Thanks to Abigail Field for the title post and thank you to Joe over at BP Investigative Agency for this submission.
According to a Handwriting Expert… yes, documents were forged and altered.
As if Breaking and Entering weren’t enough, add forgery to the lengths JP Morgan Chase will go to take a home.
When foreclosure proceedings began on William Paatalo’s Montana property in January 2010, he, like many homeowners, felt emotionally drained and devastated. “ I couldn’t believe how I got to this place. I had perfect credit in 2008. I was making payments on three properties through Washington Mutual, but they began to misapply payments to the wrong accounts and even turned off my ‘auto-pay’ feature in an attempt to sabotage my credit and spin me into default.”
By the time Paatalo discovered the error, his credit had tanked and things started spiraling downward. “It was brutal. My business lines of credit were shut down, and I couldn’t access any of my lines of credit ; WAMU was slow to acknowledge the problem; the credit agencies ignored me; and then I got the foreclosure notices. It was a living hell. I spent a lot time being angry. “
In the end, Paatalo did what many home owners are now doing. He started pushing back. “I didn’t want to just roll over. I figured I still had some rights, so I began the painstaking process of researching my loan in hopes I could modify or delay the action. The Trustee’s sale wasn’t scheduled until June, so I figured I had a little bit of time to rectify the situation.”
But unbeknownst to Paatalo, Chase, who had acquired WAMU in 2008, took early action. In March, they broke into his home, changed all the locks, and stole property, including personal documents and a handgun. “I was out of town, and when I found out what they had done I was outraged.”
Paatalo filed a criminal complaint and took additional action. However, law enforcement sat idle as it was perceived to be a “civil matter.” Tired of being victimized, he began investigating practices in the mortgage industry and uncovered much of what is now known. In October of 2010 he filed suit against JP Morgan Chase pro se and has been litigating since then.
But his case, scheduled for trial in September, took a bizarre turn recently. “I was reading about the class action suit in California Bakenie v. JPMorgan Chase Bank and I got to wondering if my note might’ve been forged. So I got a color copy of the note, and in my office I magnified the signatures 800 fold.”
What he found was astounding. Even to the layman’s eye, the signatures appeared to have been photo-shopped. In one instance, even the signature line was colored blue. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It looked like something a high school kid did.
Paatalo sent the document to Dr. Laurie Hoeltzel in southern California; a handwriting / document expert with over 20 years of experience. Her findings verified what Paatalo suspected, the documents had indeed been forged. “All along Chase has argued on record they hold the note. Clearly, they do not. It’s one thing to claim the note entitles them to foreclose, it’s another to commit a felonious act to illegally take a home they are not entitled to. It’s absolutely appalling. This is no longer a civil dispute.”
Paatalo intends to file a criminal complaint against Chase, along with formal Bar complaints against their attorneys . The expert declaration is now in the hands of Montana’s Federal Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby. How this new information plays out in court is yet to be determined, but Paatalo is sure of one thing. “Nothing these banks do surprises me anymore. I can only hope our judicial system has the backbone to hold these people accountable.”
Addendum: Paatalo notified Chase of his discovery last week and was attempting to have the evidence surrendered to the court and sequestered. After all, attorneys have a duty to uphold justice and refrain from assisting in fraud. He was notified today by Chase’s attorney that the documents had been removed from Butte, Montana and are now in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Paatalo has objected to the transferring of the documents, and Chase’s attempts to withhold evidence of a crime.
Read the handwriting expert’s affidavit below begin at page 5…
Massive Collateral Damage has been done and in the age of having files held in electronic data, this is very disturbing.
Executive Gov-
The Securities and Exchange Commission has forbidden its employees from destroying investigative documents, as fallout spreads from a whistleblower’s recent claim that the agency has illegally destroyed thousands of preliminary investigation documents.
An SEC attorney alerted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of the possible crimes in August. The whistleblower said the documents in question were “matters under inquiry,” including reviews of AIG, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bernie Madoff.
Thanks to Darcy Flynn, a longtime attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, we now have all the ammunition we need to do what should have been done years ago: terminate the SEC, with extreme prejudice, and in its place construct a new regulatory watchdog for Wall Street free of obvious conflicts of interest.
Flynn’s courage has almost been lost in all the recent apocalyptic talk of earthquakes and hurricanes, but a few weeks back he did something remarkable. After raising concerns internally at the SEC last year — and getting nowhere — Flynn went public and alleged in a formal whistleblower complaint that for at least 17 years the SEC “followed a policy of systematically destroying documents” related to what are known as Matters Under Investigation, or MUIs, most of which were focused on possibly illicit or illegal behavior at Wall Street firms. MUIs are the first step in investigating a case that may lead to a formal SEC inquiry.
A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals.
Rollingstone-
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Securities and Exchange Commission may have destroyed documents and compromised enforcement cases involving activity at large banks and hedge funds during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, according to allegations made by a lawmaker on Wednesday.
SEATTLE – Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna announced today that his office has uncovered evidence that suggests foreclosure trustees are ignoring consumer protection laws in Washington, adding a new layer to a stack of problems reported in the mortgage-servicing industry. He sent letters today to 52 trustees outlining his concerns and calling on them to suspend any questionable foreclosures in the state.
“As part of our ongoing investigation, we have received complaints and information that indicate the Washington foreclosure process frequently includes inaccurate documents, conflicts-of-interest, faulty chains of title and failures to provide the disclosures and conduct mediations required by law,” McKenna said during a press conference today in Seattle with officials from the Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) and the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. “Some of these practices can deprive homeowners of their legal right to assert legitimate defenses in an action to save their homes.”
“Problems aren’t limited to the national banks and mortgage servicers, however, and appear to extend to foreclosure trustees,” he continued.
The Department of Financial Institutions shares McKenna’s concerns that some foreclosures may not have been processed according to Washington law, said Director Scott Jarvis.
“Such failures potentially injure not just the homeowners denied the protections afforded to them under our laws, but also subsequent purchasers of foreclosed properties, financial institutions who might be inclined to lend on such properties, and the title insurance companies who insure the chain of title to those properties,” Jarvis said. “The last thing we need in these difficult times is to further damage our already struggling real estate industry.”
Washington state government officials are investigating foreclosure servicing problems from three perspectives:
McKenna and Jarvis announced today that they have joined the National Association of Attorneys General and banking regulators in forming a multistate group to investigate whether mortgage servicers have improperly submitted affidavits or other documents related to foreclosures in their states. The Washington Attorney General’s Office will serve on the executive committee of the multistate group. Jim Sugarman and David Huey, assistant attorneys general in the Consumer Protection Division, and Deborah Bortner, director of DFI’s Division of Consumer Services, will represent Washington on the new multistate group.
The Mortgage Fraud Working Group of The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, a joint federal-state initiative co-chaired by McKenna, is also investigating certain aspects of these foreclosure problems.
On the local front, the Washington Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division since May of this year has been investigating reports of lenders and trustee services not properly reviewing foreclosure documents or following other legal procedures.
“Because Washington state law allows foreclosure without court oversight, you are the party most responsible for ensuring that foreclosures are done properly,” McKenna wrote in the letter to trustees. “Consequently, I ask you to suspend all foreclosures in which you have not yet confirmed that all foreclosure-related documents were lawfully signed, that the chain of ownership is clear and has been revealed to you in full, and that state consumer protection requirements have been followed.”
McKenna said that he strongly favors loan modifications and other means of preventing foreclosures when possible and advocates working with lenders to improve communication with borrowers. In addition to its enforcement efforts, the Attorney General’s Office plays a leading role in the multistate Foreclosure Prevention Working Group, which issues regular reports on the status of foreclosure prevention efforts.
“The housing counselors that we fund have told us again and again about the serious communication problems they are having on behalf of families facing foreclosure,” said Kim Herman, executive director of the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, “These families just want to be treated fairly and get a reasonable, timely decision so they can move on with their lives. That is not too much to expect and, hopefully, this process will help that happen.”
Washington residents facing foreclosure should call the Washington State Homeownership Information Hotline at 1-877-894-HOME (4663) for referral to a free, state-approved housing counselor or legal help. Additional resources are on the Attorney General’s Web site at www.atg.wa.gov/foreclosure.aspx.
Specific concerns addressed in McKenna’s letter to foreclosure trustees:
Employees of foreclosure trustees are signing documents posing as the corporate officer of multiple banks and mortgage servicers and signatures of some trustees vary widely from document to document. This appears to be happening even though signatures are notarized with a statement that the signer is the actual person standing before the notary.
Trustees may be foreclosing on homes when there is no clear chain of ownership for the loan or the security interest. At the national level, there are reports of lenders “reverse-engineering” the chain of title, including back-dating documents to make it appear as though the loan was passed from company to company.
Many default notices have gone out without all required information. Since July 26, 2009, Washington trustees have been required to identify the owner of the loan and the company that is acting as servicer. The notices must also include an address and phone number for the servicer. The absence of these details can make it harder for homeowners to contact their mortgage owners.
Lenders are not consistently telling homeowners about their right to explore alternatives to foreclosure. Lenders are required to advise borrowers who obtained mortgages between 2003-2007 of their right to meet and confer and, if requested, the loan owner must schedule a meeting to occur within 14 days. It is our understanding that lenders are regularly not telling homeowners about this right, which exists to help homeowners explore alternatives to foreclosure.
Washington is a “non-judicial foreclosure” state, which means that a lender can proceed directly to selling a home at public auction without first filing a lawsuit. This process was created by the state Legislature. Although lenders may foreclose in court in Washington, they almost always choose non-judicial foreclosures.
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