On April 23, 2012, the plaintiff in State of Ohio ex rel. David P. Joyce, Prosecuting Attorney of Geauga County Ohio v. MERSCORP, Inc., et al., N.D. Ohio Case No. 1:11-cv-02474, filed its motion seeking an order certifying the action as a class action, appointing Geauga County as class representative, and appointing plaintiff’s counsel, the New York law firm of Bernstein Liebhard LLP, as class counsel. The plaintiff argues that the case, which the plaintiff is attempting to bring on behalf of all 88 Ohio counties for relief relating to the allegedly unlawful failure of MERS and its member institutions to record millions of mortgages and mortgage assignments throughout Ohio, meets all requirements of Rule 23(a) and that certification is proper under any one of the 3 subsections of Rule 23(b). The plaintiff hopes to persuade the court that the MERS/member institution policy concerning recordation of mortgages and assignments is a “common scheme or course of conduct” that has given rise to claims “ideally suited for class certification.”
Harris County Texas, which includes the city of Houston, won a bid to join a group lawsuit seeking damages from the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Stewart Title Co.
U.S. District Judge Reed C. O’Connor allowed Harris and nearby Brazoria County (66583MF) to enter the case that could result in payouts of a much as $10 billion for all Texas counties, according to court papers filed by the plaintiffs.
Oh my, look what we have here…big mistake because I don’t think this is going very far….his franchises that is.
Bill Warner Private Investigator-
My source in Fort Lauderdale tells me that attorney David J. Stern has rolled over his $Millions in foreclosure home profits and the cash he got up front from the DJSP Entreprises Inc. FKA Chardan 2008 China Acquisition Corp deal into at least 150 Five Guys Burger and Fries Franchise’s, will that be fries with your meal sir?
It appears that David J. Stern is buying ”Five Guys Burger and Fries Franchise’s” in bulk, Stern is trying to acquire 500 Burger Joints NATIONWIDE…
Folks, please tweet, forward, whatever. This is a huge story that deserves to be given major coverage in MSM. Local judges need to be aware that they are being handed forged documents.
Stern pocketed some $60 million from that deal. The investors got the company and all its documents, internal procedures and everything you would need in order to find out what really happened within the Stern document mill.
A little after 8 AM EST today, a filing went up on the SEC’s Edgar database. It’s a Complaint in lawsuit, dated yesterday.
Action Date: January 4, 2012 Location: FT. Lauderdale, FL
In the lawsuit filed by DJSP Enterprises against David J. Stern and the Law Offices of David J. Stern, there are also allegations involving ProVest, the process server used by Stern and most of the other major foreclosure mills hired by Lender Processing Services in over 20 states.
36. Prior to the Transaction, the Seller Defendants also knowingly and systematically inflated their process of service costs to the Court. Specifically, Seller Defendants engineered a fraudulent scheme whereby they directed their process servicing work to a process servicing company called ProVest. The Seller Defendants caused each file to generate four or five separate fees for service of process regardless of whether service of process on multiple defendants was necessary or appropriate and regardless of whether service of process for multiple defendants could be achieved at the same address.
37. In exchange for receiving these inflated service of process fees, ProVest, in turn, routinely referred back to PTA servicing requests for “skip tracing” to locate defendants for whom ProVest purportedly did not have accurate street address information to effect service of process. ProVest “hired” and paid fees to PTA for “skip tracing” services despite the fact that ProVest had the ability and resources to perform “skip tracing” itself and routinely did so itself.
38. The Seller Defendants’ arrangement with ProVest amounted to a kickback scheme. DS Law padded and inflated its process servicing costs which were billed to its clients and added to the court costs assessed to foreclosure defendants. In exchange for feeding this work to ProVest, PTA earned manufactured “skip tracing” fees which inflated PTA’s revenues and profits and which represented another way in which the Seller Defendants artificially inflated the revenues of the Target Business prior to the Transaction.
Action Date: January 4, 2012 Location: FT. Lauderdale, FL
DJSP Enterprises, the publicly-traded company that was supposed to make millions for investors from the foreclosure services it provided to The Law Offices of David Stern (“the Stern Firm”), sued David J. Stern and the Law Offices of David Stern.
Stern Law mortgage foreclosure caseload rose from 15,000 in 2006 to 70,400 in 2009.
In 2009, Stern Law handled 20% of all foreclosures in Florida.
Stern Law’s clients included all 10 of the top 10, and 17 of the top 20 mortgage servicers in the U.S. including Fannie, Freddie, Citibank, BOA, Goldman Sachs, GMAC and Wells Fargo.
The non-legal, back room servicers related to foreclosures included REO services: property inspection, valuation, eviction, broker assignment – these were performed by DJSP Enterprises – the sole client was Stern Law.
29. The Seller Defendants fraudulently induced Plaintiffs DAL and DJSP into entering into the Transaction by fraudulently and artificially inflating the Target Business’ actual revenues, by intentionally failing to disclose that the Target Business and DS Law were not, in fact, operating in accordance with all applicable laws, and by concealing that DS Law was in jeopardy of losing its largest clients due to DS Law’s unlawful conduct. Indeed, before entering into the Transaction, the Seller Defendants knew that DS Law and the Target Business had been systematically falsifying and/or back-dating pertinent legal documents, submitting such documents to the courts, routinely misplacing and losing original key documents, filing foreclosures with inaccurate and/or incomplete documents, prosecuting foreclosure cases without obtaining proper service of process, and were in jeopardy of losing the Seller Defendants’ largest foreclosure clients due to such conduct.
30. By cutting corners in the foreclosure process without following the rule of law, the Defendants artificially reduced the expenses of the Target Business which falsely inflated the profitability of the Target Business.
31. To summarize, the Seller Defendants failed to disclose to DJSP and DAL that DS Law and the Target Business were systematically operating in an unlawful manner. In addition, the Seller Defendants failed to disclose to DJSP and DAL that the Target Business’ reported revenues were not accurate, inflated, and improperly calculated and that the expenses of the business were also distorted due to the systematic practices designed to “shorten” the legal process. The Seller Defendants falsely led DAL and DJSP to believe that they were acquiring a long-term profitable business that operated in accordance with all applicable laws to induce DAL and DJSP to enter into the Transaction.
33. Prior to the Transaction, the Seller Defendants were at all times well aware that DS Law and the Target Business were intentionally perpetuating a fraud on the courts by, inter alia, systematically filing forged documents, forging signatures on such documents, fraudulently backdating documents, improperly notarizing and witnessing documents, fabricating documents, signing affidavits without reviewing or verifying the information contained therein, prosecuting foreclosure cases without obtaining proper service of process, and filing foreclosures with inaccurate and/or incomplete documents.
34. Indeed, the Seller Defendants directed employees of DS Law and the Target Business to purposefully overlook glaring inaccuracies in foreclosure pleadings and to essentially rubber stamp computer generated documents without reviewing or verifying the accuracy of the documents. New attorneys at DS Law were not only encouraged, but were even ordered to sign legal filings and pleadings without reading them. As a result, false and inaccurate documents were routinely executed and filed with the courts in an effort to hasten foreclosure proceedings and illegally obtain final judgments of foreclosure for the Seller Defendants’ clients.
35. The Seller Defendants even incentivized these unscrupulous and unlawful practices by giving their employees bonuses and extravagant gifts for churning out the highest number of foreclosure cases in the least amount of time. The Seller Defendants encouraged contests between DS Law attorneys to see who could jam a foreclosure case through the courts the fastest.
Nueces County could join a group of Texas counties suing Bank of America and a related corporation over unpaid courthouse filing fees.
Nationwide, counties are claiming that a mortgage database created by banks is cheating the counties out of billions of dollars in filing fees.
Dallas County is leading the charge with a class-action suit against the bank and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins told NPR his county has lost about $100 billion in filing fees.
Sure he will do all in his power to squirm out of this one.
REUTERS-
Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein may be asked to testify in a market regulator’s insider-trading case against a former director of the Wall Street bank, a judge ruled.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Rajat Gupta, a former board member at Goldman and Procter & Gamble, of giving inside tips about the two companies to his friend Raj Rajaratnam in 2008 and 2009.
We know for a fact and the government knows for a fact that if MERS is on your documents, a cloud also exists.
Their “quick fix” might come as simple as accepting a modification, principal reduction or a refi, to cover this all up and creating new paper.
If any of your new docs have MERS or a like, what have you done again?
Statesman-
The ownership of tens of thousands of Central Texas home loans could be in question because of the actions of a national private registry that officials say has sidestepped the filing of proper documents with county clerks, the American-Statesman has learned.
The Mortgage Electronic Registration System was created in the 1990s by 3,000 of the nation’s largest lenders to “streamline the mortgage sale process by using e-commerce to replace paperwork,” according to the company’s website.
In recent years, the Virginia-based registry has exploded across the U.S. as mortgages increasingly were bundled and sold as commodities in rapid churn to investors.
This is just slightly south of the entire settlement package of the Foreclosure Fraud settlement, which is also nilch for the acts committed.
Reuters-
Former customers of Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme filed a class action lawsuit on Monday seeking to recover $19 billion from JPMorgan Chase & Co, claiming the bank willfully ignored signs of fraud.
JPMorgan was Madoff’s bank for two decades. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, claims the bank was “thoroughly complicit” in concealing Madoff’s fraud.
Oh my, this is getting very interesting. Now who is going to pay for MERS’ attorney fees? Oops there isn’t anyone. Where will the Counties get the money they claim? The lenders? Shareholders?
We’re talking in excess of Billions and Billions if every state files one of these for every county. This is going to get interesting very quick.
It’s quite easy because most information is already on this site.
It’s so simple and no tax dollars will go to waste…. Trust me.
Bloomberg-
The Texas county that includes Houston will ask the state attorney general to investigate suing Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. over unpaid filing fees on behalf of all the counties in Texas, an official said.
“If this is something that affects county government all over the state, why isn’t the state attorney general pursuing it?” Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said in an interview today. Emmett is a member of the Harris County Commissioners Court and the highest elected official of the county.
“MERS has jeopardized the clear title of every Texas homeowner with a mortgage and has cheated Texas counties out of millions of dollars in property recording fees,”
– County Attorney Vince Ryan
My San Antonio-
Bexar County is poised to challenge a private mortgage-tracking system that officials claim has cost it millions of dollars in filing fees.
The district attorney’s office will ask the Commissioners Court at its Nov. 1 meeting for the go-ahead to hire a law firm to sue Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., which claims to hold title to some 60 million loans around the country.
HOUSTON – It was a simpler time when Edward Mahar bought his home in 1980. He has lived there ever since in southwest Houston.
“It was procedurally easy and we had a Realtor involved and basically the process was getting bank approval to buy the property,” says Mahar.
There were no mortgage swaps or complex transactions in the financial market that could leave your head spinning as is the case currently. For years, he knew exactly who held the note on his property.
“Since two years ago, everything is complicated,” says Mahar.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed but lately there is a PR move supporting MERS…but those moves will not help once every county in the US wakes up and begins to sue the machine.
Bloomberg-
Attorneys for the Texas county that includes Houston will seek permission Tuesday to hire outside counsel to sue Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. over unpaid mortgage-filing fees.
The plan was posted today on the agenda for the Harris County Commissioners Court, the governing body for the county. County attorneys will hire the same law firm, Malouf & Nockels, that handled a similar lawsuit filed by Dallas last month, County Attorney Vince Ryan said in an interview today.
The Dallas County District Attorney’s lawsuit claimed Merscorp Inc.’s MERS, which runs an electronic registry of mortgages, cheated the county out of tens of millions of dollars in uncollected filing fees. MERS tracks servicing rights and ownership interests …
Again, this is what I’ve been waiting for. As Professor Peterson says, “This case is scary because if Dallas wins then there are a lot of other counties around the country that are going to follow.” … And follow they will.
I already see them lining up one by one. You see just because you can develop a system and input data, doesn’t mean it relieves you from any responsibility of some 67+ million “errors”. They knew what they had from its inception.
BLOOMBERG-
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) is among a group of lenders that may face a wave of new lawsuits claiming the system they’ve used for more than a decade to register mortgages cheated cash-strapped counties out of millions of dollars.
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said state attorneys general and county officials across the U.S. have expressed interest in his lawsuit against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. and Bank of America, filed in Texas state court on Sept. 21. Dallas County could be owed as much as $100 million in filing fees, he said.
MERSCORP, INC.; MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC.; STEWART TITLE GUARANTY COMPANY; STEWART TITLE COMPANY; BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION; AND ASPIRE FINANCIAL, INC. D/B/A TEXASLENDING.COM, DEFENDANTS
EXCERPTS:
III. AGENCY AND CORPORATE VEIL/ALTER-EGO 10. At all times material hereto, each Defendant was acting by and through its actual, apparent, ostensible, or by estoppel agents and/or employees.
11. Plaintiff moves the Court pierce the MERSCORP and MERS corporate veils and impose liability upon Defendants Stewart and BOA as shareholders in MERSCORP for the activities of MERSCORP and MERS alleged herein. Recognizing the corporate existence of MERSCORP and MERS separate from their shareholders, including Stewart and BOA, would cause an inequitable result or injustice, or would be a cloak for fraud or illegality. MERSCORP and MERS were undercapitalized in light of the nature and risk of their business. The corporate fiction is being used to justify wrongs, as a means of perpetrating fraud, as a mere tool or business conduit for others, as a means of evading existing legal obligations, to perpetrate monopoly and unlawfully gain monopolistic control over the real property recording system in the State of Texas, and to circumvent statutory obligations.
With one court filing, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has transformed the mortgage backed securities liability landscape. By intervening and opposing the Bank of America/BNY global settlement of mortgage backed securities claims, Schneiderman served notice to the big banks that they will not be able to cut self-serving deals to escape liability to investors. By suing Bank of New York for fraud at the same time, he reminded banks that they face liabilities for their actions as trustee (as Yves Smith has been pointing out at Naked Capitalism for some time now.) In fact, given that everything Schneiderman alleged about BNY’s actions as trustee (other than the deal with BofA) could be said about Deustche Bank, US Bank, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase (all as Trustee), are those suits coming?
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP,
INC., AIG SECURITIES LENDING
CORPORATION, AMERICAN
GENERAL ASSURANCE COMPANY,
AMERICAN GENERAL LIFE AND
ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY,
AMERICAN GENERAL LIFE
INSURANCE COMPANY, AMERICAN
GENERAL LIFE INSURANCE
COMPANY OF DELAWARE,
AMERICAN HOME ASSURANCE
COMPANY, AMERICAN
INTERNATIONAL GROUP
RETIREMENT PLAN, CHARTIS
PROPERTY CASUALTY COMPANY,
CHARTIS SELECT INSURANCE
COMPANY, CHARTIS SPECIALTY
INSURANCE COMPANY, COMMERCE
AND INDUSTRY INSURANCE
COMPANY, FIRST SUNAMERICA LIFE
INSURANCE COMPANY, LEXINGTON
INSURANCE COMPANY, NATIONAL
UNION FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY
OF PITTSBURGH, PA, NEW
HAMPSHIRE INSURANCE COMPANY,
SUNAMERICA ANNUITY AND LIFE
ASSURANCE COMPANY,
SUNAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE
COMPANY, THE INSURANCE
COMPANY OF THE STATE OF
PENNSYLVANIA, THE UNITED STATES
LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY IN THE
CITY OF NEW YORK, THE VARIABLE
ANNUITY LIFE INSURANCE
COMPANY, and WESTERN NATIONAL
LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY,
Plaintiffs,
against-
BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION, BANC OF AMERICA SECURITIES LLC,
BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION, BANC OF AMERICA
FUNDING CORPORATION, BANC OF
AMERICA MORTGAGE SECURITIES,
INC., ASSET BACKED FUNDING
CORPORATION, NB HOLDINGS
CORPORATION, MERRILL LYNCH &
CO., INC., MERRILL LYNCH
MORTGAGE LENDING, INC., FIRST
FRANKLIN FINANCIAL
CORPORATION, MERRILL LYNCH
MORTGAGE CAPITAL INC., MERRILL
LYNCH CREDIT CORPORATION,
MERRILL LYNCH, PIERCE, FENNER &
SMITH INC., MERRILL LYNCH
MORTGAGE INVESTORS, INC.,
COUNTRYWIDE FINANCIAL
CORPORATION, COUNTRYWIDE
CAPITAL MARKETS LLC,
COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC.,
COUNTRYWIDE SECURITIES
CORPORATION, CWABS, INC.,
CWALT, INC., CWHEQ, INC., and
CWMBS, INC.,
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK
In the matter of the application of
THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON (as Trustee under various Pooling and
Servicing Agreements and Indenture Trustee under various Indentures),
Petitioner Counter-Defendant,
-and-
BlackRock Financial Management Inc. (intervenor), Kore Advisors, L.P.
(intervenor), Maiden Lane, LLC (intervenor), Maiden Lane II, LLC (intervenor),
Maiden Lane III, LLC (intervenor), Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
(intervenor), Trust Company of the West and affiliated companies controlled by
The TCW Group, Inc. (intervenor), Neuberger Berman Europe Limited
(intervenor), Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (intervenor),
Goldman Sachs Asset Management, L.P. (intervenor), Teachers Insurance and
Annuity Association of America (intervenor), Invesco Advisers, Inc.
(intervenor), Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (intervenor), Landesbank Baden-
Wuerttemberg (intervenor), LBBW Asset Management (Ireland) plc, Dublin
(intervenor), ING Bank fsb (intervenor), ING Capital LLC (intervenor), ING
Investment Management LLC (intervenor), New York Life Investment
Management LLC (intervenor), Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and its
affiliated companies (intervenor), AEGON USA Investment Management LLC,
authorized signatory for Transamerica Life Insurance Company, AEGON
Financial Assurance Ireland Limited, Transamerica Life International (Bermuda)
Ltd., Monumental Life Insurance Company, Transamerica Advisors Life
Insurance Company, AEGON Global Institutional Markets, plc, LIICA Re II,
Inc., Pine Falls Re, Inc., Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Company,
Stonebridge Life Insurance Company, and Western Reserve Life Assurance Co.
of Ohio (intervenor), Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta (intervenor),
Bayerische Landesbank (intervenor), Prudential Investment Management, Inc.
(intervenor), and Western Asset Management Company (intervenor),
Petitioners,
-against-
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK by ERIC T.
SCHNEIDERMAN, Attorney General of the State of New York,
Intervenor Counter-Plaintiff,
for an order pursuant to CPLR § 7701 seeking judicial instructions and approval
of a proposed settlement.
Recent Comments