Florida lawyer warns of deepening foreclosure mess
By Kevin Gray
ROYAL PALM BEACH, Florida | Wed Oct 6, 2010 2:58pm EDT
ROYAL PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) – A Florida lawyer at the forefront of legal challenges against foreclosure practices by mortgage lenders says the U.S. housing morass will drag on due to difficulty in determining who owns home loans.
Questions over practices in foreclosure procedures across the United States have forced at least three banks to temporarily halt their proceedings and prompted a growing chorus of calls by lawmakers and regulators for an industry-wide moratorium until problems are resolved.
However, Tom Ice, whose law firm Ice Legal P.A. was among the first to get banking executives to acknowledge shoddy foreclosure practices, said it will be difficult for banks to fix all of the paperwork errors.
“This isn’t just a procedural technicality, it’s exposed the very problem at the heart of the securitization fiasco, which is no one knows who owns what,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
A record 1.2 million U.S. homes are expected to be taken over by banks this year, up from 1 million last year and 100,000 in 2005, real estate data company RealtyTrac Inc. says.
Faced with a rising tide of foreclosures, lenders employed so-called “robo-signers” — middle-ranking banking executives who signed thousands of affidavits a month claiming they were knowledgeable of the cases.
However, some lenders, prodded by legal challenges, now say officials were not aware of details in all of the cases and vow to resubmit them. It is unclear how many cases are involved but it is believed to be in the tens of thousands.
But Ice said a broader problem was damaging the process of resolving the foreclosures. He said many banks were initiating proceedings without knowing if they in fact own the loans and often failed to produce requested documents.
The securitization of home loans meant many have been sold off to other investors. Banks still own some, but frequently serve as loan servicers on behalf of the actual owner, whether it is another bank or an investor pool.
Some mortgages can be tracked in an electronic system known as MERS, or the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, that traces transfers among member banks. But the mechanism is not fully reliable, Ice said.
A recent sample among some 400 foreclosure cases Ice’s law firm is handling revealed 71 percent with possible discrepancies in detailing the owners of clients’ loans.
“Few of these processes followed the rules, shortcuts were used at every step,” he said. “The industry itself doesn’t know who owns what.”
BANKS WARY OF BAD LOAN STIGMA
Some banks may be reluctant to step forward, worried about how it might reflect the amount of bad loans on their balance sheets, Ice added.
Lenders, including JPMorgan Chase and Co., Bank of America Corp and Ally Financial Inc, are now scrambling to defend and improve their foreclosure procedures.
LOXAHATCHEE, Fla.—Israel Machado’s foreclosure started out as a routine affair. In the summer of 2008, as the economy began to soften, Mr. Machado’s pool-cleaning business suffered and like millions of other Americans, he fell behind on his $400,000 mortgage.
But Mr. Machado’s response was unlike most other Americans’. Instead of handing his home over to the lender, IndyMac Bank FSB, he hired Ice Legal LP in nearby Royal Palm Beach to fight the foreclosure. The law firm researched the history of Mr. Machado’s loan and found two interesting facts.
First, the affidavits IndyMac used to file the foreclosure were signed by a so-called robo-signer named Erica A. Johnson-Seck, who routinely signed 6,000 documents a week related to foreclosures and bankruptcy. That volume, the court decided, meant Ms. Johnson-Seck couldn’t possibly have thoroughly reviewed the facts of Mr. Machado’s case, as required by law.
Secondly, IndyMac (now called OneWest Bank) no longer owned the loan—a group of investors in a securitized trust managed by Deutsche Bank did. Determining that IndyMac didn’t really have standing to foreclose, a judge threw out the case and ordered IndyMac to pay Mr. Machado’s $30,000 legal bill.
Mr. Machado and his lawyer, Tom Ice, say they now want to convince the owners of the mortgage to cut Mr. Machado’s loan balance to between $150,000 and $200,000—the current selling price for comparable homes in his community near West Palm Beach. “The whole intent was to get them to come to the negotiating table, to get me in a fixed-rate mortgage that worked,” Mr. Machado said.
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.
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.
LATE ONE NIGHT IN February 2009, Ariane Ice sat poring over records on the website of Florida’s Palm Beach County. She’d been at it for weeks, forsaking sleep to sift through thousands of legal documents. She and her husband, Tom, an attorney, ran a boutique foreclosure defense firm called Ice Legal. (Slogan: “Your home is your castle. Defend it.”) Now they were up against one of Florida’s biggest foreclosure law firms: Founded by multimillionaire attorney David J. Stern, it controlled one-fifth of the state’s booming market in foreclosure-related services. 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. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter. It frequently requires months of sleuthing in order to untangle the web of banks, brokers, and investors, among others. 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.”
Stern has made a fortune foreclosing on homeowners. He owns a $15 million mansion, four Ferraris, and a 130-foot yacht.
More often than not in uncontested cases, missing or problematic documents simply go overlooked. In Florida, where foreclosure cases must go before a judge (some states handle them as a bureaucratic matter), dwindling budgets and soaring caseloads have overwhelmed local courts. Last year, the foreclosure dockets of Lee County in southwest Florida became so clogged that the court initiated rapid-fire hearings lasting less than 20 seconds per case—”the rocket docket,” attorneys called it. In Broward County, the epicenter of America’s housing bust, the courthouse recently began holding foreclosure hearings in a hallway, a scene that local attorneys call the “new Broward Zoo.” “The judges are so swamped with this stuff that they just don’t pay attention,” says Margery Golant, a veteran Florida foreclosure defense lawyer. “They just rubber-stamp them.”
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.” While far less scrutinized than subprime lenders or Wall Street banks, these firms undermine efforts by government and the mortgage industry to put struggling homeowners back on track at a time of record foreclosures. (There were 2.8 million foreclosures in 2009, and 3.8 million are projected for this year.) 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.”
Stern’s is hardly the only outfit to attract criticism, but his story is a useful window into the multibillion-dollar “default services” industry, which includes both law firms like Stern’s and contract companies that handle paper-pushing tasks for other big foreclosure lawyers. Over the past decade and a half, Stern has built up one of the industry’s most powerful operations—a global machine with offices in Florida, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines—squeezing profits from every step in the foreclosure process. Among his loyal clients, who’ve sent him hundreds of thousands of cases, are some of the nation’s biggest (and, thanks to American taxpayers, most handsomely bailed out) banks—including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup. “A lot of these mills are doing the same kinds of things,” says Linda Fisher, a professor and mortgage-fraud expert at Seton Hall University’s law school. But, she added, “I’ve heard some pretty bad stories about Stern from people in Florida.”
While the mortgage fiasco has so far cost American homeowners an estimated $7 trillion in lost equity, it has made Stern (no relation to NBA commissioner David J. Stern) fabulously rich. His $15 million, 16,000-square-foot mansion occupies a corner lot in a private island community on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. It is featured on a water-taxi tour of the area’s grandest estates, along with the abodes of Jay Leno and billionaire Blockbuster founder Wayne Huizenga, as well as the former residence of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. (Last year, Stern snapped up his next-door neighbor’s property for $8 million and tore down the house to make way for a tennis court.) Docked outside is Misunderstood, Stern’s 130-foot, jet-propelled Mangusta yacht—a $20 million-plus replacement for his previous 108-foot Mangusta. He also owns four Ferraris, four Porsches, two Mercedes-Benzes, and a Bugatti—a high-end Italian brand with models costing north of $1 million a pop.
Despite his immense wealth and ability to affect the lives of ordinary people, Stern operates out of the public eye. His law firm has no website, he is rarely mentioned in the mainstream business press, and neither he nor several of his top employees responded to repeated interview requests for this story. Stern’s personal attorney, Jeffrey Tew, also declined to comment. But scores of interviews and thousands of pages of legal and financial filings, internal emails, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones provided insight into his operation. So did eight of Stern’s former employees—attorneys, paralegals, and other staffers who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. (Most still work in related fields and fear that speaking publicly about their ex-boss could harm their careers.)
Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here.
TAMPA – The Florida Attorney General’s Office is investigating a Tampa-based foreclosure law firm that has become one of the state’s largest foreclosure mills.
On the agency’s Web site, the attorney general showed it has an “active public consumer-related investigation” into Florida Default Law Group. The agency notes that it is a civil investigation, rather than a criminal one, and the fact that is has an investigation isn’t proof of any violation of law.
Without going into much detail, the attorney general’s Web site says Florida Default Law Group, “Appears to be fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases.
“These documents have been presented in court before judges as actual assignments of mortgages and have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient. Presenting faulty bank paperwork due to the mortgage crisis and thousands of foreclosures per month.”
Attempts to reach the Attorney General’s Office and Michael Echevarria, the head of Florida Default Law Group, were unsuccessful Thursday.
Based in a business park just off the Veteran’s Expressway, Florida Default Law Group files hundreds of foreclosure lawsuits alone in Hillsborough County on behalf of banks and mortgage servicing companies. The Tribune profiled Florida Default Law Group in January.
According to the Tribune’s review of 1,994 circuit court records, the firm filed initial legal documents for 323 foreclosure lawsuits in October. That was second only to the Law Offices of David J. Stern, a Broward County-based foreclosure firm that filed 352 foreclosure cases in October.
Florida Default Law Group operates in numerous counties in Florida, but it’s not clear how many lawsuits it files outside of Hillsborough County.
Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at (813) 259-7865.
These are precarious times for lawyers in the business of filing foreclosure cases for banks. This is particularly true in one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, Florida.
As we’ve noted before, the feds in Jacksonville recently started a criminal investigation of a company that is a top provider of the documentation used by banks in the foreclosure process. And a state-court judge ruled that a bank submitted a “fraudulent” document in support of its foreclosure case. That document was prepared by a local law firm.
For more Law Blog background on the foreclosure mess in our nation’s courts, this post will help.
The news today: the Florida Attorney General’s office said it has launched a civil investigation of Florida Default Law Group, based in Tampa, which is one of the largest so-called foreclosure-mill law firms in the state.
According to the AG’s website, it’s looking at whether the firm is “fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases.” It added: “These documents have been presented in court before judges as actual assignments of mortgages and have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient.”
The issue: judges are increasingly running into situations in which banks are claiming ownership of properties they actually don’t own. Some of them end up chewing out the lawyers representing the banks.
The AG’s office said Florida Default Law Group appears to work closely with Lender Processing Services — the company we referenced earlier that is being investigated by the Justice Department.
LPS processes and sometimes produces documents needed by banks to prove they own the mortgages. LPS often works with local lawyers who litigate the foreclosure cases in court. Sometimes those same law firms produce documents that are required to prove ownership.
We’ve reached out to Florida Default Law Group and LPS and will let you know if we hear back.
The case file cited below relates to a civil — not a criminal — investigation. The existence of an investigation does not constitute proof of any violation of law.
Case Number:
L10-3-1095
Subject of investigation:
Florida Default Law Group, PL
Subject’s address:
9119 Corporate Lake Drive, Suite 300, Tampa, Florida 33634
Subject’s business:
Law Firm, Foreclosures
Allegation or issue being investigated:
Appears to be fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases. These documents have been presented in court before judges as actual assignments of mortgages and have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient. Presenting faulty bank paperwork due to the mortgage crisis and thousands of foreclosures per month. This firm is one of the largest foreclosure firms in the State. This firm appears to be one of Docx, LLC a/k/a Lender Processing Services’ clients, who this office is also investigating.
AG unit handling case:
Economic Crimes Division in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
In a time when you can stroll over to the computer and rattle off an e-mail to your elected official because you think your taxes are too high or leave an anonymous comment on a blog or article voicing your disapproval with a particular reporter, it would seem that the days of face-to-face action and rallies are unfortunately a thing of the past.Not for a group of activists in Florida heading to the Capitol in Tallahassee on Wednesday, April 21.
Michael Redman (4closureFraud), and Lisa Epstein (Foreclosure Hamlet), in an effort to convince Florida legislators to listen to their constituents, are organizing a transport to the capital. An old fashion road trip of attorneys, advocates, and homeowners. Transportation is being organized and buses will be available from key areas throughout Florida and along major roadways. Redman and Epstein had initially dipped into their own pockets to charter buses for the event.
As of April 16th, according to Redman’s blog, in a Friday post,
“Team Ice in West Palm has sponsored their bus and now one of Pinellas County’s toughest foreclosure fighters has generously agreed to sponsor a bus to make sure any attorney and homeowner who wants to go to Tallahassee and make his or her voice heard has the opportunity to get up there and meet face to face.”
“One of the most inspiring things about all of this is seeing how the defense attorneys are all throwing their time, talent and treasure into this fight. We all share our ideas, insight and experience because doing so serves the interests of not just our clients but those folks out there who cannot afford an attorney and it especially serves the Constitution we took an oath to protect and the judiciary we respect,”
The most important piece of legislation the group was trying to stop was a push by bankers to change the way Florida handles foreclosures. Florida currently, and always has had Judicial foreclosures. The bank’s proposed legislation would have allowed banks to foreclose on Florida homes without going to court. According to Matt Weidner, a Florida attorney, the bill for now appears to have been stopped in the House, but the Senate will meet next week and according to an old Florida saying, “No one’s safe while the legislature is in session.”
A non-judicial foreclosure would mean that, “you the homeowner won’t automatically get your day in court if your lender tries to take your house away. The way it works right now is the lender is required by law to file a civil lawsuit against you in order to foreclose. You then have to answer it. If you don’t answer it or don’t show up to court, the judge issues a summary judgment against you. In a non-judicial foreclosure everything is done administratively and your right to due process is compromised and you have to beg for your day in court,” as explained by Steve Dibert of MFI-Miami.
Although the bill appears to have died, and the bankers appear to have conceded, this motivated band of advocates doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.
An e-mail from Weidner reads:
As Mark Twain said, ‘News of My death was greatly exaggerated.’ Although the legislation appears to have died, the passion and concern that its introduction incited has only increased with word of its demise. Tapping into broad based anxiety and concern felt by homeowners all across Florida, the group has turned its focus from defeating this legislation to demanding legislation that will increase protections for Florida homeowners. Talk about turning the tables. They are meeting with Senator Mark Aronberg and Rep. Darren Soto who introduced a “Homeowner’s Bill of Rights“. They’re asking that this legislation be resurrected… at the very least they want to make sure their legislators are fully aware of their concerns and the problems they’re facing.
According to Weidner’s press release,
“The response from legislators to this movement has been awe-inspiring. Our leaders in Washington may have trouble hearing the voices of their people, but the leaders who represent us in Tallahassee hear the voice of the people loud and clear! Already leaders from both houses have graciously agreed to meet with their voters, we’re confident many more will agree to meet with us when we arrive.”
Michael Moore spoke of the apathy and lack of action he witnessed despite his tireless work drawing attention to key issues affecting millions of Americans.
“Two years ago, I tried to get the health-care debate going, and it did eventually, and now where are we? We may not even have it. What am I supposed to do at a certain point?, ” Moore said in an 2009 Toronto press conference.
It’s refreshing and inspiring to think that may be changing.
Denise Richardson (givemebackmycredit.com) posted the following from Lisa Epstein on her blog:
This is not just for homeowners!We are ALL reduced by the actions behind the mortgage frauds and scams. Tenants! Anyone who relies on any public service funded by our now shrunken tax revenues! Anyone owning any property at all, fully paid off or not. Any business owner! Unemployed family members! Credit card/bank account fees victims! Those with drained 401Ks and college savings accounts!
We will be heard as was the Florida Bankers Association on their own “Capitol Day” on March 10, 2010. Florida Bankers, guess what? You wanted a “Taste of Florida”? You are gonna get one! We are having our own “Capitol Day”! But our collective voices will be a harmony; louder, clearer, unwavering, and with a foundation firmly planted in the historical roots of our country as a nation for WE, THE PEOPLE!
Bankers and other stealth foreclosing entities, listen up! We are NOT boobs, chumps, doormats, dupes, easy marks, fools, goats, gulls, patsies, pigeons, pushovers, saps, scapegoats, schmucks, sitting ducks, stooges, suckers, victims, or weaklings, And we most certainly are not “deadbeats”!
To find out more about the rally and let them know you’ll be along for the ride, see Redman’s site at 4closurefraud.org or Weidner’s blog for more information.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the attorneys at Ice Legal may be the most aggressive and hard charging Foreclosure Fraud Fighters in Florida. When this whole system comes crashing down and when judges and the Florida Supreme Court put an end to the systemic abuses of the court process being perpetrated by the foreclosure mills, the attorneys at Ice Legal will rightly take their fair share of the credit.
Attached here is a must read Motion along with a copy of a transcript from a hearing held in a Volusia County Courtroom. The Motion lays out a very disturbing set of allegations…
This is a foreclosure action filed by WELLS FARGO BANK, NA (the “BANK”). The BANK is represented by Florida Default Law Group, P.L. (“FDLG”). On behalf of the BANK in this case, and on behalf of other clients in other cases, FDLG filed affidavits to establish that the attorneys’ fees it was allegedly paid were reasonable. The affidavits purport to have been executed by Lisa Cullaro, the appointed expert on attorneys’ fees. The notary who allegedly administered the expert’s oath and vouched for her signature was Erin Cullaro, a former employee of FDLG and now an Assistant Attorney General in the Economic Crimes Division of the Office of the Attorney General.
Not only was Erin just a former employee, she was one of the lead counsel for Michael Echeverria, the owner of FDLG (Florida Default Law Group)
Continue reading…REUTERS
These are precarious times for lawyers in the business of filing foreclosure cases for banks. This is particularly true in one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, Florida.
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