If you thought robo signing was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The website 4ClosureFraud presents the gory details of a potential major new front in the foreclosure mess. A Pennsylvania foreclosure mill, Goldbeck McCafferty & McKeever, is accused by Patrick Loughren of allowing non-attorneys to file and prosecute foreclosures. A DailyFinance story gives the overview:
Two Pennsylvania cases, one state and one federal, have exposed new types of document problems in foreclosure cases. One of the cases has potentially transformative consequences for thousands of troubled Pennsylvania homeowners. At the center of each is the same law firm: Goldbeck McCafferty & McKeever (GMM)…
As long as a lawyer supervises foreclosure filings, and at least reads them before they’re submitted to the court, that is acceptable. But Loughren is suing because all three named partners of GMM, Joseph Goldbeck, Gary McCafferty and Michael McKeever, have admitted under oath — during depositions last September and in a separate case in December 2009 — that no attorney ever read the filings. The partners made clear that the practice has gone on for the past several years.
If Loughren prevails, this case will prove to be vastly more significant than robo-signing.
Robo signing, while a fraud on the court, does not necessarily invalidate the underlying legal action. Even a punitive judge is far more likely to take action against the lawyers involved in the robo signing or to reject the new corrected affidavits and require them to restart the foreclosure action afresh than dismiss the case with prejudice. Only if the affidavits or other documents were submitted in error would it inevitably disrupt the foreclosure, and in those cases, it OUGHT to present a problem to the party trying to foreclose.
The practice of law by non-lawyers is a far more serious matter. In Pennsylvania it is a crime. In the case against GMM and its apparently unsupervised paralegals, the plaintiff is seeking disgorgement of falsely billed “attorney’s fees”.
But even more important, the lack of attorney involvement would render the foreclosures void. Pennsylvania courts have found “proceedings commenced by persons unauthorized to practice law are a nullity”. Federal courts interpreting Pennsylvania law have supported this point of view.
If Loughren succeeds, the ramifications would be wideranging. For GMM foreclosures, it would cloud the title of the properties sold. The parties who lost their homes could seek recourse. It is unlikely they could reverse the foreclosures. As Bob Lawless noted at Credit Slips:
The law, however, strongly protects the finality of past foreclosure sales.
At first, these rules might seem unfair. Why should the law protect old court proceedings that have been tainted by mistake or, even worse, fraud? The answer, of course, is for the instrumental reason that a court system could not operate where every old judgment was open to attack. Losing parties will almost always feel the judge make a mistake or the opposing party misled the court through half-truths or outright lies. Before a court enters final judgment, procedural rules and court appeals are designed to maximize the possibility the truth will win out and to minimize the possibility of judicial error. The law imposes a very heavy burden on those seeking to attack final court judgments.
The same ideas strongly protect the finality of a court’s foreclosure judgment. The foreclosure judgment, however, is only an interim step to the ultimate disposition of the property at the foreclosure sale and the transfer of the deed. Now, third party rights will come into play, and the need for finality becomes even stronger. If foreclosure deeds were subject to attack, at worse we might have no bidders at the sale, and at best we would have drastically lower prices. Even if the successful purchaser at the foreclosure sale is the lender, it will be selling later to a third party, and we will have the same need for finality.
For these reasons, and not surprisingly, most every (or maybe even every–I’ll let someone else do the 50-state survey) state provides the strongest possible finality protections for deeds obtained through foreclosure sales.
But that does not mean the borrowers do not have other avenues. The logical targets are the foreclosure mills, and perhaps most important, the servicers and trustees. And per the lawsuit:
Plaintiff avers, on information and belief, that the “clients” of the non-lawyers – consisting of banks, loan servicers, REMIC trusts, and other creditors – are all aware that the non-lawyers are engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. The individuals employed at the entities (i.e., at the “clients”) all interact with the Non-Lawyer-Defendants on a day-to-day basis via e-mail and phone and they are aware that the Non-Lawyers are responsile for preparing, signing and filing these foreclosure cases and that the cases are being filed without attorney review.
Proving that the clients knew the paralegals were not supervised might be a stretch, but I suspect that the charge is accurate, particularly since as 4ClosureFraud points out, Bank of America was involved in a case where GMM staff admitted to the lack of attorney supervision and did nothing:
Loughren notes that in both cases involving the partners’ testimony about the practice, Bank of America (BAC) was the foreclosing bank. It was actually present during the December 2009 trial when the admissions were first made. Loughren points out that BofA’s representative at that trial, John Smith, is himself a lawyer, and so presumably understood the legal significance of GMM’s admission.
Other BofA employees surely learned about the practice too, given that the December case was an effort by the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee to sanction both the bank and GMM for misconduct, and evidence submitted for it showed the involvement of “high-ranking” BofA people not normally involved in a foreclosure, such as its assistant general counsel.
So why is this such a big deal? Non-lawyers practicing law is impermissible in other states.
Most foreclosure mills are run on the same template: impossibly high staff to attorney ratios, 90 or 100 to every attorney. The ratios alone make meaningful supervision impossible. And this high leverage wasn’t due solely to partner greed. Some foreclosure mills, contrary to the laws of many states, had private equity funds as investors. And other foreclosure mills were keen to secure PE monies. So most industry incumbents had the same profile: an extraordinarily high staff to partner ratio, with standardized processes to maximize profits.
As a result, just as with the robo signers, it appears likely that documents were signed improperly. Matt Weidner has examples of signatures from an Ohio law firm by attorney Edward M. Kochalski that are so different that it is pretty implausible that one person signed them all. But here, the ramifications are far more serious.
The Loughren complaint looks solid and has detailed factual allegations.
Patrick J Loughren Complaint in Equity on Non-Attorneys Filing and Prosecuting Foreclosures
So where have the state bar associations been? It’s appalling that there have been no sanctions or disbarments over the robo signing scandal. We need to see some lawyers lose their licenses, or better yet, their freedom. Otherwise, it will be clear that the legal profession is siding with its meal tickets rather than the rule of law.
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Yet another critical piece of evidence for the already massive pile: There is absolutely no legality or legitimacy whatsoever in this bank mortgage-based land dispensation.
It is manifest nonsense to even try to claim the homeowner has any moral or legal relationship with anyone but the local government, to whom he owes property taxes, and the community, to whom he owes his good stewardship of the property.
Beyond that, to pay a cent to the banks, e.g. to keep paying on an invalid mortgage, is simply to throw money into a meaningless void.
So just a quick recap:
1. The Bailout itself strips the banks of any and all valid right to exist, period. They’re history’s worst robbers, nothing more and nothing less. No citizen could possibly owe them anything.
2. The failure to convey the title legally converts the mortgage to an unsecured loan in 45 states, and renders the MBS, which we already knew were worth pennies on the dollar at best, literally worthless, since the trusts were never anything but pure fraud. So the former proves the invalidity of the mortgage for the legalistically minded, while the latter is further proof that the banks are all insolvent, and the Bailout was nothing but a monumental robbery committed by the government itself.
3. Even if one wanted to legally and/or morally argue that “the homeowner still owes somebody” on the mortgage, there’s no way to legally establish who that “somebody” might be. So I insist again that under such extreme circumstances (circumstances of course imposed unilaterally by the banks themselves), we should consider our legal obligation to be only to the local government and our moral obligation to be only to the community.
And again, even if in a particular case we could establish which bankster technically has a “right”, it would be irrelevant since through the immensity of their crimes all banksters have permanently forfeit all rights to anything from us.
4. And now, after MERS, after robo-signing, after forged notes and allonges, we learn that the foreclosures have also been criminally processed in this new way. And God knows how many other ways that we don’t yet know about.
How could anyone coherently argue that there’s any constructive way to deal with such absolutely incorrigible criminals? Or to coexist with them at all?
There’s really no alternative. Jubilate In Place, or else cave in and submit once and for all to history’s most larcenous tyranny and chaotic banana republic.
I think by now the call for debt jubilee and smashing the banks is the truly moderate, rational, conservative, law-seeking position, while any call to still temporize with the banks at all is the real call to riot.
A couple of interesting things occur to me. First, what the hell lawyer admits to the incorporated practice of law, failure to supervise, and allowing paralegals to practice? Dude, you are disbarred for ONE of those violations — all three? The ethics rules that protect the ability of your fellow lawyers to make a buck are the MOST important ones to the people who will DISBAR you. Dumb. Really dumb.
Second, I would take a very, very good look at the legal fees being charged against the foreclosure. Remember, at every step of the process, they charge their legal and court fees to the account as arrears, and then sometimes (depending on when the charges accrue) they will also charge interest on those legal fees. Does anyone want to take a bet on whether the fees were customary and appropriate for the work of a paralegal? Does anyone want to take a bet on whether these paralegals are certified, or whether they are essentially people off the street who can type?
Get them on the overbilling. Sure, it’s yet another ethics violation, but that is no big deal at this point (take a look at the client segregated account, if any, for a firm like this and I guarantee they have completely screwed it up). For the bank, if they knew that the paralegal was doing the work — regardless of whether they knew the paralegal was unsupervised — and they were billed for a lawyer’s time because they knew that it would be passed through to the mortgagor? THAT’S fraud.
Oh, first, apologies for missing the Court of Common Pleas case filed by Loughren in his own name in Allegheny County. It’s the first link in Yves’s main post:
CIVIL ACTION-EQUITY
NO. GD-10
COMPLAINT IN EQUITY
FiledbyPlaintiff, pro se
Patrick J. Loughren, Esquire
Billing fraud and mishandling of client segregated accounts (to use your terms) are disbarment offenses in most jurisdictions, above a certain aggregate dollar amount and/or number of client accounts. (In D.C. they are called “trust accounts.”)
Then, with reciprocal discipline, those attorneys would be disbarred in any other states and/or federal courts where they were licensed or admitted to practice.
Question is, did Loughren refer the GMM attorneys to the PA bar disciplinary committee? Bankr. J. Agresti did refer several attorneys to the bar for discipline in the DeAngelis case mentioned in the same Daily Finance posting.
correction: the state court case is the LAST link in the main post, it’s the scribd link at the end.
Oh yeah, I forgot: if the appropriate fee was $100, and they charged the account $500, and then charged interest on that amount? Could be usury.
No one seriously argues any more that MBS foreclosures aren’t infected by fraud: servicer fraud, attorney fraud, chain of title fraud. Nevertheless, we now have thousands (millions?) of foreclosed properties in or on their way to the hands of someone else. Can these buyers be bona fide purchasers in good faith under these circumstances? Only such purchasers are protected at common law. Do state statutes impose a different standard? I would not be so certain that buyers out of foreclosure are getting good title. Might be a good idea to wait for the Supreme Court to say so. Every good lawyer knows that law is not about justice but about order and finality. For non-lawyers this is pretty tough to swallow. Why should they tolerate law without justice? Only because it has been going on for roughly one thousand years.
One further problem: if one is now buying a house subject to an existing securitized mortgage, who owns that mortgage and has the right to collect the balance? The buyer relies on a mortgage payoff letter issued on behalf of the mortgage holder. Is that holder’s chain of title proper? Does the buyer’s title insurer have any idea? Every title insurer is and always has been undercapitalized and is now effectively insolvent if any serious volume of fraud claims begins to materialize. The foundation of organized society is the security of property claims. Once that security is questioned routine economic activity necessarily suffers. Sooner or later authority must impose finality on the mortgage mess. Up to now authority merely dithers, we are treated to bluffs from the securitization industry, silence from court authority, legal extend and pretend.
Re title insurance –
Say a new buyer from foreclosure obtains title insurance insuring the buyer’s (and not just the lender to the new buyer) interest in the property – okay, fine.
Then, what happens when a couple of years later, the new buyer seeks to sell the property – but the next prospective buyer is unable to obtain title insurance, since the title is still clouded ….
I bet most buyer’s obtain title insurance only to obtain financing – some do not even obtain a buyer’s policy at the same time and the policy protects only the new lender.
Shouldn’t properties with spotless titles get a premium when they’re put up for sale?
Imagine property A with a 20-year-old clean title in a resort area where speculation over the last decade was frenzied. Over half the nearby properties were turned, some numerous times. Prices are falling now but shouldn’t property A be able to claim above-market value on the basis of its unquestionable ownership?
Can the state bar organizations act own their own or does someone (a lawyer?) need to bring a compliant?
Is it possible to see if a compliant has been filed?
The borrower can bring a complaint, by filling out a form, perhaops providing documents. “Attorney X is lying, here is why..” At the very least, the Bar sends the debt collecting shit a letter asking him/her what’s up.
My question is how far will our Congress and this administration go to protect the banks? Clearly, the rule of law is of no importance to them or they would have taken action sooner. So is fraud admitted in a deposition okay? Are outright lies in court okay? Is fraudulent documentation and lying to the courts okay? Is the negation of state laws okay? Oh wait. We already have our answer – it’s “Yes. It’s all okay.”
I wait for the government of “the people” to finally “stand up” for the people. I think I’ll be waiting a very long time.
Whatever. The lawyer signs the pleading making him subject to sanctions if necessary. Who cares who drafts the rroutine pleadings, the lawyer signs it. We’re talking. Boilerplate documents not legal briefs. In illinois law students can prosecute traffic tickets and administrative Hearings for villages and seek fines up to tens of thousands of doollars. Perfectly legal. Get over it, there will be no jubilee. Pay you fricken mortgage already.
The lawyers appear not to have signed them. Look at the link I provided, the signatures from an Ohio foreclosure mill supposedly from one attorney are all over the map, clearly NOT from one person. Similarly, three partners from GMM, one the lead partner/major investor, admitted to not reviewing the filings. It appears both the form and the substance were not observed.
The law students have permission. Otherwise, we’re talking here about around half a dozen disbarment offenses. Every actual lawyer that I have ever dealt with – including some really low-rent guys – knows how to do signature by permission properly, and they are very careful about it. Again, lesser stuff you get sanctioned: corporate practice of law, failure to supervise on this kind of a scale, committing fraud on the court routinely — these three will be disbarred, not just sanctioned. In some states these are also crimes (misdemeanors).
We’re not talking about a jubilee: we’re talking about the destruction of the rule of law and rendering contracts essentially worthless. I assume you care about that? Perhaps not. But how do you feel about law practices being offshored to India? If no lawyer is required to oversee the “boilerplate,” as you so artfully call it, then what’s to stop the whole process from being shipped overseas?
PERHAPS now you understand why this is going to be a big deal to the state bar, and why even the court may take a very, very dim view of this behavior. Furthermore, as was pointed out in the article, there is a state law making such filings a nullity. If they are a nullity, the court never obtained jurisdiction of the defendant mortgagee.
Seriously. If you don’t read the article, kindly don’t be snotty.
Yves,
Let’s give credit to Abigail Field, the author of the original article at Daily Finance?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/thousands-of-pennsylvania-foreclosures-could-be-thrown-into-doub/19740497/
I only recently discovered her excellent, prolific work on foreclosure, and bookmarked her page so that I can check it daily:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/writers/abigail-field/
A second to raise a glass of sparkling water to Abigail Field, indeed!
When I saw this a few days ago, I asked around to see if it was as much as a big deal as I thought. Got the usual lobbyist/banking apologist ‘naw, minor.’
Which of course, meant Ms. Field was quite correct. Bigger than robo-signing.
I did link to her, but yes, this was good spadework.
The states need to think out of the box on this one.
At the least, showing up in court with funky documents shows contempt of the process. Indeed, contempt of the courts. Show cause hearing, zip, bang, $10,000 fine, pay the clerk. In Florida with around 100,000 foreclosures, assuming every last one is fraudpapered (a good assumption) that’s $1 billion. Not chicken feed. And so on across the country.
Fifty States Attorney Generals? Tobacco settlement? Um, maybe…
What is turning up is that the US has become a failed state gone rogue, run on the basis of massive crime extending all the way to top management (control fraud), board rooms (turning a blind eye), Congress (bribery, backroom deals), and even the Oval Office (lying to commit aggression, war crimes). Where does this all end? It is a stinking mess. There aren’t enough honest prosecutors or judges to prosecute and not enough prisons to hold the guilty.
Karl Denninger found in Pennsylvania’s 1968 Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law a clause that may provide a way to void the foreclosures. He blockquotes the following from the law:
(a) Any person who purchases or leases goods or services primarily for personal, family or household purposes and thereby suffers any ascertainable loss of money or property, real or personal, as a result of the use or employment by any person of a method, act or practice declared unlawful by section 3 of this act [§ 201-3], may bring a private action, to recover actual damages or one hundred dollars ($100), whichever is greater. The court may, in its discretion, award up to three times the actual damages sustained, but not less than one hundred dollars($100), and may provide such additional relief as it deems necessary or proper. The court may award to the plaintiff, in addition to other relief provided in this section, costs and reasonable attorney fees.
And then suggests that when “the fraudclosure is voided, the subsequent purchaser of that home who loses it as a consequence of the void action can sue for three times the amount of the purchase.”http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=174013
The question is if the 1968 UTPCPL provides the opportunity to void the foreclosure after the sale. What damages would arise to the new homeowners’ detriment? Workmens’ liens? I wonder if vulture debt collectors will take advantage of this, and buy foreclosures in order to then sue for treble damages?
——-
O/T
Matt Weidner posted: Important Commentary on Changes to UCC and Impact on Foreclosures– Ignored by Almost Everyone
http://mattweidnerlaw.com/blog/2010/12/important-commentary-on-changes-to-ucc-and-impact-on-foreclosures-ignored-by-almost-everyone/
——–
Yves, ForeclosureBlues has been copy/pasting your FC posts, with attribution:
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/will-thousands-of-foreclosures-be-voided-because-non-lawyers-prosecuted-them/
Are they paying the R/E taxes on the REO’s, with all I’m learning I think I know the answer ….
Ina Deaver (above) touched upon but didn’t actually state te problem here. The resolution, here, depends upon the integrity of and the willingness to procecute on these abuses/crimes. The relevant powers, the ABA and the Justice Department, need to find the integrity/cahones to clean house.
The justice department seems to have sold their soul. If the department cannot deal with this and other crimes, then they will have lost any future credibility. The coutry will soon devolve into a lawless mess.
Even the ABA’s news has a story on it.
Law Firm Accused of UPL, After Admittedly Filing Foreclosures Without Attorney Review
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_firm_accused_of_upl_after_admittedly_filing_foreclosures_without_attorn/
“Goldbeck McCafferty & McKeever has been accused of unauthorized practice of law because—as two of its name partners admitted in deposition—nonlawyers, at least in the past, routinely prepared and filed suit without attorney oversight, signing the purported filing attorney’s name themselves, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal and the the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.”
NC readers need to see this comment to the ABA Journal article kravitz linked to. I’m not sure of the protocol (given concerns over “scraping”), but the commenter was identified as William A. Roper, Jr. and his post was time-stamped just after 4 pm today:
“Dec 4, 2010 1:04 PM CST
“Readers, reporters and editors have long since forgotten that the firm named in this suit was at the center of the In Re Hill case which led to the collapse of Countrywide and which telegraphed today’s robo-perjury and foreclosure fraud scandal almost three years ago. A review of some of the primary materials in In Re Hill is appropriate:
“http://www.scribd.com/doc/40761878/In-Re-Hill-Transcript-of-20-Dec-2007-Hearing?in_collection=2711712
“http://www.scribd.com/doc/40762581/In-Re-Hill-the-Recreated-Letters?in_collection=2711712
“http://www.scribd.com/doc/41551941/In-Re-Hill-Memorandum-Opinion-and-Order-05-Oct-2010?in_collection=2711712
*
“Nor was In Re Hill the first occasion when a U.S. Court found it appropriate to sanction GMM and attorney Ledlie PUIDA. Consider the Bankruptcy Court’s In Re Ennis decision from 2006:
“http://www.scribd.com/doc/44629988/In-Re-Ennis-Memorandum-Opinion-and-Order-of-28-Jul-2006?in_collection=2703239
“Now, in December of 2010, we learn from the In Re Kemp case that BAC witnesses such as Linda DeMartini are asserting under oath that Countrywide NEVER DELIVERED the mortgage collateral to the mortgage trusts:
“http://www.scribd.com/doc/44619866/In-Re-Kemp-Decision-16-Nov-2010
“But BAC tells us that its witness was “mistaken” and that its outside counsel misunderstood its business. This is nothing more than business as usual at Countrywide/BAC where evidence fabrication, perjury and forgery are considered to be core competencies from which the firm derives a competitive advantage.
“The ABA Journal really needs to take a more aggressive editorial position reporting on the mortgage foreclosure fraud and helping the legal profession to take the steps necessary to accomplish the massive disbarment of foreclosure mill lawyers who have brought disgrace to the profession and our American system of justice.”
I was wondering whether BAC kept Countrywide’s servicer platform because it was so much better at screwing borrowers. Didn’t we read that BAC kept on the Countrywide servicer management and made efforts to combine BAC’s servicer processing onto Countrywide’s system?
Tanta’s post from January 2008 about In Re Hill quotes generously from the Gretchen Morgenson article about the case. Good synopsis. She gets into the weeds though, in trying to understand why the servicing platform came up with the overlooked charges they foisted onto Hill only after exiting bankruptcy, and writes:
This is why I get worked up over leaping to the conclusion that CFC actually wants to foreclose this borrower, wants to enough to do it the underhanded way (saving up a tax bill to snare the borrower with as soon as BK is discharged). I just don’t think they do want to. What they really want is just for the rest of the entire world, including a federal BK judge’s courtroom, to become another little department in the CFC business model, one that can be brought to understand that hey, this is the efficient way to do things, so get with the program
Turns Out Judges Don’t Like “Efficient” Servicers
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2008/01/turns-out-judges-dont-like-efficient.html
——
W.A. Roper had posted first comment on a post here last week, but it disappeared after I refreshed. I wasn’t sure if Yves scrubbed it or had lost it after correcting typos.
I looked thru these materials yesterday. As far as I could see, there is no case pending in “state” court. Patrick Loughren filed a case for a homeowner in U.S. District Court (federal court) W.D. PA (Pittsburgh). The other case, in which the Bankruptcy Judge entered the two very important orders, was in Bankr. W.D. PA, also a federal court. If somebody can find the “state” court action, I need to know, since I am a member of the PA bar (among others).
I correct this above, and also here. Yves linked to the state court action, pending in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas as case no. GD-10. Loughren sued in his own name, seeking an injunction against the non-lawyers in the GMM firm. Scribd is crap, IMHO, so I can’t get it to load quickly enough to find the date the friggin’ thing was filed. Also without having my own PDF of the document, I can’t determine whether he alleges that he referred charges to the PA bar, or when he filed the complaint in state court.
The Daily Finance item seems to me to link incorrectly to a U.S. District Court case (Robinson v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. et al.) in W.D. PA, which Loughren filed for one of his clients seeking to stop a foreclosure and seeking discovery relating to GMM’s criminal conduct. But that W.D. PA case does not name GMM as a defendant. The Daily Finance item also linked to two orders by the same bankruptcy judge (Agresti, J.) in which the judge nails the hell out of the law firm and did refer them to the PA bar.
The original source for the Daily Finance piece is this item in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_711489.html
“The chief bankruptcy judge for Western Pennsylvania sanctioned an attorney and her Philadelphia law firm for filing deceptive documents in a foreclosure proceeding and then lying about them in a case against a Monroeville woman.
The firm filed copies of three key letters created after the fact and never sent to the homeowner or her lawyer, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Agresti ruled. Under Agresti’s order last week, attorney Leslie A. Puida and the firm Goldbeck, McCafferty and McKeever must report to the Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court, which could impose penalties.
Puida could not be reached. The firm did not respond to a request for comment Monday. A partner in the firm told the judge it initiated practices and procedures to avoid a recurrence.
The reprimand stems from the case of Sharon D. Hill, who filed for bankruptcy as Countrywide Mortgage attempted to foreclose on her property. Puida, who represented Countrywide, filed copies of the letters saying the mortgage terms changed.
Hill could not be reached.
Agresti rejected a bankruptcy trustee’s recommendation to bar Puida from practice in federal court for a year and fine the law firm $50,000.
Agresti noted the Philadelphia firm lost $400,000 because of the case and Puida’s compensation was reduced considerably. He said a $50,000 penalty likely would not have “significant further deterrent effect.” If he imposed a greater penalty, it would risk putting the law firm out of business, the judge wrote.
Agresti said he was especially troubled by the fact that Puida and officials from the firm failed to accept full responsibility for their actions, and lied in court about the three re-created letters.
“The evidence that Puida lied was considerable” Agresti wrote, concluding she did not tell the truth about when she told Hill’s lawyer the letters were fabrications. He noted she was offered the opportunity during a recent hearing to “change her story,” but insisted she told the truth.
“This was not a shades-of-gray-type situation,” Agresti said.”
Property appraiser turned a blind eye to appraisal fraud. they saw it happening and never reported it. it was money in their coffer nowthe country is running out of money. next time dont steal from us. what comes around goes around i hope we all get our homes free like the chineese
can someone please tell me why if a lawyer shows up with falsified documents why the judge allows them to find the originals. they are in contempt of court
“The failure to convey the title legally converts the mortgage to an unsecured loan in 45 states,…”
Will someone PLEASE tell me or provide a link where I can find out the five states where the mortgage DOES NOT convert to an unsecured debt in failure to convey title. I’ve seen this posted in many forums, but NEVER see how this tidbit of info about 45 states was gained.
Anyone?
This is how Wells Fargo defrauded us. Instead of being held accountable, Wells Fargo’s attorneys demanded us to appear in front of the judge and show cause why Wells Fargo can’t foreclose our home based on fraudulent mortgage loan.
Wells Fargo originated us a fraudulent mortgage loan in 2005.
Wells Fargo’s fraudulent appraisal valued our home for $718,000.
Wells Fargo’s review appraisal valued our home for $475,000.
Nevada Attorney General’s Office suspended the appraiser’s license for committing appraisal fraud on our home in 2008.
We put $151,000 downpayment. Between 2005 and 2009 we paid Wells Fargo around $350,000.
On June 15, 2010, Wells Fargo still foreclosed our home, knowing that it is a Category C felony to make a mortgage loan and foreclose our home based on a fraudulent appraisal.
On November 3, Wells Fargo demanded us to appear in front of the Judge to state cause why Wells Fargo can’t foreclose our home based on fraudulent appraisal. We would like to invite you to attend the hearing.
Please sign the petition on our website. http://www.wellsfargomortgagefraud.com and let our voice to be heard.
I am only a person off the street who can type. Using paralegals in this manner is not an isolated issue practiced in Foreclosure law. During the years from 1999 until 2007, I retained an Allegheny County Lawyer whose office is also in the Grant Building. During that time his paralegal did most, if not all of his work and filings while he was President of the PA. Bar Association. If I had a complaint to file about my attorney I would have to file it with the Supreme Court Disciplinary Board of Pa. That would have meant that I would be filing it with members of my own attorney’s firm who sit on that Disciplinary board. It is my opinion that a disciplinary board should be far removed as in perhaps an adjacent state but same circuit to be beyond reproach and untainted.
Please let me add, I commend the three lawyers who admitted using the paralegals, now the laws may change or at best, we examine what doesn’t work . If lawyers admitted more wrong doing within their profession great things could begin to occur in all fields of law. Lawyers seldom admit wrong doing unless it is grossly wrong enough to make a case. I’m curious where this will go. Thank You for letting me comment.
Yves
Please contact me, via email, so I can forward some documents. You are currently using my Ohio document (linked and posted via Matt)