IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
 

FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY,
On its Own Behalf and as
Conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
Plaintiff,
 
v.

CITY OF CHICAGO,
a municipal corporation,
Defendant.

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For Immediate Release

Contact: Corinne Russell
(202) 414-6921

Stefanie Johnson
(202) 414-6376

December 12, 2011

 FHFA Sues the City of Chicago Over Vacant Buildings Ordinance

 Washington, DC –

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), on its own behalf and as Conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the city of Chicago to prevent enforcement of the city’s recently amended “Vacant Buildings Ordinance” against the Enterprises. FHFA reluctantly took this action after undertaking efforts to discuss these matters and to seek alternative solutions to the problem of vacant properties that the ordinance seeks to address. FHFA indicated that the ordinance could affect costs for homeowners in the city.

The ordinance would impose on the Enterprises the responsibilities, but not the benefits, of ownership of vacant property on which they hold mortgages. The ordinance would create risks and liabilities for the Enterprises at a time when they are already supported by taxpayers, including those in the city of Chicago. Additionally, the ordinance would subject the Enterprises to the regulation and supervision of the Chicago Department of Buildings instead of FHFA, as Congress intended.

 The ordinance requires mortgagees to pay a $500 registration fee for vacant properties and requires monthly inspections of mortgaged properties to determine if they are vacant. The ordinance also requires the Enterprises to pay the registration fees and to comply with these maintenance requirements  even when the Enterprises have not foreclosed upon a property and therefore do not have ownership of the property. If the Enterprises fail to comply with the ordinance, the city may levy fines and penalties of up to $1,000 per day for noncompliance with any provision of the ordinance. Additionally, the ordinance sets forth detailed maintenance requirements which may be revised and amended by the Department of Buildings.

The lawsuit alleges that the city’s ordinance impermissibly encroaches upon FHFA’s role as the sole regulator and supervisor of the Enterprises. As Conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHFA has been charged with the responsibility of preserving and conserving the assets of the Enterprises. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the city’s proposed registration and licensing system and “supervision” of the Enterprises by the Department of Buildings will not thwart Congress’s intent. Further, the registration fee represents a tax on the Enterprises and the Conservator that is expressly precluded by long-standing congressional directive.

 Link to lawsuit

 ###

 The Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks. These government-sponsored enterprises provide more than $5.7 trillion in funding for the U.S. mortgage markets and financial institutions.

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Gretchen Morgenson tears this one up… gotta love this piece of the story

“Only Lender Processing Services had more — 91 — than Fannie and Freddie. (Perhaps they robo-signed their registrations.)”

NYT-

THE mortgage business is moribund. New loans are down. New foreclosures are up.

But why let a little sorry news get in the way of a good party? Last week, almost 3,000 people descended on the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the 98th annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The price of admission: about $1,000 a head. But for that grand, you got to hear the band Chicago play hits from the ’70s. And David Axelrod and Jeb Bush give speeches. And experts discuss things like demographics, the politics of housing and the future of the mortgage industry, according to a flier for the event.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

Wonder what AG Madigan means by “RESOURCES”. Betcha it’s lots & lots O’documents!

BLOOMBERG-

Two state attorneys general who are among those leading negotiations with the five largest U.S. mortgage servicers over their foreclosure practices said the banks would be sued if a settlement isn’t reached.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper threatened litigation if settlement talks with the companies, including Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), break down.

Continue reading [BLOOMBERG]

ChicagoTribune-

A former Chicago resident whose home is in foreclosure has filed a lawsuit against Fisher and Shapiro LLC, the law firm that admitted to Cook County Circuit Court that some of the mortgage foreclosures it handled contained altered documents.

The suit, filed in federal court in Chicago Monday, seeks class-action status and comes three months after the court’s Chancery division temporarily halted more than 1,700 mortgage foreclosure cases as a result of the law firm’s admission. Upon further review by the court, the number of cases that was temporarily stayed grew to 2,127.

Continue reading [Chicago Tribune]

Just last week Chicago AG Lisa Madigan announced she was probing them as well. Note: some mistakenly say “National” instead of “Nationwide” below…

NY POST-

Indeed, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently said that his office is probing mortgage processing firm Lender Processing Services and National Title Clearing.

Schneiderman also launched a probe into the mortgage securitization practices of major investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and UBS.

Chicago — Attorney General Lisa Madigan today expanded her investigation into “robosigning” practices, issuing subpoenas against two national mortgage servicing support providers. The subpoenas are the latest effort in Madigan’s ongoing probe into the fraudulent practices used by banks and other mortgage institutions that contributed to the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the subsequent global financial crisis.

Madigan issued subpoenas against Lender Processing Services Inc. and Nationwide Title Clearing Inc., two Florida-based corporations that provide “document preparation services” and other loan management services to mortgage lenders for use against borrowers who are in default, foreclosure or bankruptcy.

“Foreclosure became a rubber-stamping operation that robbed many homeowners of the American Dream without a fair and accurate process,” Attorney General Madigan said. “I will not relent in my investigation into the fraudulent practices by lenders and others that caused and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and the resulting massive foreclosure crisis.”

Lender Processing Services (LPS) provides loan servicing support for more than 50 percent of all U.S. mortgages. More than 80 financial institutions use LPS to service more than 30 million loans. These loans have an outstanding principal balance exceeding $4.5 trillion.

Nationwide Title Clearing (NTC) provides a range of mortgage loan services to eight of the top 10 lenders and mortgage servicers in the country. NTC specializes in creating, processing and recording mortgage assignments, which are often needed for a lender to foreclose on a borrower.

Madigan will investigate reported allegations that LPS and NTC engaged in the practice of “robosigning” legal documents filed with the court to foreclose on borrowers. Robosigning occurs when an individual has no knowledge of the information contained in the document and often doesn’t even read or understand the document that he or she is signing. The use of robosigned documents was pervasive as lenders foreclosed on borrowers’ homes. The probe will also include a complete review of the accuracy of the systems and services that LPS and NTC provide to the large lenders including servicing platforms, foreclosure attorney interaction with these platforms and the assignment of mortgage process.

Attorney General Madigan said former employees of LPS, NTC, or former employees of any residential mortgage servicer or bank who have knowledge of any unlawful practices relating to mortgage servicing or the execution of documents should call her Homeowner Helpline at 1-866-544-7151 to aid in the investigation.

-30-

[Source: http://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov]

“Words can’t describe what a mess this is.”

Sheriff Dart goes to a home to serve eviction papers only to witness the house is gone and the foundation is overgrown with bushes because the house has been missing for so many years. This is what got him curious as to the accuracy of foreclosures.

Why was he cut off?

According to the Chicago Tribune

A Cook County Circuit Court judge has taken the unusual step of temporarily halting at least 1,700 mortgage foreclosures after a law firm told the court that the cases contained altered documents, the Tribune has learned.

Fisher and Shapiro LLC, one of the top three law firms used by mortgage servicers to handle their local foreclosure actions, reported to the court that, in a breach of protocol, affidavits in the cases were changed. Among other things, fees were added after the documents were signed by servicers.

[…]

“It’s similar to robo-signing in that it’s a high-volume pattern and practice of cutting corners, expediting the process through making false representations,” said Daniel Lindsey, an attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, which is not directly involved in the matter. “The fallout is this order and some delay, and maybe (it will) help some people figure out some alternatives.”

PATRICK L. COGSWELL and PATRICK M. O’FLAHERTY, doing business as THE PATRICK GROUP, Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
CITIFINANCIAL MORTGAGE COMPANY, INCORPORATED, successor by merger to Associates Finance, Incorporated, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 08-2153.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 15, 2009. Decided October 5, 2010.

Before FLAUM, RIPPLE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge.

CitiFinancial Mortgage assigned its interest in a mortgage to two investors—doing business as “The Patrick Group”—but never delivered the original or a copy of the underlying note. When The Patrick Group tried to foreclose on the mortgage in Illinois state court, its action was dismissed because it could not produce the note. After an unsuccessful appeal, The Patrick Group filed this breach-of-contract lawsuit against CitiFinancial. The suit was removed to federal court, and the district court granted summary judgment in favor of CitiFinancial.

We reverse. The district court based its summary-judgment decision primarily on a determination that CitiFinancial never agreed to deliver the note as part of the parties’ agreement to transfer the mortgage. But whether they agreed on this term is a question of fact, and The Patrick Group presented enough evidence from which a reasonable fact finder could conclude that it was a part of the parties’ agreement. The district court’s alternative basis for summary judgment—that CitiFinancial’s alleged breach did not cause The Patrick Group’s damages—was also erroneous. Under the circumstances of this case, the causation question should have been resolved in The Patrick Group’s favor as a matter of law; the state trial and appellate courts rejected The Patrick Group’s foreclosure action because without a copy of the note, it could not prove it was the holder of the debt the mortgage secured.

<SNIP>

In short, as a matter of law, The Patrick Group’s damages were caused by CitiFinancial’s failure to deliver an original or a copy of the note secured by the mortgage.^[5] The open factual question is whether the parties’ agreement required CitiFinancial to do so, and on this the evidence is disputed. We therefore REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Continue reading below…

COGSWELL v. CITIFINACIAL

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Thank you Thomas J. Dart, Sheriff of Cook County, Chicago!

This is not the LOTTO…this isn’t something where we’re rolling the dice and saying…you know what? Possibly this was done illegally…

Image source: Huffington Post

(UPDATED)

Angela Caputo on 07.23.10 at 10:41 AM |

(Originally published 7/22/10 at 5:20 p.m.) Chicagoan Rich Gregory figured it was only a matter of time before he’d hear from his bank after falling behind on his second mortgage. But when he was summonsed to foreclosure court in 2008, he realized his bank wasn’t interested in negotiating.

Gregory noticed something “goofy” about the summons. Attached to it was a copy of the server’s credentials, issued on the letterhead of former Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Morgan Finley, a man convicted of extortion and ousted from office more than two decades earlier. “I thought, ‘This guy’s not licensed. He’s not authorized to do it,” Gregory said.

Turns out that Cook County Judge Dorothy Kinnaird, who oversees the Chancery Division, issued a court order in June 2007, allowing lenders and servicers to sidestep the Cook County Sheriff’s office and hire private agencies to deliver foreclosure summons. The idea was to free up a flood of new foreclosure cases. Lawmakers had toyed with the idea decades earlier. Ultimately, they decided that having a neutral party – primarily the Sheriff’s office – delivering court documents would avert the sort of conflict that’s brewing in the Cook County court system. Homeowners are now challenging the legitimacy of their summonses, and some are saying that they were never called to court to plead their case.

We hear that a lawsuit is coming down to challenge the court’s use of special process servers.

As far as Marty Stack, legal council to the Sheriff’s office is concerned, these questionable summonses could threaten the legitimacy of potentially thousands of local foreclosure cases. “Basically, all of these people could come back to vacate their case,” Stack said. “The judge has no right to take away their due process.”

Continue reading…Chicagonow.com

REMOVE YOUR MONEY 9/11/2010

An army of volunteers seeks to help “Aunt Aggie,” a 100-year-old Monee woman who raised 40 foster kids on her farm

April 27, 2010|By Colleen Mastony, Chicago Tribune reporter

Let the bankers come with their foreclosure notices. Invite the building inspectors, too. At 100 years old, Agnes Albinger has lived on her 70-acre patch of farmland longer than most of those people have been alive.

She has seen two world wars come and go, survived the Depression — in part by subsisting on minnow stew — and raised 40 foster children. Now, she has become a rallying point in this rural community as she fights to keep her Monee farm.

“I’ll never leave,” she said one recent morning, as she stood with a walker on her sagging front porch, looking out over the fields she tended for most of her life. “I’d like to stay here until I die. This is my home. This was my land. I owned everything once. I worked awful hard on this place to make it what it was.”

As Albinger faces foreclosure on the property where she has lived since 1949, a coalition of friends and strangers has mobilized to help the woman everyone calls “Aunt Aggie.” They have set up a , Web site, saveagnesfarm.com, and volunteered to help with cleaning and repairs. On a recent Saturday, nearly 100 people showed up to clear brush and haul away rusting farm equipment.

For many in Will County, helping Albinger seems to be one of the few ways they can push back against the waves of foreclosures and layoffs that have swept the nation.

“It goes further than what’s happening to Agnes. This same thing is happening all over. The value of American land is going down, homes are foreclosing. All these bankers think about is how much money they can make,” said Jim Armstrong, 59, a friend who helped organize volunteers. “They don’t care that there’s people who live on this land, people who love this land.”

As for Albinger, she says she’d rather die than leave. Her body is stooped with age and her hands are gnarled from decades of labor. But her mind seems sharp, and she fiercely defends her right to live independently. ” Nursing homes are made for people who cannot help themselves,” said Albinger, who uses a walker and who has a live-in caretaker to help with the heavier chores. “I can cook my own meals. I can do my own dishes. I can do everything myself.”

But the question of her best interests remains complicated. The farm has fallen into disrepair. The yard is strewn with cast-off furniture, stacks of old tractor tires, two abandoned cars. The porch is piled with junk. The roof leaks and, until recently, Albinger kept her last chicken inside the house, to protect it from raccoons.

And yet, when asked what the place means to her, Albinger replied simply: “Home. Don’t you have a home? Then you know what it means. It’s security. Love. Peacefulness.”

From 1 big family to another

The fifth of 11 children, Albinger was born in 1909 to Lithuanian immigrant farmers who cultivated land they rented near Kankakee. As a child, she attended class in a one-room school house, herded cows on the open prairie and helped plow fields with a team of horses. After a failed harvest, the family moved to Chicago, where in 1940 Albinger married her husband, Matthew. “A wonderful husband,” she said.

The couple couldn’t have children of their own, so they became foster parents, taking in the orphaned and abandoned. They bought the farm in Monee in 1949. Back then, Albinger said the land was still “all prairies, all over. Wild animals, everywhere you could see.” But, a few years after they purchased the property, Matthew died of a heart ailment, she and family members said.

“When my husband died, I had the four (foster) kids,” Albinger recalled. “And the welfare let me keep them. They said they’ll be company for me. As they grew up, I got more.”

Over the years, she raised 35 boys and five girls. In 1969, she was nominated for Cook County Foster Mother of the Year, according to news clippings.

“She taught me everything — how to live and survive,” said Michael Follmann, 54, who had bounced between more than a dozen “pretty brutal” foster homes by the time he came to Albinger’s farm. “I was a hot-headed young boy at the age of 9 after all the stuff that happened to me. I didn’t trust or believe in anybody. Then Agnes stepped into my life and taught me what it was like to trust people again, to have faith in people.”

“In my opinion, she saved my life,” said Greg Crosby, 54, who was 5 years old when his father abandoned him and five other siblings. The children had been malnourished and close to starvation, Crosby said, when Albinger took them in — all six kids — and made sure that the state didn’t split them up. “She taught us how to garden and things like that. She taught us to take care of animals. It meant everything.”

“I got my work ethic and, I think, my integrity through her,” said Greg’s brother, Ray Crosby, 57.

“I still call her ‘Mom,’ ” said Richard Rose, 49, who was 6 when he came to the farm. “Who knows where I would be if it wasn’t for her.”

Albinger introduced her foster children to the wonders of farm life. She showed them how to feed baby chicks by dripping water off a fingertip, and how to use a hand crank to separate the milk from the cream. She kept all sorts of animals including, at times, two peacocks, a pony and a monkey.

Life followed the rhythms of the seasons. They planted corn in the spring, cut hay in the summer and brought turnips into the cellar in the fall.

As years passed, the children grew up and moved away. But Albinger kept the farm going and, even well into her 80s, still milked the cows by hand and kept a few head of beef cattle. “I used to overhaul my own tractors. I did all my own field work,” she said. “I wasn’t afraid of work.”

The farm had been free of debt, family members said, until 2000, when court and land records show that Albinger took out a $100,000 mortgage on the property. Albinger then began to sign over parcels of land to a trust and also to a company called Phoenix Horizon LLC, which according to state records was formed by Albinger’s niece, Bridget Gruzdis, 47.

In an e-mailed response to questions from the Tribune, Gruzdis said Phoenix Horizon was created “for the sole purpose of land development and sale.”

Over six years, Albinger and Gruzdis took out a series of mortgages on the farm, eventually borrowing $700,000, according to court and land records.

Albinger says she might have signed some papers but never knew about the mortgage debt. In September, the bank initiated foreclosure proceedings. As recently as last week, a prospective buyer walked the property, which was put on the market a few years ago by Phoenix Horizon and is listed for $4.6 million, according to Ron Sales, a real estate agent in the area. But Albinger and other family members said they didn’t even know the farm was for sale.

Monee Deputy Police Chief John Cipkar said that the department is investigating and detectives are trying to determine if “Agnes was in full knowledge of what she was doing” when she signed. DinSFLA- Course she didn’t! They knew what they were doing was pulling a scam!

Gruzdis said in her e-mail that Albinger is suffering from dementia — an assertion that other family members dispute. She said that Albinger was involved in the formation of Phoenix Horizon and that the mortgages were taken to cover Albinger’s expenses and to “provide funds for Phoenix Horizon’s business objectives.”

“Agnes absolutely did know,” Gruzdis wrote. “Agnes was personally involved and signed all documents with her own hand.” DinSFLA- Not so fast “STAR”…your part of the investigation!

‘If I get to live here…’

In Will County, many hope that Albinger will somehow be able to stay on her land. In preparation for a May 1 deadline set by the Monee code enforcement department, volunteers have cleaned out Albinger’s basement, removed a crumbling shed from the yard and towed away the old tractors. Next, they hope to fix up the interior of the house.

“You’d have to be coldhearted not to have some compassion for her,” said Jim Frazier, 57, a volunteer. “I feel that she should be able to stay there at least to live out the days she has left.”

Meanwhile, Albinger’s extended family is struggling to decide if they should move her to a nursing home, a place where they believe she would be well-cared for, but where they fear she would be unhappy. “Myself, I would like to see her stay,” said Bob Szorc, 68, a nephew. “I would like to see her retain her independence. And once she goes to a nursing home, that’s not going to happen.”

“If she goes to a nursing home, her life will be cut short. I don’t think she’ll care to live anymore,” said Patricia Ritacco, 72, a niece. “You know, sometimes when you take away what’s important to people, they can’t exist any longer.”

As for Albinger, she is enjoying spring on the farm. The daffodils are blooming in her garden and the lilac bushes have begun to flower along the northern fence line.

Even at 100 years old, Albinger is thinking about farming and making plans for the future. On a recent morning, she stood on her porch and eyed her last chicken, clucking in a cage. “She’s a nice little girl,” Albinger said. “If I get to live here, I’m going to buy a rooster and see if I can raise a couple of chicks.”

Where is OPRAH??? Chicago hello???