To protect and serve or just to serve is the question?
Sometimes I am amazed that millions of Americans are suffering in their homes, and barley have enough money for food and gas. Yet, there are people making millions and billions off the housing crisis.
One would think that investors, Wall Street, and real estate gurus are the only guys cashing in on the foreclosure craze. But there is a new “blue collar worker” to add to the millionaire foreclosure mix, and this blue dollar comes with a gun and a badge.
Last year, John T. Fiorillo earned almost twice as much as University of Connecticut women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma and more than 10 times the salary of Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
The Bristol resident grossed more than $2 million, but not by coaching a team to the Final Four or running state government. Fiorillo is a self-employed state marshal who serves legal papers to people about to lose their homes through foreclosure.
Fiorillo’s bounty can be attributed to his relationship with two law firms — Hunt Leibert Jacobson and Reiner, Reiner and Bendett — that have a virtual monopoly on the burgeoning foreclosure market.
Last year, the firms gave millions of dollars worth of foreclosure business to Fiorillo and a small band of state marshals who either work for Fiorillo in Hartford County or have been designated by the firms as the go-to marshalsin other counties. The marshals serve papers on banking institutions, homeowners and town clerk offices, pocketing a state-established fee that typically ranges from $350 to $400 per service.
This “foreclosure blood money” is drawing the attention of the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal is looking into why only certain marshals are getting all of the work from the two law firms.
“I think it is fair to investigate whether there are any conflicts of interest and to make sure that proper service of legal papers is being done,” Blumenthal said.
The loosely and highly unregulated mortgage and housing industry has spawned the new loose and highly unregulated industry known has “foreclosure profiteers” and it looks like the “man” is getting in on the action.
