The Law Offices of David J. Stern has only about 15 attorneys, according to legal directories.
However, it’s the biggest filer of mortgage foreclosure suits in Florida, reports the Tampa Tribune. Aided by a back office that dwarfs the law firm, with a staff of nearly 1,000, the Miami area firm files some 5,800 foreclosure actions monthly.
The back-office operation, DJSP Enterprises, is publicly traded and hence must file financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It netted almost $45 million in 2009 on a little over $260 million in gross revenue that year. The mortgage meltdown of recent years apparently has been good to the company: In 2006, it earned a profit of $8.6 million on $40.4 million in revenue.
Stern, who is the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, could not be reached for comment, the newspaper says.
His law firm has been in the news lately, after one Florida judge dismissed a foreclosure case due to what he described as a “fraudulently backdated” mortgage document, and another said, in a hearing earlier this month concerning another of the Stern firm’s foreclosure cases, “I don’t have any confidence that any of the documents the court’s receiving on these mass foreclosures are valid.”
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Judge Dismisses Mortgage Foreclosure Over ‘Fraudulently Backdated’ Doc”
Dear Honorable Judges in Foreclosure and Bankruptcy Proceedings:
This letter concerns how a Jacksonville, Florida publicly-traded company, Lender Processing Services, Inc. solves Deutsche Bank National Trust Company missing documents in foreclosure cases. Deutsche Bank National Trust Company (“DBNTC”) is the plaintiff in the majority of foreclosure actions filed in thousands of counties in America since 2007. Deutsche Bank is sometimes referred to as “America Foreclosure King.” There is currently a Department of Justice investigation of LPS and its influence over law firms in foreclosure actions, according to an article in the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review on April 16, 2010.
In these foreclosure actions, DBNTC is usually acting as the trustee for a mortgagebacked securitized trust. This means that a securities company made a commodity out of approximately 5,000 mortgages that were bundled together. The notes in the trust have a face value of approximately $1.5 billion in each trust. Investors buy shares of these trusts. Deutsche Bank is the most common name in the business of being a Trustee for Mortgage-Backed trusts. Other banks very active in this role of Trustee include Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Citibank, Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase and HSBC.
When each of these trusts was made, the securities company responsible for the securitization (often Financial Assets Securities Corporation in Greenwich, Connecticut) was supposed to have obtained mortgage assignments showing that the trust had acquired each mortgage and note from the previous owner, which was most often the original lender. The trust documents specify that the mortgages, notes and assignments in recordable from will have been obtained by the trust. Most mortgage-backed trusts included the following or equivalent language regarding 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.
Trustees take very few actions relating to the individual properties in the trust. Typically, the bank acting as a trustee for a mortgage-backed trust hires a mortgage servicing company to deal with issues involving the individual mortgages in the trust. The mortgage servicing companies in turn hire a “default management company” to foreclose when a homeowner defaults on payments on a loan that is part of the trust. Lender Processing Services in Jacksonville, Florida, is the largest mortgage default management company. Deutsche Bank National Trust Company uses several mortgage servicing companies, but most often uses American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. in Irving, Texas as its mortgage servicing company.
In tens of thousands of foreclosure cases filed by Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee for a mortgage-backed trust, Deutsche Bank has not produced the mortgage, note or Assignment and instead has filed pleadings claiming that the original mortgage and note were inexplicably lost. In these cases, Deutsche Bank uses specially prepared Mortgage Assignments to show that they have the right to foreclose. These documents were often prepared by clerical employees of Docx, LLC, a subsidiary company of Lender Processing Services, the default management company. Hundreds of thousands of other Mortgage Assignments came from the LPS office in Dakota County, Minnesota. More recently, these documents were produced from the LPS offices in Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida. In thousands of other cases, LPS directs the law firms it hires to use the employees of the law firms to sign as officers of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems to create the documents necessary for foreclosure
a) Mortgage Electronic Registration Services (MERS) is identified as the grantor and American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. is identified as the grantee; within days (or minutes), a second Assignment is filed, identifying American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. as the grantor and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee for the trust as the grantee;
b) a mortgage company no longer in existence is identified as the grantor and American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. is identified as the grantee; within days (or minutes), a second Assignment is filed, identifying American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. as the grantor and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee for the trust as the grantee;
c) a mortgage company no longer in existence is identified as the grantor and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee is identified as the grantee;
d) American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., purporting to be the “successor-in-interest” to Option One Mortgage Company, is identified as the grantor and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee is identified as the grantee;
e) Sand Canyon Corporation, formerly known as Option One Mortgage Company, is identified as the grantor and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as trustee is identified as the grantee, with no further explanation of how both American Home Mortgage Servicing and Sand Canyon have authority to act for Option One Mortgage.
On several hundred thousand Assignments, the individuals signing as officers of the grantor were actually clerical employees of Lender Processing Services, the mortgage default management company hired by American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., working for the grantee – Deutsche Bank National Trust Company. On several hundred thousand Assignments, the very same individuals signed as officers of both the grantor and grantee.
In all of these hundreds of thousands of cases, no Assignment actually took place on the date stated and no consideration was paid by the grantee to the grantor despite the representations in the Assignments. Most significantly, no disclosure was ever made to the Court in the foreclosure or bankruptcy case or to the homeowners in default that the original Assignments to the Trust were never made – or were lost – or were defective and that the recently-filed Assignments were specially made to facilitate foreclosures years after the property was transferred to the trust.
An examination of the signatures on these Assignments shows that many are forgeries, with several different people signing the names Linda Green, Tywanna Thomas, Korell Harp, Jennifer Ohde, Linda Thoresen and many of the other names used on several million mortgage assignments, as I have reported in my article “Compare These Signatures.” Many of these same individuals use at least a dozen different job titles as I have reported in my article, “An Officer of Too Many Banks.” These articles are available at www.frauddigest.com.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for additional information.
Yours truly,
Lynn E. Szymoniak, Esq.
This article could also have been titled:
HOW LENDER PROCESSING SERVICES, INC. SOLVES U.S. BANK’S MISSING PAPERWORK PROBLEM IN FORECLOSURES
-or-
HOW LENDER PROCESSING SERVICES, INC. SOLVES WELLS FARGO MISSING PAPERWORK PROBLEM IN FORECLOSURES
-or-
HOW LENDER PROCESSING SERVICES, INC. SOLVES BANK OF NEW YORK MISSING PAPERWORK PROBLEM IN FORECLOSURES
-or-
HOW LENDER PROCESSING SERVICES, INC. SOLVES CITIBANK’S MISSING PAPERWORK PROBLEM IN FORECLOSURES
-or-
HOW LENDER PROCESSING SERVICES, INC. SOLVES HSBC’S MISSING PAPERWORK PROBLEM IN FORECLOSURES
For a copy of the Exhibits referenced below, please contact szymoniak@mac.com.
Copies of Assignments from MERS to American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. are attached hereto as Exhibit 1.
Copies of Assignments from American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. to Deutsche Bank as Trustee are attached as Exhibit 2.
Copies of Assignments from American Brokers Conduit, a mortgage company no longer in existence at the time the Assignments were made, to Deutsche Bank as trustee are attached as Exhibit 3.
Copies of other Assignments to Deutsche Bank as Trustee signed by employees of Lender Processing Services, working for the grantee Deutsche Bank, but signing on behalf of the grantor mortgage companies or banks, or MERS as nominee for the grantor mortgage companies or banks, are attached as Exhibit 4.
Copies of Assignments from American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. as the successorin-interest to Option One Mortgage as grantor and Deutsche Bank as Trustee as the grantee are attached as Exhibit 5.
Copies of Assignments from Sand Canyon, formerly known as Option One Mortgage as grantor and Deutsche Bank as Trustee as the grantee are attached as Exhibit 6.
Copies of Assignments signed by employees of law firms working for Lender Processing Services on behalf of American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. and ultimately for grantee Deutsche Bank, where such employees signed as officers of MERS as grantor are attached as Exhibit 7.
Copies of Assignments signed by employees of Lender Processing Services on behalf of grantors and notarized in Duval County, Florida for grantee Deutsche Bank, filed by law firms working for Deutsche Bank are attached as Exhibit 8.
Anytime you have the word “FRAUD” involved in an on-going investigation, It makes you wonder when corps go at it together even more…click the links below to see what I mean.
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.
All over the US there is mass title defects that have been created to our homes…we are being evicted and titles to our stolen homes are being fabricated by means of Forgery/FRAUD! If these homes have been stolen from us…we have the right to claim them back! Let the unsuspecting homeowner who buys your home that it was fraudulently taken from you! What happens when your car is stolen and reclaimed? It goes back to it’s owner!
Stop by, say hello to the new owner of your stolen home and welcome them to the bogus neighborhood! Oh make sure to show some hospitality and bring them a gift…Umm your Foreclosure Mill Docs!
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.
“LPS’ characterization of itself as a stranger to this bankruptcy case is unsupported by the evidence. There is a very live case or controversy concerning the conduct of Fidelity in this bankruptcy case.”
“Lawyers must not allow the interests or dictates of a client to control their professional judgment.”
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.
Not Sooooo Fast! What corrections have you made here… exactly?? Have you corrected the families who are torn apart? Have you made corrections to notified all the many who lost their home by this? Have you made corrections to notify the lenders? Click Here
LPS Offers Clarification to Recent Article
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Lender Processing Services, Inc. (NYSE: LPS), a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage industry, today provided clarification to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal.
As indicated in LPS’ most recent Form 10-K, filed in February 2010, LPS reported that during an internal review of the business processes used by its document solutions subsidiary, the Company identified a business process that caused an error in the notarization of certain documents, some of which were used in foreclosure proceedings in various jurisdictions around the country.
The services performed by this subsidiary were offered to a limited number of customers, were unrelated to the Company’s core default management services and were immaterial to the Company’s financial results. LPS immediately corrected the business process and has completed the remedial actions necessary to minimize the impact of the error.
LPS subsequently received an inquiry relating to this matter from the Clerk of Court of Fulton County, Georgia, which is the regulatory body responsible for licensing the notaries used by the Company’s document solutions subsidiary. In response, LPS met with the Clerk of Court, along with members of her staff, and reported on the Company’s identification of the error and the status of the corrective actions that were underway. LPS has since completed its remediation efforts with respect to all of the affected documents and believes the Clerk of the Court has completed its review and closed the matter.
As stated in the Company’s Form 10-K, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Florida is reviewing the business processes of this subsidiary. LPS has expressed its willingness to fully cooperate with the U.S. Attorney. LPS continues to believe that it has taken necessary remedial action with respect to this matter.
About Lender Processing Services
LPS is a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage industry. LPS offers solutions that span the mortgage continuum, including lead generation, origination, servicing, portfolio retention, risk management and default, augmented by the company’s award-winning customer support and professional services. Approximately 50 percent of all U.S. mortgages are serviced using LPS’ MSP. LPS also offers proprietary mortgage and real estate data and analytics for the mortgage and capital markets industries. For more information about LPS, please visit www.lpsvcs.com.
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“.
