admiration,

Lynn Szymoniak

H/T Michelle

STATE OF MICHIGAN
WASHTENAW COUNTY TRIAL COURT

JAMES HENDRICKS, et al

v.

US BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
AS SUCCESSOR TRUSTEE TO BANK
OF AMERICA

EXCERPT:

The Court finds that the “Assignment”, recored on Decmeber 30, 2009 in the Washtenaw County Register of Deeds, serves to transfer nothing. The alleged conveyance failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the PSA and the New York Trust Law which governs the PSA. The alleged conveyance stated MERS assigned the mortgage and Promissory Note to USB, however, there has been no evidence presented to support the chain of the required assignments and endorsements of the mortgage and note as required by the terms and conditions of the PSA.

[...]

Therefore, the purported transfers, endorsements or assignments are void ab initio or never properly transferred into the trust. The only defendant with standing to proceed is First Franklin, the originator and original Lender of the Note and Mortgage.

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THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS:
WHEN DID THE TRUST ACQUIRE THE NOTES AND MORTGAGES -
A STUDY OF 4,580 FLORIDA ASSIGNMENTS

BY LYNN E. SZYMONIAK, JUNE 5, 2011

In 2010, mortgage bankers involved with mortgage-backed securities adopted a mantra: “The mortgage follows the note.” Tom Deutsch, Executive Director of the American Securitization Forum (“ASF”), appeared before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and in speeches to mortgage bankers, to argue that $7 trillion dollars of securitized mortgage debt was transferred in a legally sound matter.

The mantra became necessary as revelations piled up that mortgages had not been assigned to mortgage-backed trusts in the manner described in the trusts documents. The most important trust document, the “Pooling and Servicing Agreement (“PSA”), spells out in the definitions section that “mortgage file” documents include the promissory note, the mortgage, a mortgage assignment and a title insurance policy. The trusts promised investors that they would obtain these documents for each loan in the pool of loans that make up the trusts.

[...]

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Lets not act surprised in this as we always knew there was something cooking behind the scenes and not everyone agreed and probably disappointed with the approach Tom Miller from Iowa was heading.

WaPO-

The Business Review-

Members of the Albany, N.Y. County Legislature are calling for the county to pull its money from Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

The 25 legislators signed a proclamation urging John McPhillips, commissioner of management and budget, to close the county’s $90 million account from Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and to discontinue procurement cards with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

Highlight of these incredible documents:

MGL Chapter 266, Section 35A (b) (4) provides that:

“Whoever intentionally: files or causes to be filed with a registrar of deeds any document that contains a material statement that is false or a material omission, knowing such document to contain a material statement that is false or a material omission, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 5 years or by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2 and one-half years or by a fine of not more than $10,000 in the case of a natural person or not more than $100,000 in the case of any other person, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”

Once the Affidavit is prepared and notarized, please forward it and your Recording to my attention with a recording fee of $75 for each document, and I will make sure the documents are put on record forthwith.

[...]

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