I know if I purchased a stroller for my kid and later knew it these strollers are all defective …I hope the government would kick in and do a nationwide RECALL!!
GMAC stops some evictions, foreclosed home sales
By JANNA HERRON (AP) –
NEW YORK — GMAC Mortgage LLC said Monday it halted certain evictions and sales of foreclosed homes as it corrects “a potential issue” in its foreclosure process.
The action highlights what is becoming a larger problem for lenders and servicers that may have illegally driven homeowners out of their houses. The issue is threatening to clog up an already overloaded foreclosure process.
Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said last week. Banks have been stepping up repossessions to clear out their backlog of bad loans.
GMAC, which is owned by Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc., did not identify the specific internal issue that prompted the moratorium in its statement, but it has been linked to lawsuits this year surrounding the alleged falsification of a key foreclosure document.
The Florida attorney general is investigating three law firms for allegedly providing fraudulent affidavits that identify who holds the original mortgage note in foreclosure cases. In Florida and in other states, this document allows lenders to bypass a costly trial and proceed with a foreclosure.
Two of the three firms being investigated — the Law Office of Marshall C. Watson and the Law Offices of David J. Stern PA — have represented GMAC in foreclosure proceedings. And the person who signed many of these allegedly false affidavits was an employee of GMAC.
In a deposition taken in December, 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. Stephan could not be located for comment.
“That’s hundreds of thousands of cases,” said Ice Legal PA attorney Christopher Immel who took the deposition. “And there are other people at other places who sign these kinds of documents as well.”
GMAC did not address how many homeowners would be affected by its suspension of evictions and foreclosure sales. It expects the issues to be resolved within a few weeks or, at latest, by year-end. The company didn’t respond to questions beyond its statement.
The issue of documenting who holds the mortgage is not unique to GMAC. Judges and lawyers nationwide are taking a second look at foreclosure affidavits. Many mortgages have been sliced up and sold to many investors as securities and that makes it harder to determine who is the ultimate mortgage holder.
In August, a judge in Duval County, Fla., ruled that JPMorgan Chase could not foreclose upon two homeowners because Fannie Mae carried the mortgage on its books and JPMorgan Chase only serviced the loan. JPMorgan Chase had identified itself as the owner of the loan. Similar cases across the country are pending.
The law firm that represented JPMorgan Chase in that case — Shapiro & Fishman — is the third law firm being investigated by the Florida state attorney.
All these problems came about the same time MERS came to existence…now tell me something? Isn’t this a tad of a coincidence these issues became at the same time sub-prime loans hit peak?
A Reno law firm has filed two lawsuits alleging fraud against a nationwide mortgage registration firm, and if those legal actions prevail, the firm and dozens of mortgage lenders could be liable to Nevada’s counties for billions of dollars in compensation and penalties.
Law partners Robert R. Hager and Treva J. Hearne, with Reno attorney Mark Mausert, have filed a case in Nevada and one in California against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which operates an electronic registry of mortgage loans in the United States. MERS serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, investors and loan servicers in county land records, but doesn’t own any mortgages.
By using the firm’s names on deeds and other paperwork, the lenders are able to avoid county recording fees, according to the firm. MERS has no financial interest in the loans, but is listed as actual owner or surrogate for the owner on millions of deeds of trust, even as individual mortgages are repeatedly traded and packaged inside of mortgage pools.
The lawsuits argue that listing the firm as the owner of mortgages in which it has no interest in order to avoid filing fees and taxes that are legally required constitutes fraud.
“We look forward to holding these financial institutions and foreclosure mills responsible for their actions that have deprived the states and counties of much-needed revenue,” said Hager.
Karmela Lejarde, communications manager, for the Reston, Va.-based firm, noted that the attorneys general of two states declined to take on the cases as false claims suits pressed by the government, instead leaving the plaintiffs to pursue the civil suits in the court systems.
“The lawsuits are completely without merit,” Lejarde said. “…The suits were filed by the same lawyers who have brought countless lawsuits against MERS, and every single one of them has failed. The most recent (fraud case) actions are just the latest in a line of baseless claims.”
Christopher Peterson, a law professor and associate dean of the University of Utah Law School, has written articles and lectured about MERS’s activities. He said the firm being listed as proxy owner of more than half the nation’s mortgages is contrary to 200 years of American legal precedent.
COMES the State of Tennessee ex rel. Barrett Bates, on behalf of real parties in interest, the counties of the State of Tennessee, above-named and hereby complains of Defendants as follows:
STATEMENT OF THE CASE Plaintiff Barrett Bates seeks recovery pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-18-103, the False Claims Act, because Defendants made false representations in order to avoid payment in full of all recording fees reflecting the establishment and/or transfer of secured interests in real property in the State. After having recorded false, fraudulent, misleading and untruthful documents with the land records of the counties of this State, Defendants intentionally failed to cure/correct said false, misleading and untruthful documents and further failed to record subsequent assignments, deeds and other documents evidencing accurate changes in ownership interests in real property and, thereby, avoided, decreased and/or diminished their obligation to pay fees or monies to the counties of the State of Tennessee, the above-named real parties in interest.
PARTIES 1. Barrett Bates, relator, is a resident of the State of Nevada and an original source of information and authorized to bring this action pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-18-101, et seq., and as the qui tam Plaintiff because Bates has worked in the secondary mortgage market business and, during the course of his work in June 2009, became aware Defendants were concealing and avoiding the payment of recording fees or other monies to the above-named counties in this and other states and brings this action under Tenn. Code Ann. G 4-18-103 against Defendants for violations of these sections.
This is not a GMAC thing… this is a MERS thing! 
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