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Tag Archive | "sub-prime"

Ex-Countrywide/ IndyMac Angelo Mozilo Puts Up House For Sale For $3.4 Million

Ex-Countrywide/ IndyMac Angelo Mozilo Puts Up House For Sale For $3.4 Million


The Real Estalker is one of my favorite blogs and actually was one of a few that inspired me to create this site. Please check it out!

And Yes, we know Mr. Mozilo, this is just one of a few hundred you call “primary residence”. If walls could only talk in this house.

The Real Estalker-

mansion located behind the guarded gates of the well-heeled Sherwood County Clubowned as per property records–and much to our pearl clutching flabbergast–by the vastly-loathed and utterly disgraced former Countrywide Financial CEO and COB Angelo Mozilo who has the architecturally conventional (mc)mansion listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,400,000.

Mister Mozilo, a mortgage industry maverick who co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and nearly 30 years later co-founded the dramatically collapsed IndyMac Bank (now OneWest Bank), is widely regarded as one of the more Machiavellian sub-mortgage-men who helped march the U.S. (and global) economy straight off the cliff in the mid-Noughts. While Mister Mozilo and his mortgage-making army pushed and pedaled sub-prime home loans he talked up the then-flourishing company’s stock price, earned hundreds of millions in compensation, and cashed out more than $400,000,000 worth of Countrywide stock, a large portion of it during the last couple of years of his tattered tenure as the king of Countrywide.

[THE REAL ESTALKER]

listing photo: Prudential California Realty

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



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THEY ONCE WERE LENDERS – Understanding government’s failure to stop bankers OR scammers from destroying homeowners.

THEY ONCE WERE LENDERS – Understanding government’s failure to stop bankers OR scammers from destroying homeowners.


via Mandelman Matters-

Preface…

Sit down and relax… you’re going to need a comfortable chair.  But, I promise you… it’ll be worth it.

In the fall of 2008, news stories about “scammers” taking advantage of homeowners at risk of foreclosure started appearing frequently in the media.  I remember watching a prime-time national news magazine type program, I think it was 20/20, that was airing a story that featured a sleazy looking middle-age man in Denver, hurriedly walking from a small, strip mall store front to his car, his hand covering his face, as a reporter tried to ask him questions that he obviously did not plan to answer.

The story involved a company that had charged a handful of homeowners several thousand dollars up front to help them negotiate with their banks to get their mortgages modified.  The core issue being raised by the show’s host was that the homeowners had been victims of a scam because, as a couple of the homeowners interviewed were saying, their loans had not yet been modified.

I remember wondering, to begin with, how in the world such a story had become the subject of a national news magazine television program.  I mean, “Three homeowners get ripped off by small business in Denver,” is not usually the sort of event that makes national headlines.  The implication being made was that this case was emblematic of a more widespread problem, but nothing further was offered in the way of proof… no statistics, no additional facts… just statements about how homeowners should NEVER pay anyone up front to help them negotiate with their bank over a loan modification because they were “scammers.”


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



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DYLAN RATIGAN | No Way To Live: WHERE ARE THE HANDCUFFS?

DYLAN RATIGAN | No Way To Live: WHERE ARE THE HANDCUFFS?


Where are the Handcuffs?

Earlier today, I did a podcast with Shahien Nasiripour from the Huffington Post on the current state of the justice system in America.  The full transcript is on it’s way.


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



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HUFFPO | Financial Crisis Prosecutions On Wall Street Slow To Develop Despite Cries For Justice

HUFFPO | Financial Crisis Prosecutions On Wall Street Slow To Develop Despite Cries For Justice


.

NEW YORK — After the last major banking crisis, some two decades ago, roughly 3,800 bankers were prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms, by the Justice Department’s count. Yet this time, some four years after the economy descended into the most punishing financial crisis since the Great Depression, the public still waits for the Obama administration to deliver a similar kind of justice.

The 2007-’09 financial crisis was “avoidable,” a bipartisan, congressionally-appointed panel concluded last week. Mortgage fraud “flourished” in the run up to the collapse. Securities fraud was apparently widespread.

“Lenders made loans that they knew borrowers could not afford and that could cause massive losses to investors in mortgage securities,” the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission wrote in its report on the causes of the collapse. About $1 trillion worth of home loans made from 2005 to 2007 were “fraudulent,” the commission said, citing testimony from experts. The Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, told the commission that she defined fraud to include lenders’ “sale of unaffordable or structurally-unfair mortgage products to borrowers.”

And yet, the perp walk so many Americans crave — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner once referred to it as the “very deep public desire for Old Testament justice” — hasn’t occurred. Wall Street figures have largely gone untouched. Bank directors kept their jobs. In a sign that perhaps the fallout from the crisis has passed, outsized compensation is back.

“People need to go to jail,” said Liz Ryan Murray, policy director of National People’s Action, an advocacy organization that helped launch the website CrimeShouldntPay.com. “If you steal something, you go to jail. If you falsify documents, you go to jail. Why doesn’t that apply to big bank executives?”

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



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DailyFinance | Who’s to Blame for the Mortgage Mess? Banks, Not Homeowners

DailyFinance | Who’s to Blame for the Mortgage Mess? Banks, Not Homeowners


Posted 6:30 AM 01/20/11

As the foreclosure crisis has escalated over the past several months, one overarching debate has been about who bears the most blame: homeowners or banks?

After everything I’ve learned and written about the foreclosure mess, my verdict is: The banks are responsible for 90% of the problem, troubled homeowners 10%.

Yes, every foreclosure involves a homeowner not paying his mortgage. But every foreclosure also involves a bank that made the loan. And usually another bank, or several more, that profited from securitizing the loan. And still another bank, or several, that profited from servicing the loan. Together, those banks have done three things that created the massive glut of foreclosures choking America’s legal systems and laying waste to its real estate markets:

  • They knowingly made millions of loans doomed for foreclosure as soon as the check was written.
  • They deliberately and/or incompetently failed to modify many salvageable mortgages.
  • They were so careless with their paperwork and processes that they’ve undermined the rule of law, clouded the title to untold numbers of properties and complicated the processing of the massive backlog of foreclosures that hurts the economically crucial real estate market.

Let’s take a closer look at each factor.

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



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WaPO: First, the electronic mortgage superhighway. Then, the pileup.

WaPO: First, the electronic mortgage superhighway. Then, the pileup.


Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 2, 2011

In the early 1990s, the biggest names in the mortgage industry hatched a plan for a new electronic clearinghouse that would transform the home loan business – and unlock billions of dollars of new investments and profits.

At the time, mortgage documents were moved almost exclusively by hand and mail, a throwback to an era in which people kept stock certificates, too. That made it hard for banks to bundle home loans and sell them to investors. By contrast, a central electronic clearinghouse would allow the companies to transfer thousands of mortgages instantaneously, greasing the wheels of a system in which loans could be bought and sold repeatedly and quickly.

“Assignments are creatures of 17th-century real property law; they do not coexist easily with high-volume, late 20th-century secondary mortgage market transactions,” Phyllis K. Slesinger, then senior director of investor relations for the Mortgage Bankers Association, wrote in paper explaining the system.

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



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WILLIAM BLACK: 2011 Will Bring More de Facto Decriminalization of Elite Financial Fraud

WILLIAM BLACK: 2011 Will Bring More de Facto Decriminalization of Elite Financial Fraud


William K. Black
Assoc. Professor, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City; Sr. regulator during S&L debacle
Posted: December 28, 2010 05:29 PM

The role of the criminal justice system with regard to financial fraud by elite bankers in 2011 is likely to reprise its role last decade — de facto decriminalization. The Galleon investigation of insider trading at hedge funds will take much of the FBI’s and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) focus.

The state attorneys general investigations of foreclosure fraud do focus on the major players such as the Bank of America (BoA), but they are unlikely to lead to criminal liability for any senior bank officials. It is most likely that they will lead to financial settlements that include new funding for loan modifications.

The FBI and the DOJ remain unlikely to prosecute the elite bank officers that ran the enormous “accounting control frauds” that drove the financial crisis. While over 1000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan (S&L) debacle, there are no convictions of controlling officers of the large nonprime lenders. The only indictment of controlling officers of a far smaller nonprime lender arose not from an investigation of the nonprime loans but rather from the lender’s alleged efforts to defraud the federal government’s TARP bailout program.

What has gone so catastrophically wrong with DOJ, and why has it continued so long? The fundamental flaw is that DOJ’s senior leadership cannot conceive of elite bankers as criminals.

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



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[VIDEO] Nasty Mortgage Fraud Self Help remedy: Courtroom video in New Hampshire.

[VIDEO] Nasty Mortgage Fraud Self Help remedy: Courtroom video in New Hampshire.


KingCast65 | December 07, 2010 |

http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/…
This is a crucial video with actual courtroom footage showing how mortgages and notes are lost as U.S. Citizens face foreclosure, as noted by journalists like Matt Taibbi. Fight back with KingCast courtroom video. I’ve been shooting courtroom video since I tried Civil Rights cases in the mid 1990’s.

KingCast — Reel News for Real People.

Ingress v. Wells Fargo
Hillsborough South
226-2010-CV571

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



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[NYSC] JUDGE SPINNER LETS U.S. BANK HAVE IT “HAMP FAIL” U.S. Bank Natl. Assn. v Mathon

[NYSC] JUDGE SPINNER LETS U.S. BANK HAVE IT “HAMP FAIL” U.S. Bank Natl. Assn. v Mathon


Where exactly are these “trial payments” 🙂


U.S. Bank Natl. Assn.
v.
Mathon

2010 NY Slip Op 52082(U)
Decided on December 1, 2010
Supreme Court, Suffolk County
Spinner, J.

The issue of the claim of the forbearance/modification agreement, however, is an entirely different situation, one that is considerably troubling to this Court. Defendants assert (and Plaintiff does not in any way controvert) that on April 17, 2009, without the benefit of counsel, they executed a three page document entitled “Home Affordable Modification Trial Period Plan” which was propounded to them by Plaintiff. Indeed, a copy of the same is appended as Exhibit C to the Affidavit of Thomas E. Reardon. According to Defendants (and again, not controverted by Plaintiff), they timely remitted to Plaintiff the three payments of $ 1,736.00 required thereunder and in compliance therewith, followed with nine more monthly payments in the same amount. According to Defendants (and once again, not controverted by Plaintiff), they continued to send monthly payments of $ 1,736.00, doing so in compliance with a letter from Plaintiff’s servicer Chase Home Finance LLC dated June 1, 2009 and appended to their Order To Show Cause. In relevant part, this letter states, in bold face type, as follows;

“If you make all [3] trial period payments on time and comply with all applicable program guidelines, you will have qualified for a final modification. However, there may be a period of time between your last trial payment and your first modification payment as we finalize the documents and get them back from you. During that interval, you should make a continuation payment at the trial period amount, and an extra coupon has been provided for that purpose.That payment will be applied as a principal reduction payment on your loan after your final modification is effective.”

It is undisputed that Defendants sent thirteen payments to Chase Home Finance LLC totalling $ 22,568.00 in reliance upon both the aforementioned April 17, 2009 Trial Modification and the subsequent June 1, 2009 letter and further, that the same were accepted by Plaintiff, presumably under the terms and conditions dictated by Plaintiff. According to Defendants, they regularly inquired as to the status of the final modification and were variously informed that all documents had been received, the application was with underwriting and finally, underwriter had approved the final modification. Notwithstanding the continuing stream of payments from Defendants and the verbal representations made to them, Chase Home Finance LLC, by letter dated April 15, 2010 (two days shy of one year following execution of the Trial Modification) notified Defendants that a loan [*3]modification would not be offered to them due to their inability to meet the existing guidelines therefor. The reason stated for the denial was the inability to meet HAMP guidelines by modifying the payments to equal 31% of Defendants’ gross monthly income.

In opposition to the foregoing, the Affidavit of Thomas E. Reardon, Assistant Vice-President of Chase Home Finance LLC (Plaintiff’s servicing agent), plainly acknowledges the foregoing assertions by Defendants but states, in Paragraph 7, that “…Due to a combination of factors, however, including missing documents, the submission of stale financial data and a significant influx of Trial Plan applications, the Mathons’ Trial Plan was not reviewed by the underwriting department until on or about April 2, 2010.” The Affidavit does state that on June 30, 2010 the Mathons applied for a new modification but that they failed to supply all necessary documents for consideration. However, nowhere in Plaintiff’s submissions to this Court is there any substantiation of this claim nor is the issue of Defendants’ payments addressed. Too, there is no proof of any computation or other calculation explaining the basis for denial herein.

In further opposition to Defendants’ motion, Plaintiff has submitted the Affidavit of Adam M. Marshall Esq., an associate in the firm of Cullen & Dykman LLP. Mr. Marshall states under oath, in Paragraph 9 thereof, that “Since the Mathons moved by Order to Show Cause to stay the foreclosure on August 12, 2010, further efforts have been made to provide the Mathons with a loan modification based on verifiable income. On October 12, 2010, Plaintiff withdrew its Motion for Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale. In addition, a new application for a loan modification was forwarded to the Mathons. However, the Mathons have abjectly refused to complete the application or supply the financial documents requested therein.” This Affidavit by counsel seems to be somewhat at odds with the averments of Mr. Reardon and is amply rebutted by Defendants’ motion papers. Defendants have appended a plethora of documents dating from April 30, 2010 through July 28, 2010 evidencing their application for a new modification (which appears to be a HAMP modification identical to the one that Plaintiff had just rejected) as well as their cooperation with the demands of Plaintiff regarding the same. Even so, while Defendants were assiduously attempting to re-negotiate a modification, Plaintiff was instructing its counsel to continue prosecution of the foreclosure action. It is painfully obvious to this Court that Defendants relied upon representations made by Plaintiff and acted affirmatively based upon those representations, all to their serious detriment.

There has been no disclosure by Plaintiff to this Court as to whether or not this loan in foreclosure is deemed to be “sub-prime” or “high cost” in nature. Moreover, no mandatory settlement conference has been held in this matter though same is plainly required pursuant to CPLR § 3408.

Continue reading below…

[ipaper docId=44625358 access_key=key-20mvhocw7eyykamwxetq height=600 width=600 /]

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



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Countrywide, Bank Of America Agreement and Plan Merger 2008

Countrywide, Bank Of America Agreement and Plan Merger 2008


Note this is incomplete but the basics:

Table Of Contents:

  • Pg. 2. 2nd Supp. Note Deed Poll, Dated 11/072008, To The Note Deed Poll Dated 4/29/05
  • Pg. 10. Bank of America Corporation on 1st July 2008 – Effective date of merger
  • Pg. 15. Countrywide and Bank Of America Agreement And Plan Of Merger
  • Pg. 116. Bank of America Corporation on 7th November 2008 – Debt Assumption
  • Pg. 127. 6th Supp Trust Deed Dated 11/07/08, 11/07/08, Modifying The Prov. Of Trust Deed 5/01/98
  • Pg. 138 3rd Supp. Trust Deed 11/07/08, To The Trust Deed Dated 8/15/05
  • Pg. 148 UNAUDITED PRO FORMA CONDENSED FINANCIAL INFORMATION
  • Pg. 163. Countrywide Financial Corporation on 30th June 2008 – Consolidated Balance Sheet for
  • Pg. 282. First Supplemental Deed Poll Guarantee and Indemnity

[ipaper docId=44612785 access_key=key-1r5gobfvmuza3pv9k102 height=600 width=600 /]

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



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Lawsuit Involving Goldman Sachs and Countrywide, New Century & Freemont “JUNK” Securities

Lawsuit Involving Goldman Sachs and Countrywide, New Century & Freemont “JUNK” Securities


Excerpts:

I. Goldman Performed Increasingly Careful Due Diligence On Billions Of Dollars Of Subprime Mortgage Loans That It Purchased During 2005 And 2006, And Therefore Knew That Large Numbers Of Those Loans Were Defective.

II. Goldman Knew That Mortgage Loans And RMBS issued By Countrywide, New Century, And Fremont During 2005 And 2006 Had Declined Dramatically In Safety, Security, And Likelihood of Repayment.

Continue reading…

landesbank v. GS 3

[ipaper docId=43655169 access_key=key-2bofdk7fgmj8fc2xmhqy height=600 width=600 /]

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



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Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners

Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners


Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida

By Matt Taibbi
Nov 10, 2010 2:25 PM EST

The following is an article from the November 11, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. This issue is available Friday on newsstands, as well online in Rolling Stone’s digital archive. Click here to subscribe.

The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This “rocket docket,” as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby­rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn’t even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn’t to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.

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



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The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Bankers Fleeced America, and Launched a Global Crisis

The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Bankers Fleeced America, and Launched a Global Crisis


By Michael Hudson

October 22, 2010 | The following is an excerpt from Michael Hudson’s THE MONSTER:  How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America – And Spawned a Global Crisis (2010, Times Books)

A few weeks after he started working at Ameriquest Mortgage, Mark Glover looked up from his cubicle and saw a coworker do something odd. The guy stood at his desk on the twenty-third floor of downtown Los Angeles’s Union Bank Building. He placed two sheets of paper against the window. Then he used the light streaming through the window to trace something from one piece of paper to another. Somebody’s signature.

Glover was new to the mortgage business. He was twenty-nine and hadn’t held a steady job in years. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew about financial sleight of hand — at that time, he had a check-fraud charge hanging over his head in the L.A. courthouse a few blocks away. Watching his coworker, Glover’s first thought was: How can I get away with that? As a loan officer at Ameriquest, Glover worked on commission. He knew the only way to earn the six-figure income Ameriquest had promised him was to come up with tricks for pushing deals through the mortgage-financing pipeline that began with Ameriquest and extended through Wall Street’s most respected investment houses.

Glover and the other twentysomethings who filled the sales force at the downtown L.A. branch worked the phones hour after hour, calling strangers and trying to talk them into refinancing their homes with high-priced “subprime” mortgages. It was 2003, subprime was on the rise, and Ameriquest was leading the way. The company’s owner, Roland Arnall, had in many ways been the founding father of subprime, the business of lending money to home owners with modest incomes or blemished credit histories. He had pioneered this risky segment of the mortgage market amid the wreckage of the savings and loan disaster and helped transform his company’s headquarters, Orange County, California, into the capital of the subprime industry. Now, with the housing market booming and Wall Street clamoring to invest in subprime, Ameriquest was growing with startling velocity.


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



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NO. THERE’S NO LIFE AT MERS

NO. THERE’S NO LIFE AT MERS


NO. THERE’S NO LIFE AT MERS

By DinSFLA

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc (MERS) has a very long history. The beginning stages have remained a mystery until now.

In 1989, Brian Hershkowitz developed the “Whole Loan Book Entry” concept while serving as a director for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). In 1990, he first introduced this concept to seven different industry groups; Document Custodian, Originators, Servicers, Title Insurers, County Recorders, Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE’s) and Warehouse/Interim Lenders. The reception was very positive and it was viewed as a very useful recording system to be used for how equity and debt securities could be identified and managed.

In 1991, Mr. Hershkowtiz published Farming It Out in Mortgage Banking Magazine. His main discussion in this article is primarily about getting the opinion of the experts in the technology outsourcing service industry. In 1992, Mr. Hershkowitz published another article called Cutting Edge Solutions in Mortgage Banking Magazine. In this particular article he mentions the actual meeting that took place at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA) headquarters with many key players that are known today as some of MERSCORP’s shareholders, such as, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In this meeting they discussed a “System” that will bring changes in mortgage records.

Mr. Hershkowitz went on to become President and COO of LandSafe Credit, a leading settlement service provider that was a subsidiary of Countrywide. Mr. Hershkowitz also spent several years serving Countrywide in the areas of strategic planning and executive management.

In 2001, Mr. Hershkowitz became Executive Vice President at Fidelity National Information Services (FNIS) and President of its mortgage and information services division. His responsibilities included management of the Company’s data offerings, including public records information, credit reporting information, flood hazard compliance data, real estate tax information and collateral valuation services. He left FNIS in November of 2006 to become Chief Executive Officer of Maximum Value Group, a consulting firm focused on providing advice to private equity and other market participants in the area of banking and mortgages.

ENTER THE X-FILES

MERS has evolved into a totally different purpose today.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of MERSCORP Inc., located at 1595 Spring Hill Rd Ste 310 Vienna, VA 22182.

MERS was founded by the mortgage industry. MERS tracks “changes” in the ownership of the beneficial and servicing interests of mortgage loans as they are bought and sold among MERS members or others. Simultaneously, MERS acts as the “mortgagee” of record in a “nominee” capacity (a form of agency) for the beneficial owners of these loans.

To ensure widespread acceptance within the industry, MERS sought to have security instruments modified to contain MERS as the original mortgagee (MOM) language. MERS began to change decades of business practices after the two biggest mortgage funders in the U.S. the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Ferderal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) modified their Uniform Security Instruments to include MOM language. Their approval opened the doors to incorporate MERS into loans at origination.

Soon after, U.S. government agencies like the Veterans Administration, Federal Housing administration and Government National Mortgage Association (Ginne Mae), and several state housing agencies followed both Fannie/Freddie to approve MERS.

More than 60 percent of all newly-originated mortgages are registered in MERS. Its mission is to register every mortgage loan in the United States on the MERS System. Since 1997, more than 65 million home mortgages have been assigned a Mortgage Identification Number (MIN) and have been registered on the MERS System.

The mortgage-backed security (MBS) sector tested the viability of MERS because a substantial number of mortgages are securitized in the secondary market. In February 1999, Lehman Brothers was the first company to include MERS registered loans in a MBS.

Moody’s Investor Service issued an independent Structured Finance special report  on MERS and it’s impact of MBS transactions and found that where the securitzer used MERS, new assignments of mortgages to the trustee of MBS transactions were not necessary.

Since MERS is a privately owned data system and not public, all mortgages and assignments must be recorded in order to perfect a lien. Since they failed to record assignments when these loans often traded ownership several times before any assignment was created, the legal issue is apparent. MERS may have destroyed the public land records by breaking the chain of title to millions of homes.

IN MERS CEO’S OWN WORDS

In or around the summer of 1997, MERSCORP President and CEO R.K. Arnold wrote, “Yes, There is life on MERS” Mr. Arnold stated, “Some county recorders have expressed concerns that MERS will eliminate their offices nationwide or destroy the public land records by breaking the chain of title. As implemented, MERS will not create a break in the chain of title, and, because MERS is premised on an assignment recorded in the public land records, MERS cannot work without county recorders.”

In this same article Mr. Arnold also states “The sheer volume of transfers between servicing companies and the resulting need to record assignments caused a heavy drag on the secondary market. Loan servicing can trade several times before even the first assignment in a chain is recorded, leaving the public land records clogged with unnecessary assignments. Sometimes these assignments are recorded in the wrong sequence, clouding title to the property”. Mr. Arnold never mentions the fact that the mortgage notes have been securitized, thereby becoming “negotiable securities” under the Uniform Commercial Code.

In an interview for The New York Times, Mr. Arnold said, “that his company had benefited not only banks, but also millions of borrowers who could not have obtained loans without the money-saving efficiencies MERS brought to the mortgage trade.”

Mr. Arnold went on to say that, ” far from posing a hurdle for homeowners, MERS had helped reduce mortgage fraud and imposed order on a sprawling industry where, in the past, lenders might have gone out of business and left no contact information for borrowers seeking assistance.”

“We’re not this big bad animal,” Mr. Arnold said. “This crisis that we’ve had in the mortgage business would have been a lot worse without MERS.”

Unfortunately, even a simple search in the Florida Land Records proves the opposite to be the case. Researchers have  easily found affidavits of lost assignments actually stating, “the said mortgage was assigned to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., from “XXXXXXX”, the original of the said assignment to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., was lost, misplaced or destroyed before same could be placed of record with the Florida Land Records County Clerk’s office; That, “XXXXXXX”, it’s successors and/or assignee is no longer in business/or do not respond to our request for a duplicate assignment, and therefore, a duplicate original of said assignment cannot be obtained.”

According to affidavits such as these, not only have the borrowers lost contact with the lenders, but the same is true that MERS did as well.

On September 25, 2009, Mr. R.K. Arnold was deposed in Alabama. Mr. Arnold admitted MERS does not have a beneficial interest in any loan, does not loan money and does not suffer a default if monies are not paid. On November 11, 2009, William C. Hultman was deposed in Alabama and made the same admissions.

Yet again, researchers have easily located affidavits recorded in the Florida Land Records stating “That said Deed of Trust has not been assigned to any other party and that MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, Inc. is the current holder and owner of the Note and Deed of Trust in question.”

NO. THERE’S NO LIFE AT MERS

Aside from not recording assignments, Mr. Arnold failed to mention that the certifying officers given authority to execute sensitive loan documents would not be paid employees of MERS. This raises the critical legal question as to how one can act as a certified officer and execute any equitable interest on behalf of any security instruments without being an employee of MERS.

On April 7, 2010, in the Superior Court of New Jersey, MERS Treasurer and Secretary William C. Hultman gave an oral sworn video/telephone deposition in the case of Bank Of New York v. Ukpe.:

Q Do the assistant secretaries — first off, are
you a salaried employee of MERS?
A No.

Q Are you a salaried employee of MERS Corp,
Inc.?
A Yes.

Q Are any of the employees of MERS, Inc.
salaried employees?
A I don’t understand your question.

Q Does anyone get a paycheck, if they are an
employee of MERS, Inc., do they get a paycheck from
Mercer, Inc.?
A There is no MERS, Inc.

Q I thought, sir, there’s a company that was
formed January 1, 1999, Mortgage Electronic Registration
Systems, Inc. Does it have paid employees?
A No, it does not.

Q Does it have employees?
A No.

Q Does MERS have any employees?
A Did they ever have any? I couldn’t hear you.

Q Does MERS have any employees currently?
A No.

Q In the last five years has MERS had any
employees?
A No.

<SNIP>

Q How many assistant secretaries have you
appointed pursuant to the April 9, 1998 resolution; how
many assistant secretaries of MERS have you appointed?
A I don’t know that number.

Q Approximately?
A I wouldn’t even begin to be able to tell you
right now.

Q Is it in the thousands?
A Yes.

Q Have you been doing this all around the
country in every state in the country?
A Yes.

Q And all these officers I understand are unpaid
officers of MERS?
A Yes.

Q And there’s no live person who is an employee
of MERS that they report to, is that correct, who is an employee?
A There are no employees of MERS.

If so, how does anyone have any authority to sign security instruments encumbered by any loan documents, if these certifying officers are not paid employees and never attend corporate meetings in the capacity as Vice President, Assistant Secretary, etc. with Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc..

COURTS FIND ISSUES WITH MERS

Federal and state judges across America are realizing that the mortgage industry’s nominee is backfiring.

In Mr. Arnold’s own words, “For these servicing companies to perform their duties satisfactorily, the note and mortgage were bifurcated. The investor or its designee held the note and named the servicing company as mortgagee, a structure that became standard.” What has become a satisfactory standard structure for the mortgage industry has not been found by many courts to be legally sufficient to foreclose upon the property.

Again, MERS only acts as nominee for the mortgagee of record for any mortgage loan registered on the computer system MERS maintains, called the MERS System. MERS cannot negotiate a security instrument. Therefore, MERS certifying officers cannot have legal standing to assign what MERS does not own or hold.

The Supreme Court of New York Nassau County:
Bank of New York Mellon V. Juan Mojica Index No: 26203/09

Justice Thomas A. Adams stated, “Not only has plaintiff failed to establish MERS’ right as a nominee for purposes of recording to assign the mortgage, more importantly, no effort has been made to establish the authority of MERS, a non-party to the note, to transfer its ownership.”

The Supreme Court of Maine:
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. v. Saunders, No. 09-640, 2010 WL 3168374,
(Me. August 12, 2010) The Court explains that the only rights conveyed to MERS in either the Saunders’ mortgage or the corresponding promissory note are bare legal title to the property for the sole purpose of recording the mortgage and the corresponding right to record the mortgage with the Registry of Deeds. This comports with the limited role of a nominee. A nominee is a “person designated to act in place of another, usu[ally] in a very limited way,” or a “party who holds bare legal title for the benefit of others or who receives and distributes funds for the benefit of others.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1149 (9th ed. 2009).

In Hawkins, No. BK-S-07-13593-LBR, 2009 WL 901766
The Court found that the deed of trust “attempts to name MERS as both beneficiary and a nominee” but held that MERS was not the beneficiary, as it had “no rights whatsoever to any payments, to any servicing rights, or to any of the properties secured by the loans.”

In Re: Walker, Case No. 10-21656-E-11 Eastern District of CA Bankruptcy court rules MERS has NO actionable interest in title. “Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law.” “MERS could not, as a matter of law, have transferred the note to Citibank from the original lender, Bayrock Mortgage Corp.” The Court’s ruled that MERS and Citibank are not the real parties in interest.

In re Vargas, 396 B.R. at 517-19. Judge Bufford found that the witness called to testify as to debt and default was incompetent. All the witness could testify was that he had looked at the MERS computerized records. The witness was unable to satisfy the requirements of the Federal Rules of Evidence, particularly Rule 803, as applied to computerized records in the Ninth Circuit. See id. at 517-20. “The low level employee could really only testify that the MERS screen shot he reviewed reflected a default. That really is not much in the way of evidence, and not nearly enough to get around the hearsay rule.”

FRAUD ON THE COURT

In US Bank v. Harpster the Law Offices Of David J. Stern committed fraud on the court by the evidence based on the Assignment of Mortgage that was created and notarized 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.

The Court dismissed this case with prejudice.

In Duval County, Florida another foreclosure case was dismissed with prejudice for fraud on the court. In JPMorgan V. Pocopanni, the Court found that Fishman & Shapiro representing JPMorgan had actual knowledge at all times that the Complaint, the Assignment, and the Motion for Substitution were all false. The Court found that by clear and convincing evidence WAMU, Chase and Shapiro & Fishman committed fraud on this court.

Both these cases involved Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. assignments.

FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS

Two RICO Class Action lawsuits have commenced against Foreclosure Law Firms and MERSCORP for fabricating and forging documents that are entered into courts as evidence in order to have standing to foreclose. Unknown to judges and the borrowers, they accept these documents because they are executed under perjury of the law. These “tromp l’oeil” actions have finally surfaced and the courts has taking notice.

The lack of supervision and managing of MERS “Robo-Signers” has led to a national frenzy of fabrication, forgery and certifying officers wearing multiple corporate hats. Anyone who compares signatures of these certifying officers will see a major problem with forgery in hundreds of thousands affidavits and assignments which creates an enormous dark cloud of title defects to millions of homes across the US.

On August 10, 2010 Florida attorney general Bill McCollum announced that he is investigating three foreclosure law firms for allegedly providing fraudulent assignments and affidavits relating in foreclosure cases.

In a deposition taken in December 2009, GMAC employee Jeffrey Stephan said he signed 10,000 affidavits or similar documents a month without personally verifying who the mortgage holder was. That means many foreclosures could have taken place based on false documentation and many homes may have been unlawfully foreclosed on.

On September 20, 2010, GMAC halted foreclosures in 23 different states. Two of the three firms being investigated by the Florida attorney general, the Law Office of Marshall C. Watson and the Law Offices of David J. Stern PA, have represented GMAC in foreclosure proceedings.

This is not limited to only GMAC Mortgage. There are many hundreds of thousands of these same documents that are being created by many foreclosure law firms across the nation.

University of Utah law professor Christopher L. Peterson has raised the issue that MERS should be regarded as a debt collector. He argues that some of MERS’ methods are just the sort of deceptive practices that ought to be regulated under The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 U. S. C. §1692(a),(j).

CONCLUSION

Finally in May, 2009, Mr. Arnold said in Mortgage Technology Magazine, “Every system in the mortgage industry can switch MERS registry on or off at will,” referencing that both the Obama administration and Congressional leaders are aware of this.

President Obama and Congressional leaders it is time to permanently switch MERS lifeless device off!

Not until MERS became the primary focus for challenges to legal standing in foreclosure courts as reported by the alternative media, have the main stream media and the mortgage industry have begun to realize that property records cross the United States have become totally unreliable.

It has taken more than a decade for the courts to recognize that MERS has become a mortgage backfire system leaving clouded titles in over 65 million loans since 1997.

Courts across the nation must comply with the law.  Any documents submitted to the courts regarding property ownership should be assumed to be nothing but smoke in a mirror.

No, Mr. Arnold, there’s no life at MERS.


DinSFLA, “nominee” of stopforeclosurefraud.com, a blog on Foreclosure Fraud.

© 2010 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved. www.StopForeclosureFraud.com

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



Posted in featured, STOP FORECLOSURE FRAUDComments (33)

Congress Needs To ZERO IN On A “Common Thread” To Fannie, Freddie Mortgage Crisis

Congress Needs To ZERO IN On A “Common Thread” To Fannie, Freddie Mortgage Crisis


Anyone can see the “Fiction” that was set into place from all the institutions in this article below. Each one of these named parties as a shareholder utilizes Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., yet Washington never mentions this MERS device.

All this talk of false and misleading loans blah blah blah …I mean grab the bull by it’s nuts and put these criminals behind bars. Not just seek refunds! This clean up should also seek Racketeering Indictments.

Congress Seeks Fannie, Freddie Exit as Banks Eat Soured Loans

By Dawn Kopecki – Sep 15, 2010 1:00 AM ET

U.S. lawmakers will grapple today with how to end the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after two years and almost $150 billion, and who pays the bill for bad loans made during the housing boom.

Regulators who seized control of the two mortgage lenders in 2008 are under pressure to stem losses for taxpayers and recoup money from banks that sold faulty loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — all without hindering the housing market’s recovery. Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr and Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, are scheduled to testify today on their progress at the House Financial Services Committee.

The Obama administration and Congress are weighing the future of the two companies as part of an overhaul of the U.S. housing finance system. Fannie Mae, based in Washington, and Freddie Mac, based in McLean, Virginia, lost $166 billion on guarantees of single-family mortgages from the end of 2007 through the second quarter, according to the FHFA. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has promised a comprehensive proposal by early next year.

“The biggest problem in the economy is that we have three or four million too many homes,” said Chris Kotowski, a banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. The solution “will take another two or three years to work out until we sop up the excess supply,” Kotowski said.

Loan Clean-Up

The clean-up includes seeking refunds from lenders who sold loans based on false or misleading information, and the two government-backed firms aren’t the only ones demanding buybacks. The Federal Reserve, private mortgage investors and mortgage insurers are combing through loan documents for faulty appraisals, inflated borrower incomes and missing documentation that would support a refund request.

As of the end of the second quarter 2010, Fannie Mae had $4.7 billion in outstanding repurchase requests, and Freddie Mac had $6.4 billion in outstanding repurchase requests. DeMarco said in his prepared testimony that outstanding repurchase requests continue to be “of concern.”

Continue reading…BLOOMBERG

.

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



Posted in bank of america, chain in title, CitiGroup, concealment, congress, conspiracy, CONTROL FRAUD, corruption, Credit Suisse, fannie mae, federal reserve board, foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, foreclosure mills, foreclosures, investigation, MERS, MERSCORP, mortgage, MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS INC., RICO, scam, servicers, settlement, stopforeclosurefraud.com, sub-prime, trustee, Trusts, us bank, Wall StreetComments (2)

Homebuyer tax credit: 950,000 must repay

Homebuyer tax credit: 950,000 must repay


LMFAO!! Yet Another Bomb! Thank you for the rise in Real Estate sales…How do you say “bait and switch”! Were these disclosure properly made?

Can’t wait to see the outcome of these sub-prime mortgages when most of the 950K were counting on this!


Les Christie, staff writer, On Thursday September 9, 2010, 2:40 pm EDT

Nearly half of all Americans who claimed the first-time homebuyer tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to repay the government.

According to a report from the Inspector General for Tax Administration, released to the public Thursday, about 950,000 of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who claimed the tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to return the money.

The confusion comes because homebuyers were eligible for two different credits, depending on when their homes were purchased.

Those who bought properties during 2008 were to deduct, dollar for dollar, up to 10% of the home’s purchase price or $7,500, whichever was less. The catch: The money was a no-interest loan that had to be repaid within 15 years.

Had they waited to buy until 2009, they could have gotten a much sweeter deal. Congress extended the credit and made it a refund rather than a loan.

Continue Reading…YAHOO

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



Posted in Bank Owned, breach of contract, conflict of interest, FHA, foreclosure, foreclosures, mortgage, note, Real EstateComments (0)

‘Liar Loans’ Make a Comeback

‘Liar Loans’ Make a Comeback


Banks Are Quietly Reestablishing Mortgages That Don’t Require Income Documentation

By Stephane Fitch, Forbes.com
July 8, 2010

Did you think the housing collapse killed off “liar loans”–those infamous bubble-era mortgages for which people were allowed to get creative in portraying their ability to make the payments? Well, they’re back, and that may be a good thing.



All the rage during the peak of the housing boom, these mortgages went by names like “no-doc” (meaning no documentation of income required), “low-doc” or “stated-income” mortgages. In all cases, banks set aside their underwriting standards based on what borrowers could prove they were earning with pay stubs, tax returns and the like. Instead, lenders started trusting borrowers to “forecast” future income and underwrote loans based on those projections (using as a fallback the house itself as collateral).

In the height of the housing boom in 2006 and 2007, low-doc loans accounted for roughly 40% of newly issued mortgages in the U.S., according to mortgage-data firm FirstAmerican CoreLogic. University of Chicago assistant professor Amit Seru says that for subprime loans, the portion exceeded 50%.

Then came the housing collapse, with subprime loan defaults playing a leading role, particularly the low-doc “liar” variety. The delinquency rate for subprime loans reached 39% in early 2009, seven times the rate in 2005, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

Ashlyn Aiko Nelson, a public policy lecturer at Indiana University, studied the low-doc loan craze. She and two of her colleagues concluded that low-doc borrowers exaggerated their incomes by 15% to 19%. “Our sense was that investors knew that people were lying, but figured it was OK because house prices would keep going up and the homeowners could refinance,” says Nelson.

DinSFLA here: Again, who exaggerated their incomes? All of a sudden the consumer is in charge of the loan origination? Who exactly sent the file to the Underwriter? Surely not the unlicensed borrower who’s job is to broker loans!

The most outrageous types of no-doc lending disappeared entirely in 2009. Many mortgage pros say they’re unaware of banks making any low-doc loans in recent months. (A Forbes editor was, however, approached by a leading bank recently with an offer to refinance his home without documenting his income.)

Continue reading…….HERE

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



Posted in sub-primeComments (0)

The Anatomy of the Mortgage Securitization Crisis

The Anatomy of the Mortgage Securitization Crisis


Abstract:

The current crisis in the mortgage securitization industry highlights significant failures in our models of how markets work and our political will, organizational capability, and ideological desire to intervene in markets. This paper shows that one of the main sources of failure has been the lack of a coherent understanding of how these markets came into existence, how tactics and strategies of the principal firms in these markets have evolved over time, and how we ended up with the economic collapse of the main firms. It seeks to provide some insight into these processes by compiling both historical and quantitative data on the emergence and spread of these tactics across the largest investment banks and their principal competitors from the mortgage origination industry. It ends by offering some policy proscriptions based on the analysis.

[scribd id=30549688 key=key-2622r3jhgsam3rv4qiqs mode=list]

SOURCE:

The Anatomy of the Mortgage Securitization Crisis.

Posted in foreclosure fraud, securitization, thesisComments (2)

The HUGE CRASH Predicted: by: Whitney Tilson

The HUGE CRASH Predicted: by: Whitney Tilson


Listen carefully it’s not only the sub-prime …it’s now those who called everyone in foreclosure a dead beat. Those “who” were living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones because one might come bouncing back to shatter. We are now in this together so I welcome you with open arms and into a hug because I know you will need one.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYJ_KkbzWg]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZWC0fBqlYE]

Posted in concealment, conspiracy, corruption, FED FRAUD, foreclosure fraud, forensic mortgage investigation audit, MERS, naked short selling, nina, note, scam, siva, tilaComments (0)


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