The Bristol County Board of Commissioners received a letter from Attorney Garrett Bradley notifying them that a complaint against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) was filed in Suffolk County on March 29.
Previously, the commissioners voted on Feb. 14 to file a lawsuit to reclaim millions of dollars from MERS for allegedly skirting public recording laws at the expense of the county’s three property registries.
Bristol County is joining Norfolk and Plymouth counties in filing lawsuits against MERS.
Commissioners have previously said the county won’t know exactly how much money they are looking to collect until the discovery process of litigation.
The Bristol County Board of Commissioners moved on Tuesday to file a lawsuit to reclaim millions of dollars from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, commonly known as MERS, for allegedly skirting public recording laws at the expense of the county’s three property registries.
Commissioner John Mitchell said Bristol County is joining with Norfolk and Plymouth counties in filing lawsuits against MERS.
“MERS has hidden all the assignment of mortgages,” Mitchell said. “This (lawsuit) is to get fees back for the recording of assignments of mortgages. You don’t know how many times they did it. They did it privately. Supposedly, somewhere, this MERS has a registry of their own assignments of mortgages which show who is the true owner of a mortgage, except I guess in practice they don’t really have it. And that’s been a problem with foreclosures. When a bankruptcy court says, ‘Who owns the mortgage now?,’ they haven’t always been able to come up with it.”
Mitchell said it has been a “substantial” problem, but the county won’t be sure about how much money they are actually looking to collect until the discovery process of litigation — rough estimates put together by county registries last year indicate that the loss of revenue ranges well into the millions of dollars.
The board also gave the reminder that the Bristol County Advisory Board meeting is coming up. It will take place on June 23 at 6 p.m. at the Taunton Superior Courthouse.
The Taunton Gazette-
The Bristol County Board of Commissioners sent a letter to Attorney General Martha Coakley on Tuesday concerning the “deceptive practices” of a mortgage process streamlining corporation, which it says cost county registries millions of dollars in the last decade.
The commissioners say Mortgage Electronic Registration System, commonly known as MERS, skirt public recording laws about recording mortgage assignments with the Registry of Deeds. The board says MERS is able to do this by keeping a secretive recording system for its participants that is not accessible to others.
The Bristol County Board of Commisioners voted unanimously Tuesday to send a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley expressing interest in pursuing litigation against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc, commonly known as MERS, for skirting public recording laws.
MERS is a private network that is partly owned by Bank of America. The commissioners did not specify how much they are looking to recover. “It’d be really rough numbers,” said Commissioner John Mitchell. “We’d have to find out.”
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