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Like all of us, I was sorry to learn that Lies of Our Times could not be sustained. It’s a real loss, and another signal that we have our work cut out for us in times that are in many ways ominous, but that also offer a good deal of hope. – Noam Chomsky
The headlines say it all, Honorable Judges of Kansas: “MERS had no right to the underlying debt repayment secured by the mortgage”. But why aren’t the corporate media giants like ABC, NBC and cable networks like CNN or Fox crying, “Millions of free homes!”, “Oops, looks like the banks really do not own the note!”
This is by no means small mortgage potatoes or just some roguejudges making rash decisons based on helping the little guy. No, this is the real bank breaking news Main Street. This is the real deal and these cases set precedent on what can be accomplished by homeowners that choose to fight back and lawyers that are worth their legal salt.
Those two necessary parts of the equation to stick it to the banks seem to be the missing ingredient in taking down these lenders that made trillions in fraudulent mortgages.
Show me the note and take this foreclosure notice and shove it is for real folks. Very Real!
This blog post is going to show you the cases, judges, people and Senatorswho believe that many of these scrutinized mortgages were created fraudulently created. I for one have been blogging about this for over two years to get the word out and was one of the first on the internet thanks to a tip from Consumer advocate and foreclosure fighter, April Charney in 2007.
Then a stroke of luck: A Legal Aid lawyer, April Charney, got the foreclosure withdrawn after discovering that the company that filed to foreclose didn’t own the Tuckers’ loan. The owner was actually a securitized pool of loans overseen by Deutsche Bank (nyse: DB – news – people ). And Charney has documents showing the pool bought the loan after the Tuckers defaulted–an illegal purchase for most pools, including this one. That means a court might refuse to recognize it owns the loan. Charney is arguing it should do just that.
“I buy time, then get lenders to cut interest rates and fees,” says Charney, who claims she’s stopped dozens of foreclosures over ownership issues. Other lawyers are making similar moves in Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kansas and Washington State–often forcing sloppy lenders to offer generous terms to avoid litigation.
Do you think the Trucker’s in Florida are any different than you or some diamond foreclosure defense case in the rough? No, quite the contrary Main Street.
I am also going to explain why more media outlets do not cover these stories in depth and why the banks are so eager to squash any attempts by corporate media to release these stories.
If they did, it would bring a legal avalanche upon the reaming banks and quite possible crash the entire banking system like the Great Depression. This news could be a threat to our economy folks and that is why you will not hear too much about it.
Here were the headlines almost two years ago and even the great Senator of Ohio Marcy Kaptur decried in the media, on You Tube and on the Senate Floor:
“I say to the American people, you be squatters in your homes.” - Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
Powerful words from Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history.
Her district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment.That heartland region, the Rust Belt, had its heart torn out by the North American Free Trade Agreement, with shuttered factories and struggling family farms.
Kaptur led the fight in Congress against NAFTA. Now, she is recommending a radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: “So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave.”
She criticizes the bailout’s failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. Her advice to “squat” cleverly exploits a legal technicality within the subprime-mortgage crisis. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program).
The banks foreclosing on families very often can’t locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. “Produce the note,” Kaptur recommends those facing foreclosure demands of the banks.
Do you believe Senator Kaptur has more pull in the media and Washington or do you believe the banks might have more power to crush voices like Kapturs? That is the question that needs to be contemplated in order to get the message out that the media is in fact very much controlled by special interests and the banks that sit on their boards.
Deutsche Bank Foreclosures Tossed Out of Ohio Federal Court – “They Own Nothing!”
Judge Christopher A. Boyko of the Eastern Ohio United States District Court, on October 31, 2007 dismissed 14 Deutsche Bank-filed foreclosures in a ruling based on lack of standing for not owning/holding the mortgage loan at the time the lawsuits were filed.
32 More Foreclosures Dismissed for Lack of “Documentation” -
32 more foreclosures were dismissed on November 14th by Ohio Federal judget Kathleen O’Malley, citing the reasoning of the Boyko decision. Our investigations of this ruling uncovered the fact that the plaintiff was Household Realty Corporation, showing that this issue was not just a “Deutsche Bank problem”.
In one opinion, a federal judge in Cleveland sought to reverse what he called “a quasi-monopolistic system where financial institutions have traditionally controlled, and still control, the foreclosure process.”
“It is troubling that the plaintiff has filed this case before it had any interest in it,” Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Steven E. Martin said in a letter to Wells Fargo’s lawyer.
The judge said the foreclosure lawsuit was filed before Wells Fargo owned the mortgage – thus, the suit was premature.
Martin then ordered the Wells Fargo law firm, The Law Offices of John D. Clunk, that the law firm must file proof that its clients actually own the mortgages before filing any new foreclosure actions in Hamilton County.
The Judicial Integrity of the United States Court is “Priceless” – 27 More Foreclosures Dismissed
In a decision piggy-backing on Judge Boyko’s recent Deutsche Bank ruling (announced on this site Tuesday), Judge Rose has thrown out another batch of foreclosures, making the following summary remarks:
“This court is well aware that entities who hold valid notes are entitled to receive timely payments in accordance with the notes. And, if they do not receive timely payments, the entities have the right to seek foreclosure on the accompanying mortgages.
A mortgage grants a title or lien against a property as security for the payment of a debt or the performance of a duty. The “mortgagor” is the borrower who grants a mortgage in exchange for a loan; the “mortgagee” is the lender who gives the loan secured by the mortgage.
In the Landmark Bank v Kesler case the courts cites;
Black’s Law Dictionary 1031, 1034 (8thed. 2004). The mortgagee is so well understood as the lender that Black’s Law Dictionary defines a “foreclosure” as an action brought by the lender/mortgagee: a foreclosure is a “legal proceeding to terminate a mortgagor’s interest in property, instituted by the lender (the mortgagee) either to gain title or to force a sale in order to satisfy the unpaid debtsecured by the property.”
Black’s Law Dictionary 674. Similarly, the tie between a mortgage and an underlying debtis so intrinsic that Kansas law provides that “[t]he assignment of any mortgage . . . shall carry withit the debtthereby secured.” K.S.A. 58-2323. Indeed, an assignment of a mortgage without the debt transfers nothing. 55 Am. Jur. 2d, Mortgages § 1002. Thus, the mortgagee, who must havean interest in the debt, is the lender in a typical home mortgage.
A second relevant case that the court references is Gibson v. Ledwitch, 84 Kan. 505, 114 P. 851 (1911). It involved the converse of our case–a party sued to quiet title against a mortgage, which would clear the title from the encumbrance of that mortgage. But the plaintiff joined only a trustee who had no beneficial interest in that mortgage; the beneficial owner was not made a party. The court held that the judgment did not bind the beneficial holder of the mortgage since the trustee had no right to the payments, was not the party to declare default, and had no authority to transfer or foreclose the mortgage.
But for reasons thought beneficial by a group of lenders who trade mortgages, the form of mortgage used in this case designates an entity that is not the lender as the mortgagee. See MERSCORP, Inc. v. Romaine, 8 N.Y.3d 90, 96, 828 N.Y.S.2d 266, 861 N.E.2d 81 (2006) (MERS was established by large lenders to allow easy electronic trading and tracking of mortgages). Specifically, the mortgage says that the mortgagee is MERS, though “solely as nominee for Lender.” Does this mean that MERS really was the mortgagee, even though it didn’t lend money or have any rights to loan repayments? Assuming so, MERS argues that it was a necessary party to the foreclosure and that the foreclosure must be set aside. But the premise upon which MERS bases this argument is flawed.
What is MERS’s interest?
Read more at the LoanSafe.org/forum and discuss with hundreds of homeowners.
