by PAUL JACKSON

For the law firms that manage and process foreclosures on behalf of investors and banking institutions, what’s a fair legal fee? What’s a fair filing fee? Should fees to outsourcers be prohibited? And just how much money should it really cost to process a foreclosure?

As I write this, the answer to these and other questions are being fought out in the trenches, in an out-of-sight but increasingly heated battle involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the law firms that specialize in creditor’s rights, default industry service providers, and various private equity interests.

It’s a complex fight that many say will ultimately shape the way U.S. mortgages are serviced over the course of the next decade — and perhaps beyond. It’s also a debate that promises to spill over into how loans are originated and priced.

“No aspect of the U.S. mortgage business will go untouched by the outcome of this current debate,” said one attorney I spoke with, on condition of anonymity. “This is the single most important issue facing mortgage markets today, and will even determine how securities are structured in the future.”

How foreclosures are managed

Typically, a foreclosure involves legal and court filing fees — it is, after all, a legal process involving the forced transfer of a property from a non-paying borrower to secured lender. But the foreclosure process also typically involves a host of other associated fees, including necessary title searches, potential property insurance, homeowner’s association dues, property maintenance and repair, and much more.

Many of these fees are ultimately tacked onto the “past due” amounts tied to a delinquent borrower — and done so legally. Much like when a credit card becomes past due and the interest rate kicks into high oblivion, consumers looking to catch up on their delinquent mortgage payments must also make up the difference in additional fees in order to successfully do so.

Legal fees in the foreclosure business, however, aren’t what you might think. Instead of billing hourly for most work, as most attorneys in other fields would do, attorneys that specialize in processing foreclosures are paid on a flat-fee basis, using pre-determined fee schedules.

Thanks to the market-making power of the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — both of whom publish allowable fee schedules for every imaginable legal filing and process in the foreclosure repertoire — the entire foreclosure process has been reduced to a set of flat fees.

And not even negotiated fees, at that. For firms that operate in the field of foreclosure management, the GSE allowable fees amount to a take-it-or-leave-it menu of prices.

“For us, it doesn’t matter who the client is, even if it isn’t Fannie or Freddie,” said one attorney I spoke with, under condition of anonymity. “We know we’re only going to be able to claim whatever that flat fee schedule they set says we can claim, since other investors tend to employ whatever the GSE fee caps are.”

Fannie and Freddie as housing HMOs? In the foreclosure business, that’s pretty much what it amounts to.

But beyond determining the legal fee schedule for much of the multi-billion dollar default services market, the GSEs also largely determine who gets their own foreclosure work. Both Fannie and Freddie maintain networks of law firms called “designated counsel” or “approved counsel” in key states marked with significant foreclosure volume — and they either strongly suggest or require that any servicers managing a Fannie or Freddie loan in foreclosure refer any needed legal work to their approved legal counsel.

Each state will have numerous designated counsel — sometimes as many as five law firms — but in practice, attorneys say, two to three firms end up with the lion’s share of each state’s foreclosure work. In states hit hard by the housing downturn and foreclosure surge, like Florida, the amount of work can be substantial.

“The GSEs can force a servicer to use their designated counsel, especially if timeline performance in foreclosure management is out of some set boundary,” said one servicing executive at a large bank, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s usually easiest to simply use their counsel on their loans, even if we don’t see that firm as best-in-class.”

With the vast majority of the mortgage market now running through the GSEs, and much of what’s left of the private market following the guidelines Fannie and Freddie establish, it should come as no surprise to find that a few law firms in each state end up with the majority of the foreclosure work, sources say.

The rise of the ‘foreclosure mills’

Being designated as approved counsel by Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac does carry risk. Just ask Florida’s David Stern, who has seen his burgeoning operation pejoratively branded a ‘foreclosure mill’ by consumer groups, dragged through the press for both alleged and real consumer misdeeds, and facing numerous investor lawsuits surrounding the operation of DJSP Enterprises, Inc. (DJSP: 3.22 -1.23%) — the publicly-traded processing company tied to the law firm.

While Stern’s operation may win the award for ‘most susceptible to negative publicity,’ how the law firm operates is far from unique in the foreclosure industry.

Continue reading…Housing Wire

August 26, 2010 10:19 AM EDT

WASHINGTON, DC — (MARKET WIRE) — 08/26/10 — Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, LLP and Liddle & Robinson, LLP today announced that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of DJSP Enterprises, Inc. (“DJSP” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: DJSP) between March 16, 2010 and May 10, 2010, inclusive (the “Class” and “Class Period”), seeking to pursue remedies under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”).

Any person seeking to serve as lead plaintiff must move the Court no later than September 20, 2010. If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact Matt Miller, Esq. at Cuneo, Gilbert & LaDuca at 202-789-3960, or via e-mail at mmiller@cuneolaw.com. Any member of the Class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent Class member.

The Complaint charges DJSP and certain of its officers with violations of the Exchange Act. The Complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, defendants made material misrepresentations and failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s true financial condition, business and prospects. Specifically, the Complaint alleges that the Company made positive representations concerning its present and future business prospects, when it knew or recklessly disregarded that (1) one of its largest clients would be drastically reducing its need for the Company’s services, and (2) the federal government’s efforts to slow down real estate foreclosures would also reduce demand for the Company’s services. According to the complaint, on May 27, 2010, the Company shocked the market by lowering its guidance for adjusted net income by $15 million to $17 million, and the price of the Company’s stock has fallen dramatically.

Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, a firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Va., specializes in the representation of plaintiffs in consumer, antitrust, civil rights and securities class actions and is active in major litigations pending in federal and state courts throughout the United States. The Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca website (http://www.cuneolaw.com) has more information about the firm.

Liddle & Robinson, based in New York, represents individuals and financial services firms, hedge funds and other businesses in high-stakes, cutting-edge employment, securities and commercial litigation matters. The Liddle & Robinson website (http://www.liddlerobinson.com) has more information about the firm.

CONTACT:

Matt Miller
202-789-3960
Email Contact

Kenneth Eric Trent, P.A. of Broward County has amended the Class Action complaint Figueroa v. MERSCORP, Inc. et al filed on July 26, 2010 in the Southern District of Florida.

Included in the amended complaint is MERS shareholders HSBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, WAMU, Countrywide, GMAC, Guaranty Bank, Merrill Lynch, Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), Norwest, Bank of America, Everhome, American Land Title, First American Title, Corinthian Mtg, MGIC Investor Svc, Nationwide Advantage, Stewart Title,  CRE Finance Council f/k/a Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, Suntrust Mortgage,  CCO Mortgage Corporation, PMI Mortgage Insurance Company, Wells Fargo and also DJS Processing which is owned by David J. Stern.

MERSCORP shareholders…HERE

Scribd

Related article:

______________________

CLASS ACTION FILED| Figueroa v. Law Offices Of David J. Stern, P.A. and MERSCORP, Inc.

Via: ForeclosureHamlet

The evidence on the docket as well as the Notice of Mediation prove definitively that Deutsche Bank, the Law Offices of David J. Stern, Mr- Stern himself as lead attorney of the Law Offices of David J. Stern, and/or Florida Mediation Group, Inc. Intentionally and knowingly violated a court order, a crime defined by FL Crim. Stat. Sec. 3.840, Indirect Criminal- Contempt of Judge Roger Colton’s 4/1/2010 Order for Mediation to occur within 60 days at the plaintiff’s expense.

Scribd

Today an article was released about the the foreclosure mills moving forward to quash the subpoenas served upon them by the Florida Attorney General. In this article there was a tad bit of heresay going on…

One of the firms is represented by WPB attorney Gerry Richman:

The subpoena has had a chilling effect on clients and has led to defense lawyers citing the investigation in motions to have the Shapiro firm disqualified from cases. One judge, according to the petition, has said in open court he will deny all summary judgment motions filed by the law firms named by the attorney general based solely on the existence of the investigation.

In an interview, attorney Gerald Richman, who is representing the Shapiro firm, said he did not know who the judge is. He denied the Shapiro firm falsified any documents.

“One of our concerns is the broad brush,” he said. “We are not in the category with David Stern, we are not in the category with any other law firm. Hopefully we will not lose clients. We’re doing whatever we can to fight back.”

Ok, well how can anyone make such a statement without clarifying who the judge is? This is clear speculation!

The Attorney General’s office is fighting back stating the facts…

McCollum spokeswoman Sandi Copes responded, “our office is responsible for protecting consumers year-round, and this investigation has been ongoing for some time.”

Last is information requesting from David J. Stern regarding the subpoena from the AG…

“This request would include entities that have nothing to do with the Law Firm’s legal practice, e.g., if David J. Stern owns a piece of real estate in an entity or he has trusts set up for his family,” according to the petition filed by Stern’s attorney, Jeffrey Tew of Miami. “This request should be narrowed to include entities that have a connection with his legal practice.”

This statement is clearly hiding some important crucial information. Rumor has it but not confirmed that some Foreclosure Mills have been stocking up on real estate they foreclosed on into trusts. Again this is just a RUMOR!

I say keep on digging…eventually an ant hole will turn into a sink hole!

Florida Bar previously disciplined Stern

South Florida Business Journal – by Paul Brinkmann

David J. Stern, an attorney who is the target of a state civil investigation for mortgage fraud complaints, was previously disciplined by the Florida Bar for deceiving the courts and clients about his web of businesses that do legal support work.

The Bar also confirmed Aug. 16 that it is also investigating Stern for numerous allegations of violating attorney regulations, including whether his running of DJSP Enterprises, a publicly traded company, is in compliance.

Stern represents banks that are attempting to foreclose on residential mortgages. Stern, his law firm and DJSP Enterprises are exemplary of the wave of attorneys who have benefitted from the flood of foreclosures that gripped the nation over the last three years.

Stern received a public reprimand in 2002 for billing practices that made it appear he was paying other companies for work on title insurance, when he was actually using in-house staff.

Stern settled the 2002 Bar complaint by consenting to the reprimand before the Bar’s board of governors. In the reprimand, Bar President Tod Aronovitz said Stern’s practices were “misleading” to the courts and foreclosure defendants.

This summer, Stern is facing allegations that he has been similarly misleading to the courts. On Aug. 10, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said he was investigating Stern and two other law firms for allegations of unfair and deceptive actions in their handling of foreclosure cases.

Fabrications in the name of speed

It is alleged that the firms, in representing lenders, may have fabricated mortgage assignments in order to speed up the foreclosure process.

Stern’s attorney, Jeffrey Tew, has brushed off McCollum’s announcement by saying that Stern handled 100,000 cases in the last few years, and a few mistakes were inevitable.

Tew said this week that resolving the 2002 Bar complaint also involved Stern agreeing to have all staff who perform title insurance work to be on the payroll of a separate title company.

Tew, of Miami-based Tew Cardenas LLP, said any alleged deception from the 2002 complaint “was inadvertent on David’s part,” and “there hasn’t been any Bar discipline since 2002.”

Tew said Stern employs 1,200 paralegals in Plantation, and may have turned to using staff in Manila, Philippines, partly due to a lack of space.

“The Bar has approved the use of paralegals in other countries,” Tew said. “DJSP has a group of paralegals in Manila. He doesn’t necessarily have room for more here, and it may be partly related to pay scales also.”

Continue reading… Florida Bar previously disciplined Stern – South Florida Business Journal

“I’m not going to be here next week” is how Mr. Geeai greeted me on a delightfully cool morning last week,  “so your readers are going to have to live without me.  You can come and hang out,  but you have to bring your own coffee.”

“Is this the annual Geeai family campout?’

“Indeed it is”,  he replied.   “Chris is coming up from California and we are all going to hang for a week.  So you and your readers have to live without me next week.”

“That’s OK.  I’ll take notes”

“So what new has happened this week?”

“Remember David Stern?”

“The jerk who is making hundreds of millions by throwing people out of their houses?  Yes,  I remember him.”

“Want to know the name of his 130 foot yacht?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Su Casa es Mi Casa”

And then Mr. Geeai did something that really surprised me.  With all of the emotion of a great white shark coming in for a kill he said,  “Ok,  that’s a knee cap buddy”.  And then he formed his fingers into the shape of a pistol and unloaded on my kneecap.  “Bang”  he said,  and looked at me with dead eyes,  “That’s just for naming your boat what you did.  It shows who you are and that’s worth a kneecap without any other consideration.  Oh,  I’m sorry,  is that painful ?  Good.  Now,  let’s talk about what your real punishment is going to be.”

It didn’t surprise me that he blew away the kneecap so much as the totally uncaring,  nonchalant attitude he took towards the action.  It was as if he were telling one of his tenants they were responsible for a late payment.  Totally emotionless,  you’re a mark in a book.  ‘Oh,  it says here I blow your kneecap off.  *bang*  Scratch that one,  what’s next on the list?’  That’s not like him.  I know him as a man of great compassion but all of that was gone as he thought of dealing with the ones responsible for ripping off the whole country for their personal aggrandizement.

There is a seething anger in this country and them that are responsible best take heed.  If Mr. Geeai can seriously consider blowing off a kneecap … and then consider what might be appropriate punishment …  then there is real trouble brewing.  Mr. Geeai is as laid back as they come.

There was a MERS story this past week from www.wallstreetoasis.com.   Wall Street Oasis bills themselves as  a place where “monkeys” (their terms,  not mine) from investment banks,  hedge funds and private equity firms can come to relax,  trade barbs & quips,  rant,  and generally find an outlet for the frustrations built from breathing the rarified air of corporate finance.

In order to comment on any of their blogs,  you have to be a member and in order to become a member,  you have to fill out an exhaustive series of questions such as,  where did you go to school?  Where did you get your MBA?  What was your GPA?  I was reminded of standing in the little boy’s room in grammer school competing with all of the other boys to see who could step the furthest away from the urinal and still arc a flow into the bowl.  Doug Jones was the best at two steps away from the back wall,  his closest competition was four but then Doug was the best athlete on the playground so we weren’t surprised.  We were awed.  Qualifications to become a member of Wall Street Oasis are just as meaningless as arcing a flow into the urinal if you ask me.  I suppose some people are in awe just like I was with Doug Jones but I’ve grown up a bit since then.  I digress.

Continue Reading…Chink in the Armor

Aug 17, 2010 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) –

BUYINS.NET, www.buyins.net, announced today that these select companies have been added to the NASDAQ, AMEX and NYSE naked short threshold lists. Bay National Corp (OTC: BAYN), Extorre Gold Mines (OTC: EXGMF) and DJSP Enterprises (NASDAQ: DJSP). For a complete list of companies on the naked short lists please visit our web site. To find the SqueezeTrigger Price before a short squeeze starts in any stock, go to http://www.buyins.net .

DinSFLA here:

WWW.BUYINS.NET is a service designed to help bonafide shareholders of publicly traded US companies fight naked short selling. Naked short selling is the illegal act of short selling a stock when no affirmative determination has been made to locate shares of the stock to hypothecate in connection with the short sale.

According to the SEC site…

In a “naked” short sale, the seller does not borrow or arrange to borrow the securities in time to make delivery to the buyer within the standard three-day settlement period. As a result, the seller fails to deliver securities to the buyer when delivery is due; this is known as a “failure to deliver” or “fail.”

For further information on short selling, naked short selling, and threshold securities, please see the Division of Trading and Markets’ Key Points About Regulation SHO. Additional information relating to the SEC’s activities relating to short selling can be found in the SEC Spotlight on Short Sales.

http://www.sec.gov/answers/nakedshortsale.htm

On Tuesday the Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office announced an investigation of Three South Florida law firms.

The firms are identified as The Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale; Shapiro & Fishman, which has offices in Boca Raton and Tampa; and the Law Offices of David J. Stern, P.A. in Plantation.

Financial giants have figured out yet another way to profit from fraud. After devastating communities across the country with shady subprime loans, the mortgage industry has launched a new assault on America’s neighborhoods. Big banks are now outsourcing their foreclosure processing to shady law firms with a history of breaking the law for a quick buck. These foreclosure scammers forge documents, backdate signatures, slap families with thousands of dollars in illegal fees and even foreclosure on borrowers who haven’t missed a payment.

Andy Kroll lays out the insanity in a terrific piece for Mother Jones. “Foreclosure mills,” as they are known, have been around for years, but they’ve become a much bigger problem as the mortgage crisis has deepened. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spurred the creation of these social beasts decades ago to help them process large volumes of foreclosures quickly and cheaply. Pretty soon big banks wanted in on the action, and bailout barons at Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America starting sending foreclosures to these scummy law firms by the thousands.

Banks opt to outsource dirty work like this for a reason. It takes weeks to process the legal work necessary to kick somebody out of their home, since cops and judges don’t want to give borrowers the boot without proof. If you can cut down that processing time, you can save a lot of money on legal bills. Foreclosure mills cut costs for banks by cutting corners—when they can’t compile the documentation needed to push families out of their homes right now, they simply fabricate the documents. Still worse, these guys illegally withhold documentation from borrowers seeking to negotiate loan modifications with their banks—effectively forcing borrowers out of their homes instead of allowing them to cut a deal with the bank. When borrowers actually do straighten things out with foreclosure mills, the scumbags slap them with huge illegal fees. Kroll details a foreclosure mill that erroneously tried to evict a Florida couple who had been paying their mortgage on time. When it became clear that the couple could not be kicked out of their home, the foreclosure mill tried to charge them $18,500 in fees for mistakes committed by the foreclosure mill and the bank. The foreclosure mill even invented two new people who it said lived in the home in order to demand four sets of legal processing fees instead of two.

If nobody holds you accountable, then lying, cheating and stealing are very profitable business models. That’s one reason why banks love sending this kind of work to foreclosure mills. While the foreclosure mills and their lawyers have been bombarded with lawsuits for their trickery, the banks are not directly involved in the funny business. So Citi, BofA, Fannie and Freddie get to cut their costs with shady practices, but they don’t have to shoulder the legal liability for them, even though they must surely know what goes on (if they don’t know, they’re being astonishingly negligent, and should be held responsible).

The foreclosure mill scandal is very similar to a game the banks played in the craziest days of the housing bubble. A few years back, banks outsourced much of the work that goes into issuing mortgages to third-party mortgage brokers. Banks knew that many of these brokers were up to no good, and routinely trained brokers how to steer borrowers into unaffordable subprime loans. Banks also lobbied regulators aggressively for the right to look the other way when brokers abused borrowers or committed fraud. For a few years, banks made big bucks as mortgage brokers turned out fraudulent loans by the truckload. When those loans started defaulting, the banks pleaded innocence and blamed the brokers for the social and economic fallout.

Continue Reading …AlterNet

Posted by Yves Smith at 6:08 am

A good piece at Mother Jones, “Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons” (hat tip Foghorn Leghorn) provides a window on a seamy big business: cut rate foreclosure processing machines that routinely ride roughshod over borrowers and the law.

Unfortunately, space limitations prevent the story from going deeply into some critical issues. The piece does a good job of explaining how these cut rate legal services operations are creations of Fannie and Freddie and illustrating how they are engaging in fabricating documents. The story focuses on a specific bad actor, a law firm founded by David Stern that handles roughly 1/5 of the foreclosures in Florida:

Ariane Ice sat poring over records on the website of Florida’s Palm Beach County…She and her husband, Tom, an attorney, ran a boutique foreclosure defense firm called Ice Legal…. Ice had a strong hunch that Stern’s operation was up to something, and that night she found her smoking gun.

It involved something called an “assignment of mortgage,” the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it….By law, a firm must execute (complete, sign, and notarize) an assignment before attempting to seize somebody’s home.

A Florida notary’s stamp is valid for four years, and its expiration date is visible on the imprint. But here in front of Ice were dozens of assignments notarized with stamps that hadn’t even existed until months—in some cases nearly a year—after the foreclosures were filed. Which meant Stern’s people were foreclosing first and doing their legal paperwork later. In effect, it also meant they were lying to the court—an act that could get a lawyer disbarred or even prosecuted. “There’s no question that it’s pervasive,” says Tom Ice of the backdated documents—nearly two dozen of which were verified by Mother Jones. “We’ve found tons of them.”

This all might seem like a legal technicality, but it’s not. The faster a foreclosure moves, the more difficult it is for a homeowner to fight it—even if the case was filed in error. In March, upon discovering that Stern’s firm had fudged an assignment of mortgage in another case, a judge in central Florida’s Pasco County dismissed the case with prejudice—an unusually harsh ruling that means it can never again be refiled. “The execution date and notarial date,” she wrote in a blunt ruling, “were fraudulently backdated, in a purposeful, intentional effort to mislead the defendant and this court.”…

But the Ices had uncovered what looked like a pattern, so Tom booked a deposition with Stern’s top deputy, Cheryl Samons, and confronted her with the backdated documents—including two from cases her firm had filed against Ice Legal’s clients. Samons, whose counsel was present, insisted that the filings were just a mistake. She refused to elaborate, so the Ices moved to depose the notaries and other Stern employees whose names were on the evidence. On the eve of those depositions, however, the firm dropped foreclosure proceedings against the Ices’ clients.

It was a bittersweet victory: The Ices had won their cases, but Stern’s practices remained under wraps. “This was done to cover up fraud,” Tom fumes. “It was done precisely so they could try to hit a reset button and keep us from getting the real goods.”

Backdated documents, according to a chorus of foreclosure experts, are typical of the sort of shenanigans practiced by a breed of law firms known as “foreclosure mills.” ….The mills think “they can just change things and make it up to get to the end result they want, because there’s no one holding them accountable,” says Prentiss Cox, a foreclosure expert at the University of Minnesota Law School. “We’ve got these people with incentives to go ahead with foreclosures and flood the real estate market.”

Yves here. This is far from the only form of document forgeries. A widespread abuse is what bankruptcy attorney Max Gardner calls the “alphabet problem.”

Mortgage securitizations were very carefully designed to satisfy a number of concerns. One of them was bankruptcy remoteness, that if an originator failed, as Countrywide, New Century, IndyMac and a host of others did, that the creditors in the bankruptcy would not be able to claw mortgages back out of securitizations (assets sold close to the date of a bankruptcy may be deemed to have been conveyed fraudulently, and thus can be seized by the court on behalf of the creditors).

To prevent this from occurring, the Pooling and Servicing Agreement (the master document that governs the securitization) would provided for a minimum of two independent legal entities to sit between the originator and the trust that would hold the mortgages being securitized (technically, the note, which is the IOU; the mortgage, which is a lien, follows the note in 45 states). So the prescribed minimum number of steps was A (originator) => B => C => D (trust). Some securitizations (for reasons unrelated to establishing bankruptcy remoteness) would provide for even more steps.

Keep in mind that the PSA also required that the notes be conveyed to the trust, with the proper chain of endorsements, by closing; certain exceptions and fixes were permitted up to 90 days after closing, but these would be applicable only to a very small proportion of the pool.

Continue Reading…NakedCapitalism

DJSP, Enterprises announced today that they have added a General Counsel to their Senior Management Team.

Howard S. Burnston has accepted the position of Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary effective August 5th 2010. Prior to joining the company, Mr. Burnston was a shareholder with Gunster, Yoakley, & Stewart, P.A., a Florida law firm, where he practiced for 12 years, most recently as chairman of the firm’s Securities and Corporate Governance Practice Group.

“We are very pleased to add such a seasoned professional to our executive team,” said David J. Stern, Chairman and CEO of DJSP Enterprises. “Howard’s business experience and legal expertise in the areas of securities and corporate governance will add tremendous value to DJSP and our shareholders.”

Mr. Burnston stated, “The company is operating in a dynamic and challenging business environment. I believe the company has a promising future and I am excited to join the impressive management team assembled at DJSP.”

Palm Beach County Judge Meenu Sasser was also a shareholder of Gunster, Yoakley, & Stewart from 2002-09, Associate 1995-02.

Again, when is this all going to be disclosed to both investors and defendants? Where does one put a stop to conflict of interest? Where are the disclosures?

I am 100% certain that both The State of Florida and DJSP Investors want to know did Mr. Burnston and Mrs. Sasser have a working relationship and to what extent?

Inquiring minds do wish to know!

How the federal housing agencies—and some of the biggest bailed-out banks—are helping shady lawyers make millions by pushing families out of their homes.

— By Andy Kroll

Continue reading…MOTHER JONES

— Illustration: Lou Beach

By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 5:54 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010

Florida’s purported largest foreclosure law firm filed thousands of documents to take people’s homes that contained deceptive and intentionally ambiguous information, according to a proposed class action lawsuit.

The suit, filed last month in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, says David J. Stern and his Plantation-based legal team violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by generating fraudulent mortgage assignments when pursuing foreclosures.

An assignment is held by the entity that has the right to receive mortgage payments.

Stern’s practice, which the lawsuit claims filed up to 7,000 new foreclosure cases in Florida every month last year, is also alleged to have pursued foreclosures for lenders that didn’t own the debt on the homes.

“There really is no proper plaintiff to sue and foreclose and that’s what this charade is designed to cover,” said Fort Lauderdale Attorney Kenneth Eric Trent, who is seeking class action status and filed the suit on behalf of Oakland Park resident Ignacio Damian Figueroa. “There is no real holder of the note and the mortgage anymore because they broke it up and sold it to 10, 12, 20 people.”

Continue reading…The Palm Beach Post