By LYNN E. SZYMONIAK, ESQ., ED., Fraud Digest (www.frauddigest.com)

LISA EPSTEIN, foreclosurehamlet.org

100 INTRODUCTORY FACTS ABOUT MORTGAGE SECURITIZATION

PREPARED FOR OCCUPY PALM BEACH

1. Most mortgages in the U.S. are owned by trusts.

2. The trusts are often referred to as “RMBS” trusts, an acronym standing for “residential mortgage-backed securities.”

3. The total U.S. mortgage debt is between $12 and $14 trillion.  Of this, approximately $8 trillion was owned by trusts in 2008.

_____

Why is it important to learn about mortgage securitization?

Reason #1: Most of the foreclosures filed in the U.S. in the last 5 years were filed by mortgage-backed trusts.  Most of the foreclosures filed in the next 5 years will be filed by mortgage-backed trusts.

_____

4. The trusts are made up of a bundle or pool of mortgages (often 5,000 – 8,000 mortgages per trust). The loans are almost always subprime loans.  The value of the mortgages in each trust is usually between $500,000 and $2 billion.

5. Individual mortgages got packaged into RMBS Trusts; these RMBS trusts got bundled, sliced and sold as CDOs – collateralized debt obligations.

6. The mortgage loans in each pool – or RMBS Trust – usually include both first lien and second lien loans, and fixed-rate and adjustable rate loans.

7. There are different “layers” within each pile of loans, representing different qualities of loans.  It is not unusual for each pile to have as many as 20 different layers – these layers are sometimes called classes or “tranches.”

8. Certificates are issued to investors to represent the purchase – so investors are often called “certificate holders.”

9. There are often minimum investment requirements – such as “Offered certificates must be purchased in minimum total investments of $100,000 per class.”

10. The loans are selected for each pool by a particular date, often called the “closing date” of the trust.  Some trusts include a schedule or listing of all of the loans in the trust by the closing date.  While a trust may substitute loans into the pool after the closing date, there are restrictions on such substitutions.

11. The pool of loans is described in a “prospectus” – a printed document that describes the business enterprise that is distributed to prospective buyers, investors and participants (similar to the glossy brochure distributed by new car dealers describing the features of the car.”

12. Many representations (promises) are made to the potential buyers regarding the loans in each pool in both the prospectus and the Pooling and Servicing Agreement (described more fully below).  The following, for example, are taken from the prospectus for Soundview Home Loan Trust 2006-OPT2:

Mortgage Loans with Prepayment Charges:

74.60%

Fixed-Rate Mortgage Loans:

15.61%

Second lien Mortgage Loans:

4.18%

Interest Only Mortgage Loans:

16.94%

Range of Remaining Term to Stated Maturities:

116–360 Months

Weighted Average Remaining Term to Stated Maturity:

357 Months

Range of Original Principal Balances:

$15,000–$1,620,000

Average Original Principal Balance:

$201,215

Range of Current Mortgage Rates:

5.350%–14.30%

Weighted Average Credit Score of the Mortgage Loans:

622

Weighted Average Current Mortgage Rate:

8.49%

Weighted Average Gross Margin of the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

6.50%

Weighted Average Maximum Mortgage Rate of the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

14.43%

Weighted Average Minimum Mortgage Rate of the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

8.42%

Weighted Average Initial Rate Adjustment Cap of the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

2.99%

Weighted Average Periodic Rate Adjustment Cap of the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

1.00%

Weighted Average Months Until Next Adjustment Date for the Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Loans:

25 Months

Geographic Concentration in Excess of 5%:

California:

26.02%

Florida:

11.81%

New York:

10.90%

New Jersey:

5.80%

Massachusetts:

5.10%

SOME OF THE LAWS INVOLVED IN RMBS TRUSTS

13. In 1960 the government enacted the Real Estate Investment Trust Act of 1960.  This act allowed the creation of the real estate investment trusts (REIT) to encourage real estate investment.

14. In 1984 the government passed the Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act (SMMEA) to improve the marketability of REITS.

15. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 allowed the creation of the tax-free Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (REMIC) special purpose vehicle for the express purpose of issuing pass-through investments.

16. The Tax Reform Act significantly contributed to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), which changed the regulation of the savings and loan industry and encouraged loan origination.

18. There are special tax rules that apply to these trusts.  Because the money coming in to the trusts is passed through to investors, the trusts are not required to pay tax on the money that flows into the trusts (the mortgage payments from homeowners).  Investors pay tax when they receive their return on the investments.

19.  RMBS Trusts are securities; the Securities and Exchange Commission regulate mortgage-backed trusts.

20. On January 7, 2005, the SEC published Regulation AB, a final rule to codify requirements for the registration, disclosure and reporting for all publicly registered asset-backed securities including mortgage-backed securities.  Regulation AB consists of 24 “Items” relating to the operation and reporting requirements for mortgage-backed trusts.  There have been numerous revisions to Regulation AB.

21.  RMBS Trusts also have special tax consequences; the IRS also regulates RMBS Trusts.

22. The majority of mortgage securities were issued by the U.S. government, by the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) or by government-sponsored entities (GSEs) such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac).  These entities also very often guarantee some or all of the loans in RMBS trusts.

23. The vast majority of the RMBS trusts were created between 2004 and 2008.

24.  The revenue from the trusts are predicted (but not guaranteed) to last for 25 – 30 years.

25.  Servicers are paid by monthly fees from the trusts usually by a formula – for example: “Servicer will be paid a monthly fee equal to one-twelfth of 0.30% multiplied by the Aggregate Principal Balance of the mortgage loans as of the first day of the related due period for the first 10 due periods…0.65% for all due periods thereafter.”

26. The Servicer may purchase all of the loans and any REO properties and “retire the certificates” (end the payments) when the total loan balance equal or is less than 10% of the original loan balance.

27. Typical representations made to investors:

• the credit scores for at least 5,000 of the 7,500 loans in the trust will be above 600;
• at least 7,000 of the 7,500 loans will not mature for at least 355 months;
• at least 5,500 of the loans are for single-family detached homes;
• at least 6,500 of the 7,500 loans will have been made to homeowners who will use the homes as their primary residence;
• the average combined loan-to-value ratio of the loans was 77% (the loan was made for only 77% of the value of the home);
• at least 5,000 of the 7,500 loans were full documentation loans;
• the current mortgage rates for at least 70% of the loans were between 7% and 10%.

28. Servicers also are responsible for issuing periodic reports to investors advising of the performance of the loans in the trust (investor reports).

29. Mortgage loans were classified as follows:

1. full documentation;
2. stated income documentation;
3. no documentation;
4. lite documentation;
5. business bank statements.

30. Some of the major producers of RMBS Trusts from 2004-2007 included:

• Lehman Brothers
• Morgan Stanley
• Credit Suisse
• Merrill Lynch
• Deutsche Bank
• Goldman Sachs
• Bear Stearns
• JPMorgan
• CitiGroup
• Barclays

31. The names of trusts often contain short-hand information regarding that particular trust. GSAMP Trust 2006-S3, for example, stands for Goldman Sachs Alternative Mortgage Products Trust, created in 2006. Other examples:

CWALT is shorthand for Countrywide Alternative Loan Trust.

CWABS is shorthand for Countrywide Asset-Backed Securities.

Other trusts have friendly names such as Harborview or Soundview.

32. The three biggest mortgage companies in the U.S. in 2005 were:

• American Home Mortgage in Melville, NY
• Countrywide Mortgage in Calabasas, CA
• Option One Mortgage Corporation in Irvine, CA

Almost all of these loans were bundled into RMBS trusts.  Other mortgage companies that were major producers of mortgages for RMBS trusts included:

• Ameriquest Mortgage, a/k/a Long Beach Mortgage Company
• Citi Residential Lending
• Dietech (owned by GMAC)
• Fairbanks Capital
• Fremont Investment & Loan
• GMAC Financial
• New Century Mortgage Company
• NovaStar Financial

This is a very short list – there were many, many other big lenders.

33. There are 5 major groups involved in securitization: originators, depositors, sponsors, master servicers and trustees.

34. The companies that make the loans, the mortgagee, are known as the ORIGINATORS in the securitization process.

35. Loan originators often sold the loans to depositors the very same day that these loans were made or within just a few days of the closing date of the loan.

36. Loan originators very often did not lend their own money to the homeowner/borrower.  The originators were often financed by “warehouse lenders.”  These warehouse lenders were financial institution that extended a line of credit to the originator to fund a mortgage.  The loan typically lasted from the time it was originated until it was sold into the securitization market.

37. The companies that select the loans from the various mortgage companies and sell the loans to the trusts are called the Depositors.

38. The companies that direct the creation of the trusts are called the Sponsors.

39. The companies that are responsible for continuing to collect payments on the loans, notifying delinquent mortgagees, foreclosing on collateral (if any), performing data processing functions, preparing periodic reports to investors and Rating Agencies and taking other actions are called the servicers. The Servicer is often also an affiliate of the Originator.  Servicing is often the most lucrative role in securitization.

40. The companies (banks) that operate the trust after it is created are called the Trustees. Duties of the trustee for an ABS transaction typically include:

• Receiving and releasing assets
• Receiving data and collections from servicers
• Remitting funds
• Distributing reports to investors

Trustees have the authority - but typically are not required - to take action to enforce breaches of representations and warranties.

41. Approximately eight big banks serve or served as Trustees for the majority of trusts:  Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, GMAC/Ally, HSBC Bank, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

42. Bank of New York Mellon is the world’s largest custody bank, with $26 Trillion in assets under custody and administration. (Reuters, February 16, 2012, “U.S. SEC pressures BNY Mellon for better disclosure.”)

43. Trustees do not keep the mortgage documents themselves – they hire other banks to serve as Document Custodians.  Example: Wells Fargo serves as Document Custodian for most of the Deutsche Bank trusts.

44. In most trusts, a bank other than the Trustee Bank or the Document Custodian Bank, serves as Master Servicer. The operation of most trusts, therefore, involves three banks, serving in different roles.

45. Trustees frequently change, in part due to bank failures and mergers.

46. Each trust has a set of rules, set forth in a document called the Pooling and Servicing Agreement or PSA. A PSA, or similar agreement, is the governing document of a securitization transaction. Such an agreement sets forth the relationship among the parties and the assets, including, for example, the capital structure of the transaction, the eligibility criteria for the assets, the manner in which cash flows from those assets are to be distributed to note holders, and the definitions for an event of default.

_____

Why is it important to learn about mortgage securitization?

Reason #2: The major investors in RMBS Trusts are pension funds, banks, insurance companies and state and local governments. The fate of the economy is inextricably tied to the fate of mortgage-backed trusts.

_____

47.  The PSA for every trust includes many provisions regarding the loan documents that the trust must obtain and safeguard in a “mortgage file.”  These documents almost always include the promissory note, endorsed in blank or to the trust, the mortgage, an assignment of mortgage to the trust and a title insurance policy.

48. Mortgage-backed trusts include the following or equivalent language regarding Assignments: “Assignments of the Mortgage Loans to the Trustee (or its nominee) will not be recorded in any jurisdiction, but will be delivered to the Trustee in recordable form, so that they can be recorded in the event recordation is necessary in connection with the servicing of a Mortgage Loan.^”

49.  The SEC is the major source of information about a particular trust.  Information usually available from the SEC about each trust includes the Prospectus, the Pooling and Servicing Agreement, and Annual Reports.

50. Each Prospectus and PSA includes promises to investors about the quality of the loans and the loan documentation.  These promises are called Representations and Warranties.

51. Key representations and warranties concern origination, servicing, underwriting standards, due diligence, and related documentation. The PSA usually limits the rights of investors to sue for breaches of these representations and warranties. The Depositor typically makes representations and warranties to the Trustee in the PSA in which mortgage loans are conveyed.

52. Investors and insurance companies began to file major lawsuits against trust creators in 2009.

53. The most common claims against the creators of trusts include the following:

Failure to disclose risks such as failure to disclose loans in default at time of closing;

Disregard of underwriting guidelines such as disregard of LTV guidelines, or debt-to-income ratios; and

Failure to conduct due diligence such as representing that due diligence was performed when it was not.

54. The PSAs usually include anti-lawsuit provisions that limit the circumstances under which a lawsuit may be filed against the trust creators. Example:

Greenwich Fin. Svcs. Distressed Mortgage Fund 3, LLC, et al. v. Countrywide Fin. Corp. (NY Supreme Court, Oct. 2010).

Complaint was dismissed because plaintiffs did not comply with anti-suit provision that required certificate-holders to (1) make a demand upon the Trustee on behalf of 25 percent of the certificate holders, (2) offer Trustee proper indemnity, and (3) wait 60 days for Trustee to commence lawsuit.

55. Examples of major lawsuits against trust creators include the following:

MBIA v. Morgan Stanley (New York State Court May 26, 2011)

MBIA alleged that it was defrauded into insuring mortgage loans, and presented evidence that 97% of the loans in a sample did not meet stated underwriting criteria.

The court found that plaintiff adequately pled “material and pervasive non- compliance with the Seller’s underwriting Guide and the mortgage loan representations.”

Boilermakers Nat’l Annuity Trust Fund v. WAMU Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series AR1 (W.D. Wash. Sept. 28, 2010)

Plaintiff alleged that defendant failed to disclose that mortgage loans were not originated in accordance with underwriting guidelines, resulting in violations of the Securities Act of 1933.

The court found that Plaintiff had adequately pled facts suggesting that underwriting standards were abandoned.

Syncora Guarantee Inc. v. EMC Mortgage Corp. (S.D.N.Y. March 25, 2011)

Syncora, which provided a financial guarantee to investors in RMBS, filed a lawsuit seeking to require EMC (the seller of the mortgages underlying the RMBS) to repurchase the loans on a pool-wide basis.

Syncora alleged that a sample of 400 mortgage loans had 85% breaches. Syncora also demanded that EMC cure breaches in 1300 loans; EMC acknowledged only 20 breaching loans.

56. RMBS Trusts have ratings, like many other securities.

57. Allegations have been made that the trust creators manipulated the ratings.

China Development Industrial Bank v. Morgan Stanley & Co. (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Feb 25, 2011).

CDIB alleged that Morgan Stanley manipulated the rating agencies’ models.

In denying Morgan Stanley’s motion to dismiss, the court noted that the alleged corruption of the ratings process “could not have been discovered by any degree of due diligence or analysis performed by the most sophisticated of investors.”

58. Some lawsuits have focused on the undisclosed involvement of “short” parties in the loan selection process:

SEC v. Goldman Sachs & Co. (S.D.N.Y. decision June 10, 2011)

The court declined to dismiss federal securities fraud claims against Goldman employee (Tourre) based on Goldman’s alleged failure to disclose to CDO investors that a hedge fund strongly influenced collateral selection while it was it was “shorting” the CDO.

SEC v. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (S.D.N.Y. complaint June 21, 2011)

The SEC simultaneously sued and settled with JPM for $153.6 million. The SEC alleged in its complaint that JPM arranged and sold a CDO to investors while representing “that the investment portfolio of [the CDO] was selected by the [CDO’s collateral manger]” but failed to disclose that a hedge fund with a $600 million short interest in the CDO “played a significant role in the portfolio selection process.”

59.  At least one lawsuit by investors has focused in part upon the trusts’ failure to obtain and keep the original loan documents as promised to investors.

Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System v. U.S. Bank National Association (S.D.N.Y. complaint Nov., 2008)

60. Courts may pay strict attention to the many disclaimers in the Prospectuses and the PSAs.

Plumbers’ Union Local No. 12 Pension Fund, et al. v. Nomura Asset Acceptance Corporation (D.Ma. complaint Jan. 31, 2008)

With respect to the plaintiffs’ allegations concerning the mortgage originators’ underwriting standards, District of Massachusetts Judge Richard G. Stearns found that the offering documents contained a “fusillade of cautionary statements” that “abound with warnings about the potential perils.” Judge Stearns noted that plaintiffs’ contention that they were not “on notice” of those perils “begs credulity.” (This was reversed, in part, on appeal.)

61. Regulation of RMBS Trusts by the SEC was done almost solely on the honor system. The trusts prepared reports and filed these with the SEC, and almost no verification of these reports was done by the SEC.

62. The trusts were continually down-graded by the rating agencies.

63. Current investigations by the Federal Task Force co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are focusing on whether there were criminal violations in the packaging of these loans, and criminal acts by servicers relating to foreclosures by the trusts

64. Many of the people now responsible for investigating the creation and operation of trusts were previously involved in the creation and operation of these trusts.  Example: Robert Khuzami, Director of Enforcement for the SEC, was previously General Counsel for the Americas for Deutsche Bank from 2004-2009.  Khuzami thus supervised Greg Lippman, a senior trader at Deutsche, who helped create and fuel the market for mortgage-backed securities.

65. Greg Lippman was perhaps the most famous of all traders who made tens of millions of dollars betting AGAINST the continued strong performance of the U.S. housing market.  He has been singled out for his misconduct in Congressional reports.  He is known for being brash, crass and unscrupulous.

_____

Why is it important to learn about mortgage securitization?

_____

66. The majority of trusts have less than 40% of performing loans remaining in the trusts.  This means that most trusts will stop producing income for investors about 20 years sooner than expected.

67. A study of 37 trusts from three popular series of trusts, American Home Mortgage Assets Trusts, American Home Mortgage Investment Trusts and Soundview Home Loan Trusts, showed the following:

Of the 37 trusts, 18 had 25% or less of performing loans remaining.

Of the 37 trusts, 8 had 26% - 30% of performing loans remaining.

Of the 37 trusts, 11 had 31% - 38% of performing loans remaining.

There were a combined total of 228,203 loans in these trusts at inception.

As of November, 2011, there were a combined total of 51,798 (22.7%) performing loans in these trusts.

The combined collateral value of the loans in these trusts at inception was over $61 Billion: $61,441,128,225.

Of the 37 trusts, Soundview Home Loan Trust 2007-OPT5 had the highest percentage of performing loans remaining in the trust: 38%. American Home Mortgage Assets Trust 2005-2 had the lowest percentage of performing loans remaining in the trust: 10.5%.

_____

THE INVESTORS IN MORTGAGE-BACKED TRUSTS

68. Investment banks invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities.  Example: Merrill Lynch reported on January 17, 2008, an $8.6 billion net loss from write-downs on its subprime investments.

69. Pension fund managers, public and private, invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities.  Ohio’s former Attorney General Richard Cordray filed 8 major lawsuits, and to date has recovered over $2 billion for Ohio pension funds.

70. Insurance companies were major investors in RMBS trusts.  The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently estimated that insurance companies have investments of half a trillion dollars in mortgage-backed securities.

71. Local governments, counties and municipalities invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities.

_____

LIES TOLD TO INVESTORS

72.  The information in the prospectuses and the PSAs was often false.  The average credit scores of borrowers in the loan pool were much lower than represented.  There were many more “no documentation” or “stated income” loans than disclosed.  There were much fewer “full documentation” loans than disclosed.

73.  The information about the loan to value ratios was often also falsely stated.  Home values were inflated during appraisals to make it appear that there was a much higher homeowner investment/equity in the home.

INACCURATE/FALSE INFORMATION IN INVESTOR REPORTS

74. The investor reports often contain inaccurate and false information about the loans in the trust.

75.  The status of the loans is often wrongly reported in the investor reports.  Loans may be reported as delinquent, in foreclosure, in bankruptcy, or trustee-owned when the records of the clerk of the court indicate a different status for these same loans.

76. The investor reports often do not disclose that a loan/home has been sold to a new buyer through short sale or foreclosure auction.

_____

TRUSTS AND FORECLOSURES

77. Most trustees and trust servicers refuse to modify trust-owned loans and instead foreclose whenever a loan is 90-days delinquent.

78. Most trustees use high volume, low quality law firms (“foreclosure mills”) to foreclose.

79.  The law firms used by the trusts are often dictated by a list of “approved” law firms selected by FANNIE and FREDDIE.

80. According to a New York Times report in October, 2011, Fannie Mae learned as early as 2003 of extensive foreclosure abuses among the law firms it had hired to remove troubled borrowers from their homes. Fannie Mae did little to correct the firms’ practices.

81. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac approved law firms included some of the worst of the worst such as New York’s Steven Baum law firm (where employees at a firm Halloween party dressed as homeless people) or Florida’s Law Offices of David Stern where employees signed tens of thousands of documents to use as proof in their own foreclosure cases.

82. Fannie Maw and Freddie Mac gave incentives to law firms for the speed of foreclosures, with a pervasive disregard for legal requirements and honest practices.

83. Fannie and Freddie auditors may have themselves received incentives from the law firms they hired including expensive tickets to sporting events and elaborate restaurant meals to give law firms advance notice of audits and the files that would be audited.

84. In hundreds of thousands of other cases, the servicers for trusts used an outside vendor, Lender Processing Services (LPS), to handle their foreclosures.

85. LPS maintains a network of lawyers similar to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac approved lawyer vendor list. LPS has been accused by bankruptcy trustees and private litigants of requiring participating lawyers to kick-back fees to LPS from foreclosures.

86.  The servicers often run-up costs when a loan in a trust goes in to foreclosure by greatly over-insuring the property, and adding monthly maintenance fees (often for services not performed) and appraisal fees.  All of these fees are subtracted from any money that eventually goes to the investors after the foreclosure is complete and the property is resold.

_____

TRUSTS, MORTGAGE LOAN DOCUMENTATION & OTHER ABUSES

87. In foreclosures, many trusts use(d) law firms and process servers that have been discredited because of fraudulent documents.

88. Although all states require that the homeowner by served with foreclosure documents at the start of the foreclosure, certain process serving companies often used by trusts engage in a practice known as “sewer service”  where the homeowners are never actually served with the papers. (The term refers to foreclosure documents left in the sewers in front of homes.)

89. In many other foreclosures by trusts, the process server has falsely stated that the homeowner was not in active duty military service when the homeowner was actually a service member on active duty service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

90.  Renters were also never told about a pending foreclosure of the home they were renting, although such notice and opportunity to be heard was required in almost every state.  This home deterioration was so extreme that some municipalities filed lawsuits against trustees accusing trustees of being slumlords.  This widespread failure to protect the homes (the trust assets) further drove down neighborhood home values, further deteriorating the value of the loans/homes in the trust.

91. Sales of foreclosed properties were often held without complying with state laws requiring advertising such sales so that the maximum price could be obtained for the homes, lessening any loss to investors.

92. Vacant homes were not protected or maintained, causing extreme loss of value of the homes as they were often looted and vandalized.

93. Many trusts never obtained the mortgage documents that were supposed to have been in the mortgage file kept by the document custodian.  Endorsed notes and mortgage assignments were often missing from the mortgage files kept by the Document Custodian for the trusts.

94. In the case of many loans that were supposed to haven been registered with the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (“MERS”), showing the trust as the owner of the loan and mortgage, no such registration was made and the loan remained registered in the name of the loan originator.

95. Where loan documents were missing, many trusts concealed the missing documents problem, or missing MERS registration problem, by filing “replacement” documentation with the county registers of deeds and clerks of the courts.

96. In possibly thousands of cases, the ownership by the trust is never disclosed.  The foreclosure is brought in the name of the originator even though the loan was only owned by the originator for a few hours, days or weeks.

97. In the case of MERS, many trusts changed the ownership of mortgages on the MERS registry to falsely reflect that the Trust acquired the mortgage at or about the time that the loan defaulted.

98. In possibly thousands of cases, the endorsements on notes have been falsified showing an endorsement in blank or an endorsement to the trusts when no such endorsement was ever obtained from the loan originator.

99. In hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases nationwide, false fraudulent and often forged mortgage assignments to trusts were prepared and filed solely to give the trusts a legal advantage in the foreclosure litigation.

100. A major investigation of the abuses in mortgage securitization was announced in the 2012 State of the Union address.

#

The Court cannot avoid suspecting that the second allonge indeed was created solely to rebut the trustee‘s assertions in this litigation and did not previously exist. If so, the Court suggests Deutsche and Ms. Faber individually consider the possible consequences of propounding potentially false evidence and perjured testimony to the Court.

Muselman v. Deutsche Bank, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division, Case No. 6:10-bk-07828-KSJ. Document 67, page 8.

As gratifying as this recognition of fraudulent documents may be, it does raise the question: just what are the consequences of propounding false evidence and perjured testimony to the Court. With the exception of a few judges and a few decisions, there have been no consequences whatsoever.

When is a mortgage assignment actually an Affidavit posing as a mortgage assignment?

When will all Recorders of Deeds file Declaratory Judgment actions seeking to enjoin the filing of mortgage assignments by document preparers:

Why are such Declaratory Judgment actions needed?

This is the new language appearing on many mortgage assignments where Deutsche Bank National Trust Company is the Trustee the Trust is the Assignee and MERS is the Assignor:

This loan was held by the Assignee prior to the Assignee filing a foreclosure action on May 21, 2008. The date of the execution of this Assignment of Mortgage by the Assignor is not reflective of the date the loan was transferred to the Assignee. The execution of this document is a ministerial act to comply with the state law as to how the transfer is to be documented and is not reflective of the transfer date itself.

(Instrument #2011383648, Official Records, Hillsborough County, Florida.)

This is signed by Srbui Muradyan who is identified as Assistant Secretary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as Nominee for WMC Mortgage Corp. This document was notarized in Ventura County, CA, on October 25, 2011.

According to a statement in the upper left-hand corner of the document, the preparer was Tanya D. Simpson, Esq., of the law firm Smith, Hiatt & Diaz, P.A., a foreclosure mill in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The receiving trust is Soundview Home Loan Trust 2007-WMC1.

When was the mortgage assigned to the trust? That essential question is not addressed by the Mortgage Assignment.

The signer and preparer purport to know that the loan (note: not the mortgage - the loan - that is, the promissory note) was held by Deutsche Bank as Trustee prior to May 21, 2008.

How is a Bank of America employee competent to state when Deutsche Bank National Trust Company acquired a loan?

In reality, Srbui Muradyan works for Bank of America in California. On many other mortgage assignments, Muradyan’s name appears as the preparer and the address for Muradyan is 450 E. Boundry Street, Chapin, SC - the address of Corelogic, one of the newest and largest document preparers in the country. (See Assignment of Mortgage, Book 2011, Page 13758, Pottawattamie County, Iowa - available through a Google search.)

Muradyan’s signature is always notarized in Ventura County, CA.

These new Assignments fail to plainly set forth the date that the mortgage was assigned; the individuals signing use a MERS title, never revealing their actual employers; the address of the signers is either not provided or wrongly stated, making it that much more difficult for a homeowner in foreclosure to take a simple deposition.

The OCC Review Process is not working; banks and trusts continue to use the MERS guise to seize properties without proof of ownership. The language has become even more convoluted. Tens of thousands of MERS Mortgage Assignments continue to be filed each month throughout the country.

Attorneys General Beau Biden of Delaware, Martha Coakley of Massachusetts and Eric Schneiderman of New York have all sued MERS and a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief may be part of their overall strategy. Their actions, however, will only help the citizens of Delaware, Massachusetts and New York.

While the many Linda Greens may have retired their pens in Alpharetta, there are hundreds more taking their places, still using MERS titles, still pretending to be bank officers when they are untrained clerks working for document mills.

Another solution is legislative: the Truth in Mortgage Documents Act previously discussed in Fraud Digest.

The simplest solution is for judges everywhere to reject these misleading documents and sanction the filers.

The end of MERS is long overdue.

DocX, LLC, a mortgage document company and a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services (“LPS”) in Jacksonville, Florida, was indicted on February 6, 2012, by a grand jury in Boone County, Missouri. Lorraine O’Reilly Brown, a former Senior Vice President of Lender Processing Services, and the founder of DocX, was also indicted. This was the first case in which a senior officer of a mortgage document company was charged with crimes relating to mortgage document preparation.

Brown and DocX were each charged with 68 counts of forgery, a class C felony in Missouri and 67 counts of False Declaration, a Class B misdemeanor.

The felony charges can each carry a term of imprisonment not to exceed seven years and a fine not to exceed $5,000 or double the gain from the crime up to $20,000. The misdemeanor charges each carry a term not to exceed six months, and a fine of $500 or double the gain up to $20,000.

The case will be prosecuted by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster. “Today’s indictment reflects our firm conviction that when you sign your name to a legal document, it matters,” Koster said. “Mass-producing fraudulent signatures on millions of real estate documents across America constitutes forgery. When you file those documents in our state, you are committing a crime under Missouri law.

The indictment focuses on Deeds of Release, documents issued by banks and mortgage companies when a homeowner/borrower successfully pays off their loan. In some states, these are also called Satisfaction of Mortgages. The documents examined by the grand jury and identified in the indictments were signed by many different people signing the name Linda Green. This practice was first exposed in a segment of 60 Minutes that aired in 2011.

Other employees of a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services were indicted in 2011 in Nevada by Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. These employees notarized mortgage documents that had been signed by LPS employees using false names and false job titles.

LPS has steadfastly defended these practices and even coined a term, calling the forgeries “surrogate signing.” Regarding the use of false job titles, LPS has defended this practice by saying such titles were authorized by corporate resolutions from many different banks and mortgage companies.

But while publicly defending these practices, lawyers working for LPS have been filing thousands of “corrective” mortgage assignments in county records throughout the country. In tens of thousands of cases, employees signed the name Linda Green to mortgage documents and identified Green as an officer of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (“MERS”) though the real Linda Green did not qualify to serve as a MERS certifying officer because she was not an officer of her actual employer.

Conferring of officer titles to non-employees via corporate resolutions was one of the many practices challenged in a civil lawsuit brought by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan against another mortgage document mill, Nationwide Title Clearing, on February 2, 2012.

Employees in the DocX office signed names to mortgage documents 4,000 times a day for several years. They most often signed false names and false officer titles to mortgage satisfactions and mortgage assignments. The assignments were very often used in foreclosure cases to prove that residential mortgage-backed trusts owned the mortgages and had the right to foreclose even though the trusts had never obtained the necessary documents during the securitization process.

These practices will be a significant part of the examination to be conducted by the mortgage securitization fraud task force, announced by President Obama during the State of the Union address. The taskforce will be co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who filed a lawsuit against MERS and three major banks on February 3, 2012. The New York lawsuit was similar to the lawsuits filed by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden on October 27, 2011 and by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in December, 2011.

According to the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Biden, “MERS engaged and continues to engage in a range of deceptive trade practices that sow confusion among consumers, investors, and other stakeholders in the mortgage finance system, damage the integrity of Delaware’s land records, and lead to unlawful foreclosure practices.”

The DocX mortgage documents permeate the records of almost every county recorder in the country. From July 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009, 1,742 DocX mortgage assignments were filed in Palm Beach County, transferring mortgages valued at $560,239,797. Deutsche Bank National Trust Company and American Home Mortgage Servicing were two of the most frequent users of the DocX documents, but over 30 banks and mortgage companies were clients of DocX.

In most counties, the records of the county property appraiser identify the homeowners in the county.

In January, 2012, in Palm Beach County, Florida, for example, 11 banks, FANNIE and FREDDIE and one mortgage servicer were the biggest homeowners, with 2,907 homes owned in total. Palm Beach County is the third largest county, by population, in Florida.

The banks and servicer owned 2,284 homes; FANNIE & FREDDIE owned 623 homes.

Three of the banks, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, owned more homes than FANNIE.

Wells Fargo (including Wachovia) was the largest homeowner, owning 551 homes.

Bank of America and Deutsche Bank were close second and third largest, owning 496 homes and 454 homes, respectively. (The Bank of America total represents homes owned by Bank of America, BAC Home Loans Servicing and Countrywide.)

FANNIE owned 441 homes; FREDDIE owned 182 homes.

Bank of New York, the trustee for hundreds of Countrywide trusts, owned 338 homes.

U.S. Bank, the trustee for many Bear Stearns trusts, owned 196 homes

HSBC bank, the trustee for almost all of the Deutsche Bank Securities trusts, owned 175 homes.

JP Morgan Chase, including the homes owned by Chase Mortgage, and the Chase subsidiaries, Homesales, Inc. and Homesales of Delaware, Inc., owned a relatively low 174 homes.

Aurora Loan Services, keeper of most of the Lehman Brothers loans, was in 10th place among the large homeowners, with 149 homes.

Citibank, including Citimortgage, was the only other bank owning over 100 homes, with 111 homes.

Suntrust owned 82 homes; IndyMac/OneWest owned 54 homes; and GMAC owned 31 homes.

Home ownership in Florida’s 33 counties with population of 100,000 or greater as of January 24, 2012, is set forth below. The 34 counties with populations under 100,000 have a combined population of 1,278,080, approximately the population of Hillsborough County. The home ownership of Hillsborough has been used to approximate the ownership in these 34 counties.

FLORIDA HOMES OWNED BY 8 LARGEST BANKS ON 1-24-2012: 22,112

FL HOMES OWNED BY BANK OF NEW YORK ON 1-24-2012: 2,855

1 - MIAMI-DADE COUNTY (pop. 2,496,435)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 650
BANK OF NEW YORK: 367
CHASE: 254
CITIBANK: 222
DEUTSCHE BANK: 676
FANNIE: 515
FREDDIE: 213
HSBC: 324
U.S. BANK: 121
WELLS FARGO: 579
BANKS: 3,193/F & F: 728

2 - BROWARD COUNTY (pop. 1,748,066)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 624
BANK OF NEW YORK: 479
CHASE: 157
CITIBANK: 99
DEUTSCHE BANK: 445
FANNIE: 712
FREDDIE: 188
HSBC: 205
U.S. BANK: 489
WELLS FARGO: 493
BANKS: 2,991/F & F: 900

3 - PALM BEACH COUNTY (pop. 1,320,134)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 497
BANK OF NEW YORK: 338
CHASE: 180
CITIBANK: 111
DEUTSCHE BANK: 454
FANNIE: 441
FREDDIE: 182
HSBC: 175
U.S. BANK: 196
WELLS FARGO: 551
BANKS: 2,502/F & F: 623

4 - HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY (pop: 1,229,226)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 220
BANK OF NEW YORK: 116
CHASE: 40
CITIBANK: 30
DEUTSCHE BANK: 152
FANNIE: 265
FREDDIE: 83
HSBC: 84
U.S. BANK: 138
WELLS FARGO: 197
BANKS: 977/F & F: 348

5 – ORANGE COUNTY (pop. 1,145,956)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 278
BANK OF NEW YORK: 31
CHASE: 102
CITIBANK: 49
DEUTSCHE BANK: 130
FANNIE: 500
FREDDIE: 126
HSBC: 83
U.S. BANK: 120
WELLS FARGO: 216
BANKS: 1,009/F & F: 626

6 – PINELLAS COUNTY (pop. 916,542)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 166
BANK OF NEW YORK: 99
CHASE: 16
CITIBANK: 28
DEUTSCHE BANK: 113
FANNIE: 47
FREDDIE: 0
HSBC: 40
U.S. BANK: 143
WELLS FARGO: 181
BANKS: 786/F & F: 47

7 – DUVAL COUNTY (pop. 864,263)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 208
BANK OF NEW YORK: 116
CHASE: 93
CITIBANK: 30
DEUTSCHE BANK: 93
FANNIE: 204
FREDDIE: 93
HSBC: 40
U.S. BANK: 90
WELLS FARGO: 240
BANKS: 910/F & F: 297

8 – LEE (pop. 618,754)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 357
BANK OF NEW YORK: 208
CHASE: 52
CITIBANK: 48
DEUTSCHE BANK: 112
FANNIE: 411
FREDDIE: 100
HSBC: 52
U.S. BANK: 157
WELLS FARGO: 190
BANKS: 1,176/F & F: 511

9 - POLK (pop. 602,095)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 210
BANK OF NEW YORK: 79
CHASE: 38
CITIBANK: 30
DEUTSCHE BANK: 86
FANNIE: 153
FREDDIE: 58
HSBC: 34
U.S. BANK: 93
WELLS FARGO: 130
BANKS: 697/F& F: 211

10 - BREVARD (pop. 543,376)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 127
BANK OF NEW YORK: 67
CHASE: 25
CITIBANK: 10
DEUTSCHE BANK: 44
FANNIE: 144
FREDDIE: 42
HSBC: 18
U.S. BANK: 53
WELLS FARGO: 108
BANKS: 452/F& F: 186

11 – VOLUSIA (pop. 494,593)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 95
BANK OF NEW YORK: 88
CHASE: 26
CITIBANK: 14
DEUTSCHE BANK: 59
FANNIE: 50
FREDDIE: 43
HSBC: 26
U.S. BANK: 61
WELLS FARGO: 99
BANKS: 468/F& F: 93

12 - SEMINOLE (pop. 422,718)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 107
BANK OF NEW YORK: 81
CHASE: 24
CITIBANK: 11
DEUTSCHE BANK: 48
FANNIE: 146
FREDDIE: 41
HSBC: 23
U.S. BANK: 25
WELLS FARGO: 76
BANKS: 395/F& F: 187

13 - PASCO (pop. 464,697)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 102
BANK OF NEW YORK: 53
CHASE: 21
CITIBANK: 17
DEUTSCHE BANK: 64
FANNIE: 174
FREDDIE: 28
HSBC: 33
U.S. BANK: 74
WELLS FARGO: 95
BANKS: 459/F& F:202

14 - SARASOTA (pop. 379,448)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 110
BANK OF NEW YORK: 81
CHASE: 16
CITIBANK: 13
DEUTSCHE BANK: 51
FANNIE: 157
FREDDIE: 46
HSBC: 23
U.S. BANK: 38
WELLS FARGO: 134
BANKS: 466/F& F: 203

15 - MARION (pop. 331,298)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 90
BANK OF NEW YORK: 18
CHASE: 19
CITIBANK: 9
DEUTSCHE BANK: 31
FANNIE: 87
FREDDIE: 28
HSBC: 16
U.S. BANK: 38
WELLS FARGO: 98
BANKS: 319/F& F: 115

16 - MANATEE (pop. 322,833)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 117
BANK OF NEW YORK: 40
CHASE: 8
CITIBANK: 14
DEUTSCHE BANK: 37
FANNIE: 77
FREDDIE: 18
HSBC: 22
U.S. BANK: 52
WELLS FARGO: 396
BANKS: 686/F& F: 95

17 - COLLIER (pop. 321,520)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 121
BANK OF NEW YORK: 54
CHASE: 18
CITIBANK: 16
DEUTSCHE BANK: 33
FANNIE: 120
FREDDIE: 33
HSBC: 25
U.S. BANK: 28
WELLS FARGO: 79
BANKS: 374/F& F: 153

18 - ESCAMBIA (pop. 297,619)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 30
BANK OF NEW YORK: 27
CHASE: 3
CITIBANK: 10
DEUTSCHE BANK: 26
FANNIE: 62
FREDDIE: 23
HSBC: 17
U.S. BANK: 46
WELLS FARGO: 40
BANKS: 199/F& F: 85

19 – LAKE (pop. 297,052)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 51
BANK OF NEW YORK: 38
CHASE: 12
CITIBANK: 5
DEUTSCHE BANK: 28
FANNIE: 91
FREDDIE: 35
HSBC: 14
U.S. BANK: 40
WELLS FARGO: 75
BANKS: 263/F& F: 126

20 - ST. LUCIE (pop. 277,789)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 110
BANK OF NEW YORK: 47
CHASE: 27
CITIBANK: 9
DEUTSCHE BANK: 59
FANNIE: 132
FREDDIE: 40
HSBC: 33
U.S. BANK: 65
WELLS FARGO: 76
BANKS: 426/F& F: 172

21 - LEON (pop. 275,487)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 23
BANK OF NEW YORK: 12
CHASE: 7
CITIBANK: 2
DEUTSCHE BANK: 9
FANNIE: 44
FREDDIE: 12
HSBC: 4
U.S. BANK: 16
WELLS FARGO: 33
BANKS: 106/F& F: 56

22 – OSCEOLA (pop. 268,685)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 134
BANK OF NEW YORK: 3
CHASE: 30
CITIBANK: 6
DEUTSCHE BANK: 10
FANNIE: 103
FREDDIE: 29
HSBC: 7
U.S. BANK: 10
WELLS FARGO: 55
BANKS: 255/F& F: 132

23 – ALACHUA (pop. 247,336)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 36
BANK OF NEW YORK: 9
CHASE: 6
CITIBANK: 4
DEUTSCHE BANK: 11
FANNIE: 39
FREDDIE: 14
HSBC: 3
U.S. BANK: 19
WELLS FARGO: 40
BANKS: 128/F& F: 53

24 - CLAY (pop. 190,865)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 39
BANK OF NEW YORK: 16
CHASE: 7
CITIBANK: 2
DEUTSCHE BANK: 17
FANNIE: 43
FREDDIE: 7
HSBC: 11
U.S. BANK: 22
WELLS FARGO: 29
BANKS: 143/F& F: 50

25 - ST. JOHNS (pop. 190,039)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 40
BANK OF NEW YORK: 33
CHASE: 6
CITIBANK: 11
DEUTSCHE BANK: 14
FANNIE: 56
FREDDIE: 31
HSBC: 8
U.S. BANK: 29
WELLS FARGO: 58
BANKS: 203/F& F: 87

26 – OKALOOSA (pop. 180,822)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 35
BANK OF NEW YORK: 27
CHASE: 2
CITIBANK: 8
DEUTSCHE BANK: 19
FANNIE: 50
FREDDIE: 12
HSBC: 8
U.S. BANK: 24
WELLS FARGO: 16
BANKS: 139/F& F: 62

27 – HERNANDO (pop. 172,778)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 53
BANK OF NEW YORK: 41
CHASE: 13
CITIBANK: 3
DEUTSCHE BANK: 24
FANNIE: 82
FREDDIE: 26
HSBC: 15
U.S. BANK: 30
WELLS FARGO: 47
BANKS: 226/F& F: 108

28 – BAY (pop. 168,852)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 43
BANK OF NEW YORK: 39
CHASE: 13
CITIBANK: 2
DEUTSCHE BANK: 25
FANNIE: 70
FREDDIE: 18
HSBC: 7
U.S. BANK: 21
WELLS FARGO: 21
BANKS: 171/F& F: 88

29 – CHARLOTTE (pop. 159,978)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 110
BANK OF NEW YORK: 59
CHASE: 15
CITIBANK: 4
DEUTSCHE BANK: 29
FANNIE: 22
FREDDIE: 23
HSBC: 18
U.S. BANK: 41
WELLS FARGO: 56
BANKS: 332/F& F: 45

30 – SANTA ROSA (pop. 151,372)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 30
BANK OF NEW YORK: 13
CHASE: 1
CITIBANK: 5
DEUTSCHE BANK: 8
FANNIE: 34
FREDDIE: 10
HSBC: 3
U.S. BANK: 10
WELLS FARGO: 33
BANKS: 103/F& F: 44

31 – MARTIN (pop. 146,318)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 22
BANK OF NEW YORK: 6
CHASE: 5
CITIBANK: 2
DEUTSCHE BANK: 18
FANNIE: 53
FREDDIE: 9
HSBC: 11
U.S. BANK: 15
WELLS FARGO: 33
BANKS: 112/F& F: 62

32 – CITRUS (pop. 141,236)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 50
BANK OF NEW YORK: 27
CHASE: 6
CITIBANK: 3
DEUTSCHE BANK: 20
FANNIE: 40
FREDDIE: 14
HSBC: 3
U.S. BANK: 18
WELLS FARGO: 19
BANKS: 146/F& F: 54

33 – INDIAN RIVER (pop. 138,028)
HOMES OWNED BY 8 MAJOR BANKS, FANNIE & FREDDIE

BANK OF AMERICA: 38
BANK OF NEW YORK: 27
CHASE: 22
CITIBANK: 6
DEUTSCHE BANK: 17
FANNIE: 55
FREDDIE: 18
HSBC: 9
U.S. BANK: 24
WELLS FARGO: 37
BANKS: 180/F& F: 73

34 – HIGHLANDS (pop. 98,786)
35 – FLAGLER (pop. 95,696)
36 – SUMTER (pop. 93,420)
37 – PUTNAM (pop. 74,364)
38 – NASSAU (pop. 73,314)
39 – MONROE (pop. 73,090)
40 – COLUMBIA (pop. 67,531)
41 – WALTON (pop. 55,043)
42 – JACKSON (pop. 49,726)
43 – GADSDEN (pop. 46,389)
44 – SUWANNEE (pop. 44,551)
45 – LEVY (pop. 40,801)
46 – OKEECHOBEE (pop. 39,996)
47 – HENDRY (pop. 39,140)
48 – DESOTO (pop. 34,862)
49 – WAKULLA (pop. 30,776)
50 – BRADFORD (pop. 28,520)
51 – HARDEE (pop. 27,731)
52 – BAKER (pop. 27,115)
53 – WASHINGTON (pop. 24,896)
54 – TAYLOR (pop. 22,570)
55 – HOLMES (pop. 19,927)
56 – MADISON (pop. 19,224)
57 – GILCHRIST (pop. 16,939)
58 – DIXIE (pop. 16,422)
59 – GULF (pop. 15,863)
60 – UNION (pop. 15,535)
61 – HAMILTON (pop. 14,799)
62 – JEFFERSON (pop. 14,761)
63 – CALHOUN (pop. 14,625)
64 – GLADES (pop. 12,884)
65 – FRANKLIN (pop. 11,549)
66 – LAFAYETTA (pop. 8,870)
67 – LIBERTY (pop. 8,365)

In the State of the Union address on January 24, 2012, President Barack Obama announced the creation of a special unit within the Financial Fraud Enforcement Taskforce to deal with mortgage origination and securitization abuses:

And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. 

The members of the new Mortgage Securitization Abuses Unit were identified as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman; Assistant U.S. Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who currently heads the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice; Robert Khuzami, Director of Enforcement at the SEC; John Walsh, U.S. Attorney, District of Colorado; and Tony West, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Department of Justice.

Later in the evening, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released the following statement:

I would like to thank President Obama for his leadership in the creation of a coordinated investigation that marshals state and federal resources to bring justice for the victims of the misconduct that caused the mortgage crisis.

In coordination with our federal partners, our office will continue its steadfast commitment to holding those responsible for the economic crisis accountable, providing meaningful relief for homeowners commensurate with the scale of the misconduct, and getting our economy moving again.

The American people deserve a robust and comprehensive investigation into the global financial meltdown to ensure nothing like it ever happens again, and today’s announcement is a major step in the right direction.

New York Attorney General Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have been among the most outspoken of those in law enforcement regarding the prosecution of crimes relating to mortgage securitization. In May, 2011, Attorney General Schneiderman’s office announced probes of two Florida firms, Lender Processing Services and Nationwide Title Clearing. This office also announced probes into the mortgage securitization practices of major investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and UBS.

Attorneys General Schneiderman and Biden have repeatedly announced their opposition to any grant of immunity from criminal prosecution to those involved in illegal acts involving mortgage securitization.

Fabrication of mortgage documents is one of the major unaddressed crimes involving mortgage securitization. False documents were created to convince homeowners that mortgage-backed trusts owned their homes and had the legal right to foreclose. Based on these documents, hundreds of thousands of homeowners forfeited their homes. Every day, tens of thousands of homeowners lose their battle to get local foreclosure judges to recognize that the documents presented by the banks and mortgage companies are fraudulent.

Those few County Recorders who have conducted in-depth examinations of the documents have found widespread abuses that occurred over at least seven years. County Recorders John O’Brien of Massachusetts and Jeff Thigpen of North Carolina have declared their offices as “crime scenes.”

These documents were created in large part because the mortgage securitizers never obtained the mortgage documents they promised to obtain. Investors and the SEC believed that the securitizers had obtained properly endorsed mortgage notes and mortgage assignments and had recorded every change of ownership on the MERS system as promised.

“Providing meaningful relief for homeowners commensurate with the scale of the misconduct” is a tremendous, but achievable goal. Congratulations to Attorney General Schneiderman for setting this goal.

Action Date: January 18, 2012
Location: Salem, MA

Saying that the time has come for a full scale criminal investigation, Southern Essex District Register of Deeds John O’Brien, today has sent some 31,897 of what he says are fraudulent documents that have been recorded in the Salem Registry to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz. O’Brien said that he is asking these officials to impanel a Grand Jury to look into the evidence that he has presented. “I am confident that these documents will show a pattern of fraud, uttering and forgery. These documents are signed by known robo or surrogate signers, whose signatures were supposedly witnessed by notary publics. In addition, these documents may contain fraudulent information in the body of the documents. I believe that a criminal investigation is the next step to hold the perpetrators responsible.” O’Brien praised Attorney General Coakley for her aggressive pursuit of wrongdoing in her civil action but noted that other states such as California, Nevada, Illinois and Michigan have launched criminal investigations, and O’Brien is hopeful that Massachusetts will do the same. O’Brien strongly suggests that the Grand Jury should subpoena both the past and present Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of the Mortgage Electronic Recording Systems, Inc. (“MERS”), Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Countrywide, Washington Mutual among others. In addition, he is asking that the top officials of DOCX, Nationwide Title Clearing, Inc. and LPS also be subpoenaed. “These companies have been retained by MERS and its member-banks to produce the documents that I am alleging contain fraudulent information. It is one thing to go after these institutions with a civil action, but the only way to let them know that you are serious is to call them before a Grand Jury.” O’Brien said, “There is no question in my mind that the officers of these banks and loan processing servicers made a conscious decision to commit fraud and participate in a scheme to deprive the public from knowing the true holder of their mortgage while at the same time avoiding paying billions of dollars in recording fees. It is my opinion that they acted as a criminal enterprise, crossing state lines to commit their crimes and in most cases using the U.S. Postal Service to send these documents to registries of deeds, thereby committing mail fraud. We need to know what they knew and when they knew it. Until the CEOs who allowed these fraudulent activities to happen under their watch are sent to jail for what they did, these types of illegal behaviors will continue.” Just last week, O’Brien’s Registry received 3 documents from Bank of America, all signed by a known robo-signer, Linda Burton. O’Brien said, “If they are sending them to me, of all people, it is safe to assume that they are sending them to registries across the country.” O’Brien refuses to record any documents signed by a robo-signer on his list unless those documents are accompanied by an affidavit attesting to the signature. So far, he has not received one affidavit. “That clearly shows me that those documents were in fact fraudulent.” O’Brien said that if he or anyone else went into one of these major banks and forged a signature on a loan document they would be arrested and sent into jail. So it begs the question, why haven’t these CEO’S been held accountable? O’Brien cited the case of the individual who walked into a Walmart and tried to make a purchase using a fraudulent One Million Dollar bill. He was arrested and charged with attempting to obtain property by false pretence and uttering a forged instrument. O’Brien said, “As far as I am concerned, this is what these banks have been doing for years. Make no mistake, MERS and its member-banks are taking people’s homes using fraudulent documents and that is something we do not do in America.” In addition, O’Brien is zeroing in on the major foreclosure law firms that he believes have acted as a co-conspirator in flooding the registries of deeds with these fraudulent instruments. “These attorneys should know better. They have acted as co-conspirators in perpetrating this fraud. I am sending a letter to the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers asking that they conduct an independent investigation into the activities of these firms. Unlike our Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, I understand that there are other Attorneys General and other public officials across the country who would like nothing better than to sweep this matter under the rug and grant these lenders, loan servicing companies and their foreclosure-mill attorneys immunity for the damage that they have caused, not only to our economy but to people’s property rights. They would be willing to accept pennies on the dollar, a slap on the wrist, and a promise to never do it again. If that should happen, it would be the biggest sellout of the American People that I have ever seen. It would send the wrong message that the big boys can get away with anything. As I have been saying all along, they may think they are too big to fail, but as far as I am concerned, they are not to big to go to jail. The top officials at MERS, its member-banks, servicers and foreclosure-mill attorneys must be prosecuted and held accountable for their fraudulent schemes that brought profits to their institutions by cutting corners, circumventing land recordation systems through fraud, uttering and forgery.”

Download this Article as a PDF.

How many days does it take to foreclose in Florida?  The average number of days for a foreclosure action to be completed is often reported, and usually accompanied by a criticism that the process is too unwieldy.  The long foreclosure process has often been blamed for the nation’s slow economic recovery.  The discussion often moves quickly from “How long does it take?” to “How long should it take?”

While bank lawyers often argue that the foreclosure system should be changed so that foreclosures can move quickly through the courts, foreclosure defense advocates often point to due process horror stories like the recent story of Chief Circuit Judge Alan Dickey in Seminole County, Florida, who scheduled 300 foreclosure cases for three days, saying, “If everybody shows up, I’ll have about 30 seconds a case.”

Realty Trac provides the statistics in most stories. Realty Trac reported in January, 2012, that in Florida it took an average of 806 days to complete a foreclosure, the third longest time in the nation.  New York reportedly took the longest to foreclose – 1,019 days and New Jersey was second at 964 days.

An examination of actual foreclosure cases in Palm Beach County does not support the Realty Trac findings. In this study, all of the cases filed by a major forecloser, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company (“DBNTC”), in December, 2009, were examined. DBNTC filed 170 new cases in December 2009.

Of the 170 cases, 76 cases (43.5%) remained open as of January 15, 2012.

54 of the cases were closed with entry of a final judgment of foreclosure.

40 of the cases were voluntarily dismissed by DBNTC. In many cases, a voluntary dismissal indicates the parties have reached a settlement.  In foreclosures, it is also common for a bank to dismiss when the file is being transferred to another firm, a very common occurrence.

Of the cases with voluntary dismissals, the average time from filing to dismissal was 342 days.

Of the cases closed with a final judgment of foreclosure, the average number of days from the initial filing to the closing of the case was 345 days.  A few cases continue long after the entry of a final judgment of foreclosure, because of post-judgment motions to re-open or set aside the final judgment. In such cases, the actual sales date was used as the end date.

Of the 94 resolved cases, 58 (62%) were resolved in less than one year.

In many of the open cases, there had been very little effort by the banks to move the case to a final resolution.  It was not unusual to find open cases where there had been no docketed activity for over six months, and there were numerous cases where there had been no docketed activity for over one year.

When a foreclosure is completed, and the home sold, it is often sold for less than half of the amount of the original loan.  The median sales price for existing homes in Palm Beach County fell from $406,800 in June, 2005 to $183,700 in November, 2011. A trustee may actually benefit, in the short term, from prolonging the foreclosure process because the final realized loss does not have to be reported to investors until the sale, thus allowing the trustee to delay the inevitable bad news to the investors.  The servicer certainly benefits as the average servicer fees for servicing a loan in foreclosure are often three to five times the fees for servicing a performing loan.

There were a few hard-fought cases, with discovery disputes appearing regularly on the docket.  In such cases, these disputes often involved delays by the banks in responding to discovery requests by the homeowner/defendants, particularly where the banks were asked to produce trust-related documents such as the Pooling and Servicing Agreement from the trust or original loan documents.  Many of the cases involved Affidavits of Lost Notes and Lost Mortgages. The delays were caused by the plaintiff/bank.

This study will be expanded to include an entire calendar quarter and the other major foreclosers, Bank of America and Chase.  It will include data from Hillsborough and St. Johns counties.

Here are the details of the action on the 170 DBNTC foreclosure cases filed in Palm Beach County in December, 2009:

1. Arundel, Jeanette
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-3-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-23-2010
204 DAYS

2. Booth, Jay C., Jr.
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Bank’s Motion to Dismiss on 1-5-2012

3. Dickens, Matthew W.
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 5-11-2010
161 DAYS

4. Garza, Abel
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-28-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-12-2011

5. Girtman, Esperanza
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-26-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-12-2010
162 DAYS

6. Hendricks, Leon
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 7-15-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-8-2011

7. Jecrois, Jean Michelet
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 3-21-2010

8. Louidort, Elza
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-25-2010
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 5-11-2010
161 DAYS

9. Powell, Clifford
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-15-2009

10. Prince, Eddie
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-3-2010
245 DAYS

11. Sanchez, Ivan
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
Bank’s Motion to Dismiss: 6-21-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 6-21-2010

12. Snow, Frederic Gary
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-11-2012

13. Torres, Sarah
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Last Activity:  1-25-11

14. Tresness, Melissa
Filing Date: 12-1-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-28-2009

15. Harrison, Letitia Monique
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-14-2010
194 DAYS

16. Hernandez, Angel
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 9-30-2010
302 DAYS

17. Joseph, Ana
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-16-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 10-18-2010
Post-judgment pleadings; sold 5-4-2011
518 DAYS

18. Pell, Amy
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 4-27-2011
511 DAYS

19. Sandoval, Carlos
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 3-31-2010

20. Wong, Suok Ing
Filing Date: 12-2-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 9-17-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-4-2012

21. Badgley, Kenny
Filing Date: 12-3-3009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-14-2010
Post-judgment pleadings; sold 3-4-2011
457 DAYS

22. Coicou, Joseph
Filing Date: 12-3-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-12-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 10-14-2011

23. Dieter, Eric A.
Filing Date: 12-3-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 11-5-2010
Dismissed: 12-15-2010
377 DAYS

24. Figueroa, Dora D.
Filing Date: 12-3-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 10-24-2011

25. Flores, Jaime
Filing Date: 12-3-3009
Final Judgment: 7-20-2010
Post judgment Pleadings, Sold: 3-11-2011
463 DAYS

26. Pelaez, Aldo
Filing Date: 12-3-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-19-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 10-31-2011

27. Pompey, Sharon
Filing Date: 12-3-3009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-10-2010
Post-judgment pleadings; sold on 10-21-2010
322 DAYS

28. Bedasee, Lenford
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 5-20-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-1-2010
Post-judgment Motions; Sold to Bank on 4-15-2011
497 DAYS

29. Blake, Everal D.
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-22-2010
PENDING
Last Bank Activity: 2-4-2011

30. Brown, Paul Hugh
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-28-2010
298 DAYS

31. Narcisse, Anel
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-23-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-8-2010
218 DAYS

32. Wachocki, Phillip
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 6-21-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-14-2011

33. Weiss, Stephen
Filing Date: 12-4-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-16-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-14-2010
Bankruptcy and Post-Judgment Motions
Sold to Bank/Plaintiff: 9-9-2011
644 DAYS

34. Astorga, Silvia
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 3-4-2010
87 DAYS

35. Santiago, Lily
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-8-2011 Referral to Mediation

36. Herisse, Innocent
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 6-2-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-16-2010
Post-judgment motions; sold to bank/plaintiff on 6-30-2011
570 DAYS

37. Johnson, Johnny
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 11-16-2011
709 DAYS

38. Jules, Wasler
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-18-2010
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 10-1-2010
298 DAYS

39. Martin, Rigoberto
Filing Date: 12-7-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 7-29-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 6-13-2011 (Bank’s Motion to Substitute Counsel)

40. Auguste, Enique
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-25-2010
Voluntary Dismissal: 11-8-2011
700 DAYS

41. Cook, William
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-12-2010
Final judgment of foreclosure: 6-18-2010
Bankruptcy and post-judgment motions
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-27-2011

42. Delva, Wislande
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-9-2010
Final judgment of foreclosure: 6-17-2010
191 DAYS

43. George, Beryl
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-11-2010

44. Gonzalez, Juan
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 8-12-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-7-11

45. Levinger, Jane
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-7-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-6-2012

46. McCarty, Shirlon Dioni
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 4-20-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-22-2011 (substitution of counsel for bank)

47. Petrone, Anthony
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 7-26-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-27-2011
301 DAYS

48. Saqib, Sobia M.
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-4-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-5-2012

49. Spee, Eric
Filing Date: 12-8-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 12-31-2009
Voluntary Dismissal: 11-19-2010
346 DAYS

50. Dennis, Marilyn
Filing Date: 12-9-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 6-3-2011
PENDING
Last Activity: 10-19-2011

51. Jules, Gina
Filing Date: 12-9-2009
Bank’s Motion for Final Judgment: 1-28-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-14-2010
Bank’s Motion to Vacate Final Judg. and Vol. Dismissal: 3-7-2011
453 DAYS

52. Lay, Lonnie
Filing Date: 12-9-2009
Voluntary dismissal by bank: 12-7-2010
363 DAYS

53. Winkelman, Janet
Filing Date: 12-9-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 3-4-2010
85 DAYS

54. Yepes, Cesar
Filing Date: 12-9-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-5-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-9-2010
Post-judgment Motions
Final Judgment of Foreclosure (#2): 3-31-2011
477 DAYS

55. Basant, Garfield
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 6-11-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 11-8-2010
Bankruptcy and Post-Judgment Motions; Sold to Bank on 4-15-2011
491 DAYS

56. Brewster, Eileen
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-4-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-16-2010
218 DAYS

57. Derilus, Jean
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-25-2011

58. Dik, Carolyn Adams
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-23-2010
Bank’s Motion to Vacate Judgment and Dismiss: 10-24-2011
683 DAYS

59. Drake, Darla
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Final Judgment: 7-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-24-2010
257 DAYS

60. Faustin, Max
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summery Judgment: 10-4-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-3-11 Bank’s Motion to File an Amended Complaint

61. Goffe, Christina
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 4-20-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-27-10
168 DAYS

62. Hartl, William
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 5-18-2011
524 DAYS

63. Kaplan, Jill
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 3-5-2010
85 DAYS

64. Rorabaugh, Patricia
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 4-14-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-16-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-4-2012 (Granting Bank’s Motion to Sub. Counsel for Stern)

65. Rose, Warren
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-10-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-12-2010
153 DAYS

66. Tartarkin, Barry
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 2-9-2010

67. Vasquez, Sergio
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 8-31-2011
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-31-2011

68. Williams, Roney
Filing Date: 12-10-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-10-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-21-2010
193 DAYS

69. Angel, Alejandro
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-10-2012

70. Baptiste, Kenol Jean
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-14-2010
185 DAYS

71. Duff, Jack
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-9-2010
Bank’s Motion for Voluntary dismissal: 4-1-2011
477 DAYS

72. Isaac, Emmanuel R.
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-26-2010

73. Manjaro, Errol*
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-21-2011

74. New Century Mortgage
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Final Order of Foreclosure: 4-21-2010
131 DAYS

75. Schapiro, Sarita
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 4-14-2011
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-19-2011

76. Thelemaque, Onondieu
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Final Judgment: 1-28-2010
Renewed: 12-5-2011
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-9-2011

77. Vogal, Lee Scott
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 6-3-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-19-2010
220 DAYS

78. Walden, Tangela
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-16-2010
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 4-1-2011
477 DAYS

79. Wilson, Charles J.
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-9-2011
514 DAYS

80. Zeien, Jason
Filing Date: 12-11-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 12-27-2011
746 DAYS

81. Caballero, Hilda
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-1-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-18-2010
Post-judgment Motions; sold to plaintiff 9-7-2011
514 DAYS

82. Deponte, Eugenia C.
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 2-3-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 7-6-2010
182 DAYS

83. Francois, Raphael
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 6-10-2011 (bank’s motion to sub. counsel)

84. Gernstadt, Hal
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 6-9-2010
177 DAYS

85. Kese, Claudette Witter
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 7-30-2010
228 DAYS

86.  Licata, Angelo
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-2-2010
231 DAYS

87. Moody, Gary
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Final judgment of foreclosure: 9-28-2010
298 DAYS

88. Pangilinan, Sonny
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 11-2-2011
688 DAYS

89. Sanderford, Charlene
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-10-2011 (order allowing bank to sub. counsel)

90. Webster, Dena
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 4-19-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 5-27-2010
164 DAYS

91. Witt, Gerhardt
Filing Date: 12-14-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 6-9-2010
177 DAYS

92. Avila, Randy
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 4-9-2010
115 DAYS

93. Burton, David
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-30-2011
623 DAYS

94. Capp, William, Jr.
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 3-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-1-2010
260 DAYS

95. Perez, Haydee
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-14-2011 (Bank’s Subst. Counsel)

96. Pinnock, Brian
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Final judgment of foreclosure: 11-15-2011
700 DAYS

97. Purcell, Joyce
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Vol. Dismissal by Bank: 7-7-2011
569 DAYS

98. Roblero, Rolfi E.
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 10-26-2011

99. Schweizer, Edward
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 6-2-2011 (sub. of counsel)

100. Sonntag, Charles
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Vacate final judgment; voluntary dismissal: 8-30-2011
622 DAYS

101. Summa, Caryn
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-10-2012

102. Tooch, Charles A. Jr.
Filing Date: 12-15-2009
Final judgment of foreclosure: 6-14-2010
181 DAYS

103. Collins, James
Filing Date: 12-16-09
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 8-2-2010
Dismissed by Bank 5-4-2011
504 DAYS

104. Elias, Alejandro
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal: 10-8-2010
296 DAYS

105. English, Darla
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Dismissed by Bank: 7-14-2010
210 DAYS

106. Gama, Jose Omar
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: Mediation Report 11-16-2010

107. James, Yvonne
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 8-10-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 8-10-2010
237 DAYS

108. Jeantinoble, Odmar
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Defendant’s MTD Filed: 1-21-2010
PENDING

109. Lehman, Elizabeth
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-3-2012

110. Maxwell, Bertha P.
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-22-2010

111. Muras, Wayne
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 6-14-2010
180 DAYS

112. Shapiro, Andrea
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Bank’s Motion for Default Filed: 5-24-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 5-24-2010

113. Shook, Kraig
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-4-2011

114. Troncone, Monique
Filing Date: 12-16-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-2-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 5-12-2010
147 DAYS

115. Lormejuste, Clare Rose
Filing Date: 12-17-2009
Vol. Dismissal by Bank: 6-28-2010
193 DAYS

116. Meant, Jean Baptiste
Filing Date: 12-17-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 5-6-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 6-21-2010
185 DAYS

117. Rubner, Vaclave
Filing Date: 12-17-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-22-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 6-14-2010
179 DAYS

118. Travis, Farah
Filing Date: 12-17-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 1-4-2010
Voluntary Dismissal By Bank: 11-19-2010
337 DAYS

119. Zaremba, Jameelia
Filing Date: 12-17-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-26-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 7-8-2010
Numerous Post Judgment matters; Sold to Bank: 12-30-2011 ($31,100)
743 DAYS

120. Boden, Pio Izabel
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Voluntary Dismissal By Bank: 4-15-2010
118 DAYS

121. Cullen, Lyn
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-16-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 3-16-2010

122. Guerrier, Jean
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 2-22-2010
Voluntary dismissal by Bank: 2-19-2011
428 DAYS

123. Jestine, Saint Jamais
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Vol. Dismissal by Bank: 2-16-2010
60 DAYS

124. Kearney, Virginia
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 9-29-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 9-29-2010

125. Pierre, Carmel
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 5-25-1

126. Reeves, Ilene
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 9-10-2010
PENDING

127. Santiago, Ana E.
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 1-4-11
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Filed: 4-13-2011
480 DAYS

128. Wilson, David
Filing Date: 12-18-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-22-2011

129. Cash, Cleona
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 10-26-2010
PENDING
Last activity: 10-8-2010

130. Duran, Juan
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 2-5-10
PENDING
Last activity: 12-29-2010

131. Esposito, Sally
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
PENDING
Last activity: 11-1-2010

132. Garcia, Jorge
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 7-16-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 8-10-2010
232 DAYS

133. Jean-Pierre, Elvince
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 4-13-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-27-2011

134. Stenback, Gordon
Filing Date: 12-21-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 7-2-2010
Numerous post-judgment pleadings
Sold to bank for $16,600 on 3-14-2011
448 DAYS

135. Paloni, Chrissa
Filing Date: 12-22-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-14-2011

136. Serrano, Joseph
Filing Date: 12-22-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 6-16-2011
Numerous post-judgment pleadings
Sold to plaintiff for $190,200 on 8-1-2011
587 DAYS

137. Spence, Ida
Filing Date: 12-22-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 7-13-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-22-2010

138. Arvisais, Arlettie
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 9-10-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 12-20-2011 ($149,435)
Sale date 2/13 (5200 Edgecliff Avenue)
362 DAYS

139. Cisterna, Paul
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
Bank’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal: 2-19-2010
58 DAYS

140. Elliott, Paul
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-16-2011
PENDING
Last Activity: 5-31-2011

141. Jackson, Rickey
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 9-8-2010
259 DAYS

142. Lloyd, Stephen
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 2-23-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 7-15-2010 ($829,749.31)
204 DAYS

143. Williams, Kenneth
Filing Date: 12-23-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-22-2011

144. Barrett, James
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-23-2011
238 DAYS

145. Benjamin, Aaron
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
Bank’s Voluntary Dismissal Filed: 4-23-2010
116 DAYS

146. Brink, Daniela
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-5-2010

147. Flatley, Rachel
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-30-3010

148. Herisca, Marie
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-9-2012

149. Jacobson, Donald
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-28-2011

150. Puhl, Douglas
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 2-24-2010
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-19-2011

151. Zamir, Elisha
Filing Date: 12-28-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-24-2011

152. Albury, Beverly
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
Vol. Dismissal: 3-1-2011
427 DAYS

153. Berlinger, Gary
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
Vol. Dismissal: 12-14-2010
350 DAYS

154. Darling, Melvina R.
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 11-21-2011

155. Ellis, Thomas
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: Order for Bank to Sub. Counsel: 6-10-2011

156. O’Callaghan, Susanna
Filing Date: 12-29-2011
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment Filed: 3-23-2010
Final Judgment of Foreclosure Entered: 6-14-2010 ($281,906)
167 DAYS

157. Peters, Julian
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
Bank’s Notice of Vol. Dismissal: 7-28-2010
211 DAYS

158. Ulyssee, Kerole
Filing Date: 12-29-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-12-2010

159. Cheshire, Denise
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 2-4-2011

160. Confessore, Joseph
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 8-10-2011

161. Etienne, Sandra
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
Vol. Dismissal by Bank: 9-15-2010
259 DAYS

162. Florez, Andres
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-9-2010
Post-judgment motions; sold to bank 7-8-2011
555 DAYS

163. O’Donnell, Michael
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
Final judgment of foreclosure: 6-9-2011
Post-judgment motions; sold on 12-6-2011
706 DAYS

164. Reyes, Domingo
Filing Date: 12-30-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-30-2011

165. Castillo, Biviana
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 4-15-2010

166. Cruz, Lorenzo
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment: 1-10-12
PENDING
Last Activity: 1-10-2012

167. Drolet, Peter A.
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 12-12-2011

168. Miranda, Rigoberta
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
PENDING
Last Activity: 7-21-2011 (Bank’s sub. Of counsel)

169. O’Neill, Francis T.
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 8-30-2010
607 DAYS

170. Schwartz, Michael
Filing Date: 12-31-2009
Final Judgment of Foreclosure: 11-22-2011
691 DAYS

Action Date: January 11, 2012
Location: West Palm Beach, FL

Legislation needed in every state:

The Truth-In-Mortgage Documents Act

1. On every Mortgage Assignment, and every Missing or Lost Assignment Affidavit, filed in the Official Records of any county in this State, or filed in any Court in this State, each signer, including any witness or notary, must sign his or her own name, regardless of any authorization by any individual or entity to sign any other name.

2. On every Mortgage Assignment, and every Missing or Lost Assignment Affidavit, filed in the Official Records of any county in this State, or filed in any Court in this State, each signer, including any witness or notary, must set forth his or her actual job title, and the name of his or her actual employer, regardless of any authorization by any individual or entity to state any other job title or employer. Any individual signing as an officer of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (”MERS”) must state the name of the Nominee/Lender in addition to setting forth his or her actual job title, and the name of his or her actual employer.

3. On every Mortgage Assignment, and every Missing or Lost Assignment Affidavit filed in the Official Records of any county in this State, or filed in any Court in this State, each signer, including any witness, must set forth his or her actual work address at the time of the signing, regardless of any authorization by any individual or entity to state any other address.

4. On every Mortgage Assignment filed in the Official Records of any county in this State, or filed in any Court in this State, the effective date of the Assignment must be plainly and exactly set forth by day, month and year. Effective dates such as “On or before” are not permitted.

5. On every Mortgage Assignment, and every Missing or Lost Assignment Affidavit, filed in the Official Records of any county in this State, or filed in any Court in this State, each signer, including any witness or notary, must sign his or her own name, using a full signature stating first and last name, and may not use initials or abbreviations or marks, regardless of any authorization by any individual or entity to sign using initials, abbreviations or marks.

Action Date: January 4, 2012
Location: FT. Lauderdale, FL

In the lawsuit filed by DJSP Enterprises against David J. Stern and the Law Offices of David J. Stern, there are also allegations involving ProVest, the process server used by Stern and most of the other major foreclosure mills hired by Lender Processing Services in over 20 states.

The allegations regarding ProVest are found in paragraphs 36-38:

36. Prior to the Transaction, the Seller Defendants also knowingly and systematically inflated their process of service costs to the Court. Specifically, Seller Defendants engineered a fraudulent scheme whereby they directed their process servicing work to a process servicing company called ProVest. The Seller Defendants caused each file to generate four or five separate fees for service of process regardless of whether service of process on multiple defendants was necessary or appropriate and regardless of whether service of process for multiple defendants could be achieved at the same address.

37. In exchange for receiving these inflated service of process fees, ProVest, in turn, routinely referred back to PTA servicing requests for “skip tracing” to locate defendants for whom ProVest purportedly did not have accurate street address information to effect service of process. ProVest “hired” and paid fees to PTA for “skip tracing” services despite the fact that ProVest had the ability and resources to perform “skip tracing” itself and routinely did so itself.

38. The Seller Defendants’ arrangement with ProVest amounted to a kickback scheme. DS Law padded and inflated its process servicing costs which were billed to its clients and added to the court costs assessed to foreclosure defendants. In exchange for feeding this work to ProVest, PTA earned manufactured “skip tracing” fees which inflated PTA’s revenues and profits and which represented another way in which the Seller Defendants artificially inflated the revenues of the Target Business prior to the Transaction.