The Smell Test

I went to a foreclosure mill in Seattle yesterday.  Met with an attorney.  He was a pleasant enough chap, and we spent about ten or fifteen minutes discussing a certain case.  I wanted to see documentation.  He provided me some.

He purported to show me the original note, one of only a handful of times that this has occurred.  He said, "I thought this was about showing the note.  Here it is.  Now is it about something different?  Your people just want a free house."

I explained my rationale to him, which is that if this mortgage were paid off one or more times by any combination of securitized investors, private mortgage insurance or credit-default swaps, we want to know this and believe this is relevant.  It is not equitable for someone to get paid off multiple times and then want the house back as well.

He explained his rationale about how the UCC doesn't care who signed or where they signed, I kind of lost track or interest at some point, because something else was brewing in my mind.

The note that they claim to be original in this case has four endorsements on it, two on the front, two on the back.  Not a single one is signed by a human.  They're all stamped.  We're researching the first two, but the last two are by notorious for their stamps being used more freely than a beer bong at a frat party:  Laurie Meder and Michele Sjolander.  They didn't stamp these documents.  They have no idea who did.  It has come to light that the stamps themselves at some point have been made into one stamp (or one computer image) that bears BOTH signatures at the same point.

Highly unusual.  

So here's my retort:

• If this is so clear-cut, if this is so clean, why do you need to do so many illegal or borderline illegal things?
• Why do you need Scott Anderson and Linda Green and other people who either don't exist or have multiple incompatible signatures?
• Why couldn't Michele Sjolander and the like sign their names? Why couldn't you use real live employees to SIGN documents?
• Why in some cases have I seen Bank of America claiming to have the original note, when it is clearly on a different size of paper than the original?

It is clear that at least some of these files were done correctly.  Why were most of them not?  Whose fault is that?

If this process were as clear-cut as foreclosure mills make it out to be, there would be no need for all the artifice and illegality.  We are still getting to the bottom of what happened in these cases.  And if it's so easy and clear cut, Mr. Foreclosure Mill, start doing it right.