Idiocy

Here's my latest response to these ninnies, who keep sending me non-responsive correspondence and expecting me to go away:


Foreclosure Mill Lawyer

Blank Rome LLP

Re: XXXXX

Loan Number Ending in: XXXXX

Dear Mr. FML:

Thank you for your letter of May 20.

I do not believe that you have the note.  I do not believe that any of these "assignments" shown on the note are valid, or were done in a timely manner.  I am not even sure if Michelle Sjolander exists, because your clients sure haven't been able to produce her in other cases.

Please tell me where the note is.  I understand that you're not going to send it to me Pony Express.  But we want to know so that we can venture to its location like pilgrims to Canterbury and examine it ourselves.  We promise to be accompanied by BAC's armed guards and wear white cotton gloves when we do so.

A copy of a hundred dollar U.S. note is not the same as the real thing.  Try spending it at the mall.  We need to know where the real note is, and examine it ourselves.

Please provide me with a complete MERS history on the note, and a detailed explanation on how you claim that FHLMC is the "holder" thereof.

Sincerely,

Dale Wiley

cc: client

The Judge

I was talking to a lawyer the other day about the foreclosure crisis.  He is an excellent attorney in his field, but like almost all lawyers, he knows very little about this are of the law. As we were discussing the ins and outs, I came up with an analogy that I was surprised had eluded me earlier:

The Trustee in a non-judicial foreclosure is the judge.

There are two kinds of foreclosure in America:

1. Judicial Foreclosure:  The bank must take its case in front of a JUDGE before they can foreclose.  This system is used in states like New York and Florida.

2. Non-Judicial Foreclosure: In these states, a TRUSTEE is appointed, so that the property does NOT have to go in front of a judge.  This is the law in Missouri, California, Arizona and many other states.

In those states, there is no court-appointed neutral, but there is a person appointed by the parties themselves who is supposed to be neutral:  The Trustee.  The thought was obviously that this person could be trusted to look out for both sides.

• But what if the judge is also the lawyer for one side?
• What if the judge continually fails to make the party asking for foreclosure to produce the paperwork showing that they have the right to do so?

That's exactly what's happening right now.  What we do is help bring your case in front of a REAL judge, not one paid exclusively by the banks, not one helping to try to take your home from you.

Here come THAT judge.

Video

This is the amazing video done for us to explain the foreclosure crisis.

Meeting Mrs. Green

Linda Green is a very elusive lady. She signed hundreds of thousands of documents, which I'm sure would make your hand hurt. She signed so many documents, it made her signature look quite different, depending on when she signed them. Here are some examples:

And she was busy.  Boy, was she.  Why, she was working for many banks, and with most of them, she was Vice President!  Here are some of the ones she worked for:

• Wells Fargo
• MERS
• American Home Mortgage Acceptance
• Option One Mortgage
• Bank of America
• Argent Mortgage Company by Citi Residential Lending 
• Sand Canyon Corporation

 She was a very busy lady.

Mrs. Green has appeared in one of my cases.  We have very politely asked the bank who is claiming their interest under Mrs. Green's signature to give us the house in the next three weeks before we bring the Unmanned Predator Drones of the law down upon their Pakistani compound.  By May 22, we'll know if they'll make the right decision.

If you know anyone affected by Mrs. Green, please let us know.  Because I sure do want to meet her.





 

The Pursuit

I'm several months into this search now. Every time I think I've seen the worst thing the foreclosure mills can bring, I soon find I'm wrong. They do not care about law, or decency. They are getting paid twice on every file to kick you out of your house, whether they have any right to do so.

So let's assume worst case scenario for a minute. Let's just assume that you bought a house you really couldn't afford. Let's look at what they did.

1. The banks set up a system of mortgage brokers who had quick access to their funds. They paid those people well to originate these mortgages, which they, in turn, sold on to investors. The brokers got paid; the banks got paid. They didn't care about the end investors; they just sold them down the river.

2. The banks then got paid as servicer to send you bills and call when you were twenty seconds late. They got paid to hold the funds in trust. They got paid in this large variety of roles, all the time you were seeing the rate climb on your ARM. (It probably felt like a spider climbing right up your arm)

3. The banks bought credit-default swaps so they could keep the defaults off their books. We as taxpayers bailed AIG out for making too many dumb bets.

4. The banks took on stupid loans and stupid purchases. We bailed them out.

5. Now, the banks was Fannie Mae and any other agency who insured these loans to pay up, and they want their houses back. They're willing to do illegal things to get them back.

AND THEY WANT TO MAKE YOU THE VILLAIN? You didn't say yes to that loan; you didn't say yes to the worst US economy in a century. You may have talked yourself into believing their lies about your abilites, but if that's all you did, DO YOU DESERVE TO LOSE YOUR HOUSE TO SOMEONE WHO CANNOT PROVE THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO IT?

I say no. They are the ones who should bear the risk on all those properties they can't prove. If they can prove it, fine. But if they can't, then it's time to make them pay for their mistakes, instead of you making one last payment. You've given them your money, you've given them your credit. Let's help you keep your house.

Dead Letter Department

I will get back to chronology in a minute.  But I have to share with you the INCREDIBLE letter I was forced to write tonight.  I simply cannot believe the stuff that these firms are doing.  Here it is:

I am writing to confirm the amazing things I heard on our phone call today, and what I read upon returning to the office tonight.  Let’s start with the documents you sent first, because, frankly, they are beyond my wildest imagination.  Here’s what we have:

1. On September 24, 2008, Wells Fargo (whom you call your client) appoints various lawyers from your firm (including SK and JM) as power of attorney over Wells Fargo.
2. On May 26, 2009, JM, a LAWYER IN YOUR FIRM, uses that power of attorney to appoint YOUR FIRM as the Successor Trustee in this case.
3. On June 4, 2009 (Which, you will notice, is AFTER your appointment as Successor Trustee), SK, a LAWYER IN YOUR FIRM, assigns the mortgage to Wells Fargo from MERS and claims that she is an ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF MERS! 

In this transaction, your firm is a) the lender; b) the lawyer for the lender; c) the seller and d) the trustee.

What part of this incredible transaction does not scream “straw man”? What part of this gives you ANY ability to perform your duties with any degree of integrity?

And you are going to stop this sale?

Now to the phone call. I requested the ability to look at the original note, you indicated to me that you have done nothing to investigate whether your supposed client, as you referred to them, Wells Fargo, actually has ever held such a document. You do not even have the original in your file. You cannot determine if this was a MERS note or not. And yet you are attempting to foreclose on my client's home at the end of this week. In addition, you referred to this process as the "chain of custody". It is referred to as the chain of title, Mr. F. I asked you what you have done to determine if you, as the fiduciary of both parties, have any rights to foreclose on this property, and you indicated that you have done nothing. You have just simply taken it as a referral from your client, Wells Fargo.

This is the entire problem with this process, Mr. F. You and I both know that that mortgage is not held by Wells Fargo. It is held by a REMIC trust, and you must supply us with its name. It is a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to not do so.

This sale should be stopped immediately. This is not a request to postpone it for 30 days. This is a request to cease and desist all attempts to foreclose on this property. You have no right to do so, and if you continue to do so this will only be added to the laundry list of complaints that we already have on your firm and this entire process.

Finally, Mr. F, you asked me one question today which gave me pause.  You asked me why shouldn’t you foreclose.  Well, in two letters, I have given you your answer.  This is as clear a conflict of interest as I have ever seen in over twelve years of practicing law.  It is completely beyond the pale.  If you haven’t realized that your firm can’t act in the same transaction as:

1. Attorney for Wells Fargo
2. Wells Fargo Itself via Power of Attorney
3. An officer of MERS and
4. Successor Trustee (with duties to both sides)

I hope that I have now convinced you of this fact.  If I haven’t, well, at least I tried.

Please let me know at your earliest convenience whether or not you will do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Dale Wiley

THREE: Fight The Power Of Sale

After I discovered that Unnamed was not even requiring the bank to come to its own foreclosure sale, I went back and thought about old cases.  Of course, foreclosure had become a hot topic over the last couple of years, and we had stopped several sales from happening.  I thought of several files where I had run up against Unnamed, and then other foreclosure files where I had the same set of issues with other banks and trustees.

What did all of this mean? If the trustees consistently ran the foreclosure sales wrong, there was the potential that all of those sales could be invalid.  Unnamed was one of the largest foreclosure mills in Missouri; if their foreclosures were all tossed, it would mean thousands of properties in limbo.  But it also meant that thousands of families had been wrongly displaced, taken from their homes by people who had no legal right to do so.

I had my client bring in all of his paperwork and began sorting through it.  The banks on most home loans had the borrowers sign hundreds of papers: Affidavits stating that John P. Doe was the same as J.P. Doe and John Phillip Doe.  Stupid stuff.  Legal stuff.  Stuff that would make a one-armed paper pusher very tired.

But I noticed another major flaw:

All of these Harvard-educated lawyers and Stanford MBAs had forgotten simple legal steps to creating the Deed of Trust and Note.  Imagine that:  The two most important documents, and it almost seemed like they were afterthoughts.

For example:  Most of the Deeds of Trust came up with all kinds of different definitions:  Lender means this, Note Holder means that.  Understandable.  That's something almost any good contract does.  But these Deeds of Trust almost forget to mention the Power of Sale.

The Power of Sale is different from the Power of Love.  It has nothing to do with Huey Lewis.  It is different from the Power of Greyskull, and bears no resemblance to Power Station, the mid-80s "super group" featuring various hair-sprayed members of Duran-Duran and such. Simply put, it is the clause that allows the bank and a trustee to sell your home without going to court.

Mortgage documents are just contracts.  You can put in there what you want.  If you agree to wear  orange shoes and green pants in exchange for a lower rate, well, have at it.  ( N.B.: Banks won't go for this.  I already tried.)  And if your contract includes a Power of Sale, well, then there's a Power of Sale.

But that's an IF.  If a mortgage lender does a crappy job in writing a Power of Sale, that's their fault.  In legalese, we say, "Contracts are construed against the drafter."  That's a fancy (and more tactful) way of saying, "They wrote the damned thing. If they screwed it up, it's their fault."

And to my great surprise, what I kept running into was that the writers of the standard Deeds of Trust treated the Power of Sale like their crazy drunk uncle.  They barely mentioned it.   In the main deeds of trust used by most big banks (called RESPA documents), the Power of Sale is mentioned a grand total of:

-- wait for it --

One time.

What?  The whole purpose of having a Deed of Trust in a non-foreclosure state is to have the Power of Sale.  It's Rosebud.  It's what Willis was talking about.  You want to be able to foreclose without having to go to court.  That's the whole point.  And yet, in the most important of the 12, 453 documents you were required to sign in order to close on your house, the most important feature gets ONE MENTION!

And it gets better.  It says, "If the Lender invokes the power of sale".

Huh?  Are you kidding me?  Think about this:

The Lender is whoever originates the mortgage.  Most of the time with the big banks, they held onto the loan for the time it takes to open a jar of pickles.  Then they dropped it like it was hot, collected a nice fee, and then walked the heck away.

Maybe this doesn't sound big to you.  But they understand that future people are potentially going to hold the note who aren't the Lender.  They call them the Note Holder (inventive, I know). They know someone else may bug you to get the payment.  They're called the Loan Servicer.  There's a little language in one place that MIGHT go in the favor of the banks on this, saying that the agreement "benefits" others who are assigned, but that's weak stuff.

To show you how easy it would have been to correct this problem, watch this:

THE WAY THAT IT IS:  "If the Lender invokes the power of sale".

THEY WAY THAT IT EASILY COULD HAVE BEEN:  "If the Lender, the Note Holder, the Loan Servicer, or any other holder in due course invokes the power of sale".

Was that hard? No.  Would you have signed it to get your house.  Ummm ... yes.  You would have admitted to masterminding Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance to get that house.  You would have signed.

I was now of the opinion that each mortgage now had major flaws.  Foreclosures were likely called by the wrong people, and were perhaps devoid of the power of sale for anyone but the lender.

This was getting fun.