Category Archives: OP-ED

January 21, 2025 · 8:00 AM

Why attorneys don’t “rat out” judges … and other stuff!

(OP-ED) — The content posted on this website is for educational purposes only and does not purport to render legal advice or guarantee any legal conclusion of law or legal outcome.

There’s this nationwide “thing” called the American Bar Association. In each state, there’s another “thing” dubbed the “State Bar Association”. Each State (Incorporated) has some sort of judicial review board; however, the number of judges being brought before said boards has diminished of late. And here we thought the legal community would police itself; however, there may be reasons for why more judges aren’t “taken to task” for their misdeeds. It’s the “good ‘ol boy club”.

The American Bar Association (“ABA) has laid out Judicial Canons for judges to abide by. The legal codes promulgated by the ABA also mandates that attorneys report judges for alleged misconduct. This isn’t happening as regularly as it should because the attorneys AND the judges are all members of the same clique … the Bar. No one wants to be considered disloyal and/or risk having a judge pissed off enough to “go after” the lawyer’s bar card for ratting him/her out. Even worse, the attorney has to face that judge time and again and the judge will rule against them for snitching to the Bar or Judicial Review panel about the judge’s lack of candor or egregious behavior in court.

That’s the primary reason many homeowners have become frustrated after paying foreclosure defense lawyers gobs of money for services rendered only to find out later that they’ve hit the proverbial “brick wall” and the attorney can’t help them any further because the attorney won’t risk being complained about to the Bar. Many attorneys have told me that Bar attorneys are what they are because “they can’t get a job in the real world”, so they get paid to “supervise the behavior” of other attorneys, which in essence, puts them on a power trip.

Many Bar Associations have consumer advocacy boards within them, which have civilians on their boards in the hopes that these folks will help the Bar boards to take a more practical look at the complaints to see if they lack merit or it’s simply some consumer bitching about the way the judge ruled or what their attorney did to them (or didn’t do for them) that caused their case to be dismissed. In other words, “We’ll take your money because you’ve got a great case!” and … like a used car salesman, once they’ve raided your bank account/credit cards and maxed you out of funds, when the next payment demand can’t be met, they withdraw from your case and the judge lets them do it.

When it comes to foreclosure defense, the game is no different, which is one reason I cannot accept that “point of no return” where the attorney becomes indifferent to the client because the client wants justice and can’t get it through the “standard” channels. A lot of this is due to a lack of education and a rigging of the case law across the various states and federal government.

ARTICLE 1 ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM

Attorneys are not quick to admit that the game is being played in the Administrative Court system. After all, Article 1:10:1 of the Constitution does say, “… the obligation of a contract shall not be impaired”. If you are facing foreclosure, the excuse given is, “Well, you signed the mortgage or deed of trust and Note, so therefore, you’re in default and your home is fair game!” Homeowners who have a lot of equity don’t realize how the cards were dealt in the first place … and neither do their attorneys.

Judges play along with the “narrative” established by the banks, mostly because their state pension funds are invested in these pools of mortgages. That frankly is a bad move on the part of the State in investing in these toxic hedge funds. What the homeowners who face foreclosure don’t realize is that a majority of the loans were securitized and securitization in of itself, comes with caveats, unknown to both the homeowners and their lawyers.

Because the judges and attorneys coming before them do not fully understand the tenets of the Uniform Commercial Code (Articles 3, 8 and 9) and how securitization operates, they tend to adhere to the banks’ narratives. This frustrates the attorneys because once they find out the truth, the judges ignore their amended pleadings. At that juncture, the homeowner facing foreclosure is at a complete disadvantage.

Bar complaints and Judicial Review complaints are disregarded if they’re based on the judge’s ruling and not on the judge’s bias, prejudice or egregious behavior, which is where the rubber meets the road.

When attorneys are faced with the inevitable, they bail on the client … “Oh, well, it was a good run while it lasted.” (How many of you have heard that?) Or, in the alternative, the attorney wants another $10,000 to appeal what the homeowner considers a “bad decision” on the part of the judge, who the homeowner thinks wasn’t presented with all the facts. This is why pro se litigants get into trouble in today’s court system because they tend not to realize HOW the game is being played against them. As a result, they tend to complicate things by operating “outside the box” when the “system” clearly offers them options when the homeowners are faced with obvious bias on the part of the Court and their attorney won’t do anything about it.

FRAUD VITIATES CONTRACTS

There is a real U.S. Supreme Court case that posits the foregoing headline …

United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U.S. 61, 66 (1878), which states:

“Fraud vitiates every thing, and a judgment equally with a contract — that is, a judgment obtained directly by fraud, and not merely a judgment founded on a fraudulent instrument; for in general the court will not go again into the merits of an action for the purpose of detecting and annulling the fraud. . . . Likewise, there are few exceptions to the rule that equity will not go behind the judgment to interpose in the cause itself, but only when there was some hindrance besides the negligence of the defendant in presenting the defense in the legal action. There is an old case in South Carolina to the effect that fraud in obtaining a bill of sale would justify equitable interference as to the judgment obtained thereon. But I judge it stands almost or quite alone, and has no weight as to the judgment obtained thereon. But I judge it stands almost or quite alone, and has no weight as a precedent.”

The case he refers to is Crauford v. Crauford, 4 Desau. (S.C.) 176. See also Bigelow on Fraud 170- 172.

WHERE HOMEOWNERS FAIL

Homeowners are not well versed in securitization. That puts them on a level playing field with both the attorney they retain to represent them in a foreclosure case as well as the judge hearing it (unless you’re in the Southern or Eastern U.S. District Courts in New York, where the judges are very well versed in the subject matter and demand the attorneys plead their cases succinctly in order to get the desired ruling).

Most securitized mortgage contracts have commonalities:

  1. MERS is involved. You’ll find an 18-digit MIN (mortgage identification number) on Page 1 of your contract.
  2. Paragraph 25 (or something similar) declares that the homeowners (borrowers) waive their right to a jury trial (opting for a trial to the bench, where the judge who is uninformed gets to give away their homes).
  3. The homeowner is referenced within the Note and Mortgage (Deed of Trust) as the “Borrower”, when in fact, that’s not true.
  4. The homeowner was unaware that all of his credit and financial information (credit history, credit scores, financial documents and loan application) were turned into a dataset and securitized the moment the application was submitted to the securitization loan broker, who then went out, using the dataset, and committed identity theft on Wall Street, pimping the newly-converted bond (what the dataset became when it was entered into the MERS System®) across the secondary mortgage markets, looking for a mortgage pool to fund the mortgage broker’s loan application (the real “Borrower” was the mortgage loan broker).
  5. The homeowner (as “Borrower”) does not realize that Wall Street and the originating lender were making money off the dataset/bond from the time the homeowner submitted the loan application.

If the homeowner failed to “close” the deal (at the title company), the bond was still out in the secondary mortgage market, being pimped to investors as a legitimate, qualified loan when in fact, it was never consummated by the unsuspecting homeowner.

Now I’ve run across two cases where the loans were never consummated or drawn down on (both were Home Equity Lines of Credit or HELOCs) and the homeowners either lost their home or are about to if they don’t do something drastic to stop the foreclosure.

The foreclosure defense attorneys have no idea of any of this (well, very few do). The majority of the practicing lawyers and judges out there do not know the necessary fundamentals of securitization of mortgage loans, because if they did, the outcome would probably be the same as the Credit River case (First National Bank of Montgomery v. Jerome Daly, 1968).

Olson – Credit River Case (2020)Download

Unfortunately, the judge in the case died under mysterious circumstances and the case documents magically disappeared and Daly was eventually disbarred. If that doesn’t give conspiracy theorists something to talk about … well … the banking system in America doesn’t tolerate the arguments Daly posited in his own case. The U.S. Government has made agreements with the private Federal Reserve Bank to protect it at all costs and in 1999, when MERS Version 3 became a corporate reality, then- President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law, which effectively repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934 and allowed the banks to play in the securitization markets.

Most of the readers of this blog pretty much understand what a “stacked deck” is, but the attorneys and judges don’t care. The way they see it, the way the “system” mandates it, you the homeowner, signed a contract at the closing table, declaring that you were lawfully seized of the property before entering into a mortgage contract, therefore, you had the right to convey an interest in the property (and not the property itself) to the “Lender” (which in securitization was actually the “Borrower”). The homeowner, not realizing he’d been duped the moment he turned in his mortgage loan application, showed up at the closing table and locked himself into a contract that had already been making money as a bond in the secondary mortgage markets!

In many instances, the alleged loans were “insured” against default, which meant that once the homeowner (who thought he was the “Borrower”) quit making his mortgage payments, the Servicer filed a claim with the insurance company and was paid face value of the mortgage (less 27% administrative costs).

WHAT THE HOMEOWNER WASN’T TOLD …

The unsuspecting homeowner was not told that …

  1. He was a third-party accommodation to a mortgage securitization contract.
  2. His mortgage loan was actually bonded and securitized before he went to the closing table.
  3. The mortgage “lender” was the real “borrower” and not the homeowner.
  4. The mortgage “lender” was completely reimbursed for the 5% funds it put up at the front end of the deal, meaning the securitized mortgage broker was free to go out and repeat the process again with a new “sucker”.
  5. The “mortgage securitization loan broker” misrepresented to the homeowner that the homeowner was the “borrower” when in fact, the loan broker signed agreements (through its servicer) to enter the MERS System® without the knowledge and consent of the borrower, concealing the fact that upon submission of the loan application and BEFORE signing the contract and being awarded a DEED to the property the homeowner was making a loan application to buy, the homeowner (as Borrower) unknowingly signed and encumbered a property he didn’t have the right to convey in the first place because the secondary mortgage markets were already making money off of his signature.

WAS THIS FRAUD?

OR WAS THIS FRAUDULENT CONCEALMENT AND FRAUDULENT MISREPRESENTATION?

Better look up the elements of each before proceeding.

It’s not all about the judge’s ruling either. It’s about the attorney’s being afraid to tell the truth in a way the judge can understand.

Dave Krieger is the host of The Krieger Files, airing Monday-Friday on LibertyNewsRadio.com and on Global Star 3 satellite (Ch. 1) at 8:00 a.m. Central time.

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February 12, 2023 · 6:03 AM

The 6 coming crises no one wants to talk about!

(BREAKING NEWS, OP-ED) — The facts and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and should not be considered the rendering of legal advice.

CRISIS #1: FORECLOSURES

The number of U. S. foreclosures continues to increase annually for 21 consecutive months since the start of 2023 according to the latest figures released by ATTOMDATA.

In January of 2023, there were 31,557 U. S. properties with foreclosure filings, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions (completed foreclosures, REO’s). No one but those in the know behind the scenes want to talk about it.

Everyone is too busy being involved in what the U.S. government is doing in DC. Everyone in Congress just loves contributing to the finger-pointing and playing the blame game rather than addressing the issues that are important, like why America is being slowly turned into a nation-state of renters.

The moratoriums are gone and those who were in arrears in their mortgage payments that didn’t work out forbearance agreements or loan modifications (that actually worked) were the first to see default notices and threats of foreclosures as soon as the COVID-19 moratorium was lifted.

As the job market starts to shed workers, the rates of default will climb. Those who even think their job is being threatened should begin to seek alternative employment rather than wait until the pink slip arrives, especially those who work for “woke” corporations. The last thing you want to think about is having to drain your 401(k)’s or savings accounts (if in fact you have them). Most of America is living hand-to-mouth these days and the inflation issues with the various day-to-day needs isn’t going away any time soon.

CRISIS #2: CBDC’S AND THE CASHLESS SOCIETY

Anyone who has been listening to the author’s show on The Power Hour (now airing from 7 – 9 a.m., Central Time, Monday through Friday click the above link to hear the internet broadcast if you’re not in a market that carries the show on AM or FM) knows that the Fed is playing with digital currencies, based on our favor of convenience. Sadly, Americans have been brainwashed into “convenience”, using credit and debit cards at every turn and not cash (you know, the “legal tender for all debts, public and private”), FRN’s, debt notes, etc.

No one seems to understand that the “convenience” mechanisms are tied to an upcoming agenda called the “cashless society”, which, according to many in the banking industry, is tied to the control of our futures based on social credit scoring (much like what’s going on in China right now). Make a post on a social media outlet that the powers that be don’t like and you’re liable to find you can’t buy groceries or gas that week.

This “agenda” is part of the bigger picture that no one wants to think about … the chip in the hand. Many of the Christian faith would tell you this is the “Mark of the Beast”, but that time is not yet. We’re not in the tribulation period … yet … that is spoken of in the book of Revelation. However, we’re damned close to it.

The solution here, as this author has posited on the show, is to start withdrawing the maximum amount you’re allowed to withdraw from your bank’s ATM on a daily basis until someone asks you why you’re withdrawing your funds on a daily basis. Then you can tell them that you do NOT support central bank digital currencies … that you like your “cash” … and until we get public banks in every state (like the Bank of North Dakota), America is at grave risk.

CRISIS #3: THE GRID, EMP & CYBERWARFARE (AND POTENTIAL NUCLEAR WAR)

America just experience Chinese surveillance in the form of a balloon traversing across the nation over the course of a week, surveilling everything from our military installations to the balance of our infrastructure. This was no accident. China already has big plans to take over the wealth of America. The only way to do that is if Americans let them.

Our nation’s electrical grid is highly vulnerable. There are 9 key substations that, if attacked, would result in a complete blackout of all three grids (the Eastern grid, the Western grid, and Texas’s grid). Nah! People really don’t think it could happen, which is why few are prepared for it. Ask anyone who survived the February 2021 Texas Freeze and they’ll tell you they wish they’d had a generator, which is why Generac® generators were backordered for more than a year afterwards. This year, the author traveled to San Antonio to pick up supplies, only to come home to find his generator running (for 4 hours until the power came back on, from the recent ice storm). What the folks at Generac® don’t seem to want to tell you is that if the power went out for a week, you’d damned near bleed through a full 1,000-gallon tank of propane (it holds 800 gallons due to the remaining 200 gallon space needed to pressurize the tank). That means, with your generator running 24/7, you have one week of fuel and one week of electricity. What are you going to do to survive after that? (Hint, solar generator in a Faraday bag?)

Now … think about being without electricity for a year or more. The U.S. EMP Commission has already surmised that 9 out of 10 people would be dead within a year after an EMP strike and China’s balloons have been shown to be able to carry 3 hypersonic missiles. It only takes a decent-size 20 megaton strike 270 miles over Kansas to wipe out the entire U.S. power grid … and everyone is in denial that it could happen. Funny though, the government has used our tax dollars to build its own Faraday-type infrastructure so our leaders have some place to run and hide when the SHTF. What about We the Sheeple? We’re screwed.

If EMP hits, planes that are currently airborne, which constitutes about 3,000+ at a time, will plummet to earth, killing roughly 600,000, including those on the ground that make immediate contact with the wreckage. Those patients who have to have electricity to run emergency life support will cease to exist. That number is expected to be in the tens of thousands, including those in hospitals that are connected to a ventilator or some other mechanical device that requires electricity.

Then comes the “fun part”. The “have nots” versus the “haves”. People in their vehicles (that aren’t EMP protected) will be stranded on the highways. Not a pleasant scene in visual gridlock. Your safety and welfare become challenged and unpredictable, especially if you find your vehicle running when no one else’s is. Then, if you actually have a way to navigate away from traffic snarls, you still run the risk of being carjacked until you get to your safe zone. This is why many Americans are not taking vacations and traveling long distances from their homes at present. Some of America is “awake” to this possibility, but the greater majority are in denial. Since they’re living hand-to-mouth, they’ll run out of groceries and access to water. That’s when they show up on your doorstep. That’s when living in a gated community of unprepared citizenry can turn violent. No one can get in because it takes electricity to power the gate to get in and out and no one can get out, which means if you have no defensible means of saving your family, you’ll become one of the 9 out of 10 who perish.

You saw what cyberattacks did to the Eastern seaboard’s fuel storage depot right? You saw what a physical attack on a North Carolina substation did, right? Now imagine the entire nation’s grid wiped out because the computer systems running the whole show just got hacked and shut down.

The question of whether or not there will be a full-scale nuclear war hangs in the balance because why would China or any other country want to destroy all of its potential wealth with nuclear detonations that will take a century or two for the half-life of the fallout to dissipate? They could simply hit us with an EMP and watch America implode on itself and laugh all the while it’s manufacturing the very transformers and electronic parts needed to restore America’s entire infrastructure under Chinese rule!

This week on The Power Hour, this author will be talking about prepping, first aid, home defense and crisis management. Okay, so if you’re in denial, don’t bother listening.

CRISIS #4: TOO MUCH DEPENDENCE ON GOVERNMENT

This crisis goes without saying. If you’re depend on any part of the infrastructure to exist, you’re screwed when national calamity hits. Thanks to our government’s bad foreign policy, several rogue nation-states hate us enough to turn this country into a hellhole.

Ask the 220-million who took the jab whether another pandemic could hit. They’ll trust the government more than God and they will perish as the result of strokes and heart attacks, getting booster after booster, not really realizing that the government isn’t trying to protect them from the bioweapon … the jabs ARE the bioweapon. Oh, you’re in denial about that too? Whatever.

If you live solely on government subsistence, you’re screwed because in the event of EMP or cyber attack, the banking system will fail. You can’t kiss your direct deposit of your monthly Social In-security check goodbye. If you’re on welfare, you just became a “have not”. If you’re in a major metro area, your risk of death is exponentially and dramatically increased. The major cities will implode first and roving bands of gangs (as well as your neighbors who still have two feet and a heartbeat) will come knocking. Home invasions? Yep! 9-1-1? It won’t work either. Remember, EMP takes out everything including the ability to call for help. Law enforcement will be trying to get home to protect their own families. What? You learned nothing from Hurricane Katrina? How long did it take FEMA to respond? Think about that disaster, only extrapolated on a national scale.

Bottom line … concerned Americans will stop expecting the government to take care of them and start becoming resourceful. Any time the government raises taxes, barter networks erupt and the underground economy flourishes. Maybe it’s time folks started thinking outside the box, eh?

This government is too busy pointing fingers and playing the blame game to pay attention to little ‘ol you!

The entire state of the nation (and the lies proliferated within the latest “address”, if that’s what you want to call it) is at stake now more than ever. This is why there are mass exoduses from California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Our Constitutional Republic and everything it stands for is at risk. Moving to Florida or Texas, Tennessee or South Carolina? So is everyone else.

CRISIS #5: THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR GUNS

Apparently, most gun-control advocates don’t care about the 2nd Amendment. As history would have it … compare what happened in Nazi Germany prior to the start of WWII. Gun registration, then gun confiscation. Putting “Gun-Free Zone” signs out in front of schools? Bad move if you live in Uvalde.

Take away the guns, only the criminals will have them. Gee, a novel idea would be to put “Gun-Free Zone” signs in the front yards of your gun-control-minded neighbors and see what kind of “conversation” you’ll start. Great day for a home invasion, eh?

Mr. Kelly in Arizona shot a Mexican National that was trespassing on his land. Now he sits in jail on a million dollar bond. We don’t yet know all of the details, but with the number of illegal aliens and criminally-minded “got-aways” that may be headed for your homestead and the number of illegal aliens that died trying to get to America, why would someone incriminate themselves by calling the Sheriff after confronting an illegal alien who is about to do harm to you or your family? You have a 5th Amendment right to remain silent. Why wouldn’t you use it? Think about the repercussions if the grid goes down and these illegals are now fully destitute and don’t care about your means to survive. What then? Will you pull the trigger to save the lives of your family? You need to be pondering these things. And we still face weaponization of the DOJ, the FBI and the IRS against parents who protest at school board meetings and Catholics who are right-thinking and lets not forget the “deplorables”.

As this author has said on his radio program, “How many Wacos and Ruby Ridges is it going to take for Americans to wake up?”

CRISIS #6: A RESULTING CIVIL WAR

Take all of the foregoing crises and band them together and put the “have nots” in a precarious position where survival of the fittest is the order of the day, and you have a recipe for civil unrest if not a full blown civil war. Over 600,000 died in the battle between 1860-65. Now extrapolate that amongst all of the casualties, post-EMP and the civil unrest that will erupt from that. Ahhh … no one wants to talk about that possibility either, right?

History repeats itself. Those who are ignorant of it are condemned to repeat it.

Now the author just gave you something to talk about.

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October 20, 2022 · 6:37 AM

When Spokeo rears its ugly head

(BREAKING NEWS, OP-ED)–The author of this post is a paralegal and consultant to trial attorneys and covers this case in his book, The FDCPA, Debt Collection and Foreclosures, an in-depth analysis of the paradigm shift in debt collection and foreclosure defense litigation strategies. DISCLAIMER: The opinions and case analysis expressed are that of his own and do not constitute legal advice.

Available at CloudedTitles.com

Here we go again … another case in federal appeals court … another recognized attempt by a homeowner that failed when applied to the Spokeo v. Robins case handed down by the United States Supreme Court, 578 U.S. 330 (2016). See the case below:

spokeo-v-robinsDownload

While the case specifically denotes cases applicable to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, it has been judicially recognized in all 50 states as being the benchmark for proof of injury and raises the bar for such.

The case in chief is Foster v. PNC Bank, N.A. and wouldn’t you know it … Spokeo got tossed in for good measure because the homeowner (Foster) relied solely on his affidavit and couldn’t prove causation. See the case below:

foster-v-pnc-bank-na-7th-app-cir-no-20-1667-oct-18-2022Download

To get to the nuts and bolts of Spokeo and how it was applied to this case, see pages 10-11 of the Foster ruling.

Page 11 of the Foster ruling clearly identifies that Foster lacks standing because the injury he is trying to prove happened is not fairly traceable and under Spokeo, it has to be an actual injury-in-fact! There’s no getting around this if you want Article III standing to pursue such a case.

It looks as if this case could have been done pro se. Most pro se cases fail because of 3 reasons: (1) lack of understanding and application of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; (2) lack of understanding of how case law should be applied; and (3) evidence based on emotion and not facts supported by evidence. Once you clearly read this case, you might understand why the author of this post thinks that way.

NOW … Why can’t Spokeo be applied to foreclosure cases?

Why can’t homeowners make the bank or REMIC Trust prove it suffered a concrete injury-in-fact under Spokeo? That question posits multiple answers because there is specific contract law involved.

Based on paralegal-level research, bringing any kind of claim against a creditor should be entertained BEFORE the real problems begin (like getting a notice of default). This author blames homeowners for not constantly checking their public land records for suspect documents, especially in the cases of REMIC trusts, wherein third-party document mills generally crank out manufactured documents that attempt to memorialize when a particular loan (mortgage or deed of trust and note) was actually conveyed into a REMIC trust pool. Sadly, most of the documents creep their way into the public record just before the foreclosure starts. And no one finds that just a little suspicious?

Even more unfortunate, because of the way the deck is stacked in court, judges don’t like giving homeowners free houses just because they come running and screaming into court with a two-dozen (or 200) page complaint, filled with emotion, conjecture and nothing concrete to back it up with, or, in the alternative, attempt to use all that wasted space to try to educate a judge towards their point of view with no attached exhibits or any other evidentiary process to back it up. This author has seen this in hundreds of cases he has reviewed, even by attorneys who thought they were good foreclosure mill attorneys (they miss stuff too)!

The key here, especially in REMIC trust cases (most of which are formed in New York or Delaware), there are commonalities that typically get overlooked and case law can and should be applied whenever possible to support whatever argument is being made. Unfortunately, many pro se litigants miss that opportunity and just continue to rant because they think they were unfairly treated by their mortgage loan servicer, who is the real party behind the foreclosure … not the closed REMIC. What? The REMIC was closed? When?

Does anyone bother to read the REMIC’s 424(b)(5) Prospectus and attempt to tie information into their cases? This author hasn’t seen much evidence of that lately because attorneys dealing in foreclosures believe the judge doesn’t care what happened to the loan if it went into a REMIC trust. This is where knowing how to pick your battles makes all the sense in the world. The Prospectus analysis in of itself can be extremely daunting and time consuming, unless you know where to look. Then you have to apply what you’ve discovered to your discovery to make sure what you think you know can stick in a court of law. It’s called securitization failure.

The bottom line however, is whether the REMIC settled with its investors at any point in time in its history or whether the mortgage loan servicer actually performed under the Prospectus agreement and made the payments of principal and interest as identified under the ADVANCES section of the REMIC’s own governing regulations. If the payments were made by the servicer (whether the Borrower paid them or not) … then who has suffered actual Article III concrete injury-in-fact under Spokeo. There’s the rub.

If the servicer has been paying the certificate holders and the action is being brought on behalf of the certificate holders based on borrower default … how’s that possible? The servicer has paid the monthly payments to the certificate holders, so where’s the concrete injury-in-fact? The borrower isn’t in default if this is happening, are they? Who brings that up in court? Who asks the court to determine an injury-in-fact? Hmmm.

Because the bank is trying to foreclose, the courts automatically assume they own the loan; otherwise, why would they be filing a foreclosure action in the first place?

There’s the other rub. If the case involves a REMIC trust, this author believes with a certainty that the mortgage loan servicer is playing “lender” and claiming it has the right to foreclose when it can’t prove actual concrete injury-in-fact based on contract law because it doesn’t have a contract with the homeowner. Yet, bank’s attorneys come into court and misrepresent those facts all the time in an attempt to create standing for a fictitious plaintiff (one that no longer exists in most cases).

Yep, none of this seems fair, does it? But, as any good paralegal can tell you, all of our collective work is research and if you don’t take the time to do it, you can’t prove anything and your case is dead in the water before you even get started.

Then there’s the other faux pas … suing everything under the sun because they’re identified with the REMIC. Example: MERS. Big waste of time. MERS is owned by the same company that owns the NYSE. Where do you think you fit into that financial scheme of things. MERS has more money than any pro se or attorney-supported litigant out there and will outspend you and give you nothing. Besides, from a paralegal’s standpoint, it adds well more to the costs of processing a case because of service issues, actual service of process, filing responses and memorandums for every single defendant named. So what if MERS was used to electronically facilitate the transfer of securitized mortgage loans. Case law on MERS is so diverse and scattered among the states and federal circuits even the U.S. Supreme Court won’t entertain looking at MERS-related cases 99.9% of the time.

Declaratory Relief Actions

This is why this author likes declaratory relief actions. While these types of actions are discretionary at the federal level, state court judges will normally entertain them. You’re asking for a determination on a question, not a final ruling. To get to the final ruling, you have to have your questions answered, enough to prove your allegations contained a factual basis, as determined by the court. This paralegal and consultant always sees better results when dec relief actions come early and go after specific targets and not just a bunch of ballyhoo on paper. Since most judges are being ordered to clear dockets, does your case really belong in foreclosure court where all the judge sees you as is a deadbeat? Or would it be better if you were in a county court of law where the judge wasn’t occupied with foreclosure as the main issue? This author has seen successes with the latter of the two modes.

Yet homeowners wait until everything is “around their ankles” before they act. The author blames this on the lack of legal education. Spokeo (since its 2016 ruling), has been wielded like a two-edged sword, mostly in favor of the lenders. In closing, this means one would have to spend serious time doing research and digging up the facts to build an actual case. Spokeo is law. Spokeo is not emotion. People would do themselves a big favor by studying the law, especially tort law. Prosser and Keeton on Torts, 5th Edition would be a great start.

The author is also nationally-syndicated talk show host on The Power Hour.

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October 15, 2022 · 8:35 PM

Nationwide foreclosures are up over pre-pandemic levels

(BREAKING NEWS/OP-ED –) Attom Data (which supplies information to RealtyTrac®) has released a fairly comprehensive report which indicates that foreclosure starts are up 167% from a year ago! What’s worse is that the average time to foreclose nationwide has decreased 4% from a year ago, which can only mean that the banks and their mortgage loan servicers have become more aggressive in their foreclosure processes.

California, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New York led the pack out of 233 metropolitan statistical areas. Markets seeing a lower decline in foreclosure starts were Tulsa, Kansas City, Birmingham, Minneapolis and Cincinnati. In sum total, 92,634 properties had foreclosure filings, whether it be default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions. Lenders repossessed 10,515 properties from American homeowners during the third quarter of 2022. The reason, according to an Attom Data spokesman, was because borrowers were leveraging their equity and selling their homes and downsizing rather than risking an equity loss due to foreclosure.

The report is here:

u.s.-foreclosure-activity-continues-to-increase-quarterly-attomDownload

ANALYSIS: Now, let’s figure out why there is an uptick in foreclosure activity.

The foregoing figures are only for the third quarter of 2022; thus, we have to factor in similar amounts for the first two quarters and the last quarter, which, taking into consideration the average third quarter numbers, the total figure for the year would be somewhere around 370,000 homes this year. If you look at the rates during the 2009-2016 foreclosure crisis, which totaled 10.2-million homes seized, the total foreclosure numbers are coming in at around 4.45-million that can be expected over the next 7 years. That’s nearly 50% of the previous total of homes seized during the first foreclosure crisis. And you can bet that BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street (major institutional investors) will be buying these homes up and converting them into rental properties. How’s that for turning this country into a nation of renters? Clouded titles and all.

What has happened to the U.S. economy since the beginning of the decade?

Up until January of 2021, America had it good. We were energy independent. Gas prices were low. Grocery prices were low because the cost of shipping goods to market was lower. The supply chain was functioning at about 50% due to the pandemic but largely because people were too afraid to go to work because of media fearmongering. They would have rather stayed home and lived off the government dole than go back to work, post-pandemic. So, in short, it would appear the “chickens are coming home to roost” (as it were.

When the pandemic actually hit (March 17, 2020), Americans bought into the government’s crap hook, line and sinker. It became impossible for many to go to work and some were able to make arrangements to work from home. Many lost their jobs out of fear they would catch COVID-19 and die and didn’t bother showing up for work. Foolishly, state governments bought into the lies about mask wearing, social distancing, business closures and finally the jabs (delivered by and through the media, which promoted it as a vaccine, when in fact they weren’t). Over 220-million Americans received at least 2 jabs before many in that population either suffered adverse effects or death. I would anticipate that not only did the hospitals get rich (at $300,000-$600,000 per patient) due to government incentives, but Americans who refused the jab due to government mandates lost their jobs and thus, were unable to pay their mortgages. Despite the moratoriums, those days of grace would soon end and the foreclosure mills were all too happy to jump on the foreclosure bandwagon.

Unfortunately for most Americans, they continue to remain ignorant as to the fact that most of their mortgage loans were securitized. One of my associates has been fighting his foreclosure for over 13+ years and when ordered to pay attorney’s fees to the other side’s lawyers, he wrote a specific payment check to the REMIC (an acronym for Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit), which is what accepted all of these securitized loans, allegedly, and also very untimely. Here’s the attorney’s fees check:

Notice anything interesting about how the checks were made out? They have yet to be cashed … because the REMIC is closed and has been since 2007. If this isn’t proof in the pudding, I don’t know what is.

The Court agreed that since the Plaintiff was the REMIC, the check should be made payable to them, for in turn, the REMIC would turn around and pay their customary attorney’s fees for litigation expenses. Unfortunately, one can’t cash a check that has a restrictive endorsement when the payee doesn’t exist.

This is what the bank’s attorneys don’t like … a real smart ass. And I mean he’s smart. He’s done his homework. The attorneys in his case were clearly retained by the mortgage loan servicer, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., who has no contract with the borrower. You see why they’re frustrated with this case? Wells Fargo isn’t the only mortgage loan servicer committing fraud on the courts, filing on behalf of the closed REMIC either.

I am currently working on a California bankruptcy case which has posited similar research results. In that case, the REMIC trust settled with the investors, which means that no one suffered a financial loss and it’s clear the servicer is trying to steal the house from the bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy judges do not like fraud on the court, especially by officers of the court. The only way that this case has a good outcome is if the owners can defeat the motion to lift stay with enough factual information and witnesses to overcome the other side’s objections. Because I managed to conjure up witnesses (an attorney and a former bank lawyer who handled foreclosures for a major financial institution), things might not go well for the other side’s lawyer.

I still do chain of title assessments and consult trial attorneys on foreclosure matters. The foregoing issues are certainly playing into the statistics seen above. But what’s worse, when these people are being served with notice, rather than fight to stay in their homes until they can come up with a Plan B, they just pack up and move, just like they did during the first foreclosure crisis in 2008. And herein lies the rub.

History does indeed repeat itself. Only this time, homeowners may be getting smarter.

For more information, you can visit the Clouded Titles website.

Please email us through the site if you’d be interested in attending a foreclosure defense workshop later this year.

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August 28, 2022 · 9:49 PM

The Justice System has FAILED us!

(OP-ED)–The opinions expressed herein are that of the author’s only and should not be construed as legal advice.

It is unfortunate that the conservative thought process has to be jarred by liberalism … and just when we were starting to get ahead.

It’s even more unfortunate that the manner in which we conduct ourselves in the legal realm has been totally obliterated by the justice system, made up of elite oligarchs who only look out for their own pensions and care not about the people that can’t afford justice. These judges will listen to the banks before they listen to the people affected by the contract they signed.

My latest machination involves the affidavit that was issued by a “special agent” from the federal whatchamacallits, which was totally redacted by the justice department, which has sought to (indirectly) attack every Christian conservative in the name of liberalism. When one can forum shop for a judge to get a warrant signed … a warrant that would further divide America because of its very nature in attacking a former president who actually did produce positive results, (despite all of the attacks against him during his tenure in office), this justice system has failed us.

The higher elites in power have seen fit to find a Trump-hating judge to do their dirty-work in an attempt to keep Trump from running for office again. If the warrant is proven to be nothing more than hearsay, which I suspect it is, then the judge sitting on the Trump case is no better than the robed types that sit in foreclosure courts across the country, listening to banks’ attorneys, who don’t possess the note, say, “Take it from me, Your Honor, we own the note.” at face value and give the banks whatever they want, when in most cases, the lender (a REMIC trust), no longer even exists.

Foreclosure defense attorneys haven’t helped matters much. Half of them don’t even know how to argue a foreclosure matter or a forcible detainer action, half of them don’t understand that the REMIC’s investors may have been paid in full, which means the servicers are double and triple dipping on homeowners (borrowers) by claiming they represent the REMICs when they know too damned well, the REMICs are closed and were closed one year past their start-up date. These attorneys are also “officers of the court”. They know how to behave when in the “temple”. Singing Judas’s.

The attorneys that do know foreclosure defense are equally flustered because borrowers come to them, stating, “Hey, I’ve got a great case! You should represent me for free!” This kind of entitlement behavior, coupled with that of judges who just want to shove their size 9 (example) shoes up the foreclosure defense attorney’s ass every time he/she comes into court, has caused a number of the good attorneys to either stop doing foreclosure defense or quit practicing law altogether. Many wonder about the other half of the foreclosure defense attorneys and what makes them so special when they play “the delay game”. The judges know it. The attorneys know it. The borrowers don’t get it.

This is false hope. To think these attorneys can’t tell the court that the other side hasn’t proven it has standing to foreclose because the other side hasn’t proven the Plaintiff (and its investors) have been harmed, is beyond belief.

The simple question of … “If the house is sold Your Honor, who gets the proceeds?” goes right by the wayside. Or, in the alternative (as we know by example), you get a smart-ass judge that answers that question for the bank (or the servicer’s attorney), as “Pay me, I’ll figure it out.” This is when you know the court is corrupt because the judge has turned out to be an asshole.

Ever been to a rocket docket? I have. It’s pretty damned scary. Mar-A-Lago raid or no Mar-A-Lago raid, a whole courtroom of homeowners gets cleared out (totally foreclosed on) with maybe 2 cases held over for trial out of all of the 300 cases coming before that court on its weekly docket. The judges have been ordered by their superiors to “clear the docket”, no matter who they shit on. That, does not make them a great judge. In fact, it makes them a shitty judge. When a judge rules against a homeowner based on emotion and hearsay from the lender’s attorney and its fully-trained lying witness, you have bad justice.

This is why this go-round of foreclosures is going to be even tougher of a nut to crack … all because the justice system has been perverted by the entitled elite, the crooked banks whose noses are clear up the judges’ asses and the good ‘ol boy club (the Bar) who threatens attorneys with disbarment for standing up to a judge.

Any judge that will sign an affidavit based on hearsay and then allow the affiant’s name to be redacted from view of those whom he has accused, speaks ill of not only the affiant, but the prosecutor and the judge as well. Mar-A-Lago is only the tip of the iceberg. Trump is not in foreclosure. Trump has not been screwed over by the banks. The raid gave him impetus to run again because nearly 80+ million voters to attempted to return him to office a second time now feel disenfranchised. Judges won’t hear a majority of the fraudulent election claims and that puts the entire system into a quandary.

Here’s a final thought … what would happen if you wrote a check to the REMIC for the full amount you owed and made it a restrictive endorsement only to the REMIC? Chances are, it’d never get cashed because the REMIC no longer exists. A borrower in Florida did just that, twice, and his check (for attorney’s fees), paid to the REMIC itself using a restrictive indorsement, as directed by the court, still hasn’t gotten cashed. Makes you wonder why more folks haven’t used that tactic.

What would the failed justice system do to “fix” that to “out” the very entities that will screw them in the process?

The C & E on Steroids! is a must if you’re NOT in foreclosure YET, but you suspect some shady shit going on in the land records.

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