Karmela Lejarde - FORECLOSURE FRAUD

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As We Were Saying, eMortgage Coming To Your Town?

As We Were Saying, eMortgage Coming To Your Town?


Come hungry…close a loan electronically within 15 minutes and with doughnuts. Not like it took any longer the paper route!

Providing all the ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’ currently happening in foreclosure land, just hope your eNote/eMortgage doesn’t get deleted by accident.

via Housing Wire:

Harry Gardner, president of SigniaDocs, said the perfect infrastructure is one that manages all mortgage documents electronically, but the number of loans in the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems’ eRegistry is about 200,000, or “a small fraction of mortgages written in the last 10 years.”

“And by eMortgage, we mean truly paperless not some hybrid of some paper and some electronic documentation,” Gardener said. “Ten years ago, we were saying mainstream eMortgage documentation was three to five years away, and I’m happy to say that mainstream eMortgage documentation is now three to five years away.”

continue reading….  Housing Wire

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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eMortgages, eNotes …Get Ready For The No-DOC Zone

eMortgages, eNotes …Get Ready For The No-DOC Zone


For you to understand the plan the financial institutions have you need to grasp the following. Will MERS patterns continue? Imagine the price you will pay when these files are hacked or manipulated.

Everyone knows by now that MERS was ‘invented’ to keep costs low for the banks, reduce the risk of record-keeping errors and make it easier to keep track of loans for the banks not the borrowers. By these actions, not only has MERS eliminated crucial chain in title documents, has proven in many court cases to assign absolutely nothing because it had no power to negotiate the note but also eliminated an enormous amount of county revenues.

Last week SFF wrote about the latest invention planned to coexist with MERS called SmartSAFE, which will be used for creating, signing, storing, accessing and managing the lifecycle of electronic mortgage documents. According to Wave’s eSignSystems Executive VP Kelly Purcell, “Mortgages are sold several times throughout the life of a loan, and electronic mortgages address the problem of the ‘lost note,’ while improving efficiency in the process.”

This goes a step forward of what MERS can do today.

Will this process eliminate recording paper mortgages/deeds from county records? Eliminate fees that counties in trouble desperately need? THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS.

Still with me? Finally, according to CUinsight, a sample eNote in the form of a MRG Category 1 classified SMARTDoc, was successfully delivered to Xerox’s BlitzDocs eVault, a virtual repository that connects directly to the MERS® eRegistry and eDelivery systems, where it was electronically signed and registered.

Adding the finishing touches to permit MERS access to future eNotes? I say this is the master plan.

Looking forward to what MA John O’Brien, the Essex County register of deeds, NC Register of deeds Jeff Thigpen and NY Suffolk County, former county clerk Ed Romaine’s approach is after they read what they plan on doing to land records. If they thought it was limited to the elimination of recording fees for assignments of mortgage, they are mistaken.

Questions remain as to why replace something that has been working for so long? Why continue with MERS, a system which has failed in many ways? MERS is under investigation for fraud is it not? Why in a time where mortgage fraud is wide spread, will anyone even trust using electronic devices to manage possibly future trillions of dollars worth?

Say farewell to a tradition that has been here for well over 300 years. Eliminating ‘paper’ will put promissory notes and  mortgage related documents in great jeopardy. No computer system in the world is secure [PERIOD].

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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MERS Responds to Essex Co., Mass. Announcement Company in compliance with purpose and intent of state recording acts

MERS Responds to Essex Co., Mass. Announcement Company in compliance with purpose and intent of state recording acts


MERS Responds to Essex Co., Mass. Announcement
Company in compliance with purpose and intent of
state recording acts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karmela Lejarde
703-761-1274

Reston, Virginia Feb. 25, 2011—MERS has not received any direct legal communication regarding Mr. O’Brien’s February 22, 2011 announcement. The use of MERS is in compliance with the purpose and intent of the state recording acts. MERS intends to fully defend itself against these unfounded allegations.

It is not the case that recording fees are somehow owed or outstanding. All MERS mortgages are recorded in the public land records, and MERS members pay recording fees when the mortgage is recorded. Fees are paid for a service performed, and if a document is eliminated because it is no longer necessary, no fee is due because there is nothing to record. We believe it is wrong and unethical to seek money for services that were never rendered, and in fact, MERS greatly reduces the workload of county recorders, resulting in lower operating expenses for the county recorder’s office. Moreover, it would be the borrower who ultimately pays the costs of recording assignments, either directly or indirectly.

When MERS is the mortgagee, the mortgage is recorded at the county land records, thereby putting the public on notice that there is a lien on the property. The MERS® System also complements the county land records by providing additional information that was never intended to be recorded at the county level, namely the information about the mortgage loan servicer, and now, with the addition of MERS® InvestorID, the name of the investor.

– 30 –

source: MERS

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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BLOOMBERG | Merscorp Replaces Corporate Secretary William Hultman a Month After CEO Departs

BLOOMBERG | Merscorp Replaces Corporate Secretary William Hultman a Month After CEO Departs


By Prashant Gopal
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — Merscorp Inc., operator of the electronic mortgage-registration system under criticism by consumer advocates amid a probe into lender foreclosure errors, replaced Bill Hultman as its corporate secretary.

General Counsel Sharon Horstkamp is taking over the job, Karmela Lejarde, a spokeswoman for the Reston,Virginia-based company, said in an e-mail today. Hultman remains a senior vice president and corporate division manager, she said.

Merscorp has made a series of changes as courts debate what role it has, if any, in home foreclosures. Chief Executive Officer and President R.K. Arnold, who hired Hultman in 1998, retired last month. The company also is examining reforms, including a proposed rule change on the company’s website Feb. 16 that would stop members from foreclosing in its name.

“They’re trying to clean up their house,” said Christopher L. Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who has written law-review articles critical of the company. “I’m not sure Hultman was the problem.

It seems to me the problem is the business model.”

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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MERS COULD COST BANKS MORE FOR DODGING FEES

MERS COULD COST BANKS MORE FOR DODGING FEES


Dodging fees could cost banks more

Michelle Conlin and Curt Anderson,
Posted: 11/14/2010 06:53:42 PM PST
.

NEW YORK – It used to be that every time a bank sold a mortgage, the county land recording office received a fee. It wasn’t much – $30 or so – but then real estate boomed in the 1990s and banks pooled millions of mortgages into securities that investors bought and sold.

One mortgage transaction became a dozen or more, and the tab grew ever larger. So the banks came up with a way around the fees. And now they are fighting to avoid perhaps tens of billions of dollars in penalties that have added up over the years.

In 1997, when the banks’ burgeoning business in mortgage securities was clashing with the unwieldy nature of written forms, the industry created its own alternative, an electronic system that would track the ever-changing ownership of home loans.

The banks formed a private company called Mortgage Electronic Registry Systems Inc., or MERS. Its motto: “Process loans, not paperwork.” It has registered more than 65 million loans, three out of every five on the market.

MERS’ owners are all the big mortgage companies, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and GMAC. They are all facing a foreclosure fraud investigation launched by all 50 state attorneys general.

Counties complained about the lost revenue after MERS was implemented, but they rarely tried to challenge the new way of doing business. Now, three years after the housing crash and two months after allegations that some banks submitted fraudulent documents to foreclosure courts, every aspect of the nation’s mortgage machine is under scrutiny.

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Two lawyers in Reno, Nev., have filed suit in 17 states alleging that banks cheated counties out of billions of dollars. In Virginia, a lawmaker has asked the state’s attorney general to investigate MERS over its failure to pay recording fees. And everywhere elected officials and class-action lawyers turn, the back-office procedures of MERS are being called into question.

The lawsuits challenge MERS’ authority to act on behalf of banks or other investors that own a mortgage. With so many loans registered to MERS, it’s a claim that goes to the heart of the mortgage-fraud scandal.

With MERS ostensibly keeping track of who owns what, counties still get their paperwork and fees the first time a mortgage is filed. Typically, that county fee is rolled into the closing costs homeowners pay when they buy a home.

MERS is “an admitted fee-avoidance scheme,” says Robert Hager, the Nevada lawyer who, along with his partner Treva Hearne, is filing the suits against MERS and its bank owners, including the government-backed mortgage- finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie provide a low- cost flow of funding to the nation’s mortgage markets by buying mortgages from lenders, packaging them into securities and then selling them to investors.

The suits were filed in California, Nevada and Tennessee and 14 undisclosed states where the cases are still under court seal. Hager and Hearne chose the states because their laws allow what are called false claims suits, in which citizens can take legal action against companies that may have cheated the government.

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Lawmaker Questions Power to Foreclose “MERS”

Lawmaker Questions Power to Foreclose “MERS”


  • NOVEMBER 1, 2010, 7:53 P.M. ET

Lawmaker Questions Power to Foreclose

By ROBBIE WHELAN

A Virginia lawmaker asked the state’s attorney general to launch an investigation of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, the middleman firm in millions of court filings that helps keep the mortgage-securitization machine moving.

Robert G. Marshall, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, requested that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli determine whether the Reston, Va., company violates state law because it doesn’t pay a fee every time a loan changes hands. Opinions differ as to whether MERS must pay local fees every time it sells an interest in a loan.

“There are too many people getting foreclosed on not properly,” said Mr. Marshall, who represents two counties near Washington, adding that he is drafting a Virginia law that would require lenders to pay county fees before being allowed to proceed with foreclosures. “The disdain with which the conditions of law have been treated by those who want to make money too fast is very troubling to me.”

Brian J. Gottstein, a spokesman for Mr. Cuccinelli, said the attorney general is required to produce an opinion on the matter but declined to comment “on any particular industry participant right now.”

R.K. Arnold, MERS’s chief executive, said the company’s activities are legal in all 50 states and have held up under previous scrutiny.

The challenge is the latest sign lawmakers and lawyers for borrowers are taking aim at MERS as the foreclosure mess drags on. Created 13 years ago by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and several large U.S. banks as an electronic registry of land records, the company’s name is listed as the agent for mortgage lenders on documents for 65 million home loans. But that same streamlining has made MERS a target of critics who say the company might not have the legal right that it claims to foreclose on borrowers.

In a state-court lawsuit filed in Georgia last week seeking class-action status, lawyer David Ates says MERS isn’t a secured creditor, meaning it lacks the power to foreclose on behalf of lenders, mortgage servicers or other parties.

Mr. Ates said he is seeking to have all Georgia foreclosures by the company “be declared invalid and the title be returned to the debtor.”

Mr. Arnold said the company’s role in foreclosing on a mortgage is unquestionable because every time a loan is registered with MERS, the borrower must sign a document saying the company assumes all rights and responsibilities on behalf of the creditor or lender.

“The legal concept is as sound as any concept in America: You made a loan to a homeowner,” Mr. Arnold said in an interview. “They granted you a mortgage, and that’s recorded in the land records, and the company that has the mortgage and can foreclose is MERS.”

Mr. Arnold added: “We can foreclose in all 50 states, and we will continue to do that.”

Tom Kelly, a spokesman for J.P. Morgan Chase, said last month that the New York bank hasn’t used the MERS record-keeping system since at least 2008 to foreclose in the bank’s name because “some local courts wouldn’t accept MERS.” J.P. Morgan still uses MERS for mortgages originated by other banks or brokers.

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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