Daily News related to the Foreclosure Crisis

The biggest unpunished heist in human history - Max Keiser

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11/30/22

Mr. Cooper servicing unit accused of deceit in COVID loss mitigation
A pair of borrowers are suing Mr. Cooper for denying them a pandemic-related loss mitigation plan, accusing the firm's servicing unit of steering borrowers toward options which instead would benefit the company.

11/30/22

Business Records Clarity
The reports are produced by XYZ financial services (usually FiServ in conjunction with CoreLogic). *
The witness who is ostensibly employed by the company that has been designated as “Servicer” knows nothing about the location, existence, ownership, or authority over any account maintained in the name of the company (ABC BANk — usually US Bank, DBNTC or BONY) designated as a creditor.

11/29/22

LPOA: Creating the Illusion of Something Out of Nothing
A common practice employed by the banks and leave foreclosure mills that represent the banks is to use an instrument purporting to transfer an asset as the foundation for the truth of the matter asserted: that is, that the asset exists. This practice has been heavily litigated over hundreds of years.

11/27/22

Anti-Eviction Workshop with MAAPL & Guest, Alton King
We are seeing a huge uptick in planned evictions of people from their homes since the end of the eviction/foreclosure moratoriums and as we near the holidays. Come and hear Grace Ross, head of the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL), speak about how we can join together and fight back against evictions across the country. MAAPL has been successful at stopping 56/63 of the planned evictions in Massachusetts that have come to their attention in the past 9 months, including one which made national news recently, the case of Alton King. He had bees come to his rescue and stall an eviction in progress of his home last month! We will also hear from Occupy activists who participated in 2011 eviction blockades. Special guest Alton King will give us an update on his case and what he views as a war on the vulnerable by predatory institutions that is being waged in our nation's courts. To find out more, please go to https://apropertyownersnetwork.org/maapl-leading-fight or MAAPL.info . Zoom link to the Wed. Nov 30th event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84618079973

11/25/22

The great American ‘homewashing’ is happening under our noses
This is about a $1 trillion government-sponsored enterprise built upon a myth — the myth of the American home. It is also about reform on the way.

11/24/22

United States: Sixth Circuit Reaffirms Mortgagor's Right To Excess Proceeds In A Foreclosure Under Doctrine Of Equitable Title
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently issued an opinion reaffirming mortgagors' post-foreclosure rights to the equity built in their mortgaged property after the creditor's debt is paid in full. In Hall v. Meisner, 51 F.4th 185 (6th Cir 2022),

11/23/22

Enforcement of Discovery — Sanctions
The heart of foreclosure defense lies in arcane procedures that occur within the context of discovery during litigation in court. The premise is that neither the foreclosure attorney nor any identified claimant can or will answer questions about the core issues of any foreclosure case —- the existence, ownership and right to administer, collect or enforce then alleged debt.

11/22/22

Michael Hill, Associated Press is on to something HUGE! Zombie foreclosures
see

11/21/22

Why I always knew that “servicers” were not acting like “servicers” and “creditors” were not acting like “creditors”
Preface: When I received my extended MBA degree with the highest honors, I also taught and tutored other students in accounting and auditing. *
I recently received a response sent by SPS as the “servicer.” note again that SPS is owned by Credit Suisse, a commercial and investment bank located offshore. The homeowner was understandably confused. There was a reference to an “account history” but no reference to an “account” or “loan account.”

11/18/22

Press Release: Alton King Returns Home
On Friday, November 18, 2022, Alton King, a Black senior with a disability who had been wrongfully evicted from his Longmeadow, MA home, returned to his house for the first time in over a month. King said in a statement released to the media by the Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL), “I am excited to be back home. I am very satisfied that the Longmeadow Police have understood that I am not evicted physically from the home right now and report to me that they will be looking for the parties who claim that they have some rights to go back to the courts.” King’s case is currently under reconsideration by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. MAAPL has been working with other organizations to convince the SJC to reverse its decision in the original case. More details about the SJC’s original decision, and MAAPL’s response to the decision, are available here on the MAAPL website. You can read the full MAAPL Press Release below:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact(s): Mr. Alton King: (413) 250-0098; Grace Ross (MAAPL Director): (617) 291-5591 LOCATION: 49 Memery Lane, Longmeadow, MA 01106-2573 ALTON KING RETURNS HOME LONGMEADOW, MA, November 18, 2022 – Earlier today, Alton King, Jr. unlocked his home for the first time in over a month. Prior to doing so, King prioritized notifying the Longmeadow Police Department and ultimately gained entry with the assistance of a locksmith. King, though 80 years old, will swish jump shots… if you let him. After being out of his house for over a month, Mr. King was upbeat and praised the Longmeadow Police Department for their handling of today’s events:
“I am excited to be back home. I am very satisfied that the Longmeadow Police have understood that I am not evicted physically from the home right now and report to me that they will be looking for the parties who claim that they have some rights to go back to the courts.”
Sadly, the condition of Mr. King’s home, and the exact location of his possessions is still uncertain at this time. Mr. King conveyed the following after assessing his home for the first time in over a month:
“My home is not the way that I left it. We are creating a list of damages at this point. I still have a right to my belongings that are being illegally withheld by the moving company. They claim that it is the Sheriff’s office that is doing it. I expect those to be returned to me immediately. This is obviously not over, but today, justice prevailed.” [emphasis added]
Contrary to the disclosures by Sheriff Nick Cocchi, no legal eviction of Mr. Alton King from: 49 Memery Lane, Longmeadow, MA occurred on October 12, 2020. In fact, aside from confirming receipt, Sheriff Cocchi has still not responded to the ‘Open Letter’, dated and delivered to him on October 12, 2022. On the aforementioned day, Mr. King was unlawfully locked out of his house, and watched as much of his personal property was removed from his house. As of 6 p.m. today, some of Mr. King’s personal property still remains locked at Race Street Properties, 460 Race Street, Holyoke, MA.
Until today:
BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON As TRUSTEE on behalf of the registered holders of Alternative Loan Trust 2006-J7, Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2006-J7 (BNYM-J7)
had been ‘holding’ Mr. King’s home hostage for over a month. An unknown quantity of Mr. King’s personal possessions, removed by Race Street Properties on October 12, 2022, still remains unaccounted for.
1Race Street Properties, 460 Race Street, Holyoke, MA, which purports to be a ‘storage’ facility while not being legally registered with MA Division of Occupational Licensure (DOL). Also, Mr. King has not received a final inventory release from Race Street Properties for his ‘stored’ personal property as required by MGL Chapter 239 § 4.
The above-mentioned securitized trust (BNYM-J7) has: no legal existence, no trust founding documents on record with any Massachusetts Registries of Deeds, and has or is in the process of violating numerous Massachusetts laws and various Federal laws, including the anti-Ku Klux Klan Act, 42 U.S. c. §1981-88 (See ‘Open Letter’ to Sheriff Cocchi).
Today, Mr. King intends to return to his home so he may sleep in his own bed tonight and celebrate Thanksgiving with his family as he has for the last 18 years. Presently, the Bankruptcy Court has sole jurisdiction over this matter; the next hearing date for Mr. King is on December 13, 2022 at 10 a.m.
For other comments, clarifications, or questions, please contact:
Grace Ross, Coordinator of Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) (617) 291-5591 (c); Grace@GraceRoss.net
Please contact Jay Lively, Outreach & Media for general inquiries at (774) 521-6382 (c); jay.lively22@gmail.com
Posted in Current News, MAAPL in the News, Take Action! | Tagged Alton King, Eviction, Supreme Judicial Court | Leave a comment

11/18/22

Don’t ask for the true identity of the “holder of the note.” Ask instead for the identity of the holder in due course or the creditor.
The point is not the identity of the “holder” of the note. The point is the identity of the party who owns and maintains an unpaid loan account receivable that is due from you to that party. The problem with asking for the identity of the holder of the note is that there is a legal presumption that arises from the mere allegation of delivery of possession of the promissory note. *
The presumption is that (1) it was delivered by somebody who was authorized to make the delivery, (2) that the delivery came from someone who owned the note or had authority from the owner, (3) that it was accompanied by a grant of authority to enforce the promissory note and (4) that the new possessor accepted the delivery as the new holder in due course or new “holder.” Current American jurisprudence has magnified these presumptions as though they were on steroids. *
The last point is especially troublesome in the world of false claims of “securitization of debt.” It is one of those things that is so obvious you forget to ask. When (for example) U.S. Bank, as trustee, is named as the new possessor of the note or assignee of the mortgage lien, nobody thinks to ask whether U.S. Bank has actually executed any document or performed any action that indicated that it accepted the endorsement or assignment or delivery.

11/17/22

The “Debt” rabbit hole
Take care to distinguish what contract you’re talking about. If you receive money, the law says you must give it back unless it was payment for something or it was a gift. In that sense, the law imposes a contract on people even if they are not thinking about or writing a contract.

11/17/22

The Latest Digital Token Scheme from Hell: New York Fed Teams Up with Citigroup and Sullivan & Cromwell
Just two business days after the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and headlines swirled around the world suggesting it had used its crypto token to perpetuate a massive fraud reminiscent of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the New York Fed thought this would be an ideal time to announce it was launching a digital token pilot with the serial fraudster, Citigroup. (See here for the unintelligible, jargonized version from the New York Fed; here for the decrypted translation from CoinDesk; and here for a sampling of Citigroup’s rap sheet.)

11/16/22

FTX Was Creating Money Out of Thin Air Like the Fed; and Trading Its Own “Stock” Like the Wall Street Mega Banks in their Dark Pools
On June 10 of last year, Wall Street On Parade penned this headline: Seven Years after Michael Lewis Described on National TV How the U.S. Stock Market Is Rigged, SEC Chair Gensler Says He’s Going to Tackle Market Structure. Unfortunately for confidence in U.S. markets, that’s yet to happen. And it’s not just the fault of Gensler. The Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee that should be holding in-depth hearings on the most corrupted market structure since 1929 have opted instead to hold superficial hearings each time something blows up as a result of that corrupted market structure, but never actually get around to tackling the corrupt market structure itself.

11/16/22

'Zombie Debt': Homeowners face foreclosure on old mortgages
Rose Prophete thought the second mortgage loan on her Brooklyn home was resolved about a decade ago — until she received paperwork claiming she owed more than $130,000.
“I was shocked,” said Prophete, who refinanced her two-family home in 2006, six years after arriving from Haiti. "I don’t even know these people because they never contacted me. They never called me.”
Prophete is part of a wave of homeowners who say they were blindsided by the start of foreclosure actions on their homes over second loans that were taken out more than a decade ago. The trusts and mortgage loan servicers behind the actions say the loans were defaulted on years ago.
Some of these homeowners say they weren't even aware they had a second mortgage because of confusing loan structures. Others believed their second loans were rolled in with their first mortgage payments or forgiven. Typically, they say they had not received statements on their second loans for years as they paid down their first mortgages.
Now they're being told the loans weren't dead after all. Instead, they're what critics call “zombie debt” — old loans with new collection actions.

11/16/22

How to Defeat Claims of “Business Record Exception” to the Hearsay Rule.
It is the absence of evidence that becomes evidence of absence. Suppose you ask any litigator who has experience in defending foreclosure claims. In that case, they will tell you that there is absolutely no doubt that all current claims asserting the right to administer, collect and enforce the implied loan account due from the homeowner are entirely based upon documents introduced to the court as business records.

11/15/22

It is easy to blame judges for corruption, but it is more accurate to blame them for ignorance and arrogance.
Homeowners (and my readers, in particular) are completely correct in asserting at least the appearance of corruption by judges. Virtually all of them have their retirement invested partially or even mostly in funds that rely heavily on purchasing “Mortgage-Backed Securities.” Hence, if judges were to rule against the lawyers asserting representation of banks like “U.S. Bank as trustee…” (Blah blah), they would be ruling against the interest of their retirement.

11/14/22

Illegal legal Doctrine: The Homeowner Should Always Lose.” —How the courts paved the way to allow illegal foreclosures to be tried, retried and tried again
… the courts have been following an illegal doctrine for about 25 years. It is called “The Homeowner Should Always Lose.” This is closely related to the corollary doctrine of “False Foreclosure Claims Should be Allowed to Prevent Economic Disaster.”

11/11/22

Just because you see a picture of a duck doesn’t mean it can poop on your patio
Someone once asked me if “securitization” was actually a hologram. My answer was that it is a hologram of an empty paper bag. He ran with that and made millions defending homeowners. All he did was demand corroboration of the facts that the lawyer for the foreclosure mill wanted the court to presume from the apparent facial validity of the documents.
The apparent facial validity is the picture. It isn’t true, but it looks good — like a nice picture of a duck taken with a high-end camera.
So let’s take an example, which I lifted from a recent upload from Scott Staffne. As usual, it is an appeal that challenges the notion that someone who does not own the underlying obligation would be allowed to ask for property to be forcibly sold and the occupants dispossessed.
The answer, of course, as any law professor will tell you is that there are specific provisions in the law to prevent that from happening. But the courts are doing it anyway, and the appellate courts keep dodging the issue as though something terrible would happen if they allowed the premise of the modern foreclosure to be challenged, as is required to be allowed under the U.S. Constitution.

11/10/22

Now that the election is over, start writing to senators and representatives in state and federal government.
I am proposing that homeowners start petitions and complaints to government agencies and to US Senators US Representatives, State Senators, and State Representatives. With the election over, they have the time to do their job instead of focusing on getting elected or re-elected. I have been corresponding with activists who are doing exactly that and I was drawn into the effort. So here is part of my correspondence with one of them:

11/10/22

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of FDCPA and FCRA Claims Finding Collection Efforts Proper Despite Plaintiff’s Dismissal from Foreclosure Action; No In Macris v. Specialized Loan Servicing, LLC, 2022 WL 16727611 (2d Cir. Nov. 7, 2022), the Second Circuit upheld summary judgment for a mortgage servicer, holding that the plaintiff could not pursue claims under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) for the reporting and collection efforts of his mortgage note.

11/09/22

OCTOBER 2022 U.S. FORECLOSURE ACTIVITY INCREASES 57 PERCENT FROM OCTOBER 2021
Completed Foreclosures (REOs) Increase by 18 Percent, While Foreclosure Starts Remain Flat IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ATTOM, a leading curator of real estate data nationwide for land and property data, today released its October 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows there were a total of 32,376 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions – up 57 percent from a year ago, but only up 2 percent from the prior month.

11/09/22

How Wall Street escaped most liability for blatant violations of lending and servicing statutes.
The trustee on a deed of trust becomes the owner of the property or perhaps it would be better stated if we said that it was the owner of the title to the property. *
In a normal world transfer of the title to the property from one trustee to another is made on behalf of and at the instruction of the beneficiary under the deed of trust. The beneficiary can only call themselves a beneficiary if they qualify as a beneficiary under the statutory scheme for deeds of trust. In all cases, this must mean that the beneficiary is the owner of the “underlying obligation,” as is stated in hundreds of case law decisions. *
The problem for the courts and for homeowners is how you define the “underlying obligation.

11/08/22

What is Fannie Mae?
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), colloquially known as Fannie Mae, is a Congressionally-chartered agency that acts as a major player in the mortgage industry. Fannie Mae does not originate or offer mortgages directly to borrowers, but instead purchases them from lenders who do, in effect guaranteeing a market for the mortgages. By investing in them this way, it offers liquidity, stability and an ongoing “flow of capital into the U.S. housing market,” as per the company’s website, as well as the banks and companies that make mortgage loans. Along with buying loans from banks and mortgage companies, Fannie Mae offers a variety of loan products to financial institutions and education programs and services to consumers, helping to ensure homeownership for low- and middle-income Americans specifically.

11/08/22

Servicer compensation
The industry knows there is a gigantic problem surrounding servicer compensation. But there’s a difference between knowing the problem and knowing how to solve it. As Laurie Goodman, codirector of the Housing Finance Policy Center with the Urban Institute, so eloquently put it at a housing policy event on Wednesday, “It is much easier to say the current system does not work than it is actually come up with something better.”

11/07/22

Where’s Waldo? You need to stare at something for a while before you see everything.
While I was doing a CONSULT for someone, a reminder popped up on my computer screen relating to a statement sent under the letterhead of “Shellpoint.” Since securitization is a game of musical labels, the name “Shellpoint” seems especially appropriate. And knowing the culture of investment banking (having been an investment banker), it is likely that this was intentional. Investment bankers seem to think this whole mortgage meltdown/securitization scandal is a game or a joke. Maybe I would think that too, if I was being paid 50 times what I would otherwise be paid under any legitimate s scheme.

11/07/22

Quietly, the Fed Releases Its Financial Stability Report and Lines Up a Scapegoat
One minute after the stock market closed on Friday, the Federal Reserve mailed out a link to its newly-released Financial Stability Report to folks who have signed up to get press releases from the Fed. For those of you who have been reading our reports on the Fed for years – its unaccountable money printing and bailouts of Wall Street, the opaque activities of the trading floors owned by the New York Fed, its unchecked conflicts of interest, and its brazen, and as yet unprosecuted, trading scandal – you might suspect that the Fed would have pulled a lot of punches in its “Financial Stability Report.” You would be correct.

11/04/22

Racial Differences in Economic Security: Housing
This is the third installment in a series of blog posts on racial inequality produced by the Office of Economic Policy. The other posts can be found at these links: 1. Racial Inequality in the United States 2. Racial Differences in Economic Security: The Racial Wealth Gap In this blog post we discuss the stark differences in homeownership and housing wealth across racial and ethnic groups in the United States, which are key contributors to the persistence of the racial wealth gap[1] and drive differences in economic security across groups.

11/04/22

Pritzker Administration Reopens Housing Assistance Program for Illinois Homeowners
CHICAGO – The Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) announced the Illinois Homeowner Assistance Fund (ILHAF) is now open to support qualified homeowners who need help with past-due mortgage payments and related expenses due to financial hardships associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting today, eligible households may apply for grants of up to $60,000 for past-due mortgage payments, property taxes, property insurance and homeowner and/or condo association fees. Applications will be accepted at www.illinoishousinghelp.org until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.

11/04/22

An Economist’s Chart Goes Viral: Shows Main Source of Inflation
On April 21 Josh Bivens posted a titillating analysis on the Working Economics Blog. Bivens has a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research and is the Director of Research at the Economic Policy Institute. The blog post was titled: “Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?”

11/04/22

Ignorance of law, accounting, bookkeeping and financial reporting leads to arguments and assumptions about futility
Let me first state that in 16 years of public appearances, presentations at CLE seminars for litigators and bankruptcy lawyers, thousands of articles published in 26 countries, and thousands of cases litigated in court, there has been only icy silence from Wall Street as to my criticism of the financial system, the political system, and the judicial system as to how they treated the 2008 crash.

11/03/22

What is Indiana’s Homeowner Assistance Fund and what does it do for struggling homeowners?
Homeowner Assistance Funds were established through the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 to combat COVID-19-related setbacks. Indiana’s Homeowner Assistance Fund is the state’s fund for Hoosiers. One listener wondered why applications were taking long to process and if others struggled with foreclosures in the process. John Brengle is an attorney with Indiana Legal Services. He explained when an application for the program is started, the bank cannot foreclose.

11/03/22

“Experts” and Fact Witnesses
A lot of people contact me asking for an expert report. Most have no education, training, knowledge, or experience in using the testimony or report of a witness claimed to be an expert. The problem is compounded by the inability of the homeowner, or the lawyer for the homeowner, to do what every trial lawyer does with every expert witness — i.e., ask questions. Instead, they ask for an expert report as though that alone will count for something. They are right it will count for something, but not in the way they are generally thinking.

11/02/22

You Are Not Securitizing Debt If You Are Not Securitizing Debt
The problem here is the lack of information that is provided to victims of fraudulent foreclosure. You are perfectly correct that no economic or financial loss is attributed to a loss of value or a loss posted to an unpaid loan account.
*
There are two problems.

11/01/22

An example of why people hate lawyers and the courts: Splitting Hairs
The problem here is the lack of information that is provided to victims of fraudulent foreclosure. You are perfectly correct that no economic or financial loss is attributed to a loss of value or a loss posted to an unpaid loan account. * There are two problems.

11/01/22

Three 2nd Circuit Judges, all in their 80s, Decide Traders Rigging Libor Wasn’t Really a Crime
Life in the United States of America increasingly feels like a bad translation of a Kafka novel. We are specifically referring today to the arbiters of justice in our society – the men and women appointed as lifetime judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate courts and federal district courts. These courts have now become Kafkaesque with no apparent means for the public to hold these judges accountable for their actions.

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