(OP-ED) — The author of this post is a paralegal and investigative journalist whose effort to uncover the truth about foreclosures has led him to author several books on the subject. All of these works, including this article, are posted for the sake of educating the public as to what is really going on and how the deck is stacked against homeowners as the county land records “take a beating” in trash, suspect documents.
WILL THE MORATORIUMS EVER END?
Of course they will … the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled (6-3) against the Biden Administration’s revised version of the CDC-imposed moratorium. You knew it would happen at some point. It makes no difference WHO puts down moratorium rules and for what reason. The U.S. Government always has an “end game”, whether it makes any sense or not … and whether it’s legal or not. The CDC enacts a moratorium and the “person in charge”, who appears to have the “mental acuity of a 2-year-old”, has to ask constitutional lawyers if what he is doing is legal. It has already been ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the CDC has no authority to declare a moratorium, yet the U.S. Government does it anyway, simply because it can. If no one says anything, the government and its bureaucratic hierarchy get away with it. And landlords continue to suffer while deadbeat tenants continue to enrich themselves at their expense. Is that fair? Oops. There goes that liberal term “fair” again. Hell, the author can’t even use the word “equitable” here because there is none.
Being a landlord is a business. Landlords have to go out and create wealth using real estate, by whatever means necessary. Some landlords abuse the system by artificially creating wealth to expand their rental basest the expense of tenants. Some landlords truly deserve the name “slumlords”, chiefly because they let their “investments” deteriorate. In the end, someone ends up complaining and the landlords eventually wind up in court, attempting to explain themselves and their degenerative behaviors.
Being a mortgage loan servicer is big business too. Many landlords go out and borrow money to finance homes they intend on renting out. As each home is rented and paid down, the landlords gain equity; however, when tenants don’t pay, landlords can’t pay, and mortgage loan servicers end up “doing their thing”, so long as the government says so. To make the truth plain and simple, because of moratoriums and lockdowns imposed by our government, whether rational or not, at the end of the day, when the moratoriums go away, homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments aren’t the only ones that are going to be foreclosed on. Landlords who have been struggling trying to keep up with their mortgage payments on their rental properties occupied by non-paying tenants are also going to fall victim to the mortgage loan crisis.
When you interrupt the rental supply chain with “protocols” and “regulations”, things go to hell in a hand basket in short order. That goes for any essential operating parts of machinery needed to keep the supply chain running that cannot be imported because of COVID protocols or for any other excuse the government deems important (imposed by the “do as I say, not as I do” bunch). In any case, the bigger hedge funds, like BlackRock and Vanguard, are all on stand-by with their claws out, ready to swoop down and buy up as much foreclosed real estate as they can feasibly get their hands on. To cover up their tracks, they will (as they currently are doing) use “shell” companies to purchase available properties they can buy up to turn into rental properties. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not. Before you sell your property to one of these entities, look them up in the Secretary of State’s database. It may surprise you as to what you find.
THE MEANS TO AN END
There has to be a “method to the madness” (as it were) in order to accomplish the task of depleting Americans of their wealth. Nationalizing the rental market in the hands of a few is one way. If the government and the banks and their henchmen can use the court system to achieve this goal, they’ll do it by any means possible, just like they have since the 2009 foreclosure crisis began. By 2015, there was a lull in the crisis … and it appears that many foreclosure mill law firms ran out of properties to foreclose on and faded into the woodwork. Since the eviction moratoriums were imposed at the beginning of the first quarter of 2020, foreclosure mill law firms have started to reform and are preparing for another onslaught against homeowners, en masse, as soon as the self-proclaimed moratoriums end.
Enter the mortgage loan servicers. In order to achieve foreclosure, the law firms prosecuting these foreclosures (in the civil realm) have to have help. The land records, as screwed up as they are most of the time, don’t reveal the naked truth. Thus, the mortgage loan servicers have to step in and move the process along, by recording trash, suspect documents to avail themselves and their alleged “lenders” of standing to foreclose so the foreclosure mill law firms and their shills have something to argue to the court to win rulings in their favor. The unsuspecting homeowners, who up to this point may or may not have enjoyed their “reprieve” from being kicked out of their homes, don’t even bother to go to the land records in the county their property is located in and check to see what has been “recorded” (NOT FILED) by the mortgage loan servicers. They’re too busy enjoying what’s left of their “destiny”. Or maybe they are sweating bullets, but too preoccupied to go check the records before the SHTF.
In March of 2012, the mortgage loan servicers entered into an agreement with 49 States’ Attorneys General and promised NOT to trash the land records with suspect documents. No sooner did the ink dry however, the mortgage loan servicers were back to business, continuing the process they were so good at in facilitating the 2009 foreclose crisis … creating false documents and causing them to be recorded … slandering one property’s title after another.
In October of 2012, DK Consultants LLC out of Texas was retained by the Williamson County Clerk to come into the courthouse in Georgetown, Texas (inside of a locked basement office occupied also by the Clerk’s deputies) and conduct a “cursory audit” of documents the Clerk (Nancy Rister) and her deputies had culled from the county’s land records. In January of 2013, a report was presented to the Williamson County Commissioner’s Court (behind locked doors with sheriff’s deputies standing guard), while the consultant, his attorney and the County Clerk presented their findings to a somewhat stunned county commission. The commissioners had no idea their even their own records were looked into to see if they were affected and some of them were surprised to find out that “suspect” documents existed in their own back yards!
In July of 2014, DK Consultants was again retained to investigate and compile data from the Osceola County, Florida land records. Due to previous suppositions formed out of the Williamson County Real Property Records Audit, the team, which consisted also of a foreclosure defense attorney (Al West), began a 4-day arduous task of compiling certified copies (in a hotel meeting room in Osceola County, with direct access to county land records supplied by the county’s IT department) of what appeared to be “suspect” recordings of trash documents. On December 30, 2014, a 758-page report (Osceola County Forensic Examination), accompanied by an attorney opinion letter, was released to the Osceola County Clerk of the Circuit Court (Armando Ramirez) containing the findings of the examination, accompanied by 17 bankers boxes of certified documents that the team deemed as suspect.
As in the previous audit, the media again swooped down to have a “field day” in an attempt to “shoot the messenger”, because a definite “pattern” of behavior had emerged and had become evident and exposed in the report. The evidence wasn’t pretty; however, this was a report and not an indictment. This was investigative work. This wasn’t a grand jury. Some foreclosure defense attorneys, like Matt Weidner, went on camera and scoffed at the report, not bothering to notice the attorney opinion letter, stating the report, “wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.” As a result of that interview, people reading Weidner’s blog posts slammed his ass good for defaming the report.
In the weeks and months that followed, the author of the report (the author of this post), received dozens of calls from attorneys and law firms who obtained a copy of this report from the Clerk’s website, wanting more information, commenting that they were seeing the same patterns of behavior that the report evidenced in their cases. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not.
THE LAND RECORDS DON’T LIE
The pattern of behavior that was exposed since the reintroduction of securitization into the American economy (through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) is still made manifest today. The pattern of trash document manufacturing started and continued by the title companies (as early as 2002) and their employees and third-party document mills retained to keep the pattern from being identified through expanded “arms length transactions” was set into motion. As time progressed, it became more evident that the blatant attempts to “connect the dots” within the chain of title became more ominous in nature as the mortgage loan servicers themselves decided to partake in the game of document fabrication (from around 2004 and beyond). The use of “MERS” (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) became popular as 5,500+ subscribers to that system (including the Secret Service and the FBI) made use of that database to log in and enter data they owned, inputting their data which identified a long string of promissory note transfers from entity to entity which affected each reported mortgage loan.
In order to “tie off loose ends”, something had to be done to make the land records “jive” with the actual transfers of the promissory notes; thus, MERS became an uninvolved “player” in the game of trash assignments. But the pattern of behavior (by 2009) had become more predominant, when the foreclosure mill law firms themselves became involved in the document manufacturing. Vis a vis discovery, it was further made manifest that the mortgage loan servicers and the law firms that were involved in the creation of these trash documents were connected via what are known as “servicing platforms” (i.e. VendorScape, ServiceLink, etc.), wherein the law firms and their employees could communicate through these platforms with the mortgage loan servicers, to create plausible trash documents that would attempt to “match up” with the alleged “path” the note traveled in an effort to bat clean-up to whitewash the securitization process and make the attorneys’ stories to the judge more plausible.
Homeowners in many counties who discovered the discrepancies in their land records (many of whom found themselves facing foreclosure) complained to the county clerks and recorders of what they found when they obtained copies of what was recorded in the official property records in their respective counties. This is how the county clerks and recorder and registers of deeds became aware and thus involved in identifying just how serious and widespread this trash recording system had proliferated the entire country. Soon other clerks and recorders were looking into their records and to their amazement, this same pattern emerged out of their own back yards. Sadly, many clerks and recorders “stuck their heads in the sand”, while others did not and became very vocal about it, even filing lawsuits against MERS and the mortgage loan servicers and banks they claimed were responsible for the mess.
Based on the direct involvement and research and collective meetings with foreclosure defense attorneys, clerks, recorders and registers of deeds over the matter, the author of this post soon put together Clouded Titles … now in its Mayday Edition (432 pp.) and as that book started to circulate, even judges and court officials became aware that people were “taking notice” and writing about it. One federal magistrate chuckled when this author gave him one of the initial copies of the book, recognizing why MERS was trying to have him (the author) ejected from a federal settlement conference in Kansas City in 2011. All the judge had to do was look at the title and he “got it”.
The judges in today’s system are very much aware of the trash document problem. However, because the banks donate money to their election campaigns, judges are reluctant to acknowledge the document’s negative effect on any given property’s chain of title. They’re more concerned with who has the promissory note; no matter how the “ends were tied together” to make the foreclosure mill attorney’s “story” more plausible. It didn’t matter. And homeowners, relying on foreclosure defense attorneys (many of whom were clueless as to the real issues), faltered through their foreclosure cases which ended up in the homeowners being kicked out of their homes. Most common judicial answer given … “We can’t hurt the banks.” As in the previous audit, the media again swooped down to have a “field day” in an attempt to “shoot the messenger”, because a definite “pattern” of behavior had emerged and had become evident and exposed in the report. The evidence wasn’t pretty; however, this was a report and not an indictment. This was investigative work. This wasn’t a grand jury. Some foreclosure defense attorneys, like Matt Weidner, went on camera and scoffed at the report, not bothering to notice the attorney opinion letter, stating the report, “wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.” In the weeks and months that followed, the author of that report (the author of this post), received dozens of calls from attorneys and law firms who obtained a copy of this report from the Clerk’s website, wanting more information, commenting that they were seeing the same patterns of behavior that the report evidenced in their cases. Could this be some sort of conspiracy? Maybe not.
ATTACKING THE PROCESS
In examining the land records, the author of this post (who has examined thousands of such records) had to take the emotion completely out of what he was seeing in the examination of each document. One would have to realize there indeed was a “fact pattern” that had emerged in order to recognize and identify the culprits. One would have to have certain investigative knowledge of how the mortgage loan servicers retained independent contractors and support bases of employees who did nothing more than create, execute and cause to be recorded the successive chain of nonsense that (to this day) continue to show up in every foreclosure case on the planet as “evidence”. This is exactly what California attorney Al West learned in an interview with one of the independent contractors that worked at the Bank of America Simi Valley “document manufacturing plant”.
Homeowners need to become aware of what is in the land records. The reason that the clerks’ offices have “deputies” is to help homeowners locate these records (if they need help). One who is of the mindset to be educated on attacking the process first has to “get the goods” by paying for copies of every recorded document since they owned the property and analyzing their chains of title and how each document in the chain applies to their given scenario.
The commonality that these trash documents all share in today’s times is that multiple parties were involved in the creation, execution and recordation of these suspect assignments, substitution of trustees, notices of default and sale and notices of lis pendens. Each false recording slanders title. That is a given. There’s no getting around it. It then becomes the responsibility of the homeowner to identify WHO slandered his title, while keeping their emotions in check. If you, the homeowner, were pissed because of what you found, you can’t think straight and your final analysis will be flawed because you will miss important “markers”.
This author wrote about all of those “markers” in his book Clouded Titles, now in its Mayday Edition. Nothing has changed in the nature and scope of the way these documents are produced; however, the method by which you can attack them in court has become a little more refined. This author is not going to get verbose here; however, there is a full DVD-training kit, along with a manual of sample pleadings that this author used to successfully get rid of a trash document in a land record in Florida, which is included in The C & E on Steroids! … also available for your educational benefit.
The key here is to attack the document when it first appears in the land records. If you wait until the foreclosure process has started, you’ll find your action consolidated by the court into the foreclosure case and thus, a foreclosure court judge will be hearing the matter instead of an unbiased county court at law judge. Thus, checking the land records if you even think you’re going to get behind in your mortgage payments would be more than prudent at this point … and keep checking every week … because you never know when the S is going to HTF.
YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN SUPER SLEUTH!
A word of encouragement is offered here, because homeowners this author has interviewed are fighting back. One homeowner in Florida is in Year 13 of his litigation. He has been scoffed at by judges, intimidated by bailiffs, trashed by foreclosure mill attorneys and deceived by the federal court system. Yet, he’s still at it … he has the house rented out and is still fighting the foreclosure … largely in part because he chose to keep researching and investigating his case.
Again, this author has a subscription to Been Verified. This is probably the most affordable tool to researching individual players “in the game”. It’s amazing what you can find out about bank employees, mortgage loan servicer employees and third-party document hacks and notaries. Using the secretary of states’ databases can help you track notary commissions and read up on the rules. DO NOT CONTACT THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES!!! Yes … the author knows that if you’re a pissed off homeowner, the propensity to “reach out and touch someone exists”; however, a caveat here: You risk killing your case if you attempt to contact those whom you are investigating. It’s amazing that in one case, a California homeowner and his attorney are still trying to find former Nationwide Title Clearing (Palm Harbor, Florida) employee Jessica Sheetz. She keeps “relocating” every time the process server gets close. She got tipped off because someone called her employer, inquiring as to her employment status. It takes only one simple phone call to screw your case permanently … so avoid the temptation.
Public records are also a great way to track corporations. Most of the websites will allow you to download copies of their corporate filings. You can also go to sec.gov or subscribe to secinfo.com to track documents that might show you mergers and acquisitions between firms.
Hell … this author found out (through his Austin attorney) that the law firm of Brice, Vander Linden & Wernick was dissolved 3 weeks after the Williamson County Real Property Records Audit was released and made public. That law firm was named in the report multiple times, which, upon discovering their mention in the audit, faded into the woodwork to avoid scrutiny. Talk about having an impact! Stuff like this doesn’t happen every day; but when it does, you bask in the thought you might have made a difference in someone’s life.
Of course, we recommend that if you’re sick, you have enough smarts to stay home and watch the program in limited view on live stream and take notes. Again, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Remember, “they” win when YOU give up! Your comments are welcome as to the proposed workshop! The author will attempt to have attorneys present that can answer legal questions as we explore the simplest ways to extend the life of your stay past any moratorium (and maybe even win your case)!
Clouded Titles Blog 