As originally run in Key West the Newspaper Aug 5, 2011 (With online Updates)
Matt Gardi Revisits the Latest in Foreclosure Fraud
If you have been looking for a distraction from the latest Surreality TV of the Debt Ceiling Debacle, otherwise known as how 535 grown adults and a President can’t do third grade math, look no further. It’s been a couple months since Key West the Newspaper published a six part series I penned on the foreclosure fraud crisis that our State and Nation are currently facing. If you recall, throughout the series I described the rampant fraud that began with the mortgage securitization process, examined the evasion of filing fees by banksters, and worked through robo-signing and the rubberstamping of questionable cases by Judges. Ultimately the series exposed how the process is destroying the rule of law and our title histories and effects each and everyone of us, whether we’re in foreclosure or not. You know, sort of a touching love story.
The series illustrated that the resultant clouded title histories will continue to erode confidence in our property values for decades. Decreasing property values then destroy net worth, and put more homeowners in a negative equity position, the prime reason people choose to walk away from their underwater mortgages. This only perpetuates the cruel and vicious cycle, which also is destroying our tax base, and causing budget shortfalls in so many of our local agencies. The entire series is still available on my blog at www.nakedconch.com.
So what has been become of this ever growing mountain of misdeeds since then? Unfortunately the banksters have continued to use the same faulty practice of producing false documentation to foreclose on homes, unabated as if they are rowdy kids in the back of a car that know full well that Dad’s threats to “pull this damn car over” are baseless.
The good news is that around the nation some people are waking up. In Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is joining the efforts of John O’brien and going after Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) as part of an investigation into unlawful foreclosure practices. In Michigan, Oakland County Register of Deeds Bill Bullard is working with Sheriff Michael Bouchard to stop any foreclosure sales that have any association with MERS. In North Carolina, Guilford County recorder of Deeds Jeff Thigpen is working to expose flawed land records throughout our Country. In Illinois, Attorney General Lisa Madigan has issued subpoenas against Lender Processing Services Inc. and Nationwide Title Clearing Inc., two Florida-based corporations that provide “document preparation services.” She states, “Foreclosure became a rubber-stamping operation,” and “I will not relent in my investigation into the fraudulent practices by lenders and others that caused and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and the resulting massive foreclosure crisis.”
That kind of warms your heart to think that someone cares, doesn’t it? The bad news is that while the rest of the Country is taking strides forward addressing the crisis, Florida is moving decidedly in the opposite direction.
In May, Deputy Attorney General Joe Jacquot left the AG’s office for a position as Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Lender Processing Services. You know, the same firm I mentioned above that the Illinois Attorney General is serving subpoenas on. Lender Processing Services was also being actively investigated by the Florida Attorney General’s office. That was until that very same week when Attorney General Pam Bondi forced her two foreclosure fraud investigators to resign. Attorneys Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who were responsible for initiating investigations into numerous foreclosure mill law firms and document companies were called into their supervisors office and told that they would resign immediately or be fired. This after having recently received exemplary performance evaluations.
These two individuals were instrumental in exposing much of the fraudulent practices that are occurring in our courtrooms, and were striving to educate County Clerks on what to look for. They also developed a presentation that documented the egregious types of fraud and forgery that is so pervasive entitled “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases.” It is widely available on the Internet and has been used in Florida and around the country to raise awareness of the rampant fraud. You just can’t have trouble makers like that disrupting the mission of the Florida Attorney Generals Office.
I’m sure the AG’s office is still tenaciously investigating Lender Processing Services now that they have purged these two “incompetent” foreclosure fraud specialists from their staff. Other staff must be real inspired to take the reigns after seeing the reward of hard work.
To make matters worse, guess whose name appears in the list of Bondi’s campaign contributors? If you guessed Lender Processing Services, give yourself a big pat on the back. That’s right, Bondi actually accepted donations from LPS while there was an active AG investigation of them going on. I guess it is easy to be in your face when our news consists of NFL lockouts, and Pippa’s latest shade of lipstick.
Fortunately, there are some leaders here in Florida that haven’t completely sold out to worrying about their next election. Rep. Darren Soto of Orlando immediately went after Bondi for this self evident example of all that is wrong with our State. He made public records requests for personnel info of the two fired AG staffers. He quickly followed that with rhetoric of calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, back on the conch farm in June I had the opportunity to discuss my columns with our very own Representative Ron Saunders, leader of the FL House Democrats. I followed our lengthy discussion with some follow up questions via email. Over the course of a month as the Bondi scandal evolved, my unanswered questions turned to what specifically he was doing about the Bondi firings. To be fair I was my obstinate, sarcastic self, and demanded he respond in writing. Call it a fault of mine, that strange desire to be accurate.
Anyone who knows Rep. Saunders can’t help but like him. Along with his knowledge of the middle names of every voter in the Keys, and his odd way of knowing when your Grandmother had cataract surgery, he also is a wealth of knowledge regarding the historical and future meetings of committees, sub committees and the legislative process. And he won’t miss an opportunity to fill you in with such details.
However, as a Republican, who sees Republican Bondi’s actions for exactly what they are, I expect my elected Democratic Representative to share at least a fraction of my frustration and anger. But in a process that could only be compared to pulling your own good teeth out with plastic tweezers I finally got Saunders to say he actually supported Rep. Soto’s call for a Department of Justice investigation. Yes, it was helpful to know he was a friend and colleague, and that as the Democratic Caucus leader Saunders put Soto in charge of the issue, and Committees will be meeting in September, and he’d support funding of investigators, and blah blah blah.
Ultimately though, while supporting Soto’s call for a DOJ investigation, Saunders won’t even sign onto the letter Soto, along with State Senator Eleanor Sobel signed and sent to the DOJ and Sen. Bill Nelson. This even after 6,000 fellow Floridians have signed a petition to the DOJ calling for an investigation. However he does make this recklessly bold statement, “I reviewed it and agree with it.”
Gee, that’s leadership. That’s the kind of guy I want in the trenches with me. I can see it now, he’d be eating my MREs and counting my ammo as I held off the enemy. Then as I was overrun in hand to hand combat, he would be sure to have his soiled undies hanging from his rusty bayonet while reciting lesser known passages from the Geneva Convention.
Come on Ron, pound your fist on the table one time. Dare to be outraged. Take an anger mismanagement course or something. You should be appalled, not promising funding for positions that already existed and were improperly terminated. This kind of leadership is exactly what we are seeing in Washington with the debt ceiling debacle. It’s leadership that is more concerned with self preservation and future elections than doing what is right for our Nation.
After vigorously defending the firings for weeks, Bondi on Wednesday asked fellow Republican and CFO Jeff Atwater to conduct a review. Maybe she is feeling the heat of Saunder’s stealth “agreement,” but more likely it’s the true leadership of Soto, Sobel and 6,000 Floridians that has had an effect. Stay tuned, and remember 60 Minutes is re-airing their special on foreclosure fraud this Sunday evening...don’t miss it!
ONLINE UPDATE! - After Completing this column for Key West the Newspaper, Representative Saunders continued to send me updates. To his credit it appears he has agreed to co-sponsor some generic legislation developed by Rep. Soto that tries to restrict employees of investigative agencies from jumping ship for jobs with employers whom are or were under investigation, as Joe Jacquot has done with LPS.
However, Soto and Sobel have expanded their public records requests, and are now looking for communications regarding specific meetings staff from the Attorney General's office may have had with Lender Processing Services in March of this year. Now that's leadership! Oddly, Saunders is not signing onto any of these more specific actions regarding the AGs office. It made me wonder why.
Checking Rep. Saunders list of campaign contributors on the State elections website, one finds that the the law firm of Holland and Knight of Tallahassee has given $500 to Saunders repeatedly over the years, including the 2010 election cycle. If I am not mistaken, two members of Lender Processing Services Executive Management, Todd Johnson and Greg Williamson are former Holland and Knight boys. Granted, Holland and Knight is a large firm, but that constitutes nearly a fifth of all executive positions. Also, from my understanding Holland and Knight is still in-house Counsel for LPS.
To be fair, I asked Rep. Saunders if he knew anyone from Lender Processing Services, affiliates, or Counsel. He has chosen not to reply to date. Go figure.
Matt Gardi Revisits the Latest in Foreclosure Fraud
If you have been looking for a distraction from the latest Surreality TV of the Debt Ceiling Debacle, otherwise known as how 535 grown adults and a President can’t do third grade math, look no further. It’s been a couple months since Key West the Newspaper published a six part series I penned on the foreclosure fraud crisis that our State and Nation are currently facing. If you recall, throughout the series I described the rampant fraud that began with the mortgage securitization process, examined the evasion of filing fees by banksters, and worked through robo-signing and the rubberstamping of questionable cases by Judges. Ultimately the series exposed how the process is destroying the rule of law and our title histories and effects each and everyone of us, whether we’re in foreclosure or not. You know, sort of a touching love story.
The series illustrated that the resultant clouded title histories will continue to erode confidence in our property values for decades. Decreasing property values then destroy net worth, and put more homeowners in a negative equity position, the prime reason people choose to walk away from their underwater mortgages. This only perpetuates the cruel and vicious cycle, which also is destroying our tax base, and causing budget shortfalls in so many of our local agencies. The entire series is still available on my blog at www.nakedconch.com.
So what has been become of this ever growing mountain of misdeeds since then? Unfortunately the banksters have continued to use the same faulty practice of producing false documentation to foreclose on homes, unabated as if they are rowdy kids in the back of a car that know full well that Dad’s threats to “pull this damn car over” are baseless.
The good news is that around the nation some people are waking up. In Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is joining the efforts of John O’brien and going after Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) as part of an investigation into unlawful foreclosure practices. In Michigan, Oakland County Register of Deeds Bill Bullard is working with Sheriff Michael Bouchard to stop any foreclosure sales that have any association with MERS. In North Carolina, Guilford County recorder of Deeds Jeff Thigpen is working to expose flawed land records throughout our Country. In Illinois, Attorney General Lisa Madigan has issued subpoenas against Lender Processing Services Inc. and Nationwide Title Clearing Inc., two Florida-based corporations that provide “document preparation services.” She states, “Foreclosure became a rubber-stamping operation,” and “I will not relent in my investigation into the fraudulent practices by lenders and others that caused and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and the resulting massive foreclosure crisis.”
That kind of warms your heart to think that someone cares, doesn’t it? The bad news is that while the rest of the Country is taking strides forward addressing the crisis, Florida is moving decidedly in the opposite direction.
In May, Deputy Attorney General Joe Jacquot left the AG’s office for a position as Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Lender Processing Services. You know, the same firm I mentioned above that the Illinois Attorney General is serving subpoenas on. Lender Processing Services was also being actively investigated by the Florida Attorney General’s office. That was until that very same week when Attorney General Pam Bondi forced her two foreclosure fraud investigators to resign. Attorneys Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who were responsible for initiating investigations into numerous foreclosure mill law firms and document companies were called into their supervisors office and told that they would resign immediately or be fired. This after having recently received exemplary performance evaluations.
These two individuals were instrumental in exposing much of the fraudulent practices that are occurring in our courtrooms, and were striving to educate County Clerks on what to look for. They also developed a presentation that documented the egregious types of fraud and forgery that is so pervasive entitled “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases.” It is widely available on the Internet and has been used in Florida and around the country to raise awareness of the rampant fraud. You just can’t have trouble makers like that disrupting the mission of the Florida Attorney Generals Office.
I’m sure the AG’s office is still tenaciously investigating Lender Processing Services now that they have purged these two “incompetent” foreclosure fraud specialists from their staff. Other staff must be real inspired to take the reigns after seeing the reward of hard work.
To make matters worse, guess whose name appears in the list of Bondi’s campaign contributors? If you guessed Lender Processing Services, give yourself a big pat on the back. That’s right, Bondi actually accepted donations from LPS while there was an active AG investigation of them going on. I guess it is easy to be in your face when our news consists of NFL lockouts, and Pippa’s latest shade of lipstick.
Fortunately, there are some leaders here in Florida that haven’t completely sold out to worrying about their next election. Rep. Darren Soto of Orlando immediately went after Bondi for this self evident example of all that is wrong with our State. He made public records requests for personnel info of the two fired AG staffers. He quickly followed that with rhetoric of calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, back on the conch farm in June I had the opportunity to discuss my columns with our very own Representative Ron Saunders, leader of the FL House Democrats. I followed our lengthy discussion with some follow up questions via email. Over the course of a month as the Bondi scandal evolved, my unanswered questions turned to what specifically he was doing about the Bondi firings. To be fair I was my obstinate, sarcastic self, and demanded he respond in writing. Call it a fault of mine, that strange desire to be accurate.
Anyone who knows Rep. Saunders can’t help but like him. Along with his knowledge of the middle names of every voter in the Keys, and his odd way of knowing when your Grandmother had cataract surgery, he also is a wealth of knowledge regarding the historical and future meetings of committees, sub committees and the legislative process. And he won’t miss an opportunity to fill you in with such details.
However, as a Republican, who sees Republican Bondi’s actions for exactly what they are, I expect my elected Democratic Representative to share at least a fraction of my frustration and anger. But in a process that could only be compared to pulling your own good teeth out with plastic tweezers I finally got Saunders to say he actually supported Rep. Soto’s call for a Department of Justice investigation. Yes, it was helpful to know he was a friend and colleague, and that as the Democratic Caucus leader Saunders put Soto in charge of the issue, and Committees will be meeting in September, and he’d support funding of investigators, and blah blah blah.
Ultimately though, while supporting Soto’s call for a DOJ investigation, Saunders won’t even sign onto the letter Soto, along with State Senator Eleanor Sobel signed and sent to the DOJ and Sen. Bill Nelson. This even after 6,000 fellow Floridians have signed a petition to the DOJ calling for an investigation. However he does make this recklessly bold statement, “I reviewed it and agree with it.”
Gee, that’s leadership. That’s the kind of guy I want in the trenches with me. I can see it now, he’d be eating my MREs and counting my ammo as I held off the enemy. Then as I was overrun in hand to hand combat, he would be sure to have his soiled undies hanging from his rusty bayonet while reciting lesser known passages from the Geneva Convention.
Come on Ron, pound your fist on the table one time. Dare to be outraged. Take an anger mismanagement course or something. You should be appalled, not promising funding for positions that already existed and were improperly terminated. This kind of leadership is exactly what we are seeing in Washington with the debt ceiling debacle. It’s leadership that is more concerned with self preservation and future elections than doing what is right for our Nation.
After vigorously defending the firings for weeks, Bondi on Wednesday asked fellow Republican and CFO Jeff Atwater to conduct a review. Maybe she is feeling the heat of Saunder’s stealth “agreement,” but more likely it’s the true leadership of Soto, Sobel and 6,000 Floridians that has had an effect. Stay tuned, and remember 60 Minutes is re-airing their special on foreclosure fraud this Sunday evening...don’t miss it!
ONLINE UPDATE! - After Completing this column for Key West the Newspaper, Representative Saunders continued to send me updates. To his credit it appears he has agreed to co-sponsor some generic legislation developed by Rep. Soto that tries to restrict employees of investigative agencies from jumping ship for jobs with employers whom are or were under investigation, as Joe Jacquot has done with LPS.
However, Soto and Sobel have expanded their public records requests, and are now looking for communications regarding specific meetings staff from the Attorney General's office may have had with Lender Processing Services in March of this year. Now that's leadership! Oddly, Saunders is not signing onto any of these more specific actions regarding the AGs office. It made me wonder why.
Checking Rep. Saunders list of campaign contributors on the State elections website, one finds that the the law firm of Holland and Knight of Tallahassee has given $500 to Saunders repeatedly over the years, including the 2010 election cycle. If I am not mistaken, two members of Lender Processing Services Executive Management, Todd Johnson and Greg Williamson are former Holland and Knight boys. Granted, Holland and Knight is a large firm, but that constitutes nearly a fifth of all executive positions. Also, from my understanding Holland and Knight is still in-house Counsel for LPS.
To be fair, I asked Rep. Saunders if he knew anyone from Lender Processing Services, affiliates, or Counsel. He has chosen not to reply to date. Go figure.
Im thinking....all this bad stuff has been exposed. Its a well known fact that money has swayed ordinary ways of thinking....the big banks have been found out, their secrets will be even more exposed in the coming weeks / months yet they keep on plugging away at the same ole ways disregarding warning and logic....its all over and your going DOWN and I cant wait to see cuffs on some of you heartless, greedy, and pitiful human beings that are cancer on our country and the people of the united states.......before long you all will be lower than Whale shit and yall earned it!!! Soros and Dell..ur ded.
ReplyDelete