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!
Search this blog and you will see that for months now I’ve been arguing that the “evidence” submitted by Plaintiffs in foreclosure cases does not even come close to meeting the legal and evidentiary requirements for courts to grant summary judgment.
After performing extensive legal research to confirm this hunch, I have drafted and filed detailed memoranda, supported by all available case law, that stands for the proposition that the practices used by virtually every foreclosure mill in the state do not provide the evidentiary basis for a court to grant summary judgment.
So why are courts across this state continuing to grant summary judgment? There really is NO LEGAL BASIS TO SUPPORT THE GRANTING OF SUMMARY JUDGMENT IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF FORECLOSURE CASES CURRENTLY FILED IN COURTS ACROSS THIS STATE.
I attach here the most fantastic transcript of a hearing I’ve heard in a long time. This transcript shows a couple things:
First, the judges in the Sixth Circuit of Florida really, really get it.
Second, this particular judge goes far and above to do his job and deliver real, hard, honest legal work.
Third, as I mentioned above…the current processes and procedures used by the foreclosure mills do not provide courts the evidentiary or legal basis required to grant summary judgment.
But now the big question that comes to mind….now that this judge gets it…and now that my memos and others like my friend and fellow Foreclosure Fighter Mike Wasylik are starting to leak out there…
What happens to all the hundreds of thousands of homes that have been foreclose on by improper evidence?
Some excerpts from the begging of the transcript… Be sure to read it in its entirety. It is an absolute must read…
Gmac Mortgage LLC
v
Debbie Visicaro, et al.
April 7, 2010
THE COURT: Okay, we are here today in GMAC v Visicaro. This is a motion for rehearing the previously drafted motion for summary judgement…
MR. WASYLIK: I am here for Defendants… We have submitted a fairly detailed brief…
THE COURT: What’s the Plaintiff’s position regarding the motion…
MR FRAISER: I object… You’ve considered all the evidence before when you entered the summary judgment back in January 2010. The opposing party then could not support their position on any genuine material facts. Right now, Your Honor, there are no convincing exigent, you know, circumstances being offered up at the time.
THE COURT: Did you not read the motion? It sounds liker you’re making a very generalized argument, and this is an, as I viewed it, extremely targeted motion which basically elaborates on the assertions that were raised at the time of the motion for summary judgment.
As I recall that, counsel appeared on behalf of his clients, I think it was by phone and made arguments that the Court really gave short shrift to it, did not review the case…
Since that time, the Court delved further into it…
I’ve had several events which have occurred in cases which cause the Court to have great concern about the validity of fillings in our mortgage foreclosure cases, and that precipitated my reevaluation of the evidentiary considerations.
I’ll give you an example of that. I have one case that was called up for summary judgment hearing, and I thought it was going to be the typical granted situation, and then a lawyer showed up for the defendant homeowner.
I was beginning to recite to the lawyer what I had typically recited, that there was no affidavit in opposition. And the lawyer said, “Well, I thought you might want to see this,” and handed me some documents which were from another file in our circuit, and it turned out, it was the same note and mortgage that was in a separate and independent file.
There was a different plaintiff pursuing a foreclosure proceeding on the same note and mortgage as the one that was being proceeded on. Both of the cases contained allegations in the original complaints that the separate plaintiffs were owners and holders of the note. Both of them had gone so far to have affidavits filed in support of a summary judgment whereby an individual represented to the court in the affidavit that the separate plaintiffs had possessed the note and had lost the note while it was in their possession.
Interestedly, both affidavits, although they were different plaintiffs, purported the same facts and they were executed by the same individual in alleged capacity as a director of two separate corporations, one of which was ultimately found to me to be an assignee of the original note…
So that really increased my interest in this subject matter, because
I really honestly don’t have any confidence that any of the documents the Courts are receiving on these mass foreclosures are valid…
So I’ve said enough…
Honorable
Anthony Rondolino
Be sure to read the transcript in its entirety below…
Wouldn’t it just be easier to work with the homeowner than go this route? Does this make any sense at all? I mean you foreclose and try to sell the property for less than half in many instances when not sold you leave it “vacant”…I mean really M&M? Do any of you smell a SCAM?
Wednesday, 09 September 2009
Robert Klein, CEO of Safeguard Properties, contributed an article to Mortgage Banking magazine about the impact that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) is having on the management of REO and bank-owned vacant properties across the country.
The MERS Alternative to Vacant-Property Registration Ordinances
The hopeful news of 2009 is that many indicators point to the likelihood that the U.S. economy may finally have scraped bottom and could be heading upward.
The stock market has seen fairly steady gains since it hit its early-March low. The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of workers filing state unemployment claims at the beginning of June fell by its largest amount since November 2001. And RealtyTrac Inc., Irvine, California, reported that in May, foreclosure filings decreased by 6 percent from the previous month.
Now for the more sobering news. The Wall Street Journal reported that new jobless claims increased slightly from May to June. In June, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), New York, downgraded ratings for 22 banks nationwide, expecting loan losses to worsen before they improve. And the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported in late May that the level of foreclosures started in the first quarter of 2009 hit a record high.
What does this all mean? Even though the economy is showing some glimmers of recovery, high rates of default and foreclosure are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. As a result, cities around the country will continue to struggle with the challenges that vacant properties pose in their communities.
A proliferation of vacant-property registration ordinances
To address the problems associated with vacant properties — from vandalism and crime to safety and maintenance issues — cities across the country have been considering or enacting vacant-property registration ordinances.
From the municipality’s perspective, the goal in enacting ordinances is to have the ability to track down a contact to serve notice when code violations occur and to hold that party responsible when violations go unresolved for periods of time.
In part, registration ordinances attempt to fix a problem with property records across the country. In many cases those records are not up-to-date, and usually they don’t identify a property-preservation contact within the lender or servicer organization responsible for a vacant property. As a result, when cities issue code-violation notices based on public records, the notices go unheeded for long periods of time because they either fail to reach the right person or take a long time getting there.
From a servicer’s perspective, the basic notion of vacant-property registration ordinances is positive — by registering vacant properties, lenders and servicers are more likely to receive prompt notification when issues arise with properties. This allows them to address problems quickly, preserve the value of their collateral asset, and avoid both negative community backlash and potentially expensive fines for failure to comply with code requirements.
The concern with vacant-property ordinances among ser-vicers is the administrative challenge of complying with potentially thousands of different municipal ordinances around the country. The more ordinances — and more individual nuances — the more resources will be needed and the greater the risk of fees and penalties for failing to comply.
Finding common ground
Municipalities and servicers share common interests with regard to vacant properties. Both have an interest in ensuring that properties are well maintained, safe and secure. Both benefit when cities have accurate and updated contact infor-mation to serve notice when issues arise.
A few years ago, MBA took an important first step in providing contact information to cities when it posted property-preservation contacts for major mortgage servicers on its Web site for code-enforcement officials to access. While that was helpful, not enough cities were aware of the resource, and both city code-enforcement officials and servicers recognized a need to do more.
In 2008, MBA convened a Vacant Property Registration (VPR) Committee, comprised of lenders, mortgage servicers and the field servicers who represent them. The committee met by phone on a weekly basis for nearly a year, and also met with mayors and other officials in cities that were considering vacant-property legislation.
The committee listened carefully to the cities’ concerns, and offered insights regarding the challenges they face to inspect, secure and maintain growing numbers of vacant properties throughout the country.
In 2008, representatives from MBA and the VPR Committee were invited to address the U.S. Conference of Mayors, describing the challenges of securing and maintaining vacant properties in cities across the country, and listening to the feedback of mayors.
At the June 2009 U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Annual Meeting, MBA and VPR Committee representatives were again invited and had the opportunity to update mayors on their efforts.
The mayors received a briefing on the committee’s solution — now referred to as “The MERS Initiative.” This initiative is a collaboration between MBA and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), Reston, Virginia. Working with MBA, MERS developed a process by which government entities across the country can have access to the MERS system, which contains information on more than 60 million loans through more than 2,500 lenders that use the system. The MERS system was enhanced to store property-preservation contact information for the properties registered on the system.
MERS implementation under way nationally
In the fall of 2008, the committee enlisted five municipalities to serve as pilots for the program: Chula Vista, Sacramento County and Stockton in California; Boston; and St. Louis.
Code-enforcement officials who used the system reported that they were impressed with quality and quantity of data available to them. The pilot was deemed a success and the MERS Initiative was officially launched in late spring. To date, hundreds of cities have signed on to the program.
In many cases, the cities signing on are utilizing the MERS system and their vacant-property registration ordinances in tandem. Those cities will consider a loan servicer compliant with their vacant-property ordinances if their properties are registered on the MERS system. The vacant-property ordinances remain in place for properties that are not registered on the system — primarily those in the hands of property “flippers” and non-responsive property owners who fail to act responsibly.
Even though a majority of loan servicers are members of MERS, not all of their loans are currently on the system. To motivate servicers to register all of their loans, MERS has developed special registration products and incentives for servicers to register their full portfolios on the system.
A valuable resource for cities
The MERS system is proving to be a valuable tool for resource-challenged cities, especially those with the highest volumes of vacant and abandoned properties.
With access to MERS, cities don’t have to create a registration system from the ground up. They have free access to an existing system and receive free training for their users. They have a system that is proven and uniform across the country. That uniformity helps to ensure that servicers can more readily comply with registration requirements. And the system reduces administration and paperwork, because cities can exempt the vast majority of MERS-registered lenders and servicers from additional registration requirements and target their resources to address the most challenging issues.
Those familiar with the Pareto principle recognize that 20 percent of an organization’s most challenging needs consume 80 percent of its resources, while the other 80 percent require only 20 percent of its resources. This is the advantage of resource allocation that the MERS system provides to cities.
No one expects the MERS system alone will address all of the challenges regarding vacant and abandoned properties for municipalities and servicers. But the initiative is a tremendous example of what can be accomplished when interested parties come together in a spirit of collaboration to solve a problem.
In this case, success was built on three proven strategies:
Engaging in dialogue and identifying mutual interests. MBA took the initiative to form a Vacant Property Registration Committee that reached out to cities and code-enforcement officials to understand their concerns. In turn, the cities were open to better understanding the challenges faced by servicers.
Building on proven success. Instead of building individual registration processes from the ground up, cities have immediate and free access to a proven system that will allow them to address vacant-property issues more immediately and effectively.
Maximizing limited resources. By offering cities an efficient process to track properties that are being managed responsibly, code-enforcement officials can focus their attention on the properties that are the most challenging to them.
No one knows when the current housing crisis will subside, but until it does, municipalities and servicers have demonstrated their willingness and commitment to face the challenges together. As an industry, we are especially grateful to the code-enforcement community for its partnership and collaboration in producing the MERS initiative.
Looks like an Assignment of Mortgage was FRAUDULENTLY created by David Sterns office and signed by Cheryl Samons. Who woulda thunk…
“By now the fact that foreclosure mills, pretender lenders and their document mills across the country are perpetrating widespread and systemic fraud on the courts is not news. Well sure major questions remain unanswered such as what will be the ultimate price of all this fraud…as reported previously much of this fraud will go unpunished because much of the evidence is apparently being sent back to the law firms that commit the fraud. (In violation of court rules) But so much is sliding by these days.
We all must do everything we can to bring fraud to the court’s attention and to preserve the evidence when it is found. Attached here is the brilliant work of a Foreclosure Fraud Fighter, Ralph Fisher of Tampa, Florida who shows us what the courts are willing to do when a good attorney makes AND PROVES a case of fraud…..Case dismissed WITH PREJUDICE”.
From the order
The hearing time was set for March 1, 2010 at 3 p.m. for a 20-minute hearing but the Plaintiff failed to appear.
after sounding the halls and after awaiting telephonic communication from the Plaintiff. The Plaintiff still failed to appear. An assistant for Plaintiff s counsel called at about 3:44 p.m. to find out the outcome of the hearing.
Motion to Compel, the court finds that the Plaintiff has failed to produce answers to the Interrogatories for a period of 26 months
The Defendant’s Motion in Limine/Motion to Strike was based on an allegation that the Assignment of Mortgage was created after the filing of this action, but the document date and notarial date were purposely backdated by the Plaintiff to a date prior the filing of this foreclosure action.
The Assignment, as an instrument of fraud in this Court intentionally perpetrated upon this court by the Plaintiff, was made to appear as though it was created and notorized on December 5, 2007. However, that purported creation/notarization date was facially impossible: the stamp on the notary was dated May 19,2012. Since Notary commissions only last four years in Florida (see F .S. Section 117.01 (l )), the notary stamp used on this instrument did not even exist until approximately five months after the purported date on the Assignment.
The court specifically finds that the purported Assignment did not exist at the time of filing of this action; that the purported Assignment was subsequently created and the execution date and notarial date were fraudulently backdated, in a purposeful, intentional effort to mislead the Defendant and this Court. The Court rejects the Assignment and finds that is not entitled to introduction in evidence for any purpose. The Court finds that the Plaintiff does not have standing to bring its action.
IT IS THEREFORE. ORDERED AND ADJUDGED THAT:
The Motion to Compel is granted. As a sanction for egregious failure to comply with discovery Rules the Plaintiff shall be prohibited from presenting the alleged Promissory Note to this Court.
The Plaintiff shall be prohibited from introducing into evidence the alleged Promissory Note.
The Plaintiff’s recording and filing regarding the fraudulent Assignment of Mortgage is stricken, and the Plaintiff is prohibited from entering the Assignment of Mortgage into evidence.
The Motion for Rehearing of Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss is granted and the Motion to Dismiss is granted. The Plaintiff’s complaint is dismissed with prejudice, based on the fraud intentionally perpetrated upon the Court by the Plaintiff.
Moral to the story… ALL assignments are FRAUDULENT.
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“.
LPS statement “Technical Error” how about “HUMAN Robo-Signors FORGING, FABRICATING ERROR” to many tens-of- thousands (possibly in the miilions) of Assignmnet FRAUD “errors”. Preparing Docs in one state, Executing them in another and Notarizing in another? How about the signatures not matching the people who are signing? What about the folks in Minnesota where most of these were signed?
Jacksonville Business Journal – by Rachel Witkowski Staff reporter
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa is investigating a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services Inc. that processes mortgage documents for lenders.
Jacksonville-based company (NYSE: LPS) stated in its 2009 annual report that the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Florida recently began inquiring about the business processes of a subsidiary, DOCX LLC, based in Alpharetta, Ga.
LPS also acknowledged that there was an “error” in DOCX’s business processes and LPS immediately corrected it, according to the annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We have representatives speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and we are cooperating with all inquiries made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” said Michelle Kersch, LPS’ senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, in an e-mailed response. “We changed the business process that created the technical error, provided additional training to our employees and corrected documents.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on its investigation.
Kersch said LPS was contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February. That same month, another investigation by the Clerk of Superior Court in Fulton County, Ga. into DOCX had closed without taking any further action, officials said.
LPS has become a dominant player in the mortgage servicing market since it spun off from Fidelity National Information Services in July, 2008. LPS serviced about 70 percent of the non-performing loan market and 40 percent of foreclosed loans nationwide as of Dec. 31, according to LPS’ latest “mortgage monitor” report.
LPS increased revenue to nearly $2.4 billion in 2009 and recently announcing it will add 350 jobs through 2011. The Jacksonville Economic Development Commission has recommended nearly $3 million in city and state incentives for LPS to add those jobs in Jacksonville.
More to come…
Sample of their work “in-house” Minnesota…not only Alpharetta, GA
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)
Mr. Muckles lawsuit to stop every foreclosure. This is a must read to witness the precise description with supportive evidence of this perpetual fraud involving Wall Street.
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