Hundreds of thousands of home foreclosure lawsuits have focused judicial scrutiny on the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (“MERS”). This Article updates and expands upon an earlier piece by exploring the implications of state Supreme Court decisions holding that MERS is not a mortgagee in security agreements that list it as such. In particular this Article looks at: (1) the consequences on land title records of recording mortgages in the name of a purported mortgagee that is not actually mortgagee as a matter of law; (2) whether a security agreement that fails to name an actual mortgagee can successfully convey a property interest; and (3) whether county governments may be entitled to reimbursement of recording fees avoided through the use of false statements associated with the MERS system. This Article concludes with a discussion of steps needed to rebuild trustworthy real property ownership records.
John Hooge Co-Writes Article Surveying MERS Mortgage Loan Cases
Half the residential loans in this country are MERS mortgage loans and are being given increased scrutiny both in bankruptcy cases and foreclosure actions. John Hooge and Laurie Williams, the Wichita, KS. Chapter 13 Trustee, have co-written an article, “Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.: A Survey of Cases Discussing MERS’ Authority to Act “.
Marcia Heroux Pounds, Sun Sentinel
August 20, 2010
After months of wrangling with CitiMortgage, Dennis and Joyce Brown got fed up and hired an attorney to fight CitiMortgage’s foreclosure on their Lauderdale Lakes home. The Browns claim they are victims of fabricated documents used to foreclose after CitiMortgage failed to credit them for mortgage payments.
“They ran my blood pressure up so bad,” said Dennis Brown, who hired Fort Lauderdale lawyer Kenneth Eric Trent to fight the foreclosure.
CitiMortgage and its lawyers, David Stern Law Offices, voluntarily withdrew the case against the Browns in Broward County Circuit Court on June 16. But the Browns can’t rest easy. Recently, they’ve received newforeclosure letters from another lawyer representing CitiMortgage.
The Browns’ story is just one example of foreclosures resulting from allegedly fraudulent mortgage assignments and other tactics that “eliminate due process for the homeowner,” Trent said.
He also is suing Stern and his Plantation law firm in federal court in a separate foreclosure case with similar allegations.
In that lawsuit, on behalf of Oakland Park homeowner Ignacio Damian Figueroa, Trent contends that Stern and a mortgage registration firmgenerated fraudulent mortgage documents that are intentionally ambiguous to cloud the real ownership of the Figueroa’s mortgage note.
The foreclosure practices of Stern and two other law firms are under investigation by the Florida Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general recently requested records going back to Jan. 1, 2008, from Stern as well as The Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, P.A., and Shapiro & Fishman, LLP.
Thousands of Florida homeowners may have lost their homes as a result of improper actions by the firms under investigation. In announcing the probe, Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican who is a running for governor, said the law firms may have presented fabricated documents in court to speed the foreclosure process and obtain judgments against homeowners.
Jeffrey Tew, a Miami attorney who represents Stern’s firm, said while the attorney general may have received complaints, there “will not be evidence of fraud.” Due to the large volume of foreclosures, there may have been clerical mistakes, he said. “In past two to three years, the Stern law firm has processed probably 100,000 foreclosures.”
But he disputes that Stern’s law firm fabricated any documents. “I haven’t seen any example where a bank didn’t have a mortgage in default,” Tew said.
Stern represents well known mortgage lenders including Bank of America, Chase, CitiMortgage, Inc., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HSBC, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo. These lenders also are the shareholders of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS).
MERS is at the heart of the matter for Trent and other lawyers trying to stop what they view as illegal foreclosures in the nation.
The mortgage registry was created by lenders in the early 1990s to track home loans, including those repackaged as securities and sold to investors. When such loans were in foreclosure, MERS – not the original lender — was often the entity foreclosing. Some lawyers have successfully fought foreclosures by contending that MERS doesn’t own the note, or the borrower’s obligation to repay.
University of Utah law professor Christopher Peterson said MERS mortgage processing system goes against long-standing principles of property law in assigning rights to a note or mortgage. He said the “owner” of a mortgage can’t be the same as the “agent” representing the homeowner, for example.
Yet MERS records “false documents” with names of people who are not executives of the registry system, but often paralegals and clerks of law firms, he said. “It’s an extremely controversial and arguably fraudlent practice,” Peterson said.
Merscorp spokeswoman Karmela Lejarde declined to comment on the criticism of MERS or Trent’s lawsuit, citing company policy not to comment on pending lititgation.
Tew, who represents Stern’s Law Offices, called Trent’s lawsuit “fiction.” He points to Florida’s 5th District Court of Appeal that ruled in July against a homeowner who tried to fight foreclosure on the basis that MERS didn’t own the note or mortgage.
For the Browns’, foreclosure troubles began with not getting credit for their payments fromCitiMortgage, their mortgage servicer.
The couple says they couldn’t clear it up with the lender. “They were claiming I was behind in payment, but I was paying every month,” said Brown, a carpenter who works for the Broward County School System and whose three children and four grandchildren also live in his Lauderdale Lakes home.
They stopped paying on their mortgage in late 2007 and sought legal help.
Another issue in Browns’ case isthe signature on the assignment of Brown’s mortgage, giving rights to CitiMortgage, Trent said. The signature is by Cheryl Samons, who is identified as “assistant secretary of Merscorp.” In reality, Samons is an employee of Stern’s law office.
Tew confirmed Samons’ employment by Stern, but said “it’s very common for companies to appoint a registered agent. That process is absolutely legal and normal.”
But Trent contends that mortgage assignments need to be made on personal knowledge, not hearsay, to be admissible in court.
The Browns could be facing another foreclosure action, but Trent said he is confident he can fight it again. “They don’t have the basis to foreclose,” he said.
CitiMortgage spokesman Mark Rodgers said privacy restrictions prevent the financial institution from discussing a customer’s foreclosure action. But Rodgers said procedures may resume in cases “where, despite our best efforts, we have been unable to arrive at a satisfactory resolution acceptable to all the parties involved.”
Tew said foreclosure defense lawyers are portraying homeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages as helpless victims. “Everyone is sympathetic, including us, for the homeowner who can’t pay his mortgage. But it’s not fair to paint the banks and law firms that represent them as wearing the black hats.”
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A Reno law firm has filed two lawsuits alleging fraud against a nationwide mortgage registration firm, and if those legal actions prevail, the firm and dozens of mortgage lenders could be liable to Nevada’s counties for billions of dollars in compensation and penalties.
Law partners Robert R. Hager and Treva J. Hearne, with Reno attorney Mark Mausert, have filed a case in Nevada and one in California against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which operates an electronic registry of mortgage loans in the United States. MERS serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, investors and loan servicers in county land records, but doesn’t own any mortgages.
By using the firm’s names on deeds and other paperwork, the lenders are able to avoid county recording fees, according to the firm. MERS has no financial interest in the loans, but is listed as actual owner or surrogate for the owner on millions of deeds of trust, even as individual mortgages are repeatedly traded and packaged inside of mortgage pools.
The lawsuits argue that listing the firm as the owner of mortgages in which it has no interest in order to avoid filing fees and taxes that are legally required constitutes fraud.
“We look forward to holding these financial institutions and foreclosure mills responsible for their actions that have deprived the states and counties of much-needed revenue,” said Hager.
Karmela Lejarde, communications manager, for the Reston, Va.-based firm, noted that the attorneys general of two states declined to take on the cases as false claims suits pressed by the government, instead leaving the plaintiffs to pursue the civil suits in the court systems.
“The lawsuits are completely without merit,” Lejarde said. “…The suits were filed by the same lawyers who have brought countless lawsuits against MERS, and every single one of them has failed. The most recent (fraud case) actions are just the latest in a line of baseless claims.”
Christopher Peterson, a law professor and associate dean of the University of Utah Law School, has written articles and lectured about MERS’s activities. He said the firm being listed as proxy owner of more than half the nation’s mortgages is contrary to 200 years of American legal precedent.
Included here is a short excerpt that discusses the way MERS allows nearly any member have MERS authority to sign documents. The article says that some states require the signor to be a VP of the actual member. Eventually some states allow them to be an authorized signatory despite not being an employee. If any late assignments apply to you this is then a must read.
An April 25 Salt Lake Tribune article on the legal controversy surrounding the loan registry system known as MERS prominently mentions the scholarship of Christopher Peterson, a professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, and also includes an interview with Peterson.
MERS, an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, was created by the nation’s largest lenders in the early 1990s as a mechanism to reduce paperwork and recording fees. The private computer system allowed lenders to “in effect, put[] loans under MERS’ name, “ thus enabling lenders to “avoid having to file public documents each time a mortgage was bought and sold,” according to the Tribune article.
Peterson, the author of a forthcoming scholarly article on MERS in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, described it as “one of the buried, yet-to-emerge bombs in the whole mortgage crisis.” He also describes MERS as “a tax evasion broker,” that prevents counties from collecting millions in recording fees.
To read the Salt Lake Tribune article, click here.
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