Mortgage Gate Just Got Weirder: Counterfeit Court Summons

With each passing day, the revalations in mortgage-gate, which has for now implicated GMAC and JPMorgan in foreclosing on mortgages without titles, and will likely soon proceed through the entire mortgage origination industry like wildfire as more and more of those foreclosed upon begin to challenge the process (we wonder just what the statute on limitations for retroactive challenges is), are getting increasingly more bizarre. Today, courtesy of Alan Grayson's office we discover that not only are servicers foreclosing on mortgages to which nobody apparently owns the title, but that servicers, representing such reputable firms as Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, are willing to counterfeit court summons in their pursuit of a clean and efficient foreclosure mill. As Grayson's office points out: "Apparently what’s happening is that private process servicer companies may not be serving people with summons, and are simply counterfeiting the documents so they can keep the fees without doing the work.  That means that you could theoretically be foreclosed on without ever knowing there was even a foreclosure case against you." What it also means, is that banks may have been participants in this outright criminal judicial fraud, which we are confident will be uncovered in many more cases, as this is highly unlikely to be an isolated case. And the ultimate outcome, as the Florida Bar News states, is that soon, the entire foreclosure process will halt, thereby creating a huge bottleneck to cleaning out excess inventory as more and more squatters are allowed to reside in properties that no longer pay their mortgages to anyone, now that it is obvious that nobody (ahem Freddie, but how else can you keep bailing out the banks, pardon, the GSEs, via fraudulent fund flows) owns the actual deed. “If we had everyone defending their foreclosure, we’d never get through this.”

Comments

[Buck Johnson]

This is getting good, it truly is.  They are forging court documents and then going to court to get judgements on forged and misleading (willfull misleading) data.  If I was the court, I would throw them out and then tell the defendant or one being foreclosed on to sue them. 

[johngaltfla]

Pop-Quiz:

The state of Florida is currently behind in processing foreclosures.

To the tune of 500,000 PLUS.

If 50% have a mystery deed, fraud or other bankster issue, and of the other 400,000 processed (or more) in 08 and 09 with issues like this, just what does that do to the derivatives and securitized debt issues?

Especially when the foreclosures are re-opened?

Can we say September 2008 all over again boys and girls?

[trav7777]

what it means is significant impairment in the equity tranches

[Everyman]

There is bound to be a class action lawsuit on someone on behalf of the banks, the underwriters, the legal groups, property transfer specialists, etc., possibly the homeowner. 

The main problem for the banks is that now they will HAVE TO REVEAL THE ASSETS AFFECTED ON THEIR BALANCE SHEETS!!!!

it is called DISCOVERY!

Whoops!  Unintended consequences of class action lawsuits, discovery!

The crap on all the balance sheets would have to be revealed to settle the ownership chain and to establish a pattern of action and established processes employed by all and it has to be available to both parties.

Sometimes you sue for damages, other times you sue to get discovery for another suit.

[kathy.chamberli...]

i say, sue for damages fuck discovery, for another case. they can just use your case, if successful, for discovery.

[trav7777]

discovery is the pretrial process where you gather evidence.

A suit for damages would require significant examination into exactly what assets were on the books that were being sued on account of.

I think every citizen should file a class action suit against all the goddamned banks and the fuckin Fed too.  The founders would have shot all these people by now, wtf is wrong with Americans?

[Nathan Smith]

I asked my lawyer friend to read this article......here is his response (edited for identity purposes)

haha! That shit is clownin. When you file a lawsuit against a person, entity or whatever, you have to give them service. The actual person/entity that you are suing should be served in person by the sheriff's office (at least in ________ o...r through certified mail and as a backstop through publication in the newspaper. Of course, service must also be completed in foreclosure lawsuits, otherwise you wouldn't know you were being sued for foreclosure.

What happened here was that someone (not sure it was the loan servicer as, which this article seems to imply...in fact I seriously doubt it was the loan servicer) actually forged the service of process so that the person being foreclosed on didn't have any idea they were being sued. The court agreed with the defendant that the service was fake, that the defendant had no idea they were being sued, and that the foreclosure lawsuit be vacated. (what the article didn't say was that it wasn't dismissed with prejudice, and that the lawsuit could simply be refiled...so no real harm done to the loan servicer).

As far as the author saying that "this is a widespread problem" I call complete bullshit. People being sued for foreclosure aren't necessarily smart but they at least have the sense to know if or if not they were being notified of foreclosure. It is incredibly easy to refute fake service of process and any retard could do it without an attorney, especially in today's borrower friendly courts. So...yeah, it's funny that this happened, but as far as being a serious widespread problem, that's total bullshit.

Also, these loan servicers have large legal departments full of expensive attorneys, and I guarantee they woudln't advise to do something this stupid. All in all I think this article is total garbage.