LAWYER BONANZA!: Wells Fargo Foreclosing on Homeowner Who Made all Payments and Paid Extra

WELLS FARGO MAKES HUGE ERROR ADMITTING LACK OF POWER TO BIND CREDITOR TO MODIFICATIONS OR SETTLEMENTS

The simple truth is that the banks are not nearly as interested in the property as they are in the foreclosure. It is the foreclosure sale that creates the illusion of a stamp of approval from the state government that the entire securitization scheme was valid and it creates the reality of a presumption of the validity of the deed issued at the so-called auction of the property upon submission of  false credit bid from a non-creditor who is a stranger (not in privity) to the transaction alleged. — Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

see also http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/estoppel-when-the-bank-tells-you-to-stop-making-payments/

Editor’s Comment and Analysis: Wells Fargo is foreclosing on a man who has made his payments early and made extra payments to pay down the principal allegedly due on his mortgage. In response to media questions as to their authority to foreclose, the response was curious and very revealing. Wells Fargo said that the reason was that the securitization documents contain restrictions and prohibitions that prevent modifications of mortgage.

The fact that Wells Fargo offered a particular payment plan and the homeowner accepted it together with the fact that the homeowner made the required payments and even added extra payments, all of which was accepted by Wells Fargo and cashed  doesn’t seem to bother Wells Fargo but it probably will bother a judge who sees both the doctrine of estoppel and a simple contract in which Wells Fargo had the apparent authority to make the offer, accept the payments, and bind the actual creditors (whoever they might be).

It also corroborates our continuing opinion that when Wells Fargo and similar banks received insurance and creditable swap payments, they should have been applied to the receivable account of the investors which in turn would have resulted by definition in a reduction of the amount owed. The reduction in the amount owed would obviously decrease the amount payable by the borrower. If we follow the terms of the only contract that was signed by the borrower then any overpayments to the creditor beyond account receivable held by the creditor would be due and payable to the borrower. It is a violation of the spirit and content of the federal bailout to allow the banks to keep the money that is so desperately needed by the investors who supplied the money and the homeowners whose loans were paid in whole or in part by insurance and credit default swaps.

The reason I am interested in this particular case and the reason why I think it is of ultimate importance to understand the significance of the Wells Fargo response to the media is that it corroborates the facts and theories presented here and elsewhere that the original promissory note vanished and was replaced by a mortgage bond, the terms of which were vastly different than the terms of the promissory note signed by the homeowner.

Wells Fargo seeks to impose the terms, provisions, conditions and restrictions of the securitization documents onto the buyer without realizing that they have admitted that the original promissory note signed by the homeowner and therefore the original mortgage lien or deed of trust were never presented to the actual lenders for acceptance or approval of the loan.

CONVERSION OF PROMISSORY NOTE TO MORTGAGE BOND WITHOUT NOTICE

In fact, Wells Fargo has now admitted that the terms of the loan are governed strictly by the securitization documents. How they intend to enforce securitization documents whose existence was actively hidden from the borrower is going to be an interesting question.  If the position of the banks were to be accepted, then any creditor could change the essential terms of the debt or the essential terms of repayment without notice or consent from the borrower despite the absence of any reference to such power in the documents presented to the borrower for the borrower’s signature.

 But one thing is certain, to wit: the closing documents presented to the borrower  were incomplete and failed to disclose both the real parties in table funded loans (making the loans predatory per se as per TILA and Reg Z) and the existence and compensation of intermediaries, the disclosure of which is absolutely mandatory under federal law. Each borrower who was deprived of knowledge of multiple other parties and intermediaries and their compensation has a clear right of action for recovery of all undisclosed fees, interest, payments, attorney fees and probably treble damages.

This case also clearly shows that despite the representations by counsel and “witnesses” Wells Fargo has now admitted the basic fact behind its pattern of conduct wherein they claim to be the authorized sub servicer fully empowered by the real creditors and then claim to have no responsibility or powers with respect to the loan or the real creditors (which appears to include the Federal Reserve if their purchase of mortgage bonds had any substance).

Wells Fargo, US Bank, Bank of New York and of course Bank of America have all been sanctioned with substantial fines of up to seven figures so far in individual cases where they clearly took inconsistent positions and the judge found them to be in contempt of court because of the lies they told and levied those sanctions on both the attorneys and the banks.

It was only a matter of time before this entire false foreclosure mess blew up in the face of the banks. You can be sure that Wells Fargo will attempt to bury this case by paying off the homeowner and any other people that have been involved who could blow the whistle on their illegal, fraudulent and probably criminal behavior.

This is not the end of the game for Wells Fargo or any other bank, but it is one more concrete step toward revealing basic truth behind the mortgage mess, to it: the Wall Street banks stole the money from the investors, stole the ownership of the loans from the “trusts” and have been stealing houses despite the absence of any monetary or other consideration in the origination or acquisition of any loan. This absence of consideration removes the paperwork offered by the banks from the category of a negotiable instrument. None of the presumptions applicable to negotiable instruments apply.

Once again I emphasize that in practice lawyers should immediately take control of the narrative and the case by showing that the party seeking foreclosure possesses no records of any actual or real transaction in which money exchanged hands. This means, in my opinion, that the allegations of investors in lawsuits against the investment banks on Wall Street are true, to wit: they were entitled to an forcible notes and enforceable mortgages but they didn’t get it. That is an admission in the public record by the real parties in interest that the notes and mortgages are fabricated because they referred to commercial transactions that never occurred.

Going back to my original articles when I started this blog in 2007, the solution to the current mortgage mess which includes the corruption of title records across the country is that the intermediaries should be cut out of the process of modification and settlement. A different agency should be given the power to match up investors and borrowers and facilitate the execution of new promissory notes new mortgages or deeds of trust that are in fact enforceable but based in reality as to both the value of the property and the viability of the loan. It is the intermediaries including the Wall Street banks, sub servicers, Master servicers, and so-called trustees that are abusing the court process and clogging the court calendars with false claims. Get rid of them and you get rid of the problem.

http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/16/wells-fargo-forecloses-on-florida-man-who-paid-on-time-early/

Wells Fargo Wrongful Foreclosure Kills Elderly Homeowner?

see http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/hawaii-federal-district-court-applies-rules-of-evidence-bonymellon-us-bank-jp-morgan-chase-failed-to-prove-sale-of-note/

“The administrator of the estate of Larry Delassus sued Wells Fargo, Wachovia Bank, First American Corp. and others in Superior Court, for wrongful death, elder abuse, breach of contract and other charges.

Delassus died at 62 of heart disease after Wells Fargo mistakenly held him liable for his neighbor’s property taxes, doubled his mortgage payments, declared his loan in default and sold his Hermosa Beach condominium, according to the complaint.”

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our South Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. In Northern Florida and the Panhandle call 850-296-1960. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

SEE ALSO: http://WWW.LIVINGLIES-STORE.COM

The selection of an attorney is an important decision  and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s Comment and Analysis: There are two reasons why I continue this blog and my return to the practice of law despite my commitment to retirement. The general reason is that I wish to contribute as much as I can to the development of the body of law that can be applied to large-scale economic fraud that threatens the fabric of our society. The specific reason for my involvement is exemplified in this story which results in the unfortunate death of a 62-year-old man. I have not reported it before, but I have been the recipient of several messages from people whose life has been ruined by economic distress and who then proceeded to take their own lives.  In some cases I was successful in intervening. But in most cases I was unable to do anything before they had already committed suicide.

It is my opinion that the current economic problems, and mortgage and foreclosure problems in particular, stem from an attitude that pervades corporate and government circles, to wit: that the individual citizen is irrelevant and that damage to any individual is also irrelevant and unimportant. If you view the 5 million foreclosures that have already been supposedly completed as merely a collection of irrelevant and unimportant citizens and their families then the policies of the banks on Wall Street and the politicians who are unduly influenced by those banks, becomes perfectly logical and acceptable.

I start with the premise that each individual is both relevant and important regardless of their economic status or their political status. In my opinion that is the premise of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. The wrongful foreclosure by strangers to the transaction is not only illegal and probably unconstitutional, it is fundamentally wrong in that it is founded on the arrogance of the ruling class. Our country is supposed to be a nation of laws not a nation of a ruling class.

If you start with the premise that the Wall Street banks want and need as many foreclosures as possible to complete transactions in which they received the benefit of insurance proceeds and proceeds of head products like credit default swaps, then you can see that these “mistakes”  are in actuality intentional acts intended to drive out legitimate homeowners from their homes. These actions are performed without any concern for the legality of their actions, the total lack of merit of their claims, or the morality and ethics that we should be able to see in economic institutions that have been deemed too big to fail.

The motive behind these foreclosures and the so-called mistakes is really very simple, to wit: the banks have nothing to lose by receiving with the foreclosure but they had everything to lose by not proceeding with the foreclosure. The problem is not a lack of due diligence. The problem is an intentional avoidance of due diligence and the ability to employ the tactic of plausible deniability. Mistakes do happen. But in the past when the bank was notified that the error had occurred they would promptly rectify the situation. Now the banks ignore such notifications because any large-scale trend in settling, modifying or resolving mortgage issues such that the loan becomes classified as “performing” will result in claims by insurers and claims from counterparties in credit default swaps that the payments based upon the failure of the mortgage bonds due to mortgage defaults was fraudulently reported and therefore should be paid back to the insurer or counterparty.

In most cases the amount of money paid through various channels to the Wall Street banks was a vast multiple of the actual underlying loans they claimed were in asset pools. The truth is the asset pools probably never existed, in most cases were never funded, and thus were incapable of making a purchase of a bundle of loans without any resources to do so. These banks claim that they were and are authorized agents of the investors (pension funds) who thought they were buying mortgage bonds issued by the asset pools but in reality were merely making a deposit at the investment bank. The same banks claim that they were not and are not the authorized agents of the investors with respect to the receipt of insurance proceeds and proceeds from hedge product’s life credit default swaps. And they are getting away with it.

They are getting away with it because of the complexity of the money trail and the paper trail. This can be greatly simplified by attorneys representing homeowners immediately demanding proof of payment and proof of loss (the essential elements of proof of ownership) at the origination, assignment, endorsement or other method of acquisition of loans. In both judicial and nonjudicial states it is quite obvious that the party seeking to invoke  foreclosure proceedings avoids the third rail of basic rules and laws of contract, to wit: that the transactions which they allege occurred did not in fact occur and that there was no payment, no loss and no risk of loss to any of the parties that are said to be in the securitization chain. The securitization chain exists only as an illusion created by paperwork.

The parties who handled the money as intermediaries between the lenders and the borrowers do not appear anywhere in the paperwork allegedly supporting the existence of the securitization chain. Instead of naming the investors as the owner and payee on the note and mortgage, these intermediaries diverted the ownership of the note to controlled entities that use their apparent ownership to trade in bonds, derivatives, and hedge products as though the capital of the investment bank was at risk in the origination or acquisition of the loans and as though the capital of the investment bank was at risk in the issuance of what can only be called bogus mortgage bonds.

Toward that end, the Wall Street banks have successfully barred contact and cooperation between the actual lenders and the actual borrowers. These banks have successfully directed the attention of the courts to the fabricated paperwork of the assignments, endorsements and securitization chain. The fact that these documents contain unreliable hearsay statements about transactions that never occurred has escaped the attention and consideration of the judiciary, most lawyers, and in fact most borrowers.

It is this sleight-of-hand that has thrown off policymakers as well as the judiciary and litigants. The fact that money appeared at the time of the alleged loan closing is deemed sufficient to prove that the designated lender on the closing papers was in fact the source of the loan; but they were not the source of the funds for the loan and as the layers of paperwork were added there were no funds at all in the apparent transfer of ownership of the loan that was originated by a strawman with an undisclosed principal, thus qualifying the loan as predatory per se according to the federal truth in lending act.

The fact that the borrower in many cases ceased making payments is deemed sufficient to justify the issuance of a notice of default, a notice of sale and the actual foreclosure of the home and eviction of the homeowner. The question of whether or not any payment was due as escaped the system almost entirely.

Even if the  borrower makes all the payments demanded, the banks will nonetheless seek foreclosure to justify the receipt of insurance and credit default swap proceeds. So they manufacture excuses like failure to pay taxes, failure to pay  insurance premiums, abandonment, failure to maintain or anything else they can think of that will justify the foreclosure and a demand for money that far exceeds  any loss and without giving the borrower an opportunity to avoid foreclosure by either curing the problem for pointing out that there was no problem at all.

As I have pointed out before, the entire mortgage system was turned on its head. If you turn it back to right side up then you will see that the receipt of money by the intermediary banks is an overpayment on both the bond issued to the investor (or the debt owed to the investor) and the promissory note that was executed by the borrower on the false premise that there had been full disclosure of all parties, intermediaries and their compensation as required by the federal truth in lending act, federal reserve regulations and many state laws involving deceptive lending.

Wells Fargo will no doubt defend the action of the estate of the dead man with allegations of a pre-existing condition which would have resulted in his death in all events. The problem they have in this particular case is that the causation of the death is a little easier to prove when the death occurs in the courtroom based upon false claims, false collections, and probably a duty to refund excess payments received from insurers and counterparties to credit default swaps.

The cost of the largest economic crime in human history is very human indeed.

 

Elderly Man Allegedly Dies in Court Fighting Wells Fargo ‘Wrongful’ Foreclosure
http://www.alternet.org/economy/elderly-man-allegedly-dies-court-fighting-wells-fargo-wrongful-foreclosure

New York Getting Ready to Prosecute Banks for Violations of Settlement

At the end of the day everyone knows everything. If you start with the premise that the securitization of debt was a farce and that the necessary element of the false securitization of mortgage loans was the foreclosure of those loans, then you move one step closer to understanding the mortgage and foreclosure mess and a giant step forward to understanding and implementing a solution. All the actions, statements and myths promulgated by the Wall Street banks become clear, including their violation of every consent decree,order and settlement they ever made with respect to mortgage loans.

Attorney General Schneiderman of New York seems to understand this and he is taking the mega banks to task for violating a settlement that looks like pennies on the dollar. He doesn’t care why they violated the $26 Billion settlement but he is taking action for their consistent violation of the settlement. But I care about the reason and so should you. The reason is nothing less than the obvious: the mega banks expose themselves to liability that far exceeds the terms of the settlement.

In any normal circumstances when a big company enters into a settlement that amounts to pennies on the dollar, the company rushes to make the settlement final by paying the money and performing the actions required in the agreement. Thus they commit illegal acts and get away with it by entering into an agreement that looks big but doesn’t put them out of business. They are nothing but anxious to put the settlement behind them.

So why are the mega banks refusing to abide by a $26 billion settlement on a multi- trillion theft? The answer by pure logic and my sources is that if the banks actually performed on the material portions of the agreement they risk going out of business. Why?

The answer is arithmetic. The purpose of the settlement was to stop illegal foreclosure practices and compensate those who lost their homes in illegal Foreclosures (as opposed to simply reversing the Foreclosures and starting over again which is what any court of law would require if there was an admission that the documents and claims in foreclosure were false).

Arithmetic is the answer. Without Foreclosures, the banks cannot support their claim of failure of the mortgages. If the loans are reinstated then the “sales” of loans and mortgage bonds become immediately subject to an accounting and to payback to investors who bought empty bogus bonds issued by a trust that existed in name only. If the loans must be considered performing loans because of any of the reasons contained in those multistage settlements, consent decrees,orders and agency settlements, then the banks must reimburse the insurers, buyers and counter-parties on hedge products like credit default swaps.

Thus satisfactions the settlement agreement exposes the banks to a reduction in their tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 capital such that the reality and empty underbelly of the banksia displayed for all to see. Those banks and are not nearly as big as they say they are and must be resolved by the FDIC because they actually do not have the minimum capital requirements that all banks must have to continue operations. That is why the Brown bill in the U.S. Senate is dead on right.

If the Foreclosures were invalid there is only one way to correct them, just like any title problem. Correct the defect In Title by reversing the foreclosure or get an affidavit from the homeowner joining in some correction of the corrupted title resulting from fake Foreclosures.

With trillions in liability at stake of course the banks are violating the settlement agreements and consent decrees. All they can do is try to control state and federal action by providing photo opportunities and planted articles around the media to make people feel good. But neither the housing market nor the economy will get the stimulus necessary for a full recovery until the truth is addressed instead of pretending you can fix this mortgage and foreclosure mess with Tiny settlements and promises that nobody intends to keep.

Wells Fargo, BofA threatened with lawsuit over mortgage allegations
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/morning_call/2013/05/wells-fargo-bofa-threatened-with.html

Eric Schneiderman: Banks Have ‘Confidence’ That Law Enforcement Is Not Taking Violations ‘Seriously’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/eric-schneiderman-banks_n_3226992.html

Winning Cases Against the Mega Banks

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

The selection of an attorney is an important decision  and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s  Comment: It is hard to interpret what people mean when they say they are winning cases. In the example below the case is oversimplified. Wells Fargo, as usual, wanted to foreclose on the home of an 80-year-old woman regardless of whether she was in default or not. Her main defense was simply that she was never in default. Wells Fargo took the position that the payments they accepted could be allocated towards expenses of the foreclosure, which never should’ve happened in the first place.

It was quite clear that the homeowner had made all of her payments. It was quite clear that Wells Fargo had not applied the payments properly. And after three years of litigation, during which most people would have folded, judgment was entered in favor of the borrower and against Wells Fargo.

No big surprise except for the persistence of the homeowner in fighting off a big bad bank despite dwindling resources and a gaggle of people who were treating her as a leper because she was a deadbeat who didn’t pay her bills and was trying to get out of a legitimate debt.

Of course as it turns out, she was neither a deadbeat nor was she trying to get out of the debt even though it probably is not a legitimate debt and Wells Fargo is most probably not a legitimate creditor in relation to this homeowner.

I am happy that this woman got what she wanted. But some questions that linger on include why Wells Fargo failed to do the proper accounting to bring her loan account up-to-date? Why did Wells Fargo want that foreclosure regardless of whether she was in default or not? And what other payments received from third parties in the form of insurance or credit default swaps were not applied to the appropriate receivable account on the books of the real creditor?

My opinion is that in all probability there is still plenty of meat left on the bone. This homeowner  probably has several causes of action for slander of title, breach of contract, probably fraud, and abuse of process,  just to name a few.

And another thought comes to mind: would the result  or the timing have been different if the roles were  reversed? This particular case is so obvious as to whether or not money was actually paid and received that it is difficult to comprehend how it could possibly have stretched out to three years.

The only way I can think of is that the judge had a preconception of the relationship of the parties and assumed that the debt was real and was in default instead of forcing Wells Fargo to immediately prove lack of payment and their status as the real creditor. For those who complain that the courts are jammed up with foreclosure lawsuits, this case is instructive as to why that is happening.

If judges would simply take each case on its own merits and require each party to actually prove their position rather than rely on dubious and rebuttable presumptions, most of the foreclosures wouldn’t be filed and those that ended up in litigation would be over in just a few months.

 The bottleneck in the court systems across the country is not caused by volume. It is caused by bias. Judges assume that a big-name bank with 150 year old reputation on the line would never make a claim they couldn’t back up. If judges would stop making that assumption and require the backup at the beginning of the litigation the bottleneck would vanish.

Oregon Woman Wins 3-Year Fight Against Wells Fargo Foreclosure
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/04/oregon-woman-wins-3-year-fight-against-wells-fargo-foreclosure/

 

FDCPA Strikes Again: West Virginia Slams Wells Fargo

YARNEY v. OCWEN LOAN SERVICING, LLC, Dist. Court, WD Virginia 2013

SARAH C. YARNEY, Plaintiff,

v.

OCWEN LOAN SERVICING, LLC, ET AL., Defendants.

No. 3:12-cv-00014. United States District Court, W.D. Virginia, Charlottesville Division.

March 8, 2013

MEMORANDUM OPINION

NORMAN K. MOON, District Judge.

The Plaintiff Sarah C. Yarney (“Plaintiff”), pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 56, seeks summary judgment as to liability on all claims asserted in her complaint. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants Wells Fargo Bank N.A., as Trustee for SABR 2008-1 Trust (“Wells Fargo”), and its loan servicer, Ocwen Loan Servicing, LCC (“Ocwen”), attempted to collect on her home mortgage loan after she had settled the debt with Wells Fargo.

III. DISCUSSION

A. Plaintiff’s FDCPA Claims as a Matter of Law

In summary, mortgage servicers are considered debt collectors under the FDCPA if they became servicers after the debt they service fell into default. At the time Ocwen became the servicer on Plaintiff’s home loan, the loan was already in default. Therefore, Ocwen is a debt collector seeking to collect an alleged debt for the purposes of FDCPA liability in this case.^[4]

1. Defendants’ Liability under 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(2)(A)

Given the contents of the monthly bills and notices sent to Plaintiff directly, along with the continued calls she received from collection agents, I find that the least sophisticated consumer in Plaintiff’s position could believe that she still owed a debt. Thus, Plaintiff is entitled to summary judgment on her count that Ocwen violated § 1692e(2)(A) of the FDCPA.

2. Defendants’ Liability under 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2)

Because Plaintiff continued to directly receive bills, statements and phone calls from Ocwen representatives seeking to collect on an alleged debt obligation, despite notice that she was represented by counsel, Plaintiff is entitled to summary judgment that Ocwen violated section 1692c(a)(2).

B. Plaintiff’s Breach of Contract Claim as a Matter of Law

Plaintiff contends that Wells Fargo breached its agreement with Plaintiff, through the action of its agent, Ocwen ….

plaintiff contends, Wells Fargo failed to comply with its obligations, due to the actions of Ocwen, its servicer.

By attempting to collect payments from Plaintiff on behalf of Wells Fargo, Ocwen acted as Wells Fargo’s agent with respect to the original mortgage loan.^[10] Further, the undisputed facts in this case demonstrate that Ocwen continued to behave in all respects towards Plaintiff as Wells Fargo’s agent after the March 18, 2011 settlement agreement.^[11] While a party may delegate the performance of its duties under a contract, it retains the ultimate obligation to perform….

[11] While Defendants argued during the February 25, 2013 motion hearing that Wells Fargo shouldn’t be held liable for Ocwen’s conduct from now until eternity, Ocwen’s actions at the center of this case constituted collection efforts in connection with the same mortgage loan debt for which Ocwen had been assigned to service, and that Plaintiff and Wells Fargo had attempted to resolve under the March 18, 2011 settlement agreement. Thus, given the facts of this case, Ocwen continued to act as Wells Fargo’s agent with respect to Plaintiff following the settlement agreement.

Due to Ocwen’s subsequent attempts to collect mortgage loan payments from Plaintiff, Wells Fargo neither absolved Plaintiff of her possible deficiency nor properly accepted the deed in lieu of foreclosure.

. . .

“… and thus, due to the actions of its servicer, Plaintiff is entitled to summary judgment that Wells Fargo breached the March 18, 2011 contract agreement.

IV. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment is granted. This case is scheduled for a jury trial on April 9, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. in Charlottesville, VA, at which time Plaintiff will have the opportunity to testify in regards to any damages she may be entitled to in this matter.^[12] An appropriate order accompanies this memorandum opinion

 

Notice of Violation Under California Bill of Rights

“If we accept the Bank’s argument, then we are creating new law. Under the new law a borrower would owe money to a non-creditor simply because the non-creditor procured the borrower’s signature by false pretenses. The actual lender would be unable to retrieve money paid to the fake lender and the borrower would receive credit for neither his own payments nor any payment by a third party on the borrower’s behalf.” Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

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What’s the Next Step? Consult with Neil Garfield

For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure, please call 520-405-1688, customer service, who will put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

Barry Fagan submitted the Notice below.

Editor’s Notes: Fagan’s Notice gives a good summary of the applicable provisions of the Bill of Rights recently passed by California. The only thing I would add to the demands is a copy of all wire transfer receipts, wire transfer instructions or other indicia of funding or buying the loans. everything I am getting indicates that in most cases they can’t come up with it.

If you went into Chase and applied for a loan and they approved your application but didn’t fund it, you wouldn’t expect Chase to be able to sue you or start foreclosure proceedings for a loan they never funded. It’s called lack of consideration.

If you actually got the loan from BofA but they forgot to have you sign papers, you would still owe the money to them but it wouldn’t be secured because there was no mortgage lien recorded in their name. And BofA would have a thing or two to say to Chase about who is the real creditor — either the one or advanced the money or the one who got documents fraudulently or wrongfully obtained.

So then comes the question of whether Chase could assign their note and lien rights to BofA. If TILA disclosures had been made showing the relationship between the two banks, it might be possible to do so. But in these closings, the actual identity of the creditor (source of funds) was actively hidden from the borrower.

Thus we have a simple proposition to be decided in the appellate and trial courts: can a party who obtains signed loan documentation including a note and mortgage perfect the lien they recorded in the absence of any consideration. The floodgates for fraud would open wide if the answer were yes.

If the answer is NO, then the origination documents and all assignments, indorsements, transfers and allonges emanating from the original transaction without consideration are void. AND if each assignment or transfer recites that it is for value received, and they too had no money exchange hands thus producing lack of consideration, then they cannot even begin to assert themselves as a BFP (Bona Fide Purchaser for value without notice). The part about “without notice” is going to be difficult to sustain in proof since this was a pattern of table funded loans deemed “predatory per se” by Reg Z.

The reason they diverted the document ownership away from the creditor who actually advanced the money was to create the appearance of third party ownership (and transfers, which was why MERS was created) in the documentary chain arising out of the original of the non-existent loan (i.e., no money exchanged hands pursuant to the recitals on the note and mortgage as between the payor and payee). They needed the appearance of ownership was to create the appearance of an ownership and insurable interest.

Thus even though the money did not come from the originator, the aggregator or even the Master Servicer or Trustee of the pool, affiliates of the investment bank who underwrote and sold bogus mortgage bonds, were able (as “owners”) to purchase insurance, credit default swaps, and receive bailouts because they could “document” that they had lost money even though the reality was that the the third party source of funding, and the real creditors were actual parties suffering the loss.

Had those windfall distributions been applied to balances due to the owners of the mortgage bonds, the balance due from the bond would have been correspondingly reduced. AND if the balance due to the creditor had been reduced or paid in full, then the homeowner/borrower’s obligation to that creditor would have been extinguished entitling the homeowner to receipt of a note paid in full and a release of the mortgage lien (or at least cooperation in nullification of the imperfect mortgage lien).

PRACTICE TIP: Don’t just go after the documents that talk about the transaction by which they claim a liability exists from the borrower to one or more pretender lenders. Push for proof of payment in discovery and don’t be afraid to deny the debt, the note or the mortgage.

In oral argument before the Judge, when he or she asks whether you are contesting the note and mortgage, the answer is yes. When asked whether you are contesting the liability, the answer is yes – and resist the temptation to say why. The less said the better. This is why it is better preempt the pretender lenders with your own suit — because all allegations in the complaint must be taken as true for purposes of a motion to dismiss.

Don’t get trapped into disclosing your evidence in a motion to dismiss. If it is set for a motion to dismiss the sole question before the court is whether your lawsuit contains a short plain statement of ultimate facts upon which relief could be granted and all allegations you make must be assumed to be true. When opposing counsel starts to offer facts, you should object reminding the Judge that this is a motion to dismiss, it is not a motion for summary judgment and there are no facts in the record to corroborate the proffer by opposing counsel.

From Barry Fagan:

Re:  Notice of “Material Violations” under California’s Newly Enacted Homeowners Bill of Rights pursuant to California Civil Code sections, 2923.55, 2924.12, and 2924.17.
See attached and below

Reference is made to Wells Fargo’s (“Defendant”) December 13, 2012 response to Barry Fagan’s (“Plaintiff”) October 25, 2012 request for copies of the following:

(i)           A copy of the borrower’s promissory note or other evidence of indebtedness.

(ii)         A copy of the borrower’s deed of trust or mortgage.

(iii)       A copy of any assignment, if applicable, of the borrower’s mortgage or deed of trust required to demonstrate the right of the mortgage servicer to foreclose.

(iv)        A copy of the borrower’s payment history since the borrower was last less than 60 days past due.

Please be advised that I find Defendant’s response to be woefully defective. This letter is being sent pursuant to my statutory obligation to “meet and confer” with you concerning the defects before bringing an action to enjoin any future foreclosure pursuant to Civil Code § 2924.12.

Defendant’s are in violation of both the notice and standing requirements of California law, and the California newly enacted Homeowner Bill of Rights (“HBR”). In July 2012, California enacted the Homeowner Bill of Rights (“HBR”). Among other things, the HBR authorizes private civil suits to enjoin foreclosure by entities that record or file notices of default or other documentsfalsely claiming the right to foreclose. Civil Code § 2923.55 requires a servicer to provide borrowers with their note and certain other documents, if the borrowers request them.

Civil Code § 2924.17 requires any notice of default, notice of sale, assignment of deed of trust, or substitution of trustee recorded on behalf of a servicer in connection with a foreclosure, or any declaration or affidavit filed in any court regarding a foreclosure, to be “accurate and complete and supported by competent and reliable evidence.” It further requires the servicer to ensure it has reviewed competent and reliable evidence to substantiate the borrower’s default and the right to foreclose.

Civil Code § 2924.12 authorizes actions to enjoin foreclosures, or for damages after foreclosure, for breaches of §§ 2923.55 or 2924.17. This right of private action is “in addition to and independent of any other rights, remedies, or procedures under any other law.  Nothing in this section shall be construed to alter, limit, or negate any other rights, remedies, or procedures provided by law.” Civil Code § 2924.12(h). Any Notice of Default, or Substitution of Trustee recorded on Plaintiffs’ real property based upon a fraudulent and forged Deed of Trust shall be considered a “Material Violation”, thus triggering the injunctive relief provisions of Civil Code § 2924.12 & § 2924.17(a) (b).

I therefore demand that Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. provide Barry Fagan with the UNALTERED original Deed of Trust along with the ORIGINAL Note, as the ones provided by Kutak Rock LLP on October 13, 2011 to Ronsin Copy Service were both photo-shopped and fraudulent fabrications of the original documents, thus not the originals as ordered to be produced by Judge Tarle under LASC case number SC112044. Attached hereto and made a part hereof is the October 13, 2011 Ronsin Copy Service Declaration with copies of the altered and photo-shopped Note and Deed of Trust concerning real property located at Roca Chica Dr. Malibu, CA 90265.

Judge Karlan under LASC case number SC117023 “DENIED” Wells Fargo’s Request for Judicial Notice of the very same Deed of Trust, Notice of Default, Substitution of Trustee and the Notice of Rescission concerning real property located at Roca Chica Dr. Malibu, CA 90265.
Attached hereto and made a part hereof is the relevant excerpt of Judge Karlan’s October 23, 2012 Court Order along with a copy of Wells Fargo’s Request for Judicial Notice of those very same documents. Court Order: REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL NOTICE “DEFENDANT’S REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL NOTICE IS DENIED AS TO EXHIBITS A, B, C, D, K, L, & M.” 

As a result of the above stated facts, please be advised that the fraudulently altered deed of trust and photo-shopped Note that you claim to have been previously provided to Barry Fagan shall not be considered in compliance with section 2923.55 and therefore Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. has committed a “Material Violation” under California’s Newly Enacted Homeowners Bill of Rights pursuant to Civil Code sections, 2923.55, 2924.12, and 2924.17 (a) (b).

Please govern yourselves accordingly.

Regards,

/s/Barry Fagan

Barry S. Fagan Esq.

Thank you.

Barry S. Fagan Esq.
PO Box 1213, Malibu, CA 90265-1213
[T] +1.310.717.1790 – [F] +1.310.456.6447

Woman Wins Home and Forecloses on Wells Fargo

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Editor’s Comment: We have seen some of these stories before. What is disconcerting is that the press is not getting the point — some homeowners are winning their cases and getting their house free and clear. The reason is simple: if you try to make the case that you should get a free house, then you are going to lose. But if you attack the would-be forecloser where it hurts, then your chances of getting a favorable result are immeasurably increased. Mark Stopa got 14 Judges to (a) deny the forecloser’s motion for summary judgment and (b) grant final summary judgment to the homeowner. It does happen.

In the final analysis the strategy and tactics are the same as in any civil case — deny each and every allegation that you know is absolutely true, like your name. If you don’t know if the note and mortgage are legitimate or if they are showing a copy of the note and mortgage (or deed of trust) that might be fabricated, deny it. The burden is on the party seeking affirmative relief. Too many times, I see homeowners and attorneys give away the store when they are asked whether there is any issue about the obligation, note or mortgage. Their reply is no “but”….

The fact is there is no “but.” You either deny their right to foreclose or you admit it. If you admit it, then all the argument in the world won’t allow you to win. The Judge has no choice but to allow the foreclosure if your admission, tacit or expressed, goes to all the elements required for a foreclosure.

For reasons that I do not understand the same lawyer that will summarily deny virtually all allegations in the complaint for anything other than a foreclosure action, will be very timid and uncertain about denying allegations and validity of the exhibits in a foreclosure. If you attack the foreclosure after admitting that the elements are there based upon UCC or other arguments attacking the documentary trail, you will most likely lose — unless you accidentally stumble upon an argument that deals with the money trail.

That is why I am continually pushing lawyers and pro se litigants to get advice from lawyers that allows them to deny the validity of the allegations of a judicial foreclosure and deny the validity and authenticity of the substitution of trustee, notice of default and notice of sale in the non-judicial states.

Say as little as possible. The more you allege, the more the burden is on you to prove things that only the other side has in the way of information. I have previously posted an article about that.

The judicial doctrine applies that where the information is exclusively in the care, custody and control of the the opposing side then the mere allegation from you will be sufficient to shift the burden of persuasion onto the forecloser — and their case generally will collapse.

Jacksonville Business Journal by Michael Clinton, Web Producer

In a strange twist of events, a St. Augustine woman has filed foreclosure on a local branch of Wells Fargo after a judge ruled she could keep her home.

The bank tried to foreclose on Rebecca Sharp’s home, but a judge ruled she could keep it and the bank owed her nearly $20,000 for attorney’s fees — eight months later, the bank still hasn’t paid, Action News Jax reports.

“Foreclosure cases are based on borrowers not paying bills. Now, Wells Fargo has not paid its bills. There’s an irony there,” Sharp’s attorney Tom Pycraft told Action News.

Read the full story and see the video at Action News Jax.

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is the third-largest bank in Northeast Florida, with $5.5 billion in area deposits and a market share of 12 percent.

DOJ Probes Wells Fargo: Unravelling the Scam Piece by Piece

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Editor’s Comment and Analysis: For those, like myself, frustrated with the pace of the investigation, we must remember that the convoluted manner in which money and documents were handled was intended to obscure the PONZI scheme at the root of the securitization scam and false claims based upon securitization.

None of us saw anything this complex and after devoting 6 years of life to unraveling this mess I am still learning more each day , even with an extensive background on Wall Street and even with my experience with bond trading, investment banking and related matters.

So first they are going after the low-hanging fruit, which is the obvious misrepresentations to the investors who actually comprise most of the same people who were foreclosed. It was pension funds and retirement accounts managed directly or indirectly by the Wall Street banks that bought these bogus “mortgage-backed” bonds. Those same funds are now underfunded and headed for another bailout fight with the Congress.

The problem is that DOJ is still looking at documents and representations when they should be probing the actual movement of money. It is there that they will find the holy grail of prosecutable crimes. The money just didn’t go the way the banks said it would. The banks took trading profits out of the money before it even landed in an account which incidentally was never titled in the name of the REMIC that issued the fake mortgage bonds backed by loans that did not exist in the “the pool.”

Nonetheless I am encouraged that DOJ is chipping away at this, and getting their feet wet, as they get to understand what was really happening, to wit: a simple PONZI scheme in which the deal would fold as soon as there were no more investments by investors.

This simple core was covered by multiple layers of false documentation, robo-signed documents and other transmissions with disclaimers, such that there would be plausible deniability. In the end it is nothing different than Madoff, Drier or other schemes that have landed many titans in prison for the rest of their lives — unless they died before serving their sentence.

I’m an optimist: I still believe that in the end, these banksters will be brought to  justice for real crimes they committed or were directing through their position in the institutions they supposedly represented. The end result is going to be an overhaul of banking like we have not seen before perhaps in all of U.S. history.

The fact remains that the assets on the balance sheets of these banks are (a) overstated by assets that are either non existent or overvalued and (b) understated by the amount of money they parked off-shore in “off balance sheet transactions.”

In the end, which I predict could still be five years away or more, the large banks will have disappeared and the banking industry will return to the usual marketplace of large, medium and small banks, each easily subject to regulation and audits.

How the staggering toll exacted from the middle class will be handled is another story. Nobody in power wants to give the ordinary guy money even if he was defrauded. But unless they give restitution to the pension funds and homeowners, the economy will continue to drag and lag behind where it should be.

Wells Fargo Wachovia Unit Faces Probe Over Mortgage Practices

Reuters

Nov 6 (Reuters) – The government’s investigation of mortgage-related practices at Wells Fargo & Co includes the making and packaging of home loans by its Wachovia unit, the bank said in a filing Tuesday.

The No. 4 U.S. bank by assets disclosed in February that it may face federal enforcement action related to mortgage-backed securities deals leading to the financial crisis.

In Tuesday’s quarterly securities filing, Wells Fargo reiterated that it’s being investigated for whether it properly disclosed in offering documents the risks associated with its mortgage-backed securities.

The bank also said the government is investigating whether Wells Fargo complied with applicable laws, regulations and documentation requirements relating to mortgage originations and securitizations, including those at Wachovia.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008 as losses in the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank’s mortgage portfolio ballooned.

Mortgages packaged into securities for investors during the housing boom still haunt big banks years later. Banks have been accused of failing to ensure the quality of the loans and for misrepresenting their risk to investors.

In January, the Obama administration set up a special task force to investigate practices related to mortgage-backed securities at banks.

In the group’s first action, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last month filed a civil suit against JPMorgan Chase & Co for alleged fraud at Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan bought at the government’s request in 2008.

Florida Wrongful Foreclosure Victims Get $2k, Banks get $2,000k

If you are looking for legal representation in S Florida, please call 520-405-1688 where Neil has established an office again after 30 years of practicing trial law in S. Florida.

Editor’s Note: For those who have given, up, moved on and don’t want to fight about it, the $2,000 check they are about to receive is like found money. But it is a surrender to greed, bullying and criminal behavior. The banks are giving the paltry sum of $2,000 in exchange for an average loan of $200,000 which they neither funded nor purchased, but which they sold multiple times, 1000 cents on the dollar.

As I understand it, you can take the $2,000 and also sue for wrongful foreclosure, but you can be sure that despite that, most people will not sue and those who do are going to be met with the argument that we already settled that.

For those interested in getting their check, read the article below or go to the Sun Sentinel or WPTV.com. You’ll get the information you need.

From WPTV.Com by Donna Gehrke-White, Sun Sentinel

Some 167,398 Floridians who lost homes to foreclosure may each get about $2,000 as part of the nation’s largest consumer financial protection settlement.

The checks will be sent out in early 2013, with more than a third going to people who lost homes in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, estimated Jack McCabe, a housing analyst based in Deerfield Beach.

People need to send in forms to receive the money by Jan. 18. How much people will receive depends on how many borrowers participate.

Already, Minneapolis-based Rust Consulting has “sent out notification postcards to eligible borrowers nationwide,” said John Lucas, a spokesman for the Florida Attorney General’s Office that is helping administer the historic federal, 49-state settlement.

“A low percentage of those postcards were returned, and Rust is conducting further research to locate those borrowers,” Lucas added in an e-mail. People can call toll-free 866-430-8358 to see if they qualify to be part of the settlement.

A former Pompano Beach homeowner who would only give his first name, Mike, said he called and found that he was on the list to get a check. He said he hired too late an attorney to fight his foreclosure. “I was in denial,” he said. “Divorce, job and house — I lost all three.”

In all, about $1.5 billion will be given nationwide to people who lost homes to foreclosure, with Floridians getting about $334 million.

The agreement covers borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure from 2008 to 2011 and whose mortgage were serviced by Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

The five lenders agreed to a massive $25 billion national settlement earlier this year. By August more than 23,000 struggling Floridians had received $1.7 billion in mortgage relief, including principal forgiveness, loan modifications and the suspension of mortgage payments until a later date, according to an interim report by the independent National Mortgage Settlement Administrator. Floridians will ultimately receive about $8 billion in relief.

Part of that includes money to owners who already have lost homes to foreclosure, including those Floridians served fraudulent “robo-signing” foreclosure notices by the five lenders. State and federal investigations found that the banks had routinely signed foreclosure-related documents outside the presence of a notary public and without really knowing whether the facts they contained were correct.

Roy Oppenheim, a foreclosure defense lawyer in Weston, said the projected $2,000 settlement to each foreclosed homeowner doesn’t go far enough in helping those South Floridians who were tossed out of their homes with such fraudulent paperwork.

“They should have been given more money,” Oppenheim said. “Those were criminal acts.”

But the settlement makes no distinction and gives the same amount, regardless of the circumstances of how people were foreclosed on, Oppenheim said.

Other foreclosure victims have been given much more money, he added. Another unrelated foreclosure settlement, for example, gave $25,000 to each soldier who was foreclosed on while fighting overseas, Oppenheim said.

Real estate analyst Jack McCabe agreed that the estimated $2,000 settlement doesn’t fully resolve the pain of foreclosure. “It’s like pocket change,” he said. Some homeowners, for example, lost tens of thousands of dollars in home equity when they were foreclosed on, McCabe said.

Still, it’s some cash: Most Floridians who lost homes to foreclosure won’t get anything, McCabe added. About 400,000 Floridians were foreclosed on between 2008 and 2011 but the settlement affects only 167,398 of them, he said. About 233,000 others had lenders who aren’t part of the agreement.

In addition, there are now about 339,000 more Floridians fighting foreclosure in court. More than a third — or 38 percent— live in Broward, Palm Beach or Miami-Dade counties, McCabe estimated.

In addition another 530,000 Floridians are more than 90 days late in paying their mortgage and face losing their home, he said.

“We’ve still got a full ways to go before we resolve this foreclosure crisis — another two to three years,” McCabe said.

—————————–

If you believe that you are eligible for relief and have not received a Claim Form, please contact the National Mortgage Settlement Administrator at 1-866-430-8358, Monday through Friday 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. Central Time

Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/state/south-florida-foreclosure-settlement-thousands-to-get-about-2k-after-losing-homes-to-foreclosure#ixzz29aIqE4FF

Barry Fagan Launches Administrative Counter Attack

Editor’s Comment: Barry Fagan is pulling out the stops and challenging the CA AG to do her job. I am surprised that those who specialize in administrative law have not used the presumed findings of several Federal and State agencies as to a pattern of conduct that is fraudulent and which requires forgery to proffer in court and perjury to testify as to the foundation that would authenticate the invalid documents. Such administrative findings usually carry a presumption of validity.

Here Barry takes it one step further. He is using one specific case and the documents pertaining to only that case to raise the issues that clearly accuse Wells Fargo of criminal misconduct. Such conduct is the custom and practice of the entire foreclosure industry. Notice that I didn’t say the “mortgage industry,” because the foreclosure industry is predicated on getting a deed on foreclosure based upon a false credit bid from a party who neither funded nor purchased the loan.

CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL COMPLAINT

 

CALIFORNIA SENATE BILL NO. 1474 RE: CONVENING GRAND JURY FOR MORTGAGE FRAUD
Barry S Fagan
Malibu, California 90265
Complaint Against:
Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
420 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, California 94104
COMPLAINT
As an Officer of the Court, I am under a continuing obligation to inform both the Court and Law Enforcement of Fraud and Perjury. As a result, I have retained Dr. Laurie Hoeltzel a forensic document examiner with over 20 years of forensic document analysis experience to confirm that three different versions of the same deed of trust exists for my primary residence and on May 11, 2012.
I recorded all three versions of the same deed of trust with the Los Angeles Registrar Recorders Office under instrument no. 2012-0711277.
DOCUMENT FRAUD
Wells Fargo Bank has fraudulently altered Barry Fagan’s Deed of Trust and the attached expert opinion dated 1/12/2012 from Forensic Document Examiner Dr. Laurie Hoeltzel specifically explains that the handwritten page 4 has been altered on two separate versions of that original Deed of Trust. Dr. Laurie Hoeltzel makes the following findings of fact with respect to the LA Registrar Recorder’s ‘original office record’.
“Based upon my initial preliminary analysis of the above items, it appears more than one person authored the number 4 on all three documents, which purports to be the same document.” The recorded Notice of Pendency of Action shows three different versions of that same July 9, 2007 Deed of Trust as originally recorded under instrument no. 2007-1622100 and I have submitted credible evidence from a forensic document examiner with over 20 years of experience that multiple fraudulent alterations have occurred on the “Handwritten Number page 4” which is located on page 3/4 of the Deed of Trust.
All of the Deeds of Trust now reflect an entirely different handwritten NUMBER 4, and one of the exhibits also has a snake like line drawn on it, which is not present on the other two exhibits.
ACCOUNTING
C.P.A. Shawn P. Adamo stated: “It is my professional opinion that the altered deed of trust is concealing an irrevocable assignment, and explains why Wells Fargo is unable to produce loan level accounting concerning Mr. Fagan’s loan. Wells Fargo claims that any level of detail relating to Mr. Fagan’s mortgage is non- existent. As a result, CPA Shawn Adamo provided two expert opinions, one an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury dated January 24, 2012 and the other is a Feb. 6, 2012 complaint letter addressed to various regulatory agencies. In those two expert opinions, C.P.A Shawn Adamo explains that Wells Fargo Bank has failed to provide a loan level balance sheet accounting and is concealing the fact that they do not own Barry Fagan’s loan.
ROBO-SIGNING
Additionally, forensic document Expert Dr. Laurie Hoeltzel has declared under penalty of perjury on January 2, 2012 that Wells Fargo Bank is robo-signing Discovery Responses by using multiple authors of the name Rhonda Bernard Thomas.
CONCLUSION
Insofar as Wells Fargo Bank, NA is a loan servicer, it cannot enforce the note in its own right in that according to the information in the documents and the information available through discovery and expert opinions, the loan is owned by an undisclosed investor with which Wells Fargo has concealed and not established its relationship to.
Wells Fargo as the alleged servicer must, in addition to establishing the rights of the true holder, identify itself as an authorized agent for the INVESTOR.
If Wells Fargo Bank is compelled by law enforcement to comply with either of the obligations described above it will subject them (Wells Fargo) to a finding of perjury!
Wells Fargo is a criminal enterprise that is attempting to exercise rights over my primary residence by way of fraudulently altered documents, robo-signed discovery responses, no loan level accounting and Barry Fagan’s loan file needs to be investigated at the highest level within your organization to see that a crime has actually occurred!
The law offices of Kutak Rock LLP located in Irvine, California needs to have Barry Fagan’s Note and Deed of Trust subpoenaed so that the GRAND JURY can inspect those documents to see that they have indeed been fraudulently altered and photo-shopped.
/s/Barry Fagan
Barry Fagan Esq.
CALIFORNIA SENATE BILL No. 1474
Approved by Governor September 25, 2012
SB 1474, Hancock. Grand jury proceedings: Attorney General: powers and duties.
Existing law authorizes the Attorney General to convene the grand jury to investigate and consider certain criminal matters. The Attorney General is authorized to take full charge
of the presentation of the matters to the grand jury, issue subpoenas, prepare indictments, and do all other things incident thereto to the same extent as the district attorney may do.

Wells Fargo Sued For Intentionally Underwriting and Submitting Bad Mortgages on Insurance Claims

Editor’s Comment: “Reckless?” No, it was intentional. And THAT lies at the heart of the media and government perception of this entire securitization scam. The worse the loan, the more money they made. By insuring it for 100 cents on the dollar they received total payback, plus they probably got the honor of foreclosing on the home, when they never funded or purchased the loan in the fist place. Since they were not the creditor, they were neither entitled to foreclose nor to receive insurance proceeds which should have gone to investors. But the investors are probably long gone having settled their claims with the investment banker that sold them bogus mortgage bonds.

On a side note, I have read the Master contract with Fannie and Freddie several times and I cannot tell if the agency was giving a guarantee of the bond given to investors or the loan, or both. But I do know that once it went into the secondary market, the bond was sold and resold multiple times, using the federal guarantee as an incentive to purchase the bond with a perception of no risk.

The negligence being asserted in these lawsuits from investors and government agencies is merely a cover-up for intentional fraud. The investors put up a sum of money expecting a varying return based upon LIBOR, which we all know was also bogus. The return was relatively small since the risk appeared to be non-existent and the bonds were rated Triple A.

But here is the trick. If you get $1 billion with the investor expecting a 5% return, and you add to the prospectus that the investor’s money can be used to pay the expected return (PONZI Scheme), then the only way for the scheme to continue is if people continue to buy the bogus mortgage bonds. But the real issue is the money. By lending the money out with a fair distribution of interest rates between 6%-12%, you don’t need to lend out the full $1 billion you received from the investors.

The investor is looking for $50 million per year in interest return. So if you lend out $500 million at 10% you get the nominal rate that WOULD produce the expected $50 million per year to the investor if it was ever paid. But in order to get 10% you have to loan to people who are likely NOT to be able to pay.

The remaining $500 million that was NOT loaned is kept by the Bank and they have never been required to account for this money. They call it proprietary trading. Explain how proprietary means trading with investor money!

wells-fargo-sued-by-us-government.html

The U.S. government sued Wells Fargo on Tuesday, claiming the San Francisco-based bank committed fraud by recklessly approving government-backed mortgages and then seeking government insurance when those loans flopped.

Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) made the announcement Tuesday. They contend in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District court in Manhattan, that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has wrongfully paid millions of dollars in insurance claims on loans that defaulted.

“As the complaint alleges, yet another major bank has engaged in a longstanding and reckless trifecta of deficient training, deficient underwriting and deficient disclosure, all while relying on the convenient backstop of government insurance,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. “As also alleged, Wells Fargo’s bonus incentive plan – rewarding employees based on the sheer number of loans approved – was an accelerant to a fire already burning, as quality repeatedly took a back seat to quantity.”

Doing Your Homework to Win, Not Delay

Brian Korte depo of Krista Higgs US Bank – SHORT AND SWEET

If you look at the short deposition taken by Brian Korte you can easily see why we have strained to have lawyers prepare their material and go for winning rather than mere delay. Here we have a person whose only job was to review the affidavits of other people and check what was on the computer for an account she knew nothing about, could not verify the amounts due, and did not have access to the information. Yet THIS is the person that US Bank brought forward as the person with the MOST knowledge as to the loan receivable account, about which she could verify nothing.

Yet this person could easily have signed an affidavit and without any objection, it would be admitted into evidence and the case closed with a foreclosure and eviction on the horizon. Brian not only gets the rules of evidence, he understands what happened with the money and the documents through research, analysis and planning strategy.

We provide the research, the analysis and the consultation for strategy and tactics. The important thing to remember that is what you do with it, and whether you actually believe you owe the money, or that you are in default and that the other side is right but you are just trying to buy time, gets through to the Judge who was leaning that way in the first place.

So before you make a decision as to what to do in a foreclosure case either do the research yourself if you know how, do the analysis yourself, if you know how, and make sure you have clear strategy that can be presented in a matter of a few minutes rather than the rambling cries of injustice that most homeowner and their lawyers use when they go to the court. If you don’t understand this stuff, then consider the following:

COMBO Title and Securitization Search

Neil Garfield’s Expert Declaration

Consultation with Homeowner, Lawyer and Neil

Garfield Continuum Workbooks 1st and 2nd Editions

And watch the free videos on YOU TUBE or Order the DVD’s at www.livinglies-store.com

Wells Fargo to Pay up to $50,000 per person in bias case against blacks, Hispanics

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Editor’s Notes:  

The point here, besides the obvious bias, is that they were targeting people who were unsophisticated and if it all possible had language problems. Why would they go to so much trouble to find hapless people who are not going to be able to pay for the loans? ANSWER: Because every time a loan fails it gives them another opportunity to make even more money than they did before. Since they were playing with investor money, the risk of loss was not factored in making the loans.

Remember that in Florida alone it was discovered than more than 10,000 people were newly licensed mortgage brokers, each of whom was a convicted felon for economic crimes. They needed people who would say anything to close the deal, NOT people who were looking out for the bank or its depositors because there were no depositors in most cases and even when a depository institution initiated the loan origination, they were not using their own money or credit. Nobody after that EVER paid one cent for any of the transfers, assignments, indorsements, or allonges. All the transactions were fake descriptions of transactions that never occurred.

And they are STILL trading on the bad loans even if they were long ago “foreclosed” and even if there was an eviction. They are trading the synthetic derivatives that were based upon the derivatives whose value was derived from the mortgage bonds whose value was derived from the home. All the trades are bogus. While all Americans suffer, the banks continue to generate “profits” that don’t actually exist because they are more than offset by an unstated liability for selling “forward” an asset that they know they never had and which has been lost through the foreclosure.

Nobody in mainstream media has YET picked up on this because of its obvious complexity. But when they, do, all hell will break loose. It will be discovered that the original loan was paid in full at the moment of origination and that all trades after the fake transaction used as the basis of the contents of the “closing documents” were faked, which is why they couldn’t come up with real documents and were submitting fabricated, robo-signed, surrogate signed, forged documents and recording them.

And that is the tip of the iceberg on the degree of corruption of our title system. Because all those trades, foreclosures and evictions can and should be reversed. And the economic collapse should and would be restored to normal economic activity with the wealth back where it belongs — in the hands of people who were cheated, deceived and discriminated against by the banks.

Justice Dept: Wells Fargo to pay $175M to settle allegations of bias against blacks, Hispanics

WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo Bank will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest residential home mortgage originator, allegedly engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers from 2004 through 2009.

At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the bank’s discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.

Cole said that with the settlement, the second largest of its kind in history, the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.

The bank will pay $125 million in compensation for borrowers who were steered into subprime mortgages or who paid higher fees and rates than white borrowers because of their race or national origin rather than because of differences in credit-worthiness.

Wells Fargo also will pay $50 million in direct down payment assistance to borrowers in areas of the country where the Justice Department identified large number of discrimination victims. Those areas are Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland and San Francisco, New York City, Cleveland, Riverside, Calif., and Baltimore.

“The department’s action makes clear that we will hold financial institutions accountable, including some of the nation’s largest, for lending discrimination,” Cole said.

The settlement will bring “swift and meaningful relief” to African-American and Hispanic borrowers who received subprime loans when they should have received prime loans or who paid more for their loans, said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Perez said that because of the bank’s practices “an African-American wholesale customer in the Chicago area in 2007 seeking a $300,000 loan paid on average $2,937 more in fees than a similarly qualified white applicant. And these fees were not based on any objective factors relating to credit risk. These fees amounted to a racial surtax. A Latino borrower in the Miami area in 2007 seeking a $300,000 paid on average $2,538 more than a similarly qualified white applicant. The racial surtax for African Americans in Miami in 2007 was $3,657.”

Wells Fargo noted in a statement that it has denied the claims.

“Wells Fargo is settling this matter solely for the purpose of avoiding contested litigation with the DOJ,” it said, “and to instead devote its resources to continuing to provide fair credit services and choices to eligible customers and important and meaningful assistance to borrowers in distressed U.S. real estate markets.”

The part of the settlement for $125 million deals with mortgages that were priced and sold by independent mortgage brokers through Wells Fargo’s wholesale channel. The financial institution said that it is discontinuing financing mortgages that are originated, priced and sold by independent mortgage brokers through the mortgage wholesale channel.

“Through our separate decision to no longer fund mortgages through independent mortgage brokers, we can control how that commitment” to serving home ownership needs “is met on every mortgage that Wells Fargo makes,” said Mike Heid, president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

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Szymoniak: Honesty Pays $46.5 Million in Whistleblower Suit

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Editor’s Comment and Analysis:  

It was and remains a big lie — the securitization the loans, the origination of the loans, the assignments, alleges and endorsements. $46.5 million sounds like a lot and these whistleblowers will get a “windfall” as a result of it. But it is a drop in the bucket and we need to fill the bucket. And our bucket list should include taking down the big banks, removing money from politics, and getting back to government by the people and for the people.

Schiller, the scholar who has been leading the way in economic analysis of the housing market, has offered an audacious plan that is the last possible way for government intervention to save the economy, which is heavily dependent upon consumer spending, particularly in the housing market. Eminent domain has long been sustain as the right of government to take private property and convert it to public use. Whether it is a highway, downtown redevelopment or other reasons, eminent domain has been played by the banks and developers as a way to get land they need, at a price that could not be achieved using the power of the government behind them. 

While seemingly unusual and audacious, Schiller’s proposition has many precedents in history and should be considered as the last great hope after the 50 attorney generals agreed in the 50 state settlement that now prevents them from further investigation and prosecution against the banks. Schiller’s, the originator of the case-Schiller index showing that median income and income disparity is harmful to the economy and deadly to the housing market, proposes that we use the power of eminent domain to seize the remaining mortgages, and perhaps the property that has already been foreclosed, and remake the deals so that they make sense. Translating that means that the homeowners will get the deal that they should have received when they bought o refinanced their house. And it capitalizes on the inconvenient truth that it was the banks who created risks that neither the investors nor the homeowners signed up for.

By paying the value of the remaining mortgages — more than 30% are reported still under water and when carefully analyzed the figure is closer to 60%, the banks get no more and no less than they should, the investors still get their money — 100 cents on the dollar if they insist on payback from the banks in addition to the money from the new mortgages on the old property, and the homeowner is back in charge of his own home paying principal, interest, costs, fees and insurance and taxes that are fair market value indicators. It is better than the proceeds of foreclosures, so the banks now must argue that they have a right to take less money in order to get the foreclosure.

The banks want the foreclosure because they lied. And with the foreclosure it adds to the illusion that they funded or paid for loans in which they do not have a nickel invested. The fact that the balance sheets of the mega banks are going to take a giant hit is only an admission that the assets they are reporting are either not worth anything or are worth far less than the value shown on their public financial statements. They are still lying about that to investors, the SEC and other regulatory agencies.

So whistleblowers must pave the way and show the lies, show the inequality, show the inflated appraisals that could not stand the test of time and force government to act as it should. The chief law enforcement of the country and the chief law enforcement of each state owes his/her citizens at least that much and more. They must find ways to clear up the corruption of title records that are irretrievably lost. 

And the lawyers who keep turning down these cases because they are too complex or too weak should take a close look at these whistleblower  cases. The settlement, as always, comes before the trial because the fact remains that the banks are o the hook for  their bets on the mortgages and not the mortgages themselves. Lawyers need to show a little guts and seek some glory and wealth from these cases, while at the same time doing their country a service.

We are turning the corner and the banks are starting to lose. Keep up the fight and your effort will probably go well-rewarded.

Whistleblowers win $46.5 million in foreclosure settlement

By James O’Toole

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Getting served with foreclosure papers made Lynn Szymoniak rich.

While she couldn’t have known it at the time, that day in 2008 led to her uncovering widespread fraud on the part of some of the country’s biggest banks, and ultimately taking home $18 million as a result of her lawsuits against them. Szymoniak is one of six Americans who won big in the national foreclosure settlement, finalized earlier this year, as a result of whistleblower suits. In total, they collected $46.5 million, according to the Justice Department.

In the settlement, the nation’s five largest mortgage lenders –Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial — agreed to pay $5 billion in fines and committed to roughly $20 billion more in refinancing and mortgage modifications for borrowers.

A judge signed off on the agreement in April, and in May — Szymoniak received her cut.

“I recognize that mine’s a very, very happy ending,” she said. “I know there are plenty of people who have tried as hard as I have and won’t see these kinds of results.”

Related: 30% of borrowers underwater

Whistleblower suits stem from the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to file lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. when they have knowledge that the government is being defrauded. These citizens are then entitled to collect a portion of any penalties assessed in their case.

The act was originally passed in 1863, during a time when government officials were concerned that suppliers to the Union Army during the Civil War could be defrauding them.

In 1986, Congress modified the law to make it easier for whistleblowers to bring cases and giving them a larger share of any penalties collected. Whistleblowers can now take home between 15% and 30% of the sums collected in their cases. In the cases addressed in the foreclosure settlement, the whistleblowers revealed that banks were gaming federal housing programs by failing to comply with their terms or submitting fraudulent documents.

In Szymoniak’s case alone, the government collected $95 million based on her allegations that the banks had been using false documents to prove ownership of defaulted mortgages for which they were submitting insurance claims to the Federal Housing Administration.

The FHA is a self-funded government agency that offers insurance on qualifying mortgages to encourage home ownership. In the event of a default on an FHA-insured mortgage, the FHA pays out a claim to the lender.

Szymoniak’s case was only partially resolved by the foreclosure settlement, and she could be in line for an even larger payout when all is said and done.

As an attorney specializing in white-collar crime, the 63-year-old Floridian was well-placed to spot an apparent forgery on one of the documents in her foreclosure case, one she saw repeated in dozens of others she examined later.

“At this point, the banks are incredibly powerful in this country, but you just have to get up every morning and do what you can,” she said.

The other five whistleblowers in the settlement came from the industry side, putting their careers at risk by flagging the banks’ questionable practices.

Kyle Lagow, who won $14.6 million in the settlement, worked as a home appraiser in Texas for LandSafe, a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial. He accused the company in a lawsuit of deliberately inflating home appraisals in order to collect higher claims from the FHA, and said he was fired after making complaints internally.

Gregory Mackler, who won $1 million, worked for a company subcontracted by Bank of America to assist homeowners pursuing modifications through the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP. Under HAMP, the government offers banks incentive payments to support modifications.

Mackler said Bank of America violated its agreement with the government by deliberately preventing qualified borrowers from securing HAMP modifications, steering them toward foreclosure or more costly modifications from which it could make more money. He, too, claims to have been fired after complaining internally.

There’s also Victor Bibby and Brian Donnelly, executives from a Georgia mortgage services firm who accused the banks of overcharging veterans whose mortgages were guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, thereby increasing their default risk. Bibby and Donnelly won $11.7 million in the settlement; their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

Shayne Stevenson, an attorney who represented both Lagow and Mackler, said the two weren’t aware of possible rewards when they first brought their evidence to his firm.

“The reality of it is that most of the time, whistleblowers don’t even know about the False Claims Act — they don’t know they can make money,” Stevenson said. Both his clients, Stevenson added, “just wanted the government to know about this fraud, so they deserve every penny that they got.”

A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment on individual cases, but said the national settlement was “part of our ongoing strategy to put these issues, particularly these legacy issues with Countrywide, behind us.” BofA acquired mortgage lender Countrywide in 2008, thereby incurring the firm’s legal liabilities.

The other banks involved either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Related: Foreclosures spike 9%

While the whistleblowers in the settlement scored big paydays in the end, the road wasn’t easy. Stevenson said his clients “were pushed to the brink” after raising their concerns, struggling to find work and beset by financial problems.

“They were facing evictions, foreclosure, running away from bills, trying to deal with creditors that were coming after them,” Stevenson said. “This went on and on and on, and this is part and parcel of what happens to whistleblowers.”

For Robert Harris, a former assistant vice president in JPMorgan’s Chase Prime division, the experience was similar.

Harris accused the bank of failing to assist borrowers seeking HAMP modifications and knowingly submitting false claims for government insurance based on wrongful foreclosures. He was stymied when he tried to complain internally, and says he was fired for speaking out.

While Harris ended up with a $1.2 million payout in the settlement, the father of five says he’s been blacklisted within the industry and exhausted by the ordeal.

“It completely turned my life upside down,” he said. “I’m trying to raise my kids, recover from a divorce, recover from the loss of my career — it just comes to down to surviving and putting this to an end.”

“I guarantee the other whistleblowers, too, have sacrificed a lot,” he added. “But to be able to sit back and sleep at night is worth it.”

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Arizona Foreclosure Mediation Considered

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Editor’s Notes:  

Mediation dropped Nevada foreclosures to much lower levels. That was especially true when the lawmakers put in provisions that made clear that this wasn’t a game. In order to foreclose you had to mediate first. And in order to mediate you had to have a decision maker present. AND if you are saying that the party showing up is a decision maker, you better have proof — which just another way of saying “standing.”

In the article below, it is clear that progress is slow but the proponents of mediation in Arizona are moving forward with a small pilot. Mediation is, after all, what nearly all the distressed homeowners want — a fair chance after some correction for the excesses of inflated appriasals and unaffordable loans foisted on the American public. Most homeowners are actually willing to accept mortgages where the principal due is still higher than the value of the property just so they can stay in the property. It is an unprecedented opportunity for the lender to get out of the mess they are finding themselves with all their REO proeprty subject to title challenges.

But the REAL problem is that strangers to the loan transaction are going to lose money unless the foreclosure goes through. So they are posing as lenders (pretender lenders) and pushing hard on fraudulent foreclosures because that results in a judicial or legal event in which the property was deemed to be in the REMIC pool (even if it wasn’t) and the loss falls on the investors instead of these strangers. These strangers are well known to us — BofA, Citi, JPM, Wells Fargo etc. They are fighting mediation because it threatens to expose the farce — that none of the foreclosures before were real and that the current ones are no more valid, legal or just than the old ones.

Homeowners simply do not owe money to these people posing as foreclosers, and they never did. There is no basis for foreclosure because the money came from investor lenders with whom the borrower never had the opportunity to make a deal because the real facts were withheld from both the investor lenders and the homeowner borrowers. That leaves the banks holding the bag, legally, if the law is applied and that is exactly what should happen. The obligations arising from the funding by pension funds should be settled through mediation and modification. Foreclosures would and should end, and our national nightmare would be over.

Hat tip to DR Blog

Arizona Foreclosure Mediation – Part 1

Last week at the Arizona Bar meeting my colleague Timothy Burr  presented a progress report for the Foreclosure Mediation Unit of ASU’s Lodestar Dispute Resolution Program. The program was well attended and has generated some buzz in the legal community. In some sense this was the FMU’s coming out party as we’ve been keeping a low profile because we’re in its pilot program phase. In my mind there’s nothing worse than rolling out a new program and touting it as a big deal before actually doing anything and then watching it die a humiliatingly public death.

Before talking about the program, a little background. Arizona is a state where almost every foreclosure is a non-judicial foreclosure, although judicial foreclosure is an option it is very rarely used. Non-judicial foreclosures tend to be short and sweet (or bittersweet as the case may be) because they are purely contractual as noted in the deed to the property.  Here’s a link to the best online primer on trustee’s sales I’ve found, and here’s the shorthand version. If you fall behind in your payments and the creditor decides to go forward with a trustee’s sale, a notice is placed on the house’s door announcing a trustee’s sale will occur 90 days from the posting, and the sale occurs on that day unless there’s a serious problem (like fraud or other similarly egregious claims brought in court) or there’s a last minute agreement between the creditor and debtor(s).

In 2009 I worked with others to create an Arizona Foreclosure Mediation Task force, and after several meetings it was clear that we didn’t have the clout to get anything off the ground so we disbanded. However, in late 2010/early 2011 the state was part of a nationwide settlemen with some of the big banks related to mortgage issues, and the Attorney General’s Office set aside part of those settlement monies for grants to assist with the state’s mortgage crisis.  Through this granting source the law school was able to obtain the funds to get foreclosure mediation off the ground. And, once the funds came in we hired Tim to direct and build the program.

Our initial question was – how do we even get into the game?  In judicial foreclosure states it’s pretty easy to know how to do this.  Other non-judicial foreclosure states such as Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii have created statutory schemes requiring mediation before the trustee’s sale. Such legislation has been proposed in Arizona since 2008 or so, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. Thinking that the only sure fire mediation referral source would be a court, I spoke with the Pro-Se Clerk at the Bankruptcy Court and asked if a foreclosure mediation program might benefit the court. To my surprise he happened to be looking into ways to deal with pro-se bankruptcy filers who were filing for bankruptcy simply to hold up trustee’s sales. While bankruptcy can slow down the trustee’s sale process, the creditors typically are allowed to go forward with the sale when the court finds there’s no legal reason to keep it from going forward (again, the handy primer).  So far that’s been the vast majority of cases in the bankruptcy court. At the end of last summer we presented a foreclosure mediation proposal to the court. In this meeting the judges talked about the numerous cases where there clearly was a communication problem between the debtor and the mortgage servicers and/or holders, and they liked the idea. So, we entered into an agreement to report back after 25 referrals, at which time the court and the FMU would decide whether we should go forward with another 75 referrals.

My next post will present data about our first 25 referrals, which formed the basis of Tim’s presentation last week. And just so you know, we are going forward with the next 75 referrals.

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Wells Fargo Compounds Misbehavior with Retaliation

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Bank Closes Accounts of Critics

Editor’s Notes:  

Wells Fargo’s story has been as bad or worse than many of the stories that have been published about banks committing crimes (forgery), misrepresentations is court, and fraudulent foreclosures. But Wells escaped a lot of media attention even with mammoth fines and penalties imposed by enraged Judges. We shouldn’t be too surprised by all this bullying and intimidation — after all, it is even a huge problems in schools which makes one wonder what is happening in the homes.

Their strategy seems to be to say anything that gets the job done (foreclosure) regardless of the facts or the law. It starts off with them having their attorney represent them in court, proffering “facts” that are not in evidence and turn out to be completely untrue. More specifically, they tell the court and the borrower that they are the creditor and then later, when it turns out the representation was completely untrue, and it is time for the homeowners to get attorneys fees and costs, they tell the Judge that they made a mistake and that they are not really the creditor, just the servicer, through America’s Servicing Company, which is not even a legal entity but simply a department within the Bank.

Now they are striking back through their commercial banking operation finding excuses to close or freeze accounts of those organizations that are critical of Wells Fargo behavior. We can expect more of this bullying and intimidation, rather than less. I expect that the other big banks will start doing the same thing. We have already seen how our own effort here at LivingLies have been hampered in getting simple title reports, because the sources of this on-line data, while open to the public, often mislead any inquirer into “plans” that won’t give them the right data.

Matt Weidner has cataloged some of the events in the article below. Hat tip to him for the effort. The media problem will heat up against the banks when the investigative reporters finally get the point: the mortgages are invalid, there was no financial transaction between the parties recited on the “closing” documents, and the terms of repayment shown to the lender (pension funds etc., who advanced the money for the loans) were different from the terms shown to the borrower.

And when the media realizes that the money never followed the document trail from beginning to end the fun will really start. The transaction was between the homeowner and the pension funds through an undifferentiated commingled escrow account where there were no decisions on “bundling” (which never actually took place). It was just money in an account that was used to fund mortgages without getting a signature from the homeowner borrower on the actual transaction and without the investor lender knowing the true nature of the underwriting and funding process.

In order for these proceedings to start leaning toward the borrower, the borrower and their attorney must educate themselves enough to deny the debt, deny the default, deny the note, deny the mortgage and everything else that is being presumed by the would-be forecloser. It is the borrower’s job to to argue passionately and persuasively that there are material facts in issue on which the borrower is entitled to a fair hearing on the merits. Instead borrowers and attorneys are reading the pablum fed to them by the banks’ publicists and they are failing to object to misrepresentations in court without facts in evidence, failing to object to lack of foundation, competency of witness and hearsay.

By the time the case gets argued by the homeowner, it is already established in the Judge’s mind that you took a loan, it was from these people who are foreclosing or one of their affiliates, you failed to pay it and you defaulted on the terms of repayment. Now you want that same judge, with those thoughts in his/her head, to start ruling for you because some of the documents were improperly prepared. The biggest mistake homeowners make is trying to win the entire case in the first hearing or in their first pleading. Any good trial lawyer knows that is impossible. The pleading and argument of the homeowner should focus on denial of any facts that would support any lawsuit, foreclosure or sale. You have had lots of loans, but none of them were with these people or their predecessors. Thus the note was procured by trick (fraud in the execution) based upon false pretenses (Fraud in the inducement) and predatory lending practices (violations of TILA).

It was all a living lie. And instead of taking their just deserved punishment, Wells Fargo is leading the way to punish those who tell the truth. Brad Keiser who co-presented in our first national tour liked to quote George Orwell who said something along the lines of “In a world of lies, the most courageous act is to tell the truth.”

WOW- Writing Against The Banks Can Get You Punished…

 

By Matt Weidner

Scary stuff from Zombeck:

A wrap-up of stories and posts you might have missed or overlooked — the ones below the fold.

For quite some time Wells Fargo managed to stay below the media’s radar and let the other guys like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, for example, bear the brunt of consumer and activist outrage. Lately, it seems, they’ve had to prove that they’re equally nasty and contemptible as the others. Foreclosing on priests and temples; closing bank accounts without apparent reason; promoting and profiting from private prisons; and ripping off towns, states and counties with bid rigging that skimmed money slated for schools, hospitals, and nursing homes.

Wells Fargo can’t seem to get enough bad press these days. While working with the “any press is good press” theory may work for loud mouths like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, it’s not a strategy normally employed by most consumer based businesses.

In a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago I speculated that Wells Fargo had closed the bank accounts of ML-Implode’s Aaron Krowne out of retribution for Martin Andelman’s articles about Wells Fargo’s egregious and reprehensible track record in respect to homeowners and foreclosures. It’s important to note that Andelman blogs independently, is not paid by ML-Implode, and ML-Implode does not dictate or control what he writes. His blog, however, is hosted on ML-Implode. In essence, it would be like closing Arianna Huffington’s bank account because of something I wrote on Huffington Post.

Wells Fargo took particular offense, asserting that the headline was factually incorrect, but claimed that for privacy reasons they cannot disclose publicly the specifics behind the decision to close accounts. They asked that the title of the article be changed to not use the word “retaliation” and that somehow the original headline, “Wells Fargo Freezes Account in Retaliation,” was inaccurate since one of the articles mentioned, “Husband’s Suicide Yesterday, Wells Fargo to Evict Wife Tomorrow Anyway,” by Martin Andelman was written after they had made the decision to close the account. Andelman’s article was written on May 14 and Wells Fargo made the decision to close Krowne’s account on May 11.

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Getting the RIGHT Report: Rebutting the Presumptions That the Original Note and Transfers Had Any Legal Effect

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Editor’s Comment: The biggest problem to knocking the banks on their ass is the feeling deep down inside the homeowner that the loan is valid and so is the mortgage. So people are thinking in terms of buying time rather than winning the case. Lawyers are saying the same things to themselves even as they take your money to represent you which is why I started http://www.garfieldfirm.com — so we would have lawyers who are NOT thinking that way and to get hundreds of other firms to compete with passion in their hearts that the homeowner is the victim.

The current state of affairs is that in most cases, misguided Judges are forcing investors to take bad loans that do not conform with their agreement (e.g. cutoff required under Internal revenue Code and express PSA terms and conditions) in a process that  does not conform to the process of origination and transfer expressly stated in the PSA (as expressed in the prospectus and Pooling and Servicing Agreement), thus enabling the investment bank to throw the loss onto the investor in a newly fabricated (see Congress decision from June 8 in Alabama Appellate Court) — and the kicker is that investor knows nothing about the transaction or litigation and is presumed to have accepted the assignment of a non-existent loan. The borrower is being forced to pay on a non-existent loan or lose his or her house. And still the borrowers persist on thinking they are getting what they deserve, thus leaving the banks with the money while the investors and homeowners get nothing.

Only 2% of the mortgage loans are contested in any meaningful way and 80% go about it in the wrong way. I mean to change that 2% to 75% of the mortgages being contested, and reduce the number of mistakes such that only a small fraction of mortgage contests are done incorrectly.

Have you heard the term “Master Servicer”. Yes, well they are the ones actually orchestrating events on behalf of the investment bank that put up this illusion that we call securitization. They sold the pension funds on what? The pension funds advanced money to the investment banking firm which was placed into a super fund account from which closing money found its way to the closing table with the so-called borrower.

The real reports and accounting are those that are given to the creditor, not the borrower. The reports to the creditor come from the Master Servicer whereas the reports to the borrower come from the subservicer which doesn’t  have access to to creditor’s accounts so it is in no position to report, account or testify through affidavit or in person what the creditor’s ending balance is as of the day of the declaration of default or the day of the testimony. The subservicer’s proffer of testimony should be subject to voir dire in which they admit that there is a master servicer that keep the accounts for the creditor and the subservicer has no knowledge or access tot hat.

This is followed by an objection to the competency of the witness to testify as to anything other than transactions in which it received money from the borrower and transactions (never included) in which it paid out those moneys to the creditor.

Take great care here not to suddenly find yourself carrying the burden of proof on facts that are exclusively within the hands of the pretender or the agents of the pretender. Your motion should be directed at the incompetency of the witness to tesify as to the conclusion that there was a default and the fact that they declared the default without gaining access to the information from the Master Servicer. Hence the objection also to any documents being proffered to the court as evidence, since they clearly do not and cannot by definition establish the default. 

You don’t want to find youself in the position of having the Judge rule that the proffer of that evidence is sufficient for a prima facie case and that if you wish to rebut it you must come forward with proof of other payments. Since THEY are the party seeking affirmative relief, the burden should ALWAYS be on them to produce all relevant accounting and reports nefore they take the home away from a homeowner.

What the borrower and the Courts are getting are simple subservicer reports which amount to no more than a printout from a computer that may or may not have the right data, the right loan or the right starting figures. It may or may not have charges that are permissible or not permissible against the account. But the real information about the account balance is what the creditor is showing on its books and that information comes from the distribution reports and discovery of the accounting records of the Master Servicer and the Tax statements for the creditor.

But here is the kicker. The investment bank (Master Servicer) is NOT reporting the receipt of proceeds from insurance, credit default swaps, and other credit enhancements — not even to the investor. So they are manufacturing (fabricating) a loss that does not exist, at least in part. This is relevant to everything in a foreclosure including the identity of the creditor who is allowed to declare the default, and the identity of the creditor and the amount due so that real creditor can submit a real bid that is called a credit bid because it is the equivalent of the amount due ON THE ACCOUNT.

The magic sleight of hand trick being played is that the subservicer is giving the court an accounting of transactions with the alleged borrower when in fact the creditor is getting a completely different report, many of which show continuing payment from the subservicer or Master Servicer.

The borrower and borrower’s counsel are unaware and in most cases don’t even know enough to ask for these reports. The creditor is entitled to payment on his account — once and only once.  The fact is that insurance and credit default swaps are right there in the pooling and servicing agreements, and so are credit enhancements like overcollateralization and cross collateralization.

That is money that (a) should be reported and paid to the investor creditors and (b) allocated to the loan accounts’ principal reduction as an additional payment. In many cases the creditor’s balance is zero because the creditor has been paid off in total, settled or traded the bogus mortgage bonds for something else of value — which is to say that the “pool” or “trust” proffered by the attorney fro the pretender lender does not even exist anymore.

All this money came from “players” who knew the Wall Street game and were gambling with pension money, depositors money etc, contrary to law and common sense. In no way was any homeowner even mentioned by name much less offered the opportunity to look at the terms offered to the lender, which were substantially different that the terms offered to the homeowner. The homeowners’ signature on “loan papers” was in actuality the issuance of a security that was traded furiously even if it was procured by fraud in the inducement and fraud in the execution.

The result of this frenzy is that through multiple channels including the Federal discount window and the TARP bailout, together with the maiden-lane disposal of toxic waste loans, the creditors were satisfied leaving the homeowner owing nothing to the creditor that loaned him the money. The insurer and the issuer of the credit default swap expressly waived any right to enforce against the homeowner.

AND the homeowner was the innocent bystander who thought he was borrowing money from one party, received it from another and then issued negotiable paper that was filled with misrepresentations. So the pretenders have nothing but dirty hands and the borrowers are clean.

So there is an obligation out there that the homeowner might owe — but the debt that was created at the time of receipt of the funds was never described in any document. In fact, the debt described in the promissory note and mortgage never arose because there was no loan transaction between the homeowner and the originator. This actual debt arising out of an actual transaction in which money was received by or on behalf of the borrower came from a pipeline outside the transactions described in the origination documents and outside the scope of transactions referred to in allonges, assignments and endorsements all fabricated in order to keep the Judge’s eye on the wrong ball.

The real transaction was NOT subject to, described in or referred to in any deed of trust or mortgage and therefore was not secured. If not secured, no valid foreclosure could occur without some sort of waiver by the homeowner that was clear and unequivocal or some order of the court based upon a judicial proceeding in which the terms of the loan are established by court order as of a date that the order says it is effective. Every document relied upon by the pretender lenders was a lie. It described transactions that never occurred. Thus every foreclosure based upon such documents was also a lie.

Interrogatories, requests for Admission and especially requests to produce (not just the documents but the financial records showing that consideration was paid by the party or to the party stated in the instrument), Motions to set aside, vacate, recuse, remove counsel, sanctions, discovery, and reconsideration are being filed to (a) obtain relief and (b) allow the record to be created for appellate review. Without a good record on appeal, the appellate court is hamstrung to affirm a decision it thinks was wrong.

Distribution reports are your first clue that they left out an accounting that they had and we didn’t and they refused to give up. Notice that WF is the party reporting and disclaims the accuracy. Then who DOES know what went on, where are they and was the loan balance even computed on the day that the loan was declared in default — i.e., what did the CREDITOR (not the subservicer) show as the balance due? Getting the “accounting” from the subservicer is useless. If you had 10 children and you gave them each $100 with the responsibility to account for the money, why would you only take the accounting from one of them?

 

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Information vs. Evidence: Challenge to Affidavit in Support of Summary Judgment

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Editor’s Comment:

I’ll be appearing soon at one of Darrell Blomberg’s Strategy Meetings (which take place every Tuesday evening at Macayo Restaurant in Central Phoenix) to do a session on evidence on June 19. The analysis below is the type of thing I do to support lawyers and litigants when the pretender lender submits a bogus “affidavit” in support of some action, usually a Motion for Summary Judgment. Among other things this is what we’ll be talking about on June 19 and this will be subject of much more discussion on July 26 at my 1/2 day seminar overview for Lawyers.

Analysis of Declaration in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment

1. “These facts are personally known to me to be true.” How does he know them? — was he there, did he hear, did he see or was he told and he believes them and therefore he means “personally known” as meaning he knows the people who told him the facts. NOTE: if he was a supervisor of a specific department dealing with the past factual issues leading up to the foreclosure and related issues, and if he can prove that the documents or statements were made in the ordinary course of business and at that time they had no fear or thought of being used in litigation, then it MIGHT be an exception to the hearsay rule.
2. Otherwise anything he was told or shown are excluded because they (OBJECTION:) lack FOUNDATION because he is not a competent witness to establish the authenticity of the document nor the truth of the matters asserted therein.
3. In this case the entire affidavit should be struck, it should not be considered to support the motion for summary judgment, and the motion for summary judgment MUST be denied unless they have other affidavits timely filed from people who can establish that they have personal knowledge.
4. He is the President which most likely means that he had nothing to do with any of the facts of this case and only became aware of the the existence of the case when he was called to execute an affidavit. In fact he identifies himself as the President of a company whose function was to be (1) the “foreclosure trustee” and (2) limited signing agent for the beneficiary under “the deed of trust” without identifying the deed of trust.
5. Unless he was doing the work himself he is admitting that he is relying upon the word and work of others and is subject to a hearsay objection.
6. The business records exclusion to the hearsay rule must be proven by the proponent of the exemption, not the objector which means he must prove with documents and testimony how the facts upon which he is testifying became known to him in the ordinary course of business which means that he reviews all documents as they come in, which of course he does not. Neither does he perform the work involved. The trap door to avoid here is that even if he were to satisfy all the requirements, which he obviously cannot, his knowledge is ALL limited to events that occurred before the decision was made to foreclose and there fore the receipt of an accounting from the sub-servicer, no account from the master-servicer and no accounting or instruction or authority from the creditor to go ahead with the foreclosure and submit a credit bid in the name of the identified creditor.
7. Since his company is the “foreclosure trustee” he is admitting that they only have knowledge on their own as to matter that occurred AFTER they received the file or instructions and we ought to know which it was — the file or the instructions.
8. Since he identifies his company as the foreclosure trustee he is admitting that the sole purpose of the company, even though it was called a trustee, was to foreclose on the property after the substitution of trustee.
9. They were ordered to foreclose and NOT to perform due diligence or to take any action to protect BOTH the homeowner and the purported creditor, who in this case is a stranger to the transaction as required by statute.
10. The Trustee is a substitute for the court and if the facts are in dispute the trustee has no power to decide the merits of competing claims (trustee is a not a special master who can conduct hearings and rule on evidence or make recommendations of findings to the court), which means that the his company was duty bound, upon learning of competing claims, to take the matter to court if the parties could not resolve their differences.
11. Specifically the “trustee” should have filed an interpleader action in which the trustee would have stated that they had no stake in the transaction (something that was untrue since they were a controlled or owned entity by the party pretending to be the creditor) and that that there is a dispute of facts concerning the procedure and substance of the foreclosure and that the court must rule on the competing claims of the parties — after BOTH have submitting pleadings stating their positions and then proving the claims in accordance with the rules of civil procedure, due process and the rules of evidence and the doctrines concerning the burden of proof.
12. If you sign this response as an affidavit, then the burden shifts to them to show that they are truly a trustee and not just an agent of the pretender creditor.
13. Since the party seeking affirmative relief is the pretender creditor seeking to take the house using a credit bid instead of cash when they are not the creditor, the pretender creditor would be required first to submit the pleading and exhibits upon which they depend, and second the homeowner would be required to file responsive pleading — motion to dismiss, motion to strike, etc. or answer, affirmative defenses and counterclaim.
14. He identifies the COMPANY as the limited signing agent for the beneficiary. There is no definition of limited signing agent. A review of statutes and common law reveals that this term has never been used in any legal document or case EXCEPT where it refers to a notary who is identified by name and license number. It does NOT refer to the authority of any company or person to sign on behalf of another party or company without a separate document providing said authority properly executed and binding under the laws of the state in which the grantor is located and the laws in which the document is to be used. LIke MERS was a naked nominee and the “lender” was a “naked nominee” a limited signing agent is a naked nominee meaning, in the parlance of the industry a bankruptcy remote vehicle that will perform acts which might otherwise subject the principals to criminal or civil liability. It is also used to conceal the the identity of the principals.
15. Which deed of trust? The one allegedly executed by the homeowner which may or may not be the one produced as the original but without scrutiny cannot be authenticated as anything more than a fabricated document utilizing modern technology and a color printer?
16. “I have personally reviewed the files.” This phrase has been repeatedly thrown out as establishing the business record exception. The fact  is that somehow he saw documents without establishing how they came into his possession and who the parties are (why are THEY not testifying?) and what knowledge THEY had, who prepared the documents in the file, what security was used for the posting of data to the files, and what security was employed in maintaining the security of the files?
17. This is layers upon layers of hearsay without any valid exemption. Motion to strike the affidavit.
18. Motion to remove NDEX as trustee,
19. Motion to void the substitution of trustee and install the original trustee as the trustee on the deed of trust or some other actually independent party.
20. Objection in title registry office to the recording of the substitution of trustee because they knew that NDEX was not a trustee but rather was the foreclosure agent, as admitted by this affidavit, masquerading as the substituted trustee
21. Motion for sanctions and cause of action for slander of title for filing false substitution of trustee directed at parties named on the substitution of trustee and the parties who prepared it and the lawyers who presented it knowing that it was a falsified, fabricated and forged fraudulent document.
22. “My experience as the officer of the company provides the foundation for my knowledge referenced herein.” This is an outright admission and should be the leading the point. He is saying that he has been in the business a long time so looking at the the records of the homeowner in this case is like looking at the records of thousands of others where he made the same decision (but we must emphasize that he undoubtedly did not and specifically does not say that he reviewed other documents). It is an admission that he has NO PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE of the documents, that therefore the affidavit is worthless, and that therefore the affidavit is not the required foundation for admission of the documents because he, the affiant is not a  competent witness (look up competent witness in CA statutes and common law requiring OATH, PERSONAL perception sight,hearing etc., MEMORY and the ABILITY to COMMUNICATE. In fact, he has disqualified his entire firm as a foundation witness since by definition (foreclosure trustee) they received the documents after the decision was made by parties outside the chain of title to foreclose.
23. “I have personal knowledge of the accuracy of the records.” He already said he doesn’t and that he (a) received the documents when they were to be foreclosed and (b) relied upon his experience when he reviewed the documents, but still fails to state who prepared the data or documents, how they were kept, when they were kept, where they were kept and who was involved. ALl of this could be easily resolved had they chosen the people who actually DID have knowledge, But they didn’t do that. Why? Because either those people refuse to testify to the facts that they want or those people are MIA after being downsized.
24. At no time does he say that his company acted as the servicer, creditor, or master servicer. He merely says that they received data and documents from unknown undisclosed sources AFTER the decision to foreclose was already made. By definition neither he nor his company would be competent to testify to facts or documents or data that occurred PRIOR to the time that his company was the “foreclosure trustee”
25. There is no reason to believe that any unauthorized person had access. Nor is there any reason to believe that unauthorized access didn’t occur on a regular basis, just like MERS.
26. The rest of the paragraphs say what I said above — he knows nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing and was never in any contract with borrower or anyone else as a servicer, never handled any money, and posting, or anything else.
27. Paragraph 16 is a particularly interesting because to corroborates the argument that they were NOT acting as trustee, they were acting as agent. He says that his company acts ONLY as a limited signatory agent to sign and record the Notice of Default (why doesn’t the creditor do that if this company is not the service nor the conduit or collector of any funds) and that the ONLY other function was to serve as “foreclosure trustee.”
28.  The last paragraph says it all. They foreclosed because they acted on instructions from the loan servicer without any regard for what the homeowner had to say in objection to the allegations of the loan servicer. (see discussion on interpleader above).

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Information vs. Evidence

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Editor’s Comment:

I’ll be appearing soon at one of Darrell Blomberg’s Strategy Meetings (which take place every Tuesday evening at Macayo Restaurant in Central Phoenix) to do a session on evidence. And in fact, I am thinking about a half-day seminar on evidence, with Darrell as a co-presenter, he may not be a lawyer but he gets it — there is a huge difference between information (data) and evidence. And there is a huge difference between evidence and admissible evidence. And in discovery, you have the right to pursue information in interrogatories, requests for admissions and requests to produce for INFORMATION that might lead to the “discovery” of admissible evidence.

I am adding this overview into the 2d edition Workbook, Treatise and Practice manual. I want to get this lesson out to lawyers and litigants as quickly as possible. And the reason is that these people have forgotten or never knew the difference and they certainly are confused about the procedure. Take a look at the appeals court decisions that slap down the borrower. There is almost always a statement in the opinion that appellant argues XYZ but we don’t see X or Y in the record. In the absence of X and Y being in the record, the appellate court has no authority to find Z and rule in favor of the appellant (borrower).

Every appellate case I have read that ruled against the homeowner falls into this category. Every one of them has a recitation of “facts”, “history” or “background” that is simply untrue but has been made part of the record and which is regarded as “evidence” because it is in the record.

Example: The primary recital in these appeals usually says something like, “The appellant is John Jones. John Jones applied for and received a loan from Mama’s Money Farm on October 16, 2008 in the amount of $869,000. Jones promised to repay the money in monthly installments as set in the promissory note and mortgage (or Deed of Trust) which he signed. Wells Fraudgo is the current holder of that note and seeks enforcement through the power of sale (or in judicial states, through a foreclosure lawsuit) seeking collection of the money due and sale of the home at auction to the extent that the borrower is unable to make the required payments. Jones defaulted on the note by failing to comply with the schedule of payments in the note he executed for the loan he received, to wit: he stopped making the payments that were due under the note on January 1, 2009.”

How did this recital get into the record so that the appellate court could include it in its opinion justifying the affirmation of the trial court’s decision throwing the borrower out of court and even telling the borrower they were “vexatious” etc (Madison v. MERS et al see previous blog post 6-6-2012 entitled “They Will Get You on Procedure Every time”)?  It got there without any evidentiary hearing or without any hearing in which the borrower’s claims and defenses could be given a fair hearing, with full rights of discovery etc.

This could only happen if the litigant was quiet while the lawyer for the pretender lender “proffered” these facts in his opening narrative of each hearing and the homeowner or his attorney failed to object immediately. “Wait your turn” is the polite way of saying let the other guy talk. But if you let the other guy talk and THEN bring up your defenses and claims, your procedural objections, the Judge has already formulated an opinion about the nature of this case. You might buy some time with procedural irregularities but you won’t win the case, force the other side into a settlement, mediation or modification and you certainly won’t get rid of the mortgage that is recorded in the county title registry.

You will be treated like a deadbeat because you have inadvertently confessed to being a dead beat. You have agreed, without realizing you agreed, that everything the lawyer for the pretender lender has said is true, which means that the statements (proffers) of the other lawyer are now evidence in the record, and the rest of the case was you saying “yes but….”

Trial note 101: Never let go of the narrative regardless of who is speaking but always be polite, courteous and respectful in your words even if you make various faces and expressions that the court reporter is missing. Oh yes — if you want a record on appeal you need a court reporter. Your statements about what the Judge said or what happened in court in your appellate brief is useless and will be properly disregarded by any court reviewing the actions in the court below.

So here is what you want the appellate court to see in the record. First a Notice of filing of everything you would offer into evidence that might be rejected by the court. This would include my expert declaration (although I think we found a couple more people with the right credentials to survive as experts located in Maryland) and all exhibits to the reports, opinions and affidavits that you have showing that that you have some reason (not necessarily proof) for denying the debt, denying the default, denying the note, denying the mortgage and denying that the pretender lender is either the lender or anyone who purchased the loan.

Second, a Motion to set discovery schedule together with a SHORT version of your discovery requests.

Third, a transcript showing continual interruptions with proper objections like “Objection your Honor, we demand proof of authority to represent. In cases all over the country this pretender lender and others are represented by lawyers who never speak with the client, don’t get retained by the client and who only know that someone gave them a file that was recently minted from the fabrication factory of fake, forged and fraudulent documents.”

“Objection your honor, counsel is attempting to proffer facts that are not in evidence and that are vehemently denied by the homeowner who is being improperly identified as the borrower.”

“Objection your honor, counsel is attempting to proffer facts or even testify as to matters that are not in the record. If counsel wants to testify then let’s get him sworn in and put in a witness chair where I can cross examine him as to the foundation for his pretender personal knowledge regarding this bogus loan and fraudulent foreclosure.”

Objection: “Counsel is attempting to get into the record that which he could never get into evidence were this an evidentiary hearing. The homeowner vehemently denies that the application on file was filled out by him or that he authorized it. My client denies the signature is valid either because it was forged or it was procured by fraud in the execution in which case he thought he was signing something else while hands covered the true nature of the document.”

“Objection your honor.  Counsel is trying to proffer information into the record that will be perceived as evidence. My client rejects that recital and denies that he ever received a loan from Mama’s Loan Kitchen, denies that the promissory note correctly recited the terms of the loan and therefore denies that the mortgage lien was properly perfected. He further denies that there was any default on any loan and therefore denies that any assignment from Mama to Fraudgo could have been valid. He further denies that the assignments stating “for value received” involved any transaction where any value was received and therefore failed for lack of consideration. He further denies that even if the documents relied upon by the Fraudgo were valid, there would still be no default because the creditor was being paid without interruption according to their very own Pooling and Servicing Agreement and he denies there ever was a meeting of the minds (although the Fraudgo agents from Mama’s Money Kitchen made it appear to the homeowner that the proper disclosures were made, that the lender agreed to these terms) when in fact the lender (the actual source of funds) agreed to an entirely different set of terms for repayment.”

“Your honor it is our position that the promissory note described a transaction that never occurred and that the mortgage was an encumbrance based upon the false representations of the note. This is like one lying and the other swearing to it. If they are not afraid of proving their allegations then by all means we don’t want to deprive the pretender lender of an opportunity to be heard in court. But the homeowner is entitled to the same consideration under the requirements of due process. The homeowner denies that he failed to make any payment that was due and he denies that the obligation to the real lenders (creditors) in this case is currently in default.”

Evidence is whatever the Court lets in as evidence in which case the court says it is letting the information in as evidence to prove that ABC happened. Or, as is usually the case in these foreclosure cases, evidence comes from silence of the lambs.

So if you want to box in the trial judge and the appellate court let there be a record that shows you followed the rules, there were genuine issues of material fact and the trial court still would not allow the homeowner to proceed. That’s enough to eventually get a ruling that allows discovery to proceed.   And Discovery is the magic key to the kingdom of settlement — but probably not until after 5-6 motions to compel answers or better answers to our discovery requests.

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Whistleblower Bangs BofA for $14.5 million in Mortgage Case

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Editor’s Comment:

Countrywide Financial Inflated Appraisals 

For people in law enforcement this is a time when it gets to be fun going after the big guys.  Being arrogant to the highest degree going into this mortgage mess you can only imagine the ego of the Titans of Wall Street after making trillions of dollars in turning the entire mortgage process on its head and reversing all common sense criteria in underwriting loans.

The rats are leaving the ship by the thousands, whether they want to or not.  There is hardly a day that goes by that some former employee of Countrywide, Bank of America, Chase, Citi or Wells Fargo does not reveal that they were under instructions to violate regulations and law.

The inflation of appraisals of the securities and the inflation of the homes themselves was the key to the success of the Wall Street plan.  This plan was devoted to sucking out as much o the liquidity in the marketplace as they could possibly achieve.  This in itself is a reversal of even the purpose of allowing Wall Street to exist.  Wall Street’s mandate is to provide liquidity in the marketplace and not taking it away.  Instead they took the equivalent of the gross domestic product of several countries combined (including the United States) and converted the proceeds to “trading profits”.

It is good that these whistleblowers are appearing and it’s even good they are making so much money.  This will encourage other whistleblowers and will encourage those attorneys who thought mortgage litigation was beneath them.  As these cases proceed we will see more and more understandable facts emerge that explain the tragic reversal of our financial model and the historic consequences to most of the major countries of the world.

Bank of America Whistleblower Receives $14.5 million in Mortgage Case

By Rick Rothacker

(Reuters) – A former home appraiser will receive $14.5 million as part of a whistleblower lawsuit that accused subprime lender Countrywide Financial of inflating appraisals on government-insured loans, his attorneys said Tuesday.

Kyle Lagow’s lawsuit sparked an investigation that culminated in a $1 billion settlement announced in February between Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and the U.S. Justice Department over allegations of mortgage fraud at Countrywide, his attorneys said in a news release. Bank of America bought Countrywide in 2008.

Lagow’s suit was one of five whistleblower complaints that were folded into the $25 billion national mortgage settlement that state and federal officials reached with Bank of America and four other lenders this year. His suit was unsealed in February, but the amount of his settlement had not been disclosed.

Gregory Mackler, a whistleblower who challenged Bank of America’s handling of the government’s HAMP mortgage modification program, has also finalized a settlement, said Shayne Stevenson, an attorney with the Hagens Berman law firm, which represented both whistleblowers. Stevenson declined to comment on Mackler’s settlement amount.

The complaints were brought under a whistleblower provision in the U.S. False Claims Act, which allows private individuals with knowledge of wrongdoing to bring suits on behalf of the government and share in the proceeds of any settlement.

Both Lagow and Mackler lost their jobs after raising concerns about practices at their companies and faced difficult times awaiting settlements, Stevenson said. Lagow, who worked in a Countrywide appraisal unit, filed his suit in 2009; Mackler, who worked at a firm called Urban Lending Solutions, brought his case in 2011.

“These guys are inspirational,” Stevenson said. “They both did the right thing. They should inspire other people to come forward.”

Bank of America declined to comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, which handled the Bank of America settlement, also declined to comment.

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