I can no longer say that not a single senior executive of one of the major nonprime lenders whose frauds hyper-inflated the housing bubble and caused the Great Recession has been convicted of his frauds. A single senior executive of one of the hundreds of fraudulent nonprime lenders was convicted yesterday, April 19, 2011. A jury found Lee Farkas, Chairman of the Board of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), guilty of fraud. TBW was a large mortgage banking firm that made many nonprime loans, but the prosecution does not address the fraudulent nonprime lending.
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Third, note that while a Colonial Bank officer pleaded guilty for assisting these frauds against Colonial Bank, no one has pleaded guilty at Freddie Mac. The critical question is whether TBW actually delivered the key loan documents to Freddie Mac. Did Freddie Mac obtain an enforceable security interest or was it defrauded by TBW? Was Colonial Bank the only victim of the double sale/pledge?
FLORENCE R. LACY-MCKINNEY, Appellant-Defendant,
v.
TAYLOR, BEAN & WHITAKER MORTGAGE CORP., Appellee-Plaintiff.
No. 71A03-0912-CV-587.
Court of Appeals of Indiana.
November 19, 2010.
JOSEPH F. ZIELINSKI Indiana Legal Services, Inc. South Bend, Indiana, ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT.
CRAIG D. DOYLE, MARK R. GALLIHER AMANDA J. MAXWELL Doyle Legal Corporation, P.C. Indianapolis, Indiana, ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE.
OPINION
KIRSCH, Judge.
Florence R. Lacy-McKinney (“Lacy-McKinney”) appeals the trial court`s entry of summary judgment in favor of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. (“Taylor-Bean”) on Taylor-Bean`s action to foreclose on Lacy-McKinney`s mortgage that was insured by the Federal Housing Administration (“FHA”).[1] On appeal, Lacy-McKinney raises two issues that we restate as:
I. Whether a mortgagee`s compliance with federal mortgage servicing responsibilities is a condition precedent that may be raised as an affirmative defense to the foreclosure of an FHA-insured mortgage; and
II. Whether the trial court erred when it entered summary judgment in favor of Taylor-Bean on its mortgage foreclosure action against Lacy-McKinney.
We reverse and remand.
At the time Taylor-Bean filed its complaint, the security interest in the subject mortgage was in the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (“MERS”) “(solely as nominee for [Taylor-Bean] . . . and [Taylor-Bean`s] successors and assigns).” Appellant’s App. at 8. After MERS assigned the security interest to Taylor-Bean, Taylor-Bean filed an amended complaint. Lacy-McKinney initially argued that summary judgment in favor of Taylor-Bean must fail because Taylor-Bean had no interest in the Property at the time the original complaint was filed. Id. at 102-03. Lacy-McKinney does not raise this issue on appeal.
In an extremely significant ruling, a Florida Circuit Judge today dismissed a residential foreclosure Complaint filed by the Bank of New York as trustee for a securitized mortgage loan trust for failure to comply with the Supreme Court of Florida Order amending the Rules of Civil Procedure to require that all residential mortgage foreclosure Complaints be verified and as the Plaintiff also failed to properly allege the chain of title from the original lender to the foreclosing Plaintiff as required by recent Florida case law. The Supreme Court of Florida rule amendment and the recent case law requiring proof of chain of title in order to be able to foreclose were both previously reported on this website.
The original lender was Taylor Bean & Whitaker, which failed and was taken over by the government for fraudulent lending practices. There was no assignment or other evidence showing how the loan went from TBW to the Bank of New York. The Complaint was filed on February 12, 2010, the day after the effective date of the Supreme Court Order requiring verification of all residential foreclosure Complaints.
The ruling is extremely significant, as it ratifies the effect of the Supreme Court Order requiring that ALL residential mortgage foreclosure complaints filed in Florida after February 11, 2010 be verified and that such Complaints also allege the proper chain of title of the note and mortgage from the original lender to the foreclosing Plaintiff, and that if the Complaint does not do both, the Complaint is subject to dismissal.
The borrower is represented by Jeff Barnes, Esq., who filed the Motion to Dismiss and argued the matter at a hearing this morning.
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