Foreclosure Fraud Fall-out

As the most massive, systemic fraud in the history of human commerce continues to unfold before us, there is no lack of topics and issues – while we poke through these cesspools of Wall Street slime. By now, everyone has heard ad nauseum the announcements by U.S. fraud-factories that they were “suspending” foreclosure proceedings “in 23 states”. An automatic question which arises from these announcements is: what about the other 27 states?

We have a situation where Wall Street banks (and the “foreclosure-mills” they hired to do their “dirty work”) didn't just “cut corners” in processing these foreclosures, they threw the rule-book out the window and willfully committed millions of fraudulent acts – any and every time it was convenient to do so.

Yet despite the severity of the acts of which we already know, most of these fraud-factories are still steaming ahead with getting corrupt judges to rubber-stamp these systemic acts of fraud, in more than half of all U.S. states. This begs another question: what sort of defective legal systems, and defective land-titles systems must these other states have – so that even after this massive fraud is exposed, the bankers are still ramming-through fraudulent foreclosures with impunity?

Bear in mind that unlike countries which maintain honesty and integrity in their legal systems in general, and their land-title registries in particular, virtually none of the millions of foreclosures being rubber-stamped in the U.S. are “final” judgments. Thanks to greedy Wall Street bankers totally abandoning a legal process which was perfected over a period of two centuries (so they could boost profits by a few more percent), permanent defects have been created in (at least) millions of residential properties, and more likely tens of millions – leaving all of these properties open to future legal challenges, indefinitely.

In this respect, my own opinion is conservative. A recent edition of MSNBC's “Dylan Ratigan Show” provides a more extreme view of this issue. U.S. attorney, Michael Pines: “As bad as you think it is, it's probably a thousand times worse.”

Pines was responding to a question from Ratigan about Pine's clients: the Earl family. This middle-class family was trying to get caught up on its mortgage, and making payments to the bank. The Earl's allege that even after large payments were made on their account (more than $100,000 in total), that there was no change in the balance owing. The moment the Earls requested an “accounting” on their mortgage (which is obviously within their rights), the bank refused to provide an accounting, and simply sent them a “notice of default” (foreclosure) instead.

In other words, if the Earl's account of the matter is correct, the conduct of the bank did not simply represent “fraud”, but blatant extortion – such as we might literally expect the Mafia to engage in. Give the bank whatever it asks for, with “no questions asked”, or the bank will foreclose on you.

What happened at trial, when the trial judge heard this evidence? Naturally, the trial judge never heard this evidence, because as with 90% of all these fraudulent foreclosures, the judge simply rubber-stamped the bank's request: giving the bank “legal” permission to take the Earl's home – without the homeowners ever being permitted to say one word in their own defense.

At this point, many already know the next chapter of the story. The Earl's (and their nine children) “broke in” to their own house, changed the locks, “repossessed” the house – and are now forced to live as “squatters” because in The Land of Foreclosure Fraud, “justice” is on a long holiday. Attorney Pine's statement to Ratigan: “This happens all the time.”

Ratigan then introduced a second guest – another bank-victim. This victim alleges that even though a foreclosure process had never been commenced, that one evening someone (representing the bank) broke into her home (while she was there), and attempted to change the locks on her home.

This client's lawyer, another foreclosure specialist, was equally strident. He simply stated that this massive scandal would “fundamentally destabilize” the entire U.S. real estate market. Pines interjected again.

“This is not only residential, this is commercial.” In that respect, what Pines meant is that we are about to see the same scenario play-out in the multi-trillion dollar U.S. commercial real estate market. At this point he came out with his real “bombshell”: “Nobody in this country knows for sure who owns any real estate.”