Nothing to do with Foreclosures, but this is a wake up call for all us to watch our backs!

By LARRY CELONA, FRANK ROSARIO and TIM PERONE

Last Updated: 10:32 AM, May 2, 2010

Posted: 9:28 PM, May 1, 2010

A car bomb nearly caused a bloodbath in the heart of Times Square yesterday as a homemade explosive device in an SUV parked outside the doors of “The Lion King” fizzled out.

The bomb caused a terror scare that forced thousands of people to evacuate the Crossroads of the World and turned Times Square into a ghost town for hours.

Photos: Times Square bomb scare

Photos: Times Square bomb scare

Photos: Times Square bomb scare

An unidentified T-shirt vendor, who is a Vietnam veteran, saw smoke billowing from a Nissan Pathfinder and alerted Police Officer Wayne Rhatigan, a mounted patrol cop, who looked inside the smoldering vehicle at around 6:30 p.m. on West 45th Street near Seventh Avenue in front of an entrance to the Minskoff Theatre, which houses the hugely popular Disney musical, Mayor Bloomberg said early this morning.

Rhatigan, who has been on the force for 19 years, the last four in the Mounted Unit, smelled gunpowder and called in the Fire Department, which put out the car fire as he and two patrol officers cleared the area of civilians.

Bomb Squad members then searched the SUV, which bore Connecticut license plates that were actually registered to a Ford F-150, and found two gasoline cans, three propane tanks, electrical wires, black powder, consumer grade fireworks and two clocks, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

PHOTOS: TIMES SQUARE BOMB SCARE

VIDEO: TIMES SCARE

“I think the intent was to cause a significant ball of fire,” Kelly said.

A Bomb Squad robot was used to handle the suspicious package in the back of the vehicle, officials said.

Bloomberg called the device “amateurish” but said that the city was “very lucky” because of the quick-thinking actions of the hero T-shirt vendor and Rhatigan.

There was a “box within a box” in the car, a 2X2X4 black gun locker, Kelly said.

Officials dismantled the first device and were in the process of rendering the second box safe this morning at the department’s firing range in the Bronx.

An NYPD security camera caught the Pathfinder travelling west on West 45th Street at 6:28 p.m. and at 6:34 p.m. the 911 call came in, Kelly said.

The Mayor added that the cameras, “couldn’t detect who was in the vehicle, how many were in the vehicle and what was in the vehicle.”

Cops were looking at other security videos from various cameras in the area that may have captured images of the suspect.

Authorities searched the immediate area for any possible secondary devices, but no other areas were evacuated. Also an NYPD and federal manhunt for the suspect began.

Investigators interviewed the person who had the license plates before they were put on the Pathfinder. That person is not a suspect and told officials that he dropped the plates off at a junkyard. Police are trying to track down the owner of that junkyard.

Special Thanks to: RICHARD WILNER NYPOST

Fla. judge reverses GMAC loan

By RICHARD WILNER

Last Updated: 4:23 AM, April 25, 2010

Posted: 12:14 AM, April 25, 2010

GMAC Mortgage got slammed by a Florida judge this month — and that may be good news for some of the 1,234 New York homeowners hit with a foreclosure action by GMAC since the beginning of 2008.

In that case, Judge Anthony Rondolino voided a GMAC foreclosure win after he found out legal papers filed by the company with the court to steamroll its way over homeowner Debbie Visicaro were faulty. They were filed by an employee of GMAC’s law firm who had no personal knowledge of the faulty mortgage’s position.

In short, they were based entirely on hearsay.

Lawyers familiar with foreclosure actions filed by law firm mills, as was done in this case, say such instances aren’t rare.

Visicaro, like most of the New York homeowners, at first decided to fight the foreclosure action without a lawyer. She didn’t know that the law firm employee was guessing in his court papers. But Visicaro finally hired a lawyer, Michael Alex Wasylik, who pointed out the flimsy evidence to the judge who then admitted he made a mistake when he first awarded GMAC a quickie legal win.

When the GMAC lawyer couldn’t explain away the bad evidence — and could only manage a Ralph Kramden-like hamina-hamina-hamina — the judge barked: “You’re going to have to speak up. I know that when you’re getting pummeled, it’s hard to talk loudly.”

“You know what I’d really like to see?” Rondolino said. “I’d like to see in one of these cases where a defense lawyer cross-examines, takes a deposition of these people, and we can see whether they ought be charged with perjury for all these affidavits.”

The 720 homeowners still fighting active cases — of the 1,234 filed in New York over the last 28 months — should start asking questions about the affidavits submitted in their cases, lawyers said. Maybe the legal papers in their case are built on legal ground as firm as that in the Visicaro case.