A few short EXCERPTS: (**Scroll down to read important Fannie/servicing update!)
LATE ONE NIGHT IN February 2009, Ariane Ice sat poring over records on the website of Florida's Palm Beach County. She'd been at it for weeks, forsaking sleep to sift through thousands of legal documents. She and her husband, Tom, an attorney, ran a boutique foreclosure defense firm called Ice Legal. Now they were up against one of Florida's biggest foreclosure law firms: Founded by multimillionaire attorney David J. Stern, it controlled one-fifth of the state's booming market in foreclosure-related services. Ice had a strong hunch that Stern's operation was up to something, and that night she found her smoking gun.
It involved something called an "assignment of mortgage," the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter. It frequently requires months of sleuthing in order to untangle the web of banks, brokers, and investors, among others. By law, a firm must execute (complete, sign, and notarize) an assignment before attempting to seize somebody's home.
A Florida notary's stamp is valid for four years, and its expiration date is visible on the imprint. But here in front of Ice were dozens of assignments notarized with stamps that hadn't even existed until months--in some cases nearly a year--after the foreclosures were filed. Which meant Stern's people were foreclosing first and doing their legal paperwork later. In effect, it also meant they were lying to the court--an act that could get a lawyer disbarred or even prosecuted. "There's no question that it's pervasive," says Tom Ice of the backdated documents--nearly two dozen of which were verified by Mother Jones. "We've found tons of them." MORE
"...Stern's company is one of dozens of mills that now churn through more than a million cases a year for Fannie and Freddie, big banks, and private lenders. Built like industrial assembly lines, the mills employ small armies of paralegals and other low-level employees who mass-produce court filings, run title searches, and schedule scores of hearings and property auctions daily..."
"...The business model is simple: to tear through cases as quickly as possible. (Stern's company handled 70,382 foreclosures in 2009 alone.) This breakneck pace stems from how the mills get paid. Rather than billing hourly, they receive a predetermined flat fee for the foreclosure--typically around $1,000--plus add-ons for each of the related services. The more they foreclose, the more they make. As a result, consumer attorneys and legal experts say, even families who have been foreclosed upon illegally--and who can afford to make good on their mortgages--end up getting steamrolled. "It's 'How fast can I turn this file?'" says Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates in Washington, DC. "For these guys, the law is irrelevant, the process is irrelevant, the substance is irrelevant."
Be sure to read the article in its entirety, and find links to follow the paper trail: Mother Jones
MORE Mortgage servicing news;
IMPORTANT UPDATE ** FannieLimitsOutsourcing.pdf
No more back-office processing fees - Fannie now limits to $25/file; (Stern
booking $1,500), no more REO companies, no more title companies.
Legal fees only go to lawyers
BOMBSHELL- CLASS ACTION OPEN FOR EVERY CONSUMER WHO HAS BEEN SUED BY DAVID J. STERN
From Matt Weidner Law
A lawsuit was just filed against the Law Offices of David J. Stern, David J. Stern individually and MERSCorp. The lawsuit is stunning both in the allegations made and the detail that describes the collapse of the entire American financial markets and widespread the destruction of property rights across this country.WILL THIS BE ONE OF THE LAST SHOES TO DROP?
More will be detailed about this lawsuit in months to come. For now, I encourage everyone to read this lawsuit carefully and share this lawsuit with judges, reporters and policy makers. The lawsuit articulates many of the suspicions and the greatest fears held by many but who are unable to put those fears into words. I give real credit to the courageous attorney who took on this effort and encourage all those who are in the fight to protect and defend our courts to support this effort. Stern Class Action
From MSFraud.org
California is following in the footsteps of Tennessee. Recent Sup. Ct. rulings held that MERS is not the holder in due course (real party in interest) of any property and never was. This can have devastating repercussions for the mortgage industry, not just MERS, because there is no valid chain of title. People who are being foreclosed upon, or have been foreclosed upon, now have an equitable remedy. These people should now be able to win in court and have their mortgage nightmares settled. Some people are able to keep their homes, as banks fear losing far more in class-action suits. Now California is getting in on the action and suing MERS for filing false records in every county in the state since MERS began over 10 years ago.Treasury Used Bogus Info in Report to Homeowners
Carrying a possible fine of $5-$10K a pop, this could amount to millions and possibly billions of dollars in penalties against MERS. This is money the counties desperately need.
This could mean that anyone with a mortgage may have it immediately settled and the true owner will get the title free and clear due to fraud, which has no statute of limitation. Lawful owners will have recourse to sue for fraudulent foreclosure. Let's see what happens.
Read the complaint...
from Richard Zombeck,
EXCERPT from Huffington Post:
"...While I was in D.C. in April at Treasury, Diana Farrell, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council briefly mentioned the administration's "successful" programs, referring to HAMP, Making Home Affordable, and similar programs designed to address the mortgage fiasco.
I asked her why the administration continues to see these programs as a success when the only point of reference they use to gauge the performance is the bank's own reporting of their progress. She then directed me to the progress reports on financialstability.gov - the same reports Treasury is now reporting as flawed.
"Those reports are crap; I've seen them," I said in response, "Why aren't you talking to the homeowners and people whose loans have been supposedly modified. Why isn't there any oversight or verification?"
I didn't get a direct response. Instead she looked to her colleagues in the back of the room and said, "We'll take that under advisement," and moved to the next question in the room.
So while Treasury was taking the word of criminals in the banking and servicing industry - allowing them to report on their own progress, the very organization that caused the meltdown by gobbling up all the toxic mortgages it could is providing status reports that essentially cover up the program's utter failure.
There are some painfully obvious reasons why these modifications are re-defaulting: A large number of the modifications don't offer any real relief at all. Many homeowners have found themselves owing more principal on the loan than they did before. Others have been offered lower payments amounting to no more than $60 in savings per month - hardly an incentive to stay in a home that's lost 30-40 percent of its value and is more than likely to lose another 30 percent in the coming two years.
It's not like the information isn't out there...MORE
ALSO see;
Serving Your Country? Bank of America Wants Your House...At Any Cost.
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Please tell me if anyone in ga or the southeast is handling any class action suit against emc mortgage. Thank You
looking to sue HSBC and Fanne Mae
please help
who ever have class auction already ,I need his or her attorney name
thank