Lexology-

On April 23, 2012, the plaintiff in State of Ohio ex rel. David P. Joyce, Prosecuting Attorney of Geauga County Ohio v. MERSCORP, Inc., et al., N.D. Ohio Case No. 1:11-cv-02474, filed its motion seeking an order certifying the action as a class action, appointing Geauga County as class representative, and appointing plaintiff’s counsel, the New York law firm of Bernstein Liebhard LLP, as class counsel. The plaintiff argues that the case, which the plaintiff is attempting to bring on behalf of all 88 Ohio counties for relief relating to the allegedly unlawful failure of MERS and its member institutions to record millions of mortgages and mortgage assignments throughout Ohio, meets all requirements of Rule 23(a) and that certification is proper under any one of the 3 subsections of Rule 23(b). The plaintiff hopes to persuade the court that the MERS/member institution policy concerning recordation of mortgages and assignments is a “common scheme or course of conduct” that has given rise to claims “ideally suited for class certification.”

[LEXOLOGY]

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Market Watch-

The investigation concerns whether the Company or its fiduciaries breached their fiduciary duties by improperly processing mortgages and mortgage foreclosures. A civil lawsuit filed in December 2011 by the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Nevada alleges that LPS and certain of its subsidiaries: (1) engaged in a pattern and practice of falsifying, forging and/or fraudulently executing foreclosure related documents, resulting in numerous foreclosures that were predicated upon deficient documentation; (2) fraudulently notarized documents without ensuring that the notary did so in the presence of the person signing the document; (3) implemented a widespread scheme to forge signatures on key documents, to ensure that volume and speed quotas were met; (4) concealed the scope and severity of the fraud by misrepresenting that the problems were limited to clerical errors; (5) improperly directed and/or controlled the work of foreclosure attorneys by imposing inappropriate and arbitrary deadlines that forced attorneys to churn through foreclosures at a rate that sacrificed accuracy for speed; (6) improperly obstructed communication between foreclosure attorneys and their clients; and (7), demanded a kickback/referral fee from foreclosure firms for each case referred to the firm by LPS and allowed this fee to be misrepresented as “attorney’s fees” on invoices passed on to Nevada consumers and/or submitted to Nevada courts.

[MARKET WATCH]

This is interesting since all responsible for Foreclosure Fraud are being investigated or sued for some breach of fiduciary duty including LPS for robosigning, whom by the way executed most of the documents…

Alison Frankel-

The big question for the other banks that signed the nationwide foreclosure settlement, though, is whether Illston’s robosigning ruling improves the prospects for shareholder derivative suits against them. JPMorgan Chase, for example, was just hit with a Manhattan State Supreme Court robosigning derivative complaint filed by Robbins Geller, one of the plaintiffs’ firms in the Wells Fargo case. Earlier this month, shareholders in a consolidated derivative class action against Bank of America in Manhattan federal court voluntarily dismissed their robosigning-based case, but said they planned to refile in Delaware Chancery Court. Two derivative suits against Citigroup alleging flawed foreclosure practices were consolidated in Manhattan federal court in December, but the docket indicates no activity since then.

But those banks, according to the plaintiffs’ allegations in the Wells suit, were quicker to renounce robosigning than Wells Fargo. JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial were the first to halt foreclosures to investigate robosigning allegations, doing so in September 2010. Bank of America followed in October. Wells Fargo was still insisting at the time that its foreclosure practices were sound. According to the shareholder complaint, Wells continued to permit robosigning of foreclosure documents well into 2011, after it told shareholders it was cooperating with the government investigation.

[REUTERS LEGAL]

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An 11th-hour settlement is expected to stave off potential class action status in a lawsuit that claims foreclosed borrowers were overcharged for attorneys’ fees that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. did not actually incur.

National Mortgage News-

The plaintiffs, Jose and Lorry Trevino, filed a motion seeking class action status and an amended complaint on Jan. 12. The defendants had until Jan. 17 to respond, but received a two-week extension, “so that the parties can memorialize their settlement,” according to court documents filed Jan. 13.

The parties have agreed to terms, but the settlement is pending final paperwork. The case hasn’t been dismissed and likely won’t until the settlement is finalized.

The suit, originally filed in 2007, names Merscorp and a number of its shareholders, including Citigroup, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GMAC Residential Funding, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo.

[NATIONAL MORTGAGE NEWS]

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CONTROL FRAUD | ‘If you don’t look; you don’t find, Wherever you look; you will find’ – William Black

This pretty much sums this up… But go ahead and read.

Excerpt:

705. DEFENDAN T et al., al. stand-by and know, Plaintiff’s foreclosure, and others similarly situated are fraudulent in their nature, supra, but stand silent in condolence, over a system in their care custody and control under the corporate veil of MERSCORP, which either created, support financially or employ thus making DEFENDANT co-conspirator, liable as a facilitator of said Fraudulent behavior facilitator of Larceny on a grand scale.

[...]

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IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS
GEAUGA COUNTY, OHIO

STATE OF OHIO, ex.rel.
DAVID P. JOYCE
PROSECUTING ATTORNEY OF GEAUGA
COUNTY, OHIO
Courthouse Annex, 231 Main St. Suite 3A
Chardon, Ohio 44024

On behalf of Geauga County and all others similarly
situated,

Plaintiff,

v.

MERSCORP, INC.
1818 Library Street, Suite 300
Reston, Virginia 20190

and

MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION
SYSTEMS, INC.
1818 Library Street, Suite 300
Reston, Virginia 20190

[...]

Scribd

October 13, 2011:  Bernstein Liebhard LLP, with David P. Joyce, Prosecuting Attorney for Geauga County, Ohio, announced today that a lawsuit has been filed in the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas by Plaintiff Geauga County, on behalf of itself and all other Ohio counties, (the “Class”) against MERSCORP, Inc., Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc. (“MERS”), and MERS’s members (collectively, “Defendants”).  

In the class action complaint, Plaintiff Geauga County, on behalf of itself and all other Ohio counties, alleges violations of Ohio state law arising from Defendants’ failure to record intermediate mortgage assignments in, and pay the attendant county recording fees to, Ohio county recording offices.  In failing to record, Defendants systematically broke chains of title throughout Ohio counties’ public land records by creating “gaps” due to missing mortgage assignments they failed to record, or by recording patently false and/or misleading mortgage assignments.  Defendants’ purposeful failure to record has eviscerated the accuracy of Ohio counties’ public land records, rendering them unreliable and unverifiable — damage to public land records that may never be entirely remedied. 

Ohio’s recording laws have been in place for nearly 200 years.

The case is captioned State of Ohio, ex rel. David P. Joyce Prosecuting Attorney of Geauga County, Ohio v. MERSCORP, Inc., et al., No. 11-M-001087.  For more information, please contact either Stanley D. Bernstein at (212) 779-1414, bernstein@bernlieb.com or Christian Siebott at (212) 779-1414, siebott@bernlieb.com.

NOT…

“We are doing everything we can to keep people in their homes that should stay in their homes.”

BLOOMBERG-

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s chairman and chief executive officer, said he was sorry for foreclosure mistakes as hundreds of protesters at the annual meeting demanded he do more to help homeowners and small businesses recover from the financial crisis.

Excerpt:

We do not believe that the Federal Reserve or the Treasury would want to leave American banks at a disadvantage. We need American leadership to be forceful and engaged to ensure a fair outcome.

We all have a vested interest in getting this right The government took great action to stop the crisis from getting worse. Lawmakers and regulators have and will take much action to fix what clearly was a broken system.

[hit image to read pdf]

Does the system of tracking note holders need a reboot or a replacement?

.

Click on image below to go to National Mortgage News PDF

Source: Housing Wire

The Securities and Exchange Commission upheld a New York City Pension Funds request that big bank shareholders will get to vote on whether or not those vested financial institutions conduct foreclosure reviews.

Shareholders of Bank of America (: ), Citigroup (: ) and Wells Fargo (WFC: 31.27 -0.76%) will vote at annual meetings this spring, because of the ruling. Wells did not contend the proposal at the SEC. In January, The New York City Comptroller John Liu asked the boards of the banks and JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 45.20 -0.59%) to conduct the reviews to catch potential problems related to robo-signing and other documentation issues.

Read full story… HOUSING WIRE

POSTED: January 1, 1:25 PM EDT | By Matt Taibbi

Happy New Year, America…

Have multiple relatives en route to my home this morning, but wanted to post a few thoughts on an interesting story that came out this week before I disappear into a weekend of overeating and meaningless NFL games.

The piece, which came out Thursday, is the Washington Post’s feature on MERS, the electronic mortgage registration company that is at the center of the foreclosure/mortgage bubble mess. MERS is the brainchild of the mortgage-lending industry and is essentially an effort at systematically evading taxes (more on that in a moment) and hiding information from homeowners in ways that enabled the Countrywides of the world to defraud investors and avoid legal consequences for same.

The idea behind MERS was to wipe away centuries of legal tradition that mandated the physical transfer of loan notes and ownership information. Whereas lenders once were required to physically register with county clerk offices every time a mortgage loan was extended or re-sold, MERS provided an “electronic registry” of mortgage notes where all such transfers were recorded in the wiry brain of a giant computer instead of on paper.

By John Lux

Introduction

This article discusses some of the legal aspects of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems or “MERS” with regard to its potential legal liabilities and how these liabilities may affect related public companies.

We maintain that the potential legal liabilities faced by these companies are very large and may seriously injure their stock prices. We believe that the affiliates of MERS may be held liable for MERS violations based on various legal theories, including conspiracy, and if the courts pierce the corporate veil of MERS.

A list of some of the companies that may be affected is found at the end of this analysis.

MERS

MERS is a private non-stock Delaware member corporation that operates an electronic registry to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States. MERS acts as a so-called “straw man.” MERS clouds land records as the purported owner of mortgages transferred by lenders, investors and loan servicers. MERS maintains that it eliminates the need to file assignments in the county land records with the purpose of lowering costs for lenders. This naturally reduces county recording revenues from real estate transfers.

Legal Issues Faced by MERS

Not Qualified to do Business in Most States

MERS is not qualified to business in most of the states in which it operates. The problem here is that MERS has allowed itself to be the plaintiff in many hundreds of thousands of mortgage foreclosures in states where it is not qualified to do business and therefore has no standing to sue. Most, 95% or more of these cases, were uncontested and therefore resulted in the loss of the defendants home after a telephone hearing that lasted a few minutes.

Self-Appointment of Officers

Thanks to a tip from California’s hero Brian Davies:

Lenders Turning Their Backs on MERS, Going Back to Paper

With more borrowers filing legal challenges to foreclosure, many mortgage lenders have turned their back on using MERSCORP Inc., which operates an electronic loan registry, to bring foreclosure actions. Some lenders are even returning to the old-fashioned, paper-based system of physically recording mortgage assignments at county recorder offices to ensure an unbroken chain of title.