Articles Posted in Uncategorized

Amazing article from Matt Taibbi, here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620 Here are the highlights: “”Even though some aspects of municipal bond finance are complex, the fraud here was simple,” she told the jurors. “It was about lying and cheating cities and towns in a bidding process that was in place to protect them.” The “simple fraud” Waszmer described…

E-mail service will be mandatory for attorneys practicing in the civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial courts, as well as in all appellate cases, when the rule amendments take effect on July 1, 2012. Florida’s Rule of Civil Procedure 1.080, which requires service of every document subsequent to the initial…

In the latest news, on the heals of GMAC Mortgage/Ally Financial/ResCap filing for bankruptcy just a few weeks ago, another major mortgage servicer filed this week, Franklin Credit. The saying "karma is a bitch" comes to mind. However, unfortunately, those responsible for these failures and the failures of our economy and system of competent regulation…

A recent ruling by Judge Robert E. Grossman in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of New York in the chapter 7 case, In Re: Ferrel L. Agard sets forth a ruling based on very common sense, simple logic that the MERS business model is illegal, absurd and may have made every MERS mortgage…

Rarely do I actually blog anymore. My seven day work week with very often 12+ hour days is best spent fighting for clients while squeezing in the time it takes to read all the latest developments in case law, proposed legislation, and various other news stories affecting the foreclosure crisis. Typically forwarding links to all…

According to a recent study done at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, roughly 42.2 million Americans took out a mortgage between 2004 and 2007. As of February of 2011, 2.7 million or only 6.4% of those loans were lost to foreclosure. The study conservatively estimates that another 8.3% or 3.6 million households are…

Some very interesting spin in this one from MERS spokesperson Janis Smith. Her statement… “The MERS System is not a legal system of record or a replacement for public land records. No interests are transferred on the system—they are only tracked,” Smith, Merscorp vice president of corporate communications, wrote in a response to emailed questions.…

“For two years, they’ve (the treasury department) known how abysmal servicers were performing, and decided to do nothing,” said Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP or the bank bailout, which provided the money for HAMP. “It demonstrates that if you have a set of…

I can hardly believe an economist said this: "Right now you’re prolonging the agony. Do you want to take the Band-Aid off your arm slowly so you can feel each hair being pulled out by the root, or do you want to do it quickly and get it over with?" said Sean Snaith, an economist…

Here’s the full quote: "You’re not talking about improperly stapling together two documents; you’re talking about systematic fraud in the system," said Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. "What this shows is that before the financial crisis, the banks were essentially lying to the purchasers of…