By Peg Brickley Of DOW JONES DAILY BANKRUPTCY REVIEW
The Department of Justice is conducting a nationwide probe of the company whose automated systems handle half the mortgages in the U.S., looking for evidence Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) has “improperly directed” the actions of lawyers in bankruptcy court.
The Jacksonville, Fla., company was spun out last year from Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS), a financial technology giant that is also under scrutiny for its role in court actions, according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Philadelphia.
Although the companies say they are providers of electronic information services, the U.S. trustee believes LPS and Fidelity play a “much greater” role in court actions where thousands of homes are at risk of foreclosure, according to Bankruptcy Judge Diane Weiss Sigmund.
“The thoughtless mechanical employment of computer-driven models and communications to inexpensively traverse the path to foreclosure offends the integrity of our American bankruptcy system,” Sigmund wrote in a decision released Wednesday, April 15.
A spokeswoman for Fidelity did not respond to requests seeking comment on the investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trustee, an arm of the Department of Justice whose mission includes safeguarding the integrity of the bankruptcy courts.
Michelle Kersch, a spokeswoman for LPS, said the U.S. trustee has “advised outside counsel for LPS that it is seeking to better understand LPS’ role.” In an e-mail, Kersch pointed out that the judge held the lawyers, not LPS, responsible for the problems in the case before her.
The probe of the mortgage technology operation surfaced in a Philadelphia case after Sigmund started asking questions about the source of false court filings that came from HSBC Mortgage Corp. In pursuit of homeowners Niles and Angela Taylor, HSBC filed the wrong mortgage, gave incorrect payment amounts and claimed the Taylors had missed monthly payments. This “was simply not true,” Sigmund wrote in a 58-page decision.
The Duval County Clerk’s Office has offered online bidding for foreclosed properties for some time, and now Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services is bringing bank-foreclosures all over the U.S. online.
Through its LPSAuctions.com Web site, LPS is to open bidding on single-family homes, condominiums and town homes from Coral Springs to Tacoma, Wash. The bid deadline for the homes listed in the “Spring Clearance” auction on the site is May 10.
So now it’s official they have they’re hands in all Real Estate! My question is how…why would any state permit them to sell anything if they are under the scope of the FEDS?? Take a look below.
American Home Mortgage Servicing
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company
Docx, LLC
Lender Processing Services
Action Date: April 13, 2010
Location: Jacksonville, FL
On April 12, 2010, Lender Processing Services closed the offices of its subsidiary, Docx, LLC, in Alpharetta, Georgia. That office was responsible for pumping out over a million mortgage assignments in the last two years so that banks could foreclose on residential real estate. The law firms handling the foreclosures were retained and largely controlled by Lender Processing Services, according to a Sanctions Order entered by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Diane Weiss Sigmund (In re Niles C. Taylor, EDPA, Case 07-15385-sr, Doc. 193). Lender Processing Services, the largest “default management services company” in the country, has already made at least partial admissions that there were faults in the documents produced by the Docx office – although courts and homeowners were never notified. According to Lender Processing Services, over 50 major banks use their default management services. The banks that especially need the services provided by Lender Processing Services include Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, acting as trustees for mortgage-backed securitized trusts. These trusts, in the rush to securitize mortgages and sell them to investors, often ignored the critical step of obtaining mortgage assignments from the original lenders to the securities companies to the trusts. Now, years later, when the companies “servicing” the trusts need to foreclose, they retain Lender Processing Services to draft the missing documents. The mortgage servicers, including American Home Mortgage Services, Saxon Mortgage Services, and American Servicing Company, never disclose that the trusts are missing essential documents – they just rely on Lender Processing Services to “fix” the problems.Although the Alpharetta office has been closed, Lender Processing Services continues to mass produce “replacement” assignments from itsJacksonville, Florida, and Dakota County, Minnesota offices. Law firms retained by Lender Processing Services also often use their own employees, posing as officer of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, to produce the needed Assignments.Since the vast majority of homeowners do not retain counsel in foreclosure proceedings, this flawed system has worked very effectively for the last few years, with courts all over the country rarely questioning why so many mortgage companies had officers in Alpharetta, Georgia, or why Trusts that closed in 2005 and 2006 were just obtaining Mortgage Assignments in 2009 and 2010. Most courts never even questioned why companies long-dissolved, such as Option One, could still be executing documents years after the dissolution. While the closing of the Alpharetta office may be a sign that these fraudulent activities will finally be exposed and addressed, for the time being, it is just a matter of an unsatisfactory end of one small facet of an enormous and far-reaching problem.
Imagine, if you will, a bank sets up a mortgage backed security. The security is backed by a trust that holds all the mortgages and notes. The trust document says that all of the mortgages that would be included in that particular security had to be transferred into the trust by a particular date. That date is long since passed.
You are now in foreclosure, and attached to the summons and complaint is a copy of an assignment of your mortgage, within the last few days before the date of the summons and complaint, transferring your mortgage into the trust. What does that all mean?
It could mean that the trustee did not actually own your mortgage and that all the money that you have paid on that mortgage that went to pay the holders of the security associated with that trust was paid to the wrong party.
Why? Because the mortgage was not transferred into the trust before your payments were directed to it. And the after the fact assignment doesn’t remedy it, because the trust was required to close the book on adding new mortgages into the trust, on a date long since passed. So, the trustee accepted payments from you even though your mortgage was not a part of that trust. You were paying the wrong party.
Then to add insult to injury, the trustee is trying to take your home away.
Oh, and the last minute assignment –may be a forgery. Ain’t that just the icing on the cake?
These are the cranium exploding allegations being made by white collar fraud expert Lynn Szymoniak, Esq.
In a letter to an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms. Szymoniak alleges
This letter concerns possible fabricated and forged mortgage-related documents that are being filed by banks in foreclosure actions in Massachusetts, Florida and throughout the country.
These documents were prepared by a company known as DOCX, LLC, a company that claims to “expedite” the mortgage foreclosure process for banks and mortgage lenders. DOCX is located in Alpharetta, Georgia, and is owned by a Jacksonville, Florida company, Fidelity National Financial, Inc.
In many cases, DOCX has provided Assignments so that banks that have purchased mortgages from the original lender may pursue foreclosure even when the proper documents have not been prepared, executed and filed. These documents very often appear in cases where the mortgage has been purchased, and combined with others to create to an asset-back security. Deutsche Bank National Trust Company is one of the banks that have frequently used mortgage-related documents prepared by DOCX.
Ms. Szymoniak goes on to reveal that clerks at DOCX are signing these documents pretending to be employees of varies banks and other financial institutions. For example:
… on mortgage documents prepared by DOCX, since January 1, 2006, Linda Green has signed as a Vice President of at least eight different banks and mortgage companies, including: Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, Option One Mortgage Corporation, American Home Mortgage Servicing, American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Argent Mortgage Company, LLC, Sand Canyon Corporation, and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., acting solely as a nominee for HLB Mortgage.
Korell Harp’s purported signature appears on documents where he is identified as Vice President of MERS as nominee for Quick Loan Funding, Vice president and Assistant Secretary for Argent Mortgage Company, Authorized Signer for USAA Federal Savings Bank, Vice President of American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., as successor-in- interest to Option One Mortgage Corporation, Vice President of American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Inc., and Vice President of Sand Canyon Corporation.
Tywanna Thomas’s purported signature appears on documents where she is identified as Assistant Vice President of MERS, as nominee for Quick Loan Funding, Inc.; Assistant Secretary of MERS, as nominee for American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Inc.; Assistant Vice President of Sand Canyon Corporation, formerly known as Option One Mortgage; and Vice President & Assistant Secretary of Argent Mortgage Company.
Other names that appear on hundreds of DOCX assignments, as officers of many different banks, include Jessica Odhe, Brent Bagley, Christie Baldwin, Cheryl Thomas and Linda Thoresen. These documents have all been notarized in Fulton County, Georgia. An examination of the signatures also reveals that the signatures of the same person vary significantly.
Action Date: April 4, 2010 Location: Jacksonville, FL
In the first 3 days of April, 2010, the Wall Street Journal and the Jacksonville Business Journal both reported that Lender Processing Services was the subject of a federal criminal investigation involving a subsidiary company, Docx, LLC in Alpharetta, Georgia. A representative of the company reportedly acknowledged the investigation. Foreclosure defense blogs, and this website, have reported some of the problems with mortgage assignments prepared by Docx including Assignments where the grantor or grantee was described as “Bogus Assignee for Intervening Asmts” or “A Bad Bene.” Docx also produced many assignments with an effective date of 9/9/9999. In other cases, the effective date was listed as 1950. Other Assignments listed the amount of the original mortgage as $.00 or $.01. Still other assignments were missing signatures. The Docx office has produced over one million mortgage assignments in the last few years and filed these assignments in recorders’ offices across the country. How many Assignments were defective? Did any foreclosures occur based on the defective documents? Were court clerks notified of the defective assignments? Were borrowers notified? Were mortgage companies and banks notified? The company disclosures to date raise even more questions regarding the role of document mills in the national foreclosure crisis. Courts and litigants everywhere will be waiting for more complete disclosures.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A unit of Lender Processing Services Inc, a U.S. provider of paperwork used by banks in the foreclosure process, is being investigated by federal prosecutors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said a government probe into the business practices of the LPS unit was “criminal in nature.” According to the report, the probe was disclosed in LPS’s annual report in February.
The subsidiary being investigated is Docx LLC, which processes and sometimes produces documents used by banks to prove they own mortgages, the report said.
According to the report, among Docx documents being reviewed was one that incorrectly claimed an entity called “Bogus Assignee” was the owner of the loan.
The report cited LPS spokeswoman Michelle Kersch as saying that the “bogus” phrase was used as a placeholder and that some documents had been “inadvertently recorded before the field was updated.”
Keep in mind this is only on the Georgia Subsidiary “DocX” mean while back at the ranch in Minnesota much, much, much more fraud has been created see the videos below.
A subsidiary of a company that is a top provider of the documentation used by banks in the foreclosure process is under investigation by federal prosecutors.
The prosecutors are “reviewing the business processes” of the subsidiary of Lender Processing Services Inc., based in Jacksonville, Fla., according to the company’s annual securities filing released in February. People familiar with the matter saythe probe is criminal in nature.
Michelle Kersch, an LPS spokeswoman, said the subsidiary being investigated is Docx LLC. Docx processes and sometimes produces documents needed by banks to prove they own the mortgages. LPS’s annual report said that the processes under review have been “terminated,” and that the company has expressed its willingness to cooperate. Ms. Kersch declined to comment further on the probe.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the middle district of Florida, which the annual report says is handling the matter, declined to comment.
The case follows on the dismissal of numerous foreclosure cases in which judges across the U.S. have found that the materials banks had submitted to support their claims were wrong. Faulty bank paperwork has been an issue in foreclosure proceedings since the housing crisis took hold a few years ago. It is often difficult to pin down who the real owner of a mortgage is, thanks to the complexity of the mortgage market.
During the housing boom, mortgages were originated by lenders, quickly sold to Wall Street firms that bundled them into debt pools and then sold to investors as securities. The loans were supposed to change hands but the documents and contracts between borrowers and lenders often weren’t altered to show changes in ownership, judges have ruled.
That has made it hard for banks, which act on behalf of mortgage-securities investors in most foreclosure cases, to prove they own the loans in some instances.
LPS has said its software is used by banks to track the majority of U.S. residential mortgages from the time they are originated until the debt is satisfied or a borrower defaults. When a borrower defaults and a bank needs to foreclose, LPS helps process paperwork the bank uses in court.
LPS was recently referenced in a bankruptcy case involving Sylvia Nuer, a Bronx, N.Y., homeowner who had filed for protection from creditors in 2008.
and this is their video of the Minnesota Branch where they worry about “security”. I wonder if Christina Allen, Topako Love, Eric Tate, Laura Hescott were in this video?? Listen towards (4:41), they use “Delivery” or “Destruction“.
LPS statement “Technical Error” how about “HUMAN Robo-Signors FORGING, FABRICATING ERROR” to many tens-of- thousands (possibly in the miilions) of Assignmnet FRAUD “errors”. Preparing Docs in one state, Executing them in another and Notarizing in another? How about the signatures not matching the people who are signing? What about the folks in Minnesota where most of these were signed?
Jacksonville Business Journal – by Rachel Witkowski Staff reporter
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa is investigating a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services Inc. that processes mortgage documents for lenders.
Jacksonville-based company (NYSE: LPS) stated in its 2009 annual report that the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Florida recently began inquiring about the business processes of a subsidiary, DOCX LLC, based in Alpharetta, Ga.
LPS also acknowledged that there was an “error” in DOCX’s business processes and LPS immediately corrected it, according to the annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We have representatives speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and we are cooperating with all inquiries made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” said Michelle Kersch, LPS’ senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, in an e-mailed response. “We changed the business process that created the technical error, provided additional training to our employees and corrected documents.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on its investigation.
Kersch said LPS was contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February. That same month, another investigation by the Clerk of Superior Court in Fulton County, Ga. into DOCX had closed without taking any further action, officials said.
LPS has become a dominant player in the mortgage servicing market since it spun off from Fidelity National Information Services in July, 2008. LPS serviced about 70 percent of the non-performing loan market and 40 percent of foreclosed loans nationwide as of Dec. 31, according to LPS’ latest “mortgage monitor” report.
LPS increased revenue to nearly $2.4 billion in 2009 and recently announcing it will add 350 jobs through 2011. The Jacksonville Economic Development Commission has recommended nearly $3 million in city and state incentives for LPS to add those jobs in Jacksonville.
More to come…
Sample of their work “in-house” Minnesota…not only Alpharetta, GA
Jacksonville Business Journal – by Rachel Witkowski Staff reporter-
Lender Processing Services Inc. recently opened an office in Washington, D.C. in order to attract more government work, the company announced Thursday.
The Jacksonville-based technology and services provider (NYSE: LPS) to the mortgage and real estate industries said having an office in the nation’s capital “gives LPS the ability to quickly respond to the needs of its government clients and to increase its presence by pursuing opportunities with new government partners.”
The company said it is currently has contractual relationships with a number of federal agencies. The D.C. office will provide services including mortgage consulting, technology, portfolio data analytics and risk management as well as due diligence and valuation.
“In today’s challenging economic environment, government agencies need expert support and data to make the most informed decisions, mitigate risks and operate at peak efficiency,” said LPS’ co-chief operating officer, Eric Swenson in the announcement. “LPS’ proven, robust technology solutions and extensive governmental expertise can help agencies quickly adapt to changing market conditions and regulatory requirements for optimal performance.”
First, Lynn Szymoniak ESQ. presented “Compare these Titles & Signatures” & “Too Many Jobs”…Now the next of many of compare these signatures & titles series. “Officers of Way, Way too many banks”…Part Deux “The Twilight Zone”.
How can you be an OFFICER of all these banks and Why is your signature never signed the same??? Minnesota? LPS? Bueller? …anyone?…Bueller?
These “Black Deeds”, collectively, are proof that the notaries, witnesses, and signatories on each and every like assignment of mortgage is suspect at best; created as purely fabricated malarkey at worst. Professionals are starting to surmise that all of these mortgage assignments magically produced, presto-chango, to ram another foreclosure through “the system” are not credible evidence upon which the transfer of property, dispensation of justice, and the roof over a family’s head should rest.
And, then, here ya’ go: another colleague found a mortgage assignment back-dated four years in order to assign property two years hence. Being no math whiz, would someone please clarify if that is a net back-dating of two years? Perhaps it’s a cumulative formula, adding the 4 years to 2 years, makes the “off dating” 6 years? I dunno! How’s that really work? Sounds like an episode of Beat The Clock!
This is no mere document failure! Please. Call it what it is: foreclosures upon millions of families, evicted from their homes by financial entities with no more rights to take those homes than have you or I. When faced with this fact, the financial entities are creating, fabricating (aka MAKING UP) the “evidence” to prove that they have the
right to take a family’s home and throw them with all their worldly
possessions into the street! Where are the investors who really put up the money for these home loans? They must be singing the blues to see some interloper foreclose a million times over and keep the proceeds from the post-foreclosure sale. Welcome to America! Waive to the Statue of Liberty on your way in. Breathe in that democratic process air we’ve prided ourselves on for lo these 233 years.
There are millions upon millions of families being evicted onto the streets, many with no alternative housing options. It’s not so easy to find a job in the best of circumstances today. Ever tried to find and/or hold down a job without a fixed address? How ’bout the children, in the middle of their school year? What about the beloved pets of foreclosure, fully members of the newly homeless family? Ever tried to find emergency shelter or housing with a deeply loved animal or two? What of the elderly who do not have the remaining lifespan to recover from the terrible financial and personal blow and may face their remaining “golden years” begging for scarce, dwindling social-net resources. What of the disabled, those of us living in America who, without dramatic rescue, are too ill and infirm to ever hope to again live independently under cover.
I may or may not return here to add more…………I’m too distraught to continue writing of my country’s egregious willful complicity in these relentless evictions and property confiscation. My heart and soul start to rupture past the point of repair when I think of how America is treating it’s citizenry, including the weakest of us all; based on a million-fold fraudulent transactions from mortgage origination well past post-foreclosure sale.
Let’s move on in a more wickedly delicious track, shall we?
Two unrelated, remorseful individuals have come forward, whispering to us colleagues with tales of the inner workings and “business practices” of document creation “mills” which may or may not be operating under the direction of foreclosure mill law firm. Permission from the parties has been extracted to publish this post.
Apparently, that same fear, hopelessness, and rage which descend upon one who is evicted from the only home they know to face a bleak and uncertain future……….. Yes, THAT fear, hopelessness and rage! Well, that same emotional response seems to have hit hard on a few past and/or current employees of certain companies which may have been involved in dubious, questionable “business practices”.
A crisis of conscience? Fear of criminal charges? Facing foreclosure themselves? Relative evicted? Family member tenet unexpectedly “trashed out”? Seeing the futility of working out a loan mod? One of the signatories (or employers thereof) who frantically googles the same names over and over and over in a mad search for what is known, what is published?
Could it be one or more of these signatories, while working for a “document solutions” company, have been “transferring property and assets” valued in the multi-billions and ostensibly owned by the top financial institutions in the world? Ron Mehig? Bethany Hood? Linda Green? From New House Title? Cheryl Hodge? Korrell Harp? From Law Offices of David Stern? Scott Anderson? Lori Brown? Barbara Hindman? Lori Brown? Whitney K. Cook? Melissa Flanagan? Lillana Morcan? Liquenda Allotey? Christina Trowbridge? Raquel Smith? Branden Kiel? Beth Cottrell? Twanna Thomas? From DocX? Winona Church? Nancy Reyes? William W. Huffman? Jill Arnold? Shameca Harrison? Kari Marx? Renee Hertzler? Mark Biscof? From LPS? Lorraine Brown?
Who knows? I’m not one to force another to reveal their personal motivations. I enjoy the privacy afforded me by the hard bones of my skull. I often keep my thoughts to myself and extend to others the same respect.
Action Date: March 9, 2010 Location: West Palm Beach, FL
ON MARCH 9, 2010, researchers for Fraud Digest easily found at least 10 Assignments, for combined loan amounts well over $2 million, with the Assignment Effective Date listed as 9/9/9999. These were all prepared by Docx, LLC in Alpharetta, Georgia, a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services in Jacksonville, FL. These are the same “document preparers/officers of too many banks” that prepared and filed Assignments where the grantor or grantee was listed as “Bogus Assignee for Intervening ASMTS” and also the same people who listed the grantor or grantee as “A Bad Bene.” All of these documents are witnessed and notarized (by other Docx employees). Fraud Digest researchers are now attempting to quantify the number of Assignments (in the hundreds or more likely thousands) where MERS is stated to be the original mortgagee. If the assignment is not effective until 9/9/9999, many homeowners will be able to stay in their homes a VERY long time. Each of these assignments effective in 9999 was to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Assn.
For a short period of time in Florida, pretender lenders and their attorneys had a field day in Florida courts, obtaining foreclosure judgments and title to property based on the flimsiest of evidence. Now courts are aware of many of the problems with these files and lenders can no longer count on a free ride to the foreclosure auction. Below is a sampling of case headnotes from recent circuit court opinions that denied foreclosure. Judges in circuits across the state are now standing up for consumers (or at least for the rule of law) and requiring lenders to prove their right to claim the relief they seek. A sampling of the headnotes follows:
Mortgages — Foreclosure — Stay — Foreclosure action is stayed until mortgagor has been afforded mitigation and modification opportunities of home affordable modification program
Mortgages — Foreclosure — Standing — Motion for final judgment of foreclosure denied — Plaintiff that did not become holder of note until after suit was filed did not have standing to bring action — Even if assignment could confer standing retroactively, assignment is deficient where jurat does not indicate that it was signed in presence of notary, and assignor does not have documented authority to assign mortgage — Further, motion for summary judgment is deficient where supporting affidavit was signed by person whose only demonstrated authority is to assign and release liens, not by individual with corporate authority and demonstrated knowledge.
Mortgages — Foreclosure — Complaint — Plaintiff has failed to state cause of action where partial terms sheet attached to foreclosure complaint omits details as to who gets paid, when and where payment is due, and amount of payment — Further, assignment that is dated after filing of suit is at variance with complaint — Complaint dismissed with leave to amend.
Mortgages — Foreclosure — Standing — Motion to dismiss is granted with leave to file new or amended complaint to allege that plaintiff is owner and holder of note and mortgage and to allege additional facts that support that allegation.
Mortgages — Foreclosure — Where note filed by plaintiff is endorsed but does not name entity to which it is made payable, plaintiff failed to plead in complaint that it is owner of note or mortgage, mortgage names entity other than plaintiff as mortgagee, plaintiff has filed assignment of mortgage executed and recorded after complaint was filed, and complaint does not demonstrate equitable assignment of mortgage to plaintiff before complaint was filed, plaintiff must amend complaint to allege that it is owner and holder of note and mortgage and identify documents upon which it relies to establish that it holds and owns note and mortgage
When speaking in generalities, it’s difficult for folks to understand what lawyer, judges and informed consumers are ranting about when we scream, “THE BANKS, LENDERS AND FORECLOSURE MILLS ARE COMMITTING FRAUD!”
I attach here a deposition transcript of Angela Melissa Nolan, a robo signer at Chase Home Finance. In the deposition, she describes in detail some of the corporate processes in place that purport to give pretender lenders the evidentiary basis to pursue foreclosure cases….I’ve called these people “Robo Signers” because prior depositions indicated they don’t read anything…they just sign. This deposition reveals another form of “Robo Signer”, a computer generated document, complete with a “real” signature scanned in…..and the rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper.
C’mon take a few minutes to watch the video…I tell you it’s exactly what’s happening here!
In the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of residential mortgages were bundled together (often in groups of about 5,000 mortgages), and investors were offered the opportunity to buy shares of each bundle. This process is called securitization.
Each such bundle of residential mortgages was given a name, such as “Soundview Home Loan Trust 2006 OPT-2.” The name indicates information about the particular trust such as the year it was created (2006) and its contents (with OPT indicating that the loans in that particular trust were originally made by Option One Mortgage). Each such bundle/trust has a Cut Off Date identified in the trust documents (specifically, in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement). The Cut Off Date is the date on which all mortgage loans in the trust must be identified. In short, a final list of all of the mortgages in the bundle is set out. Each trust also has a Closing Date which is the date that the individual mortgages are transferred to the Trust Custodian, who must certify that for each mortgage, the custodian has a mortgage note endorsed in blank and proof that the ownership of the note has been transferred. This proof is most often an Assignment of Mortgage. Most trusts included the following or equivalent language regarding the Assignments: “Assignments of the Mortgage Loans to the Trustee (or its nominee) will not be recorded in any jurisdiction, but will be delivered to the Trustee in recordable form, so that they can be recorded in the event recordation is necessary in connection with the servicing of a Mortgage Loan.”
Title insurance companies issued policies guaranteeing that the trust had clear title to the mortgages.
When widespread defaults occurred, Trustees discovered that the laws regarding Mortgage Assignments varied significantly from state to state. Many issues regarding such Assignments were simply unresolved. One of the most significant issues was whether Mortgage Assignments could be back-dated or have retroactive effective dates. This issue arose because Trustees and their lawyers discovered in the foreclosure process that the Assignments could not actually be located, or that certain states did not allow blank Assignments.
To solve the problem of the missing Assignments, new Assignments were made and recorded. Because the question of retroactive Assignments had not been 2 resolved, most of these Assignments did not set forth the actual date that the Assignment took place. The Assignments were signed and notarized as if the transfer took place many years after the actual transfer date.
The Assignments were prepared by specially selected law firms and companies that specialized in providing “mortgage default services” to banks and mortgage companies. In jurisdictions with a high rate of mortgage defaults, over 80% of the filed Mortgage Assignments in the last three years were prepared and filed by the same five or six law firms and default processing companies.
In many states, two such Assignments were prepared and filed. The first was prepared in the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems as “nominee” for the particular bank or mortgage company. When MERS authority to file foreclosures and Assignments was challenged in most jurisdictions, with varying results, a non-MERS Assignment was prepared as well.
In all of these cases, the Assignment was prepared to conceal the actual date that the property was acquired by the Trust. An examination of the Assignments filed showing the grantee as the Trust – such as “Soundview Home Loan Trust 2006 – OPT 2” – shows that most of these Assignments were prepared and filed in 2008 and 2009, when, in reality, the mortgages and notes were actually assigned – albeit defectively – prior to the closing date of the Trust. While the exact closing date can only be determined by looking at the trust documents, any Trust that includes the year in 2006 in its title most likely closed in 2006.
If a Mortgage Assignment is dated, notarized and filed in a year after the year set forth in the name of the grantee trust on the Assignment, it is actually an Assignment specially, and in many cases, fraudulently, made to facilitate foreclosures.
These Specially-Made Assignments have created havoc in the courts. In many cases, the Specially-made Assignments are dated After the foreclosure action has been initiated, making it appear that the Trust somehow magically knew prior to the assignment that it would acquire the defaulting property several months after the foreclosure action was initiated.
Repeatedly, courts have asked Trustees to explain why they were acquiring nonperforming loans and whether such acquisition was a violation of the trustee’s fiduciary duty to the Trust. No Trustee has ever come forth and explained that the Trust actually acquired the loan years before the Assignment. As a result, there are many decisions with observations similar to this observation made by Judge Arthur M. Schack of Kings County, New York, in HSBC Bank v. Valentin, 21Misc. 3d 1124 [A]:
Further, according to plaintiff’s application, the default of defendants Valentin and Ruiz began with the nonpayment of principal and interest due on January 1, 2007. Yet, four months later, plaintiff HSBC was willing to take an assignment of the instant nonperforming loan. The Court wonders why HSBC would purchase a nonperforming loan, four months in arrears?
And in Deautsche Bank National Trust Co. V. Harris, Judge ARTHUR M. SCHACK Kings, New York, Index No. 39192/2007 (05 FEB 2008):
Further, the Court requires an explanation from an officer of plaintiff DEUTSCHE BANK as to why, in the middle of our national sub-prime mortgage financial crisis, DEUTSCHE BANK would purchase a non-performing loan from INDYMAC…
In Massachusetts in October, 2009, Land Court Judge Keith Long reaffirmed a March, 2009, ruling that a lender cannot begin foreclosure proceedings before the lender has filed and recorded the Assignment, stating:
The blank mortgage assignments they possessed transferred nothing…in Massachusetts, a mortgage is a conveyance of land. Nothing is conveyed unless and until it is various agreements between the securitization entities stating that each had a right to an an assignment and they are certainly not in recordable form. U.S. Bank National Association v. Ibanez, Massachusetts Land Court Misc. Case No. 384283, consolidated with two other cases.
Many authors expect the Massachusetts Supreme Court to reverse the Ibanez decision, but the uncertainty itself, as in the case of the MERS challenges, caused lenders to flood recording offices with new Assignments.
In cases where the Trust failed to get a valid Assignment, the problem is complicated by the bankruptcy of the major loan originators, including American Home Mortgage, Option One Mortgage, and Countrywide Home Loans.
When these big mortgage companies filed for bankruptcy, they did not disclose the mortgages already sold to the trusts as assets, because the transfers occurred months and years prior to the bankruptcy filing. Years later, when the Assignments were required for foreclosures, a bankruptcy court’s permission was needed to Assign billions of dollars in mortgages. Most likely in fear that a Bankruptcy Judge would not rubber stamp such a request, no such permission has ever been sought.
In lieu of valid Assignments, Trusts continue to rely on Assignments specially made by their own law firms and mortgage default service companies. Eventually, these fraudulent Assignments are being discovered by Courts, and the foreclosing trusts required to prove that they own the Mortgage and Note in the foreclosure action without reliance on Assignments that misrepresent the date of the actual transfer to the Trust the authority of the signers of the bankrupt original lenders. For thousands of homeowners, this realization has come too late.
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