Tag Archives: Osceola County Forensic Examination

Vindication Comes In Small Packages

(BREAKING NEWS) — The author of this post is also the author of the Forensic Examination of the Osceola County, Florida public records. The Examination was conducted in July of 2014 by an 8-member team, with the information compiled and delivered to the Osceola County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Hon. Armando Ramirez (now retired) by the author of this post on December 30, 2014 by DK Consultants LLC of Texas. The examination was supervised by a bar-licensed attorney, Allen D. West, Esq. (Redondo Beach, California) and paid for out of Osceola County funds. The results are made a part of this post. This is a report, not an indictment; however, the author has been getting calls from attorneys and homeowners all over the U.S. who have downloaded this report and discovered similarities between the information contained in this report and their own legal scenarios. The author of this post serves as a consultant to homeowners and their attorneys in foreclosure and title matters.

NOTE: The report does not constitute legal advice and the exhibits that were attached to this report are voluminous; thus, any request by the readers of this post for viewing of the exhibits should be sent to cloudedtitles@gmail.com. Because some of the exhibits are NOT in PDF format, there may be a charge assessed for procurement of certain exhibits.

The reason for the article on vindication is due to recent events occurring within a court case in the State of Kansas in the U.S. District Court, Wichita Division, where the Osceola County Forensic Examination was cited, under protest, with a motion to strike made by attorneys for the Bank of New York Mellon, which was denied by the Court. This means the Osceola County Forensic Examination sticks as evidence in the case. Needless to say, the lawyers for BONY Mellon were not happy. The Amended Complaint is shown below:

The interesting thing about court cases is that homeowners get discovery. The author of this post sees certain things he would have suggested been done differently. The author is expecting a call from chief counsel for the Plaintiffs. This attorney (at one time) was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas, so he clearly understands the national gravity of the gravamen of this case.

This is not the author’s only audit of county land records. See below:

Ever since the 49 states attorneys general inked an agreement with the mortgage loan servicers, who were found to be the overseers of the suspect document manufacturing that most homeowners and their attorneys deem suspect, not soon after the ink was dry the servicers started up these fraudulent practices again. The only thing servicers understand is the threat of jail time. They have so much in their war chests they can fight multiple lawsuits in multiple venues. This worked in a case this author put together for an attorney in Florida, where the Lee County Circuit Court judge was directed (through a prayer in the pleadings) to order the Clerk of that Circuit Court to produce certified copies of the assignment of mortgage and power of attorney and submit it to the State’s Attorney for criminal referral and investigation. Soon after the counterclaim was filed, the homeowner’s attorney moved for depositions of the Defendants (the actual author, signer and notary of the assignment). This prompted a move by the servicer’s attorney to move for a settlement, which included a withdrawal of the counterclaim with prejudice. What scared the servicer and its attorney is that they faced implications as accessories to the fraudulent documents complained about. The actual complaint was only 11 pages, plus 6 pages of exhibits. Do you think a judge would actually be in favor of reading such a short complaint? Easily explained. Easy to get through. No bitching. Just stated facts supported by two publicly-recorded documents and citations of the law supporting the action and requests for criminal referral. THAT is what scared the other side into submission.

By virtue of the fact (Paragraph 67 of the Amended Complaint shown in this post) that the Osceola County Forensic Examination was cited and allowed to remain in the complaint (which didn’t go far enough (IMHO) in going after the actual perpetrators themselves) clearly demonstrates vindication for all the crap the author and his team took in bring the Forensic Examination to light. The Kansas Court chose to recognize the report’s value, even though the bank’s attorneys referred to it (similarly to what Florida attorney Matt Weidner referred to it as on an Orlando TV station interview) as, “not worth the paper it was printed on.”

Again, the similarities contained in the report and the assertions made of the suspect fraud contained within the records themselves was enough to convince a federal judge to allow the report to remain on the record. Again, the 758-page report is a “report”, not an indictment. It was a legitimate report, considered fully legitimate by the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Osceola County, Florida, to be published on his website during his tenure in office. That report and the attorney opinion letter accompanying that report is still on the Clerk’s website, even though the Clerk changed hands when Hon. Armando Ramirez (84) retired. The new Clerk, Kelvin Soto, kept the documents in place, including the warning about filing false documents that pops up on the website (osceolaclerk.com) when you access it, which the author of this post helped to draft. Whether the filing of fraudulent documents in that county’s records still continues would be the subject of another forensic examination.

This is one of the reasons that this post’s author and attorney Allen D. West, Esq. taught a class in Las Vegas on The C & E on Steroids! which contains a book and an 8-DVD educational set with accompanying notes and templates on how the author and attorney West constructed the actual declaratory relief complaint. There are only 18 copies left of this kit (hint, hint). This author will not reprint any more of them. Those who are serious about pursuing this option will entertain its legal value.

Every aggrieved homeowner wants to see the signers of these fraudulent documents “hung from the gallows”; however, this will not happen unless you actually make the signers and creators of these documents themselves actual targets. They will “sing for their supper” and rat out their supervisors if put in the hot seat. It’s a small price to pay to see justice done, isn’t it? If you want to see a potential criminal RICO action spawn out of something so trivial, then entertaining an option like this might be well worth your time, effort and expense.

Most people don’t care about a single homeowner’s foreclosure action; however, this case in chief is not that. The homeowners paid off their mortgage! It’s WHO they paid is what’s at issue. They may have paid the wrong party! They can’t even get a legitimate satisfaction of mortgage! A title company examiner claimed their recorded release was suspect! How can they have marketable title? No reasonable person would buy their home, knowing that the wrong party might have been paid and that another party could come back in the future and attempt foreclosure on that same property. Slander of title is an actual damage. A criminal referral within such a case is more than just a slap on the wrist to a mortgage loan servicer. It’s damning and could open a Pandora’s Box the likes of which the servicing industry has yet to see but is all to necessary to vindicate everyone whose mortgage loans were securitized.

The foreclosure mess created by the banks is still plaguing the courts. The political corruption within the court systems in America continues to be exposed with the challenge by homeowners of each of their foreclosure cases, even bringing forth corrupt justices who continually side with the banks despite the overwhelming evidence of suspect documents being offered. The number of lawsuits, according to L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (in his past article, “Memo to Banks: You are Toast”), has exposed the fact that “the banks are getting sued from here to Pluto by homeowners, soldiers and sailors, Fannie and Freddie, PIMCO, the NYFed, and just about anybody with access to a lawyer. And, increasingly, the banks are losing.”

Even though this article was published in 2011, the suits continue and banks don’t want to lose more cases. They would rather settle than create bad case law for themselves. Can you blame them for not wanting to go to jail in addition to pay out fines and restitution. The day of real judgment is coming.

Vindication, no matter how small, is still sweet.

Dave Krieger is also a national talk show host on The Power Hour, which airs Monday-Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Central Time) on radio stations across America, as well as rebroadcasted worldwide on shortwave (7.490 mHz) and streaming live on The Power Hour’s website. Programs are archived daily on the website.

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Filed under I'm not posting any more stuff on here!

Conspiracy? Maybe Not!

(OP-ED) — The author of this post is a paralegal and investigative journalist whose effort to uncover the truth about foreclosures has led him to author several books on the subject. All of these works, including this article, are posted for the sake of educating the public as to what is really going on and how the deck is stacked against homeowners as the county land records “take a beating” in trash, suspect documents.

WILL THE MORATORIUMS EVER END?

Of course they will … the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled (6-3) against the Biden Administration’s revised version of the CDC-imposed moratorium. You knew it would happen at some point. It makes no difference WHO puts down moratorium rules and for what reason. The U.S. Government always has an “end game”, whether it makes any sense or not … and whether it’s legal or not. The CDC enacts a moratorium and the “person in charge”, who appears to have the “mental acuity of a 2-year-old”, has to ask constitutional lawyers if what he is doing is legal. It has already been ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the CDC has no authority to declare a moratorium, yet the U.S. Government does it anyway, simply because it can. If no one says anything, the government and its bureaucratic hierarchy get away with it. And landlords continue to suffer while deadbeat tenants continue to enrich themselves at their expense. Is that fair? Oops. There goes that liberal term “fair” again. Hell, the author can’t even use the word “equitable” here because there is none.

Being a landlord is a business. Landlords have to go out and create wealth using real estate, by whatever means necessary. Some landlords abuse the system by artificially creating wealth to expand their rental basest the expense of tenants. Some landlords truly deserve the name “slumlords”, chiefly because they let their “investments” deteriorate. In the end, someone ends up complaining and the landlords eventually wind up in court, attempting to explain themselves and their degenerative behaviors.

Being a mortgage loan servicer is big business too. Many landlords go out and borrow money to finance homes they intend on renting out. As each home is rented and paid down, the landlords gain equity; however, when tenants don’t pay, landlords can’t pay, and mortgage loan servicers end up “doing their thing”, so long as the government says so. To make the truth plain and simple, because of moratoriums and lockdowns imposed by our government, whether rational or not, at the end of the day, when the moratoriums go away, homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments aren’t the only ones that are going to be foreclosed on. Landlords who have been struggling trying to keep up with their mortgage payments on their rental properties occupied by non-paying tenants are also going to fall victim to the mortgage loan crisis.

When you interrupt the rental supply chain with “protocols” and “regulations”, things go to hell in a hand basket in short order. That goes for any essential operating parts of machinery needed to keep the supply chain running that cannot be imported because of COVID protocols or for any other excuse the government deems important (imposed by the “do as I say, not as I do” bunch). In any case, the bigger hedge funds, like BlackRock and Vanguard, are all on stand-by with their claws out, ready to swoop down and buy up as much foreclosed real estate as they can feasibly get their hands on. To cover up their tracks, they will (as they currently are doing) use “shell” companies to purchase available properties they can buy up to turn into rental properties. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not. Before you sell your property to one of these entities, look them up in the Secretary of State’s database. It may surprise you as to what you find.

THE MEANS TO AN END

There has to be a “method to the madness” (as it were) in order to accomplish the task of depleting Americans of their wealth. Nationalizing the rental market in the hands of a few is one way. If the government and the banks and their henchmen can use the court system to achieve this goal, they’ll do it by any means possible, just like they have since the 2009 foreclosure crisis began. By 2015, there was a lull in the crisis … and it appears that many foreclosure mill law firms ran out of properties to foreclose on and faded into the woodwork. Since the eviction moratoriums were imposed at the beginning of the first quarter of 2020, foreclosure mill law firms have started to reform and are preparing for another onslaught against homeowners, en masse, as soon as the self-proclaimed moratoriums end.

Enter the mortgage loan servicers. In order to achieve foreclosure, the law firms prosecuting these foreclosures (in the civil realm) have to have help. The land records, as screwed up as they are most of the time, don’t reveal the naked truth. Thus, the mortgage loan servicers have to step in and move the process along, by recording trash, suspect documents to avail themselves and their alleged “lenders” of standing to foreclose so the foreclosure mill law firms and their shills have something to argue to the court to win rulings in their favor. The unsuspecting homeowners, who up to this point may or may not have enjoyed their “reprieve” from being kicked out of their homes, don’t even bother to go to the land records in the county their property is located in and check to see what has been “recorded” (NOT FILED) by the mortgage loan servicers. They’re too busy enjoying what’s left of their “destiny”. Or maybe they are sweating bullets, but too preoccupied to go check the records before the SHTF.

In March of 2012, the mortgage loan servicers entered into an agreement with 49 States’ Attorneys General and promised NOT to trash the land records with suspect documents. No sooner did the ink dry however, the mortgage loan servicers were back to business, continuing the process they were so good at in facilitating the 2009 foreclose crisis … creating false documents and causing them to be recorded … slandering one property’s title after another.

In October of 2012, DK Consultants LLC out of Texas was retained by the Williamson County Clerk to come into the courthouse in Georgetown, Texas (inside of a locked basement office occupied also by the Clerk’s deputies) and conduct a “cursory audit” of documents the Clerk (Nancy Rister) and her deputies had culled from the county’s land records. In January of 2013, a report was presented to the Williamson County Commissioner’s Court (behind locked doors with sheriff’s deputies standing guard), while the consultant, his attorney and the County Clerk presented their findings to a somewhat stunned county commission. The commissioners had no idea their even their own records were looked into to see if they were affected and some of them were surprised to find out that “suspect” documents existed in their own back yards!

In July of 2014, DK Consultants was again retained to investigate and compile data from the Osceola County, Florida land records. Due to previous suppositions formed out of the Williamson County Real Property Records Audit, the team, which consisted also of a foreclosure defense attorney (Al West), began a 4-day arduous task of compiling certified copies (in a hotel meeting room in Osceola County, with direct access to county land records supplied by the county’s IT department) of what appeared to be “suspect” recordings of trash documents. On December 30, 2014, a 758-page report (Osceola County Forensic Examination), accompanied by an attorney opinion letter, was released to the Osceola County Clerk of the Circuit Court (Armando Ramirez) containing the findings of the examination, accompanied by 17 bankers boxes of certified documents that the team deemed as suspect.

As in the previous audit, the media again swooped down to have a “field day” in an attempt to “shoot the messenger”, because a definite “pattern” of behavior had emerged and had become evident and exposed in the report. The evidence wasn’t pretty; however, this was a report and not an indictment. This was investigative work. This wasn’t a grand jury. Some foreclosure defense attorneys, like Matt Weidner, went on camera and scoffed at the report, not bothering to notice the attorney opinion letter, stating the report, “wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.” As a result of that interview, people reading Weidner’s blog posts slammed his ass good for defaming the report.

In the weeks and months that followed, the author of the report (the author of this post), received dozens of calls from attorneys and law firms who obtained a copy of this report from the Clerk’s website, wanting more information, commenting that they were seeing the same patterns of behavior that the report evidenced in their cases. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not.

THE LAND RECORDS DON’T LIE

The pattern of behavior that was exposed since the reintroduction of securitization into the American economy (through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) is still made manifest today. The pattern of trash document manufacturing started and continued by the title companies (as early as 2002) and their employees and third-party document mills retained to keep the pattern from being identified through expanded “arms length transactions” was set into motion. As time progressed, it became more evident that the blatant attempts to “connect the dots” within the chain of title became more ominous in nature as the mortgage loan servicers themselves decided to partake in the game of document fabrication (from around 2004 and beyond). The use of “MERS” (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) became popular as 5,500+ subscribers to that system (including the Secret Service and the FBI) made use of that database to log in and enter data they owned, inputting their data which identified a long string of promissory note transfers from entity to entity which affected each reported mortgage loan.

In order to “tie off loose ends”, something had to be done to make the land records “jive” with the actual transfers of the promissory notes; thus, MERS became an uninvolved “player” in the game of trash assignments. But the pattern of behavior (by 2009) had become more predominant, when the foreclosure mill law firms themselves became involved in the document manufacturing. Vis a vis discovery, it was further made manifest that the mortgage loan servicers and the law firms that were involved in the creation of these trash documents were connected via what are known as “servicing platforms” (i.e. VendorScape, ServiceLink, etc.), wherein the law firms and their employees could communicate through these platforms with the mortgage loan servicers, to create plausible trash documents that would attempt to “match up” with the alleged “path” the note traveled in an effort to bat clean-up to whitewash the securitization process and make the attorneys’ stories to the judge more plausible.

Homeowners in many counties who discovered the discrepancies in their land records (many of whom found themselves facing foreclosure) complained to the county clerks and recorders of what they found when they obtained copies of what was recorded in the official property records in their respective counties. This is how the county clerks and recorder and registers of deeds became aware and thus involved in identifying just how serious and widespread this trash recording system had proliferated the entire country. Soon other clerks and recorders were looking into their records and to their amazement, this same pattern emerged out of their own back yards. Sadly, many clerks and recorders “stuck their heads in the sand”, while others did not and became very vocal about it, even filing lawsuits against MERS and the mortgage loan servicers and banks they claimed were responsible for the mess.

Based on the direct involvement and research and collective meetings with foreclosure defense attorneys, clerks, recorders and registers of deeds over the matter, the author of this post soon put together Clouded Titles … now in its Mayday Edition (432 pp.) and as that book started to circulate, even judges and court officials became aware that people were “taking notice” and writing about it. One federal magistrate chuckled when this author gave him one of the initial copies of the book, recognizing why MERS was trying to have him (the author) ejected from a federal settlement conference in Kansas City in 2011. All the judge had to do was look at the title and he “got it”.

The judges in today’s system are very much aware of the trash document problem. However, because the banks donate money to their election campaigns, judges are reluctant to acknowledge the document’s negative effect on any given property’s chain of title. They’re more concerned with who has the promissory note; no matter how the “ends were tied together” to make the foreclosure mill attorney’s “story” more plausible. It didn’t matter. And homeowners, relying on foreclosure defense attorneys (many of whom were clueless as to the real issues), faltered through their foreclosure cases which ended up in the homeowners being kicked out of their homes. Most common judicial answer given … “We can’t hurt the banks.” As in the previous audit, the media again swooped down to have a “field day” in an attempt to “shoot the messenger”, because a definite “pattern” of behavior had emerged and had become evident and exposed in the report. The evidence wasn’t pretty; however, this was a report and not an indictment. This was investigative work. This wasn’t a grand jury. Some foreclosure defense attorneys, like Matt Weidner, went on camera and scoffed at the report, not bothering to notice the attorney opinion letter, stating the report, “wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.” In the weeks and months that followed, the author of that report (the author of this post), received dozens of calls from attorneys and law firms who obtained a copy of this report from the Clerk’s website, wanting more information, commenting that they were seeing the same patterns of behavior that the report evidenced in their cases. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not.

ATTACKING THE PROCESS

In examining the land records, the author of this post (who has examined thousands of such records) had to take the emotion completely out of what he was seeing in the examination of each document. One would have to realize there indeed was a “fact pattern” that had emerged in order to recognize and identify the culprits. One would have to have certain investigative knowledge of how the mortgage loan servicers retained independent contractors and support bases of employees who did nothing more than create, execute and cause to be recorded the successive chain of nonsense that (to this day) continue to show up in every foreclosure case on the planet as “evidence”. This is exactly what California attorney Al West learned in an interview with one of the independent contractors that worked at the Bank of America Simi Valley “document manufacturing plant”.

Homeowners need to become aware of what is in the land records. The reason that the clerks’ offices have “deputies” is to help homeowners locate these records (if they need help). One who is of the mindset to be educated on attacking the process first has to “get the goods” by paying for copies of every recorded document since they owned the property and analyzing their chains of title and how each document in the chain applies to their given scenario.

The commonality that these trash documents all share in today’s times is that multiple parties were involved in the creation, execution and recordation of these suspect assignments, substitution of trustees, notices of default and sale and notices of lis pendens. Each false recording slanders title. That is a given. There’s no getting around it. It then becomes the responsibility of the homeowner to identify WHO slandered his title, while keeping their emotions in check. If you, the homeowner, were pissed because of what you found, you can’t think straight and your final analysis will be flawed because you will miss important “markers”.

This author wrote about all of those “markers” in his book Clouded Titles, now in its Mayday Edition. Nothing has changed in the nature and scope of the way these documents are produced; however, the method by which you can attack them in court has become a little more refined. This author is not going to get verbose here; however, there is a full DVD-training kit, along with a manual of sample pleadings that this author used to successfully get rid of a trash document in a land record in Florida, which is included in The C & E on Steroids! … also available for your educational benefit.

The key here is to attack the document when it first appears in the land records. If you wait until the foreclosure process has started, you’ll find your action consolidated by the court into the foreclosure case and thus, a foreclosure court judge will be hearing the matter instead of an unbiased county court at law judge. Thus, checking the land records if you even think you’re going to get behind in your mortgage payments would be more than prudent at this point … and keep checking every week … because you never know when the S is going to HTF.

YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN SUPER SLEUTH!

A word of encouragement is offered here, because homeowners this author has interviewed are fighting back. One homeowner in Florida is in Year 13 of his litigation. He has been scoffed at by judges, intimidated by bailiffs, trashed by foreclosure mill attorneys and deceived by the federal court system. Yet, he’s still at it … he has the house rented out and is still fighting the foreclosure … largely in part because he chose to keep researching and investigating his case.

Again, this author has a subscription to Been Verified. This is probably the most affordable tool to researching individual players “in the game”. It’s amazing what you can find out about bank employees, mortgage loan servicer employees and third-party document hacks and notaries. Using the secretary of states’ databases can help you track notary commissions and read up on the rules. DO NOT CONTACT THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES!!! Yes … the author knows that if you’re a pissed off homeowner, the propensity to “reach out and touch someone exists”; however, a caveat here: You risk killing your case if you attempt to contact those whom you are investigating. It’s amazing that in one case, a California homeowner and his attorney are still trying to find former Nationwide Title Clearing (Palm Harbor, Florida) employee Jessica Sheetz. She keeps “relocating” every time the process server gets close. She got tipped off because someone called her employer, inquiring as to her employment status. It takes only one simple phone call to screw your case permanently … so avoid the temptation.

Public records are also a great way to track corporations. Most of the websites will allow you to download copies of their corporate filings. You can also go to sec.gov or subscribe to secinfo.com to track documents that might show you mergers and acquisitions between firms.

Hell … this author found out (through his Austin attorney) that the law firm of Brice, Vander Linden & Wernick was dissolved 3 weeks after the Williamson County Real Property Records Audit was released and made public. That law firm was named in the report multiple times, which, upon discovering their mention in the audit, faded into the woodwork to avoid scrutiny. Talk about having an impact! Stuff like this doesn’t happen every day; but when it does, you bask in the thought you might have made a difference in someone’s life.

As a footnote … this author is contemplating doing another live foreclosure defense workshop in a “free state” (that means a Red State), where you can travel (for the moment) without having to worry about vaccine mandates and mask wearing and freely exchange ideas and learn new tactics for staying in your home for simply being proactive.

Of course, we recommend that if you’re sick, you have enough smarts to stay home and watch the program in limited view on live stream and take notes. Again, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Remember, “they” win when YOU give up! Your comments are welcome as to the proposed workshop! The author will attempt to have attorneys present that can answer legal questions as we explore the simplest ways to extend the life of your stay past any moratorium (and maybe even win your case)!

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Filed under OP-ED, Securitization Issues

ADVANCES, explained

(OP-ED) — The author of this post is a consultant and paralegal to attorneys practicing in foreclosure defense matters and their related fields and thus, the information offered in this post should be considered research for educational purposes only and not the rendering of legal advice.

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Biblical quote in part)

Most homeowners that retain counsel to look into matters involving foreclosure only scrape the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dealing with REMIC trusts. A REMIC (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit) is a common law trust set up by a hedge fund that is primarily funded by “certificate holders”. The “certificate holders” are investors or investment groups that buy securities from the hedge fund. The securities are created from lists of mortgage loans, all pooled together in a package, that are sold to investors, who receive shares (certificates) which represent their stake in the matter. The amount of “shares” given to the certificate holders depends on the amount of funding they’ve contributed to the REMIC trust and to which tranche they purchased certificates in (some tranches are riskier than others, by design). It’s much like getting stock certificates when you buy stock in a company on Wall Street, especially when it comes to the risk of loss.

Each REMIC trust has a Master Servicer by design. REMIC trusts can also incorporate mortgage loan servicers and sub-servicers if it so deems, for the purposes of collecting the monthly mortgage payments from borrowers.

Each REMIC trust has a Cut-Off Date, where all paperwork that is represented as “filed” with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission via the Trustee of the Trust, has to be forwarded to the Trustee prior to the closing of the Trust.

Each REMIC trust has a Closing Date, in which the documents have all been tendered to the Trustee of the Trust. The Trustee then issues the certificates to the certificate holders, who then receive principal and interest payments from the servicer every month. The IRS refers to the Closing Date as the “Start-Up Date” of the trust, when the trust officially is closed for business and exists according to law for one (1) year.

Each REMIC trust has a Distribution Date … and this is important … because whether or not the borrower makes a payment or not … the servicer is required to advance proceeds from the sums collected from all of the borrowers, to the certificate holders in the form of principal and interest payments. The Distribution Date is generally somewhere between the 20th and 25th of every month, according to the majority of REMIC trust filings this author has reviewed.

The Certificate Holders are buying securities, which are batches of securitized loans that have all been pooled together into a CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation).

Each REMIC has an ADVANCES section, which explains in detail how the mortgage loan servicers pay the certificate holders on the Distribution Date, whether the Borrowers make their mortgage payments or not.

When the Borrowers go to their respective “corresponding lenders” (part of the table-funding process), that lender checked to see whether the Borrowers’ credit scores were worthy of their best, low-interest loans. If the borrower’s credit scores were “shitty”, they generally ended up in subprime loan pools, which the government now frowns on lender’s from making. These were the riskiest loans made, thus, more attractive to investors because of the high-interest returns they would get on their certificates (from playing in the secondary markets).

Fast Forward to the Foreclosure Process

Now that it’s been simply explained how the system came into play, one must also understand that the servicers continue to collect for the certificate holders once the trusts have hit their one-year mark and expire. When the borrowers have begun to make payments on their mortgage loans, they are told to make at least 3 payments. Why?

Because it takes at least 3 payments to get the entire securities package set into motion. But wait! The Closing Date stated that (in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement for each REMIC trust) that all paperwork had to be “in” to the Trustee by that time, as the Trustee was issuing certificates to the certificate holders! The idea of being able to pay for at least 3 months was designed to send a false representation to investors that the loans were “good”, when the originators knew the “sewer would back up” at a point in time in the future.

The lenders also know that because of most of the predatory loans they issued, they knew already that the default rate was going to be higher because these loans weren’t really “qualified” loans under the law. The loan originators went to various insurance companies and purchased default insurance to guarantee that if the borrower defaulted, the certificate holders would be paid the value of their shares via the default insurance payment.

If a foreclosure indeed occurred … and knowing that the default insurance (and other means of reimbursement vehicles were initiated, such as credit default swaps, PMI, LPMI, MIP, title insurance, etc.) would pay out after Day 91 of the Borrowers’ default on their loans … the certificate holders were paid, assumedly by the servicer, right?

How then, did the certificate holders (for which the trustee represents to the court or in the notices of default at the time of the foreclosure) suffer financial harm? How did they suffer an actual injury-in-fact if they were being paid by the mortgage loan servicers every month?

When a borrower files suit against the servicer and the REMIC trust, they completely miss the boat on Injury-in-fact (see the article on Lessons Learned from Spokeo on this blog site) issues. By that time, a plethora of questionable documents have been recorded in the land records in the county where the subject property is located. These documents, suspiciously referred to as Assignment of Mortgage or Assignment of Deed of Trust, were more than likely generated by the mortgage loan servicers themselves or through third-party document mills, as a means of “batting clean-up” in the land records. These assignments all attempt to link the chain of title to the current alleged lien holder, albeit, questionably.

Who is the damaged party here?

Various attorneys that this author has consulted have all maintained that 99.9% of the foreclosures involving REMIC trusts are illegal. In California, notices are given to prospective bidders that they are only bidding on the lien and not the property itself. After the foreclosure occurs, the Trustee or the law firm allegedly representing it, issue a Trustee’s Deed Upon Sale. The problem here is … the Trustee is deeding the land over to the new buyer, who, if they would have read the damned sale notice, were only buying the lien and not the property itself! Judges gloss over all this because they don’t give a shit about the borrower. Judges can’t even be bothered to apply the law as it’s written, which is why America has appellate courts. The problem is, most borrowers can’t afford to even litigate the foreclosure let alone the appellate phase of the matter. The judges know this, which is why they don’t give a shit how they rule. Seldom do you ever find an honest judge that actually reads, understands the facts at hand and rules accordingly. The honest judges even have a hard time sifting through the facts if the borrower’s attorney doesn’t understand who he’s litigating against and why.

If the borrower’s attorney were to simply ask the court: “Your Honor, if my client’s house is sold on the courthouse steps today, who gets the money?”, the judge would then inquire of the foreclosing lender’s attorney WHO is being represented here. The Plaintiff’s attorney will always acknowledge that he represents the Plaintiff, when the Plaintiff’s attorney knows damned well he’s being paid by the mortgage loan servicer, who is coming to court under stealth, in the name of the lender (REMIC trust) to steal the house to reimburse itself for the payments.

When the Borrower’s attorney goes to court, the attorney and his client are faced with the submission of a payment history from the servicer showing the borrower’s history of mortgage loan payments and when they stopped making them. The Plaintiff bank then asserts that since that date, the certificate holders haven’t received payments, which is false. The servicer has been paying them all along and the servicer, the real party behind the foreclosure action, has failed to tender the payment history, post-borrower-payments made. The servicer should be required to disclose ALL payments made to the certificate holders of the REMIC trust, because the Trustee is claiming that the payments the borrower was making were the only payments made to the certificate holders, which is also false.

The servicer is the real party in interest here … and they’re in court trying to recover all of their payments … and then some. When they sell the home, they are going to recoup tens of thousands of dollars, in addition to the booty collected through the default insurance and all of the other payoff methods. In fact, mortgage loan servicing is big business and it’s a dirty one too. Not one mortgage loan servicer that has been “taken to task” to the fullest extent of the law (in court) has come away with clean hands; that is, if the attorneys who are litigating for the borrowers actually know what they’re doing.

The borrower does not have a contract with the mortgage loan servicer!

If this is the case, then what is the servicer doing in court, claiming to represent a closed REMIC trust, after the trust and the servicer have been paid multiple times over by all of the claimed default mechanisms?

This is where it’s estimated that a $500,000 mortgage loan nets the securitized trust $7,000,000 dollars. You read that right! Given all of the payouts the servicer got after Day 91, the certificate holders were all made whole. How then were the certificate holders damaged? They have no standing to come into court. They got away with the foreclosure because of borrower ignorance.

When the first run of foreclosures occurred in 2009-2014, 97.5% of the borrowers served with notices packed up their belongings and ran. Two (2%) percent of them attempted to deal with the mess in court themselves and got their asses handed to them. The other point 5 percent (0.5%) retained attorneys or were successful pro se because they bothered to do their research … but sadly, because of the way the system is “rigged” in favor of the banks, the banks’ servicers have loads of money to spend (and they will spend it) to legally outmaneuver the borrower, making it virtually impossible to win their case. It is estimated that 1 out of 100 foreclosures heard by the courts will actually go anywhere, especially to appeal. Those are very bad odds, especially to those who lack the knowledge necessary to make the banks prove the default and the actual harm occurred.

One Footnote: The Credit Risk Manager

As a footnote to this research, one should also understand that some of these REMICs have what is known as a Credit Risk Manager. These are third-party firms that are fee retained (for a small percentage of the collected funds of all payments submitted to the REMIC, generally 0.0135% per annum of the Scheduled Principal Balance of each Mortgage Loan) to monitor the activities of the mortgage loan servicers collecting for the REMICs. Had the borrower’s attorney known this entity existed, it would have been so easy to depose them and all their records, to see just who was paying whom and when. But again, no one is paying attention.

Here’s an example of one SEC filing from a 424(b)(5) Prospectus:

Taken from Page S-69 from a 424(b)(5) Prospectus issued on behalf of First Franklin Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-FF15

This is one of many “hired guns” that are put in place to monitor the activities of the mortgage loan servicers and master servicers. Can you imagine the shit show if you discovered that these people were being paid to monitor specific payments on your mortgage loan and the advice they gave the servicers was non-existent? That could constitute a breach of their contract! And that’s just one issue you might discover if you can get this entity into a deposition!

Read the foregoing paragraphs carefully! Notice where it says the Credit Risk Manager will provide a “loan-level loss and mitigation analysis and a prepayment premium analysis” to the REMIC’s Master Servicer and Servicer? This basically describes how the party making the payments to the Certificate Holders (who are allegedly in court claiming they were harmed) different analyses of ways to “make them whole” (mitigate their losses), meaning the Master Servicer and the Servicer, who have to pay principal and interest on the Distribution Date, every month, whether the Borrower pays their mortgage payment or not!

THE LAST STRAW

In the Osceola County Forensic Examination, the author of this post, who prepared the report, included as EXHIBIT 29 the following letter that you should read if you want to understand HOW the servicer is allowed to reimburse itself for ADVANCES paid out. For all intents and purposes, it’s an admission by the now-defunct Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC as to HOW it does its business:

If you want some real “background” on how the servicing game is played, you should download this PDF Exhibit 29 and read it thoroughly and research its contents BEFORE engaging the servicer or BEFORE you start drafting pleadings. The party you are going after in court is NOT the REMIC trust! This document should make things plain and simple for you regarding the explanation of how the servicer treats ADVANCES.

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QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ASKING

(OP-ED) — The author of this post (Dave Krieger) in the near future, is slated to take over as the permanent talk show host for the nationally-syndicated program called The Power Hour (a 2-hour program that airs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Central Time). This is slated to happen near the beginning of the 4th quarter of this year. (FYI: We will be having foreclosure defense attorneys on as guests … just in time for the end of the moratorium illegally set by the current “administration” if that’s what you call it!)

CAVEAT AND DISCLAIMER: The contents of this post are based on paralegal level research and are not intended to represent legal advice. The value of the research is intended for educational purposes only.

THE VALUE OF THE LAND RECORDS

Many homeowners who really understand what’s in the county land records (previously discussed in other articles on this blog) “get” the fact that checking these records often is like checking your credit history often by ordering credit reports and looking to see what’s posted there in the trade line items. This author has put together a book on the subject (The Credit Restoration Primer), which goes into detail about how to request and analyze the information contained within your credit report, based on paralegal level research and the advice given to this author by expert attorneys who developed this program, which this author expanded and further expounded on.

The land records provide more than just a modicum of detail about your future as a homeowner. They contain every document in your chain of title that has been legally recorded. There is a difference between the word “filed”, which is used to refer to the act of initiating a lawsuit in a court or law or equity, versus the term “recorded”, which implies a public record that is handed to a Clerk, a Register of Deeds, a Recorder, an Auditor (and the like) and summarily archived in a “book” and “page” in either electronic or hard copy form. Smaller counties in America will have hard copy files (if they’re smart). The bigger counties with larger populations have resorted to digital recording of these documents through the scanning process. The originals and then sent back to the person initiating the recording of the documents.

As you may have noticed, this author used the word “legally” recorded. He did NOT say “lawfully” recorded. In other words, if a document contains false and misrepresentative information, it represents a “stain” against your property’s land record. This “stain” is commonly referred to as a “cloud on title”. A “cloud on title” basically means that there is something that is “blocking” the marketability and vendibility of the property, which means you can’t sell something that has blemishes on it because the prudent buyer that knows his stuff will not purchase something that a title company is going to “gloss over”. The title companies take these recordings at their word … if it’s recorded in the land records … it must be true (whether it is or not).

The land records are your only means of exposing these blemishes. If it’s not recorded, it means nothing in the “official realm”. In the last post, the author reflected that the 3,041 land records that exist in America are tainted with all sorts of shit documents, suspect because of (a) how they were created; (b) who created them; (c) when they were created; and (d) for what purpose were they created.

THE PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR

In the Williamson County Land Record Audit and the Osceola County Forensic Examination of the Land Records, both of these reports showed a suspect pattern of behavior in the manner in which certain documents were created, executed and recorded.

The pattern that developed and was demonstrated throughout both reports exhibited that the propensity to create these trash documents fell on the mortgage loan servicers and the foreclosure mill law firms who represent them in the theft of peoples’ homes. This is why there was a list (in the Osceola County, FL report) of the suspects, both representing mortgage loan servicers and law firms, one of which, the Gilbert Garcia Law Firm, who bitched at the Osceola County Clerk in writing, threatening a defamation suit if he didn’t remove the report from his website (nothing ever came of it). The little twits at that law firm seemed to forget that if they did file suit, the Clerk not only gets his day in Court, he also gets “discovery”, a damning tool that can be used to unearth all sorts of information involving the law firm’s participation in the creation of trash documents.

The problem with most homeowners (and many of their foreclosure defense attorneys who are feeding off their bank accounts) is that they don’t recognize the importance of discovery and how to get it.

I drafted an 11-page lawsuit in Lee County, Florida for an attorney under the direction of her investor client. It was framed as a counterclaim to a foreclosure action in which a trash assignment had been created by a mortgage loan servicer’s 3 employees. I did not name the servicer in the lawsuit. I named the 3 employees in their official capacities. I itemized every single thing they did in creating, executing and notarizing the document that was eventually recorded in the land records, calling them out on all of the “issues” that were present as misrepresented within the document.

As soon as the attorney for the investor FILED the counterclaim and started pushing for depositions of the 3 defendant employees of the mortgage loan servicer … ALL OF A SUDDEN NOW THEY WANT TO SETTLE! Why?

We collectively “hit a nerve”!

Maybe it was because we were making the right assertions in the lawsuit and attaching the Florida Criminal Code to those assertions, directing the judge to order the Clerk of the Circuit Court to produce a certified copy of the trash document and to turn it over to the State’s Attorney for further investigation. Do you think that the servicer wanted their employees to testify in a deposition? Not likely. Why? Because they would have spilled the beans on the entire operation in order to save their own asses from criminal prosecution, that’s why!

This is one way this author discovered that the pattern of behavior in the land record examinations was true. If the mortgage loan servicer didn’t have a nexus with the law firm (the servicers are the real parties retaining the law firms, not the alleged “lenders”) in initiating foreclosures, the law firm would not have acted the way it did (in the Florida case), trying to stop the depositions of the servicer’s employees. As I told John Healey (the Fort Bend County, TX D.A.), “It only takes one prosecution of a robosigner and all those who conspired with them to ‘send a message’ to the rest of these scumbags.”

Seriously, look at what happened when Las Vegas notary Tracy Lawrence testified before a grand jury about the thousands of default and sale notices she signed her boss’s name to and then notarized those same documents under the direction of her “bosses”. She ended up dead. Think about the means by which the banking, servicing and title companies operate and understand how “complex” things could get the more they are challenged as to the patterns of behavior exposed in these two land record reports … and how they can “reach out and touch someone”. Lawrence died of a 3-drug cocktail, which was found in her toxicology report (… “worst case of suicide I ever saw”). Why a cocktail? Because most women kill themselves by overdosing on something and this story would be “plausible” to investigators, who ruled it a suicide rather than what most of us probably think really happened. Think Marilyn Monroe.

Again, I must remind the readers that these are “reports”, not indictments. And, yes, this author has had numerous conversations with attorneys all across the country who have read these reports and have reached out to him to discuss the reports’ contents and the similarities they possess to the cases these attorneys are working on.

THE “RED MEAT” OF THE MATTER

By this time, you’re chomping at the bit to discover the line of questioning this author might have in mind, right?

If the author were the homeowner, he would first want to know:

  1. In a Qualified Written Request to the mortgage loan servicer under RESPA § 6:

(a.) the name of the alleged current holder of the note with the right to enforce it; and

(b.) do they have a copy of the note and mortgage or deed of trust they can send with their response?

COMMENT: Everyone shoots themselves in the foot by asking 50 questions in a voluminous request right up front instead of spacing out their requests … and the other mistake is … they don’t send it certified, return receipt requested to the servicer’s QWR address (they do have one)! The longer you can drag out a QWR, the longer it takes to get a foreclosure accomplished. I’ve seen at least 9 QWR requests in one case and it took the servicer nearly 3 years to answer all of them before they could even proceed with the foreclosure!

2. Research the assignment. This is where a subscription to “Been Verified” or use of a private investigator can really be of benefit to case development. Research every name, address and phone number on it. Identify each party and their location. This will tell you the “WHO” that is involved in your scenario. Research their backgrounds. If a law firm is mentioned anywhere on the assignment, such as “Prepared by” or “After recording, return to”, you can bet the law firm involved in the case (or retained at arm’s length by the law firm coming after you in foreclosure court) is behind the creation and manufacture of the document. The law firm (generally local, sometimes) can be tied to the pattern and thus, now you have suspects in your case development as to “WHAT” each knew and “HOW” they participated in the creation of the trash document(s). Sometimes, multiple assignments pop up in rapid succession and this should also send out warning alarms. DO NOT CONTACT THE TARGETS, DAMMIT! You’ll tip them off as to your intentions and suddenly (as has happened in some cases) … they disappear and you can’t depose them because they’re in hiding! Why does this author say that? Because people have called up the robosigners and the notaries and then they wonder why their cases are falling apart. Stupid is as stupid does.

3. Develop a list of unanswered questions for each deponent (the people you will depose). Understand that the minimum cost to depose someone starts at $3,000. You need to be careful about picking your targets.

COMMENT: A lot of this information is available in The C&E on Steroids! training kit, which has a training manual and 13 hours of DVD material covered by myself and California attorney Al West (including sample pleadings).

4. Your target is assumed to have valuable information useful to your case. Mortgage loan servicers often show up claiming to represent the REMIC trust. They are not paid by the REMIC. They are not REMIC employees. They are paid by the servicers. They are trained in mock trial courts to be “convincing” so they pass muster in court in their phony testimony. (You’re probably wondering how this author knows those mock trial courts exist, right?) Think about it. How could the servicers’ employees be so “skilled” at answering and rebutting questions asked during cross examination if they weren’t educated? Understand WHO you’re dealing with here. Deposing a REMIC is futile because by the time the case gets to you and your home, that REMIC is closed and long gone. Sending correspondence to the REMIC is also futile. If they’re closed they can’t answer, right?

5. You need to discover whether you’re dealing with a “trust” or a “pretend trust”. There is a difference. Some of these “pretend trusts” are junk debt pools whose employees manufactured the assignments with the intent to claim standing in court to foreclose. Assume the foreclosure judge doesn’t care about the assignments. This is why we file C&E’s BEFORE the foreclosure, to tie off documents before a judge who isn’t handling foreclosures. We want them thrown out so a foreclosure judge can’t proceed against us! This is the value of declaratory relief. If you wait until your foreclosure is in motion, it’s likely your judge will merge your suit into the foreclosure and toss your claim against the document the other side is using to steal your home! Timing is everything. Discovery is necessary to find out WHO you’re dealing with here.

6. If you are dealing with a REMIC, you need to obtain a copy of the 424(b)(5) Prospectus (not the FWP). In it, you will find the ADVANCES section. You may also find a section entitled, “The Credit Risk Manager”. If you are fortunate enough to have THAT party named in your prospectus … these people monitor the activities of the mortgage loan servicers dealing with the REMIC and they’ve got troves of information and should be considered a primary target for deposition and production of documents. They should be able to tell you whether or not and how long the advances were paid to the certificate holders, who are assumedly in court claiming they’ve been damaged, when in fact, they’ve been paid all along or have been made whole through the default payouts described in my last article after DAY 91.

7. You’ll need to investigate DAY 91 and what happened then. Asking questions relevant to the insurance payouts, credit default swap payouts, title insurance payouts and PMI/LPMI/MIP payouts, etc. could put a “feather in your cap” in demonstrating to the court that the real party in interest isn’t present in the courtroom. If you follow the money trail, you’ll expose mounds of information that was as useful in the Buffington case in Arizona against U.S. Bank.

You’ll notice the Court only threw out one of the causes of action … the one for FRAUD. This should send a message to you … a clear one … because 99.9% of litigants go into court screaming “Fraud!” WRONG! You don’t have enough evidence to prove that, so get that shit out of your head right now! Until you’re done with discovery, or your case proceeds to the point where the true evidence emerges in the case to actually ask the court to amend your complaint to include “Fraud”, “Conspiracy” and “RICO”, DON’T LEAD WITH THAT! By doing so, you’ve just added about $5000-$10000 to your legal bills. Duh. If you had that kind of money, you wouldn’t be in foreclosure in the first place!

And don’t let your attorney plead FRAUD either! He’s doing that because he doesn’t know any better. He was trained in law school to plead “shotgun style”, like the spaghetti noodle theory … throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. In this day and age, judges don’t appreciate that. It’s a great way to posture yourself in a negative light before the court. The way this author sees things (after having been in trial court with attorneys on numerous foreclosure cases), the judge is already against you when you walk into court. Why make things worse?

The idea here is “wise as serpents, harmless as doves.”

IDENTIFYING SERVICERS

By looking at the complaints or recorded documents and looking at the “WHOs” in the document and tracing their employment, you’ll easily find out WHO the robosigners work for. Any robosigner or notary in California has to keep a journal with thumb prints and signatures in them. Bet they won’t have those when you request Production of Documents and call them on it. I love deposing notaries, even if they no longer have commissions. Notaries can be your best friend in a deposition (and not beforehand).

Once you’ve identified the servicers, go back into the REMIC documents (if a REMIC is involved) and look at the Servicers that are named in the REMIC prospectus. Research each one and you’ll probably find multiple assignments and transfers of the collateral files, where stuff can go missing or be falsely duplicated. You’ll want to get at that collateral file, but QWR’s will only give you limited discovery in advance. You’ll need to target the collateral file in the Request for Production. That’s how the author would do it if he were the victim here.

Again, this isn’t legal advice. It’s just the means to be able to get a judge to ask the other side’s lawyer who he’s really representing, so you can tell the court you have no contract with the mortgage loan servicer … so why are they there instead of the REMIC? Most people don’t get that far because they’re not forward thinking. They’re so tied up in emotional knots they can’t think straight. They just want to lash out and then wonder why they end up homeless and living in a tent city (or worse, with relatives).

You can also build a case against the mortgage loan servicer when they don’t respond to your QWR requests (either at all or in an untimely manner). The author would suggest you look up the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act § 6 and thoroughly read that BEFORE engaging in your research quest. Understand that there are statute of limitations on many things involving your case. Identify what those are and avoid challenging areas where the court is likely to toss your claims. It’s another waste of money.

ONCE YOU GET TO THE SERVICER, YOU CAN EXPOSE THE LAW FIRM

In the Carrsow-Franklin case in New York, Wells Fargo’s robosigning behaviors were exposed by New York bankruptcy attorney Linda Tirelli. The use of MERS in a lot of these documents can also work in your favor, even though MERS is now hiding behind the same bunch that owns the New York Stock Exchange.

You’ll find the use of MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) shows up in all REMIC-related cases. If MERS is involved, you can bet your loan was securitized into the secondary mortgage markets.

And don’t sue MERS … you’re throwing money away again. They have very good hiding places that will cost you millions of dollars to find … if you get my drift. And you don’t have millions of dollars to spend; otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the foreclosure mess you’re in, right?

Some folks have amended their foreclosure complaints to include the law firm involved in the processing of the documents because it localizes their cases and keeps them in state court instead of getting thrown into the federal realm, where litigation costs are exponential and the banks’ attorneys have an edge. The local law firm suing you can be especially vulnerable if the law firm’s employees were involved in the direct manufacture and robosigning and notarizing of the documents. Surprisingly, many of the law firms involved in the National Default Exchange (NDEX; a national network of foreclosure mills) are directly involved in processing trash documents. Research those networks and what you find may surprise you, especially when you discover what “servicing platforms” they used (Vendorscape, Servicelink, etc.) and what discoverable information you can get from that.

If the law firm was directly involved in “doing the dirty”, now the State Bar can get involved … if you get my drift.

RESEARCH THE JUDGE!

Assume all of them are bought and paid for by the banks! That way, you’ll know who you’re dealing with. Research their political campaigns and who donated to them (betcha never heard that angle before). It’s a great way to get them to recuse themselves from your case, especially if the mortgage loan servicer or law firm that’s trying to foreclose on you donated to the judge’s campaign.

judicialwatch.org/judge and therobingroom.com are great tools to explore the way federal judges rule and to look up their declared financial records. You might find a conflict of interest. One such case in Florida opened up a can of worms when the homeowner discovered that one of the federal judge’s law clerks worked for a former foreclosure mill that litigated against the homeowner in the lower courts! Talk about conflict of interest!

For state judges, you’ll have to do more digging, which is the subject of another article.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

As a closing note, if you have to educate your attorney on discovery and how to read a prospectus and understand securitization, you need to find another attorney who you don’t have to spend money to educate. Avoid attorneys with big egos and attorneys who make promises that “you’ve got a great case”; otherwise, you’ll be bent over a screwed again in the end … if you get my drift.

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