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Alan Grayson On Mortgage Fraud (Lack Of) Accountability: "President Obama… Let These Crooks Off The Hook"
February 9th, 2011 | 
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Now that Alan Grayson is no longer in Congress, Fed hearings have certainly lost that certain dose of panache which only a man, wearing a dollar sign tie, and cross examining the Fed’s General Counsel which grinning like a diabolical Tasmanian Devil, would bring to the table.
We managed to catch up with Grayson during today’s session of Radio Free Dylan, in which the traditionally opinionated Fed critic had some very choice words about the President. In essence, the former Florida Democrat said that it is none other than the President, who is the reason there have been no prosecutions on banks: ”
I am not only blaming the Obama administration, if the Bush administration had its head on straight they would have prevented a lot of these things from happening to start with. But the President Obama administration said at the beginning, we are going to look forward and not back and therefore in the process of making that decision basically let these crooks off the hook.” But that’s ok – see the SEC, which incidentally has to give a person by person org chart and job description of its 3,500 porn addicts before it receive one additional penny of funding, is about to catch one or two criminal masterminds who bought some NYX calls after the information of today’s merger, which was so badly leaked that virtually everyone knew about the deal ahead of the announcement, are about to spend some time in prison.
In the meantime, all those who knowingly and willfully committed crimes in the great housing pump and dump (up to and including misrepresenting underwriting documents), are about to get away scott-free. Thank you Mr. President. That’s some might fine change you got there.
More choice selections from the Ratigan-Taz interview.
On the complete lack of prosecutions and Obama’s responsibility:
DYLAN: Couple of last questions and then I will let you go. One thing that came out in the FCIC report and Bill Greider did a great job of highlighting this — was the explicit introduction of known to be fraudulent mortgages. They have been audited by Clayton Holdings which is one of the bigger auditing firms if not the biggest auditing firms of these documents. They were knowingly and knowingly insofar as they had been reviewed by Clayton Holdings, then installed inside of investments and sold to pension funds, et cetera et cetera, where then the banks would go out and buy insurance on that that obviously paid a lot of money when the government stepped in to bail out AIG who was one of the big insurers.
How is it that after the Great Depression, there were blue sky laws that said it is illegal to sell a worthless piece of paper as if it is stock in the company if its just Alan Grayson and Dylan Ratigan have gone downtown with a piece of paper with their names on it and they are selling it for money even though there is actually no business. We created laws to prevent people from doing that sort of thing. And yet we found here that mortgages that have been deemed by some official authority — an auditor in this case — as nonconforming, will not get paid back, noncompliant with illegal investment standards for you, American pension fund, for you American mortgage buyer, Fannie Freddie etcetera, and then the FCIC comes out, shows that these fraudulent mortgages were being packaged and sold by Goldman, Deutsche, Morgan, the list goes on and yet, we have yet to see a single meaningful fraud investigation. I mean these guys makes Bernie Madoff look like Romper Room.
REP. GRAYSON: Well that’s right, and what it comes down to is they have been protected by one thing and one thing only which is prosecutor discretion. There is no doubt in a situation like that that people committed crimes, but in order to prosecute them for that you need to have a prosecutor who is willing to do it. And that is something that seems to have eluded us in the past, I guess, three years now. I am not only blaming the Obama administration, if the Bush administration had its head on straight they would have prevented a lot of these things from happening to start with.
But the President Obama administration said at the beginning, we are going to look forward and not back and therefore in the process of making that decision basically let these crooks off the hook.
DYLAN: And what does that sort of decision make, I call Obama the “turn the page president” whether it is war crimes, banking crimes or anything else, is there a point where the decision not to prosecute blatant crimes that are destructive to society really starts to breach the public trust with the government just because the President doesn’t really want to deal with the mess?
REP. GRAYSON: It’s actually worst than that. The same people who were committing fraud and crimes at Bear Stearns, they are now committing fraud and crimes at Bank of America, at Goldman Sachs and other institutions, because it turns out that crime does pay. It turns out that if you steal a large amount of money that leads to the collapse of your institutions, there’s jobs for you somewhere else.
On the auditing the Fed process, for which Grayson, alongside Paul, had a major contribution in getting at least some partial disclosure from Bernanke:
Tim Geithner said when it was time to finish the bill on financial reform, he told people that his highest priority was to make sure – and this is the bill that was supposed to save America — to keep us from having a bail out — make sure that we didn’t have a total collapse of the economic system.
He said that his highest priority was to make sure that there was no auditing of the Fed! (laughs) So, in the fact of that kind of resistance, we were able to win and win big. I mean we have now the first independent audit and nothing really bad has happened so far. People were saying well if you audit the Fed, the economy will collapse. Hasn’t happened yet and I think that people are going to realize the Fed should be a responsible government body just like every other government body. We need to look behind the curtain and find out exactly what’s going on.
DYLAN: What do you think Tim Geithner is so afraid would be found?
REP. GRAYSON: I don’t know but I am sure that Tim Geithner didn’t want the Fed audited because Tim Geithner didn’t want Tim Geithner audited, he worked for the New York Fed, led the New York Fed for years before he became Treasury Secretary — and frankly it sounded a bit self serving to me that he said that.
DYLAN: And what do you and not just you but I’ll add Dr. Ron Paul to it — what do the two of you think was so important about auditing the Fed?REP. GRAYSON: Well, what I think we are going to find is something that we’ve already have a little taste of here and there, which is that the Fed has made an enormous deals with entities like Citibank on terms that were completely unfair to the taxpayers. We got a little shred of information about that because one of those deals happened to be one involving the treasury, it has to be a released to us and we found that the Fed had assumed $238 billion dollars of liability from Citibank on mortgage back securities in exchange for nothing. I think we are going to find more deals like that and people are going to scratch their heads and say why are we doing this? Why are we allowing our money to be used in the secret bailouts of three or four or five or six institutions without people even finding out about it except for the fact that we pass this legislation to help to find out. The fed has been out of control now for quite a while and helping its friends at the expense of the rest of us.
DYLAN: And why are we doing that? Why are we – why have we accepted a system in your opinion that allows a relatively anonymous, highly secretive group of people to provide infinite access of money to people who not only create no apparent value but creates lots of apparent loss?
REP. GRAYSON: Because the banking system and the bankers, the people in charge of the system have created this meme that the Fed can do no wrong and it has to remain independent of everybody and everything. It is almost as if they believe that the Chairman of the Fed is the Wizard of Oz and it’s not true. I mean the Fed has the authority to create money but it should not have the authority to make the kind of deals that we’ve been seeing where they create massive liability off the books of their favorites while small community banks and small businesses suffer and get nothing. At one point we demonstrated that they had – lent so much money to the Central Bank in New Zealand that it corresponds to $4,000 for every single person in New Zealand. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Feds can extend that kind of credit to Americans?
Full interview can be heard here.
Posted in Administration, Alan Grayson, Banks, Barack Obama, Corruption, Dylan Ratigan, Economic Crisis, Economy, Federal Reserve, Financial System, Foreclosuregate, Foreclosures, Fraud, Government, Lobbyists, Money, Mortgage Industry, Mortgage-Backed Securities, Mortgages | 
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Grayson To FCIC: Increase Reserves
Yeah, ok….. may I ask what reserves, given that Bernanke was given the ability to set them to zero in the TARP bill?
Dear Secretary Geithner and members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council,
I’m writing concerning the foreclosure fraud crisis and the resulting potential need for a special capital buffer for large systemically significant institutions. I’m particularly worried about the title insurance market, and attempts to lay off title liability onto large banks without corresponding changes in capital requirements.
Recently, Bank of America struck a deal with Fidelity National Title Insurance to indemnify the title insurer should legal problems with foreclosures create unanticipated title liability. Title insurers are clearly worried that they may face higher legal and policy costs if foreclosures are reversed, or should legal ambiguity cloud titles they already have insured. Bank of America’s deal with Fidelity may be necessary to help keep the housing market functioning. Since title insurers have in some cases just refused to insure this market, someone must pay for the liability these insurers have refused to incur.
The extent of this liability is unclear. On October 8, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told the public and investors that, despite the self-imposed foreclosure moratorium, his bank had not “found any foreclosure problems”. He said, explaining the foreclosure moratorium, that “[w]hat we’re trying to do is clear the air and say we’ll go back and check our work one more time.” The bank’s SEC Form 8-K reinforced these comments. Yet two weeks later, the Wall Street Journal just reported that Bank of America, in reviewing 102,000 cases of problematic foreclosures, found problems “in 10 to 25 out of the first several hundred foreclosures it examined.”
Both banks and regulators are claiming that the problems are simply process-oriented document errors that aren’t really causing harm to the public at large. I suspect that no one really knows the extent of the problem, or the potential liability. What we do know is that title insurers are demanding indemnification.
With that in mind, it would seem prudent to require additional capital buffers for systemically significant institutions until the extent of the foreclosure fraud crisis is understood, or until title insurers decide that they no longer need indemnification for increased risk. It may also be useful to conduct a new round of stress tests to determine the resilience of the financial system with respect to these serious problems.
Regards,
Alan Grayson
Member of Congress
Again: In order to increase something, you must first have some of it. 
Posted in Alan Grayson, Banks, Debt, Economic Crisis, Economy, FCIC, Federal Reserve, Financial System, Fraud, Government, Money |
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Grayson's Letter On Foreclosures – And A Way Forward
Love him or hate him, here are two points to keep in mind when it comes to Alan Grayson:
- He’s an attorney.
- He “gets it” when it comes to the root causes of Foreclosuregate. It took him a while (too long, in my opinion, even though I’ve been hammering his office since he was elected and his staff indicated a willingness to listen), but he finally connected the dots.
A letter he sent out yesterday is linked in full at the bottom of this Ticker. Here are the salient points for you to ponder, from my perspective:
So far, banks are claiming that the many forged documents uncovered by courts and attorneys represent a simple “technical problem” with foreclosure processes. This is not true. What is happening is fraud to cover up fraud.
Yep. As Grayson goes on to cite, The FBI noted an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud earlier in the decade. Nothing was done about it. These lenders were engaged not in making mortgage loans but rather in an elaborate asset-stripping scheme where the key point was to force the homeowner back into the lender’s office in a couple of years so they could grab another few thousand dollars in fees.
Repayment didn’t factor into their decisions and was immaterial to their thought process.
The banks didn’t keep good records, and there is good reason to believe in many if not virtually all cases during this period, failed to transfer the notes, which is the borrower IOUs in accordance with the requirements of their own pooling and servicing agreements. As a result the notes may be put out of elegibility for the trust under New York law, which governs these securitizations. Potential cures for the note may, according to certain legal experts, be contrary to IRS rules governing REMICs. As a result, loan servicers and trusts simply lack standing to foreclose. The remedy has been foreclosure fraud, including the widespread fabrication of documents.
Yep.
It has been my contention for more than three years that these notes were never intended to be repaid – they were intended to be prepaid out of the trusts by what amounted to forced-refinances where the borrower could be asset-stripped once more. In such a circumstance not only is the proper chain of documents immaterial it is actually harmful as the original documents provide the trustee and servicer the ability to audit compliance with the representations and warranties. No documents, no audit – you can’t audit what you don’t have!
But when the housing market crashed these asset-stripping schemes fell apart, as the owner now had negative equity and did not qualify even on the most-generous of claimed terms for a refinance. Therefore the notes couldn’t prepay and instead defaulted. Lenders started to go under, and servicers and trustees now had a bad hand – one that they were sold by the banks and either knew was bad or didn’t bother to verify.
The result is the same – the “trusts” never were conveyed what was supposed to be there, and what’s worse, what they do have (and in those cases where they do have it) they are out of compliance anyway, as the REMIC rules require that no more than 10% of a trust’s assets be comprised of notes that either (1) are delinquent (even by as little as 30 days) or (2) are reasonably foreseeable as likely to default. The former means that any “first payment default” notes are obviously trouble and the second means that any that violate reasonable lending constraints or in which the only real security against default is a rising asset price are in violation.
We now have as sworn testimony before the FCIC that the banks knew these loans didn’t meet credit quality standards – that anywhere from 1/3rd to as much as 90% of them were in violation. Many of these loans went into the securities anyway, despite knowledge of these deficiencies.
In addition, we know from the FCIC hearings that Fannie and Freddie do not have the loan files that were allegedly “conveyed.” The GSE regulator has said that they have found it impossible in many cases to obtain these original files – the originators are either “slow-walking” their requests or flatly refusing to turn them over. I also have a report from an attorney on the west coast who is suing one of the major originators as a class action that they intentionally shipped the files to India, which (I would presume) is an effort to frustrate a subpoena to compel production of those documents.
The liability here for the major banks is potentially enormous, and can lead to a systemic risk. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation includes a resolution process for these banks.
Exactly.
The immediate action that must be taken is to force all payments into court escrow – that is, a court-held suspense account – until it is sorted out who actually owns what.
Freezing foreclosures doesn’t fix it – if you’re not paying, then you’re not paying. But at the same time if the trust doesn’t actually own the paper they have no right to the money! The solution to these problems is known and already available under the law – it’s a court-ordered suspense account held by the clerk for all payments and trustee sales until the courts figure out who owns what.
The proper remedy under the law for institutions that tendered assets into a trust that they knew or had reason to know did not meet the qualifications for that trust is for the transaction to be unwound – for the bank to be forced to refund the full face value of the mortgage and repurchase it. For those assets that were never conveyed the solution is likewise for the bank that was supposed to convey it to repurchase the asset.
This resolves the problems with chain of title at the same time it resolves the problems with the REMICs.
But, at the same time, it sticks the banks that performed the securitizations (all big financial institutions) with these non-performing loans – that is, the financial liability for their actions.
Once the above is sorted out let those who have actual ownership of these notes and can prove it come to the court and prove up their ownership under strict standards of proof, claiming their funds.
Then those who wish to foreclose, forebear or renegotiate are free to do so as they wish – and they are also required to recognize the losses that came from the bad lending practices.
With more than $1 trillion in outstanding non-agency REMICs of this sort, and another $5 trillion or so at Fannie and Freddie, if half – a reasonable estimate of those that might be compromised – are forcibly unwound and the bad loans are recognized at their recovery or renegotiated value then we’re going to need that Dodd-Frank resolution authority- for all the major banks.
This, incidentally, is exactly what Institutional Risk Analytics was basically saying the other day.
We have to force these resolutions folks. These REMICs must go through all their paper and prove up its provenance in each and every case. If they are either holding empty boxes or bad notes that did not meet the claimed credit quality they must be forced back onto the issuers, because it is both manifestly unjust to allow the major financial institutions to get away with screwing your pension funds, insurance companies (e.g. annuities, etc) and similar, and we must resolve the title issues that are now being exposed as massive and pervasive across the country.
Private property rights have as their highest expression the ownership of real estate. It is for this reason that states have historically taken very seriously the recordation of titles, assignments and a proper chain of ownership proof in these matters. What the banks have done – intentionally – is severely damage that sacred trust and personal property ownership right, and they must not be allowed to get away with it. This same scam was run during the 1920s with the Florida “swampland” fiascos and it took YEARS to sort it out. We must start now.
Those who are invested – either in the bonds or common stock – of the big banks at this point in time are essentially betting that the consequences of these acts either will not be of financial consequence or that the government will find some way to keep them from being recognized and “eaten” by these institutions.
I wouldn’t take that bet.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38954848/Letter-to-FSOC-Calling-for-Foreclosure-Halt
Posted in Alan Grayson, Banks, Corruption, Debt, Economic Crisis, Economy, Financial System, Foreclosures, Fraud, Government, Money, Mortgage Fraud |
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Pay Attention Conservatives! Dems Have Figured Out The One Thing That Would Keep Them In Office: PROSECUTE THE CRIMINALS!
Congressman Grayson: “Breaking and Entering Does Not Become Legal Just Because a Big Bank Does It. The Rule of Law Must Apply Equally to Everyone”
Congressman Alan Grayson’s office sent me the following statement by the Congressman on the rampant foreclosure fraud, and the unlawful breaking and entering into people’s homes by the banks:
First we see systemic fraud in the foreclosure process. Now we’re literally seeing banks breaking into people’s homes and terrifying homeowners. The big banks claim these confrontations are a result of innocent errors. Come on! How many times are we going to force a woman to cower in her bathroom for fifteen minutes and dial 911 while a man breaks into a home, before we do something about it?
Breaking and entering does not become legal just because a big bank does it. The rule of law must apply equally to everyone. It’s long past time to halt this blatantly illegal activity. We need investigation and law enforcement, not coddling of failed institutions. We need justice for all.
Conyers and Kilpatrick Demand Lenders Extend Housing Foreclosure Moratorium to Michigan; No More Foreclosures Until Fraudulent Paperwork is Resolved
From the office of: Fourteenth District, Michigan
Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman, House Judiciary Committee
Dean, Congressional Black CaucusPress Release
Conyers and Kilpatrick Demand Lenders Extend Housing Foreclosure Moratorium to Michigan; No More Foreclosures Until Fraudulent Paperwork is Resolved
Contact: Nicole Triplett
202-226-5543Washington, DC- Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (MI-14) and Congresswoman Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (MI-13) called on lenders to extend their foreclosure moratorium to Michigan and other states and to cease administering foreclosures until the problem of fraudulent paperwork is resolved.
The revelation that large mortgage lenders may have been evicting families from their homes based on flawed and erroneous documentation is no small matter. These lenders may have presented false affidavits – that is, sworn legal testimony – in thousands of cases fraudulently stating that a homeowner was in default or that the lender had the legal right to foreclose on the property, without the proper verification of the facts asserted in those affidavits. Moreover, the admission by these lenders of inaccurate documentation raises broader questions about whether they are proceeding with foreclosures in non-judicial foreclosure states based on faulty documentation or information. It is crucial that these lenders are held accountable.
Michigan is among the hardest-hit foreclosure states in the Nation. In August 2010, the state’s foreclosure rate increased 128% over August 2009 and it remains among the top five states in the Nation in foreclosure totals. Michigan’s foreclosure rate rose 29% in the first half of 2010 over the first half of 2009. Metropolitan Detroit showed an increase of 35% during that same time period, rising to the highest level since 2007. In July 2010 alone, 1 in 241 housing units in Michigan received a foreclosure filing. In Wayne County, the number was 1 in every 158.
In response to numerous recent reports of false foreclosure affidavits and other apparently fraudulent activities by home mortgage lenders, Reps. Conyers and Kilpatrick, today, sought the following actions:
· Lenders should extend moratoriums on home foreclosures to all states, including Michigan, rather than just those states with judicially supervised foreclosures.
· Lenders that have initiated moratoriums should insure that they actually prevent foreclosures rather than just evictions subsequent to foreclosures.
· The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thereby controlling a major portion of mortgages subject to foreclosure in the U.S., should review its procedures for proper compliance and also consider initiating a foreclosure moratoriumAt the same time, Conyers announced plans to investigate mortgage lenders to learn more about their foreclosure practices, including paperwork violations and false affidavits, and ascertain what can be done to protect homeowners from possible abuses. As part of this effort, Conyers is asking the Federal Housing Finance Agency – the federal agency charged with overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – to ensure that they abide by the law, to consider initiating a moratorium, and to conduct an audit of their actions. In addition, Conyers will be calling upon the DOJ’s Executive Office for U.S. Trustees to investigate the extent to which false affidavits have been filed in bankruptcy cases by lenders seeking to foreclose on debtor’s homes.
Thus far, only three lenders – Ally Financial (parent of GMAC Mortgage), Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase – have ceased post-foreclosure enforcement actions in 23 states that have court- controlled foreclosure proceedings: Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Even those lenders appear to have only ceased evictions, while they continue to engage in foreclosures, which take title from homeowners.
At this point Michigan and 26 other states are not on the moratorium list for these lenders, purportedly because they have a non-judicial foreclosure process. However, without judicial oversight, the possibility of abuse can be even greater in these states. As a result, elected state officials in non-judicial foreclosure states such as California, Colorado, Texas, Massachusetts, and Maryland have recently asked lenders to suspend their foreclosures.
Widespread concern about documentation abuses in the mortgage industry is not limited to state officials. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the California congressional delegation called on the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve to investigate large mortgage lenders’ handling of delinquent mortgages, mortgage modifications, and foreclosures. Additionally, Senators Robert Menendez (NJ) and Al Franken (MN) called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate the role of federal government entities charged with overseeing the mortgage lending industry to determine how they allowed lenders’ misconduct to occur without detection for so long. Also, Members of Congress from Maryland and Arizona – two non-judicial foreclosure states – called on large lenders to halt foreclosures in their states.
“It makes little sense to limit the moratoriums to judicial foreclosure states when many of the same errors and paperwork flaws likely plague non-foreclosure states,” said Conyers. “When the very same lenders that ignored the rules which helped get us into the real estate bubble are placed in charge of the foreclosures that are exacerbating the problem, locking millions of Americans in a financial trap they cannot escape from, we have a situation that is spiraling out of control and cries out for intervention.”
“Given the depth of the financial calamity in Michigan and other states, the huge number of foreclosures, and the chain reaction of problems involving foreclosures that has impacted communities and individuals, I would urge home mortgage lenders to cease their foreclosure activities,” said Conyers. “Rather than spending their time running mass production foreclosure mills, the lenders should be working with individuals to keep families in their homes and restructure their loans.”
“Home foreclosures affect individual families and devastate entire communities,” said Congresswoman Kilpatrick. “For home foreclosures to proceed under false pretenses is patently unwarranted and unfair. I am proud to join one of the founders of the CBC and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in this clarion call for justice, fairness, and equality to Michiganders and all Americans.”
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Posted in Alan Grayson, Banks, Corruption, Economic Crisis, Financial System, Florida, Foreclosures, Fraud, Michigan |
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THIS IS A FACTORY OF FRAUD: Rep. Grayson
Listen to this folks.
“THE EASIEST WAY TO MAKE A BUCK IS TO STEAL IT” – Alan Grayson
WHERE ARE THE DAMN HANDCUFFS?
No, “dismissing” these cases is NOT sufficient. The OFFICERS of these banks must be INDICTED and PROSECUTED and all who committed unlawful acts in this regard MUST GO TO PRISON.
These MBS Trusts MUST BE UNWOUND and the loans PUT BACK on the originators who have in the States where actual chains of assignment be shown, FAILED TO DO SO by their own hand and decision.
The BANKS must be FORCED to eat EACH AND EVERY loss occasioned by this.
Not you, not I, THE BANKS.
Posted in Alan Grayson, Banks, Corruption, Debt, Economic Crisis, Economy, Financial System, Fraud, Government, Money |
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Grayson Sends Letter Demanding Halt Of Illegal Foreclosures, Calls Out "Largest Seizure Of Private Property Ever Attempted By Banks And Government"
Well, at least one Member of Congress is paying attention (even if he is pretty much a crazy person). Why isn’t anyone else paying attention to the immense amount of fraud being perpetrated on the American people by the banks?
***********************************************
The key story from this morning was the Bloomberg report that GMAC Bank had halted foreclosures in 23 states, following disturbing news from last week that rekindled the latent debate over whether servicer banks do in fact own deeds to mortgages on which they foreclose on, and whether the entire foreclosure process is in fact fraudulent (one judge found it to be so, creating a massive headache precedent for the banker community). Yet the company which initially agreed with Bloomberg’s version of events, is now retracing and claiming that foreclosures are in fact continuing… with a footnote. Reuters reports: “GMAC Mortgage, a unit of Ally Financial Inc, is continuing with all new residential foreclosures despite a report it had stopped them, a spokeswoman said on Monday. But some evictions have been suspended while the company reviews its internal procedures, the company said.” Maybe the company can clarify just what event catalyzed the decision to suspend evictions, and specifically which “internal procedures” are being reviewed. Also, it is about time for the ABA to step in and share some insight on a topic that has millions of Americans suddenly in arms. And since that won’t happen, it is up to the one or two politicians who are not in the bankers’ (and the Fed’s) pockets to raise some noise. Enter Alan Grayson who in a letter just released to a Florida Supreme Court Justice says:”If the reports I am hearing are true, the illegal foreclosures taking place represent the largest seizure of private property ever attempted by banks and government entities.”
Grayson, best known for his endless skewering of Ben Bernanke and his henchmen during congressional hearings, has just sent a letter to Justice Canady of the Florida Supreme Court, demanding a halt to all illegal foreclosure activity. GMAC may have dodged the bullet, but the stink that Grayson is about to dig up may end up killing a massive, and illegal, funding loophole for the entire banking industry.
Full letter below:
September 20, 2010
Chief Justice Charles T. Canady
Florida Supreme Court
500 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1900
Dear Chief Justice Canady,I am disturbed by the increasing reports of predatory ‘foreclosure mills’ in Florida. The New York Times and Mother Jones have both recently reported on the rampant and widespread practices of document fraud and forgery involved in mortgage assignments. My staff has spoken with multiple foreclosure specialists and attorneys in Florida who confirm these reports.
Three foreclosure mills – the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, Shapiro & Fishman, and the Law Offices of David J. Stern – constitute roughly 80% of all foreclosure proceedings in the state of Florida. All are under investigation by Attorney General Bill McCollum. If the reports I am hearing are true, the illegal foreclosures taking place represent the largest seizure of private property ever attempted by banks and government entities. This is lawlessness.
I respectfully request that you abate all foreclosures involving these firms until the Attorney General of the state of Florida has finished his investigations of those firms for document fraud.
I have included a court order, in which Chase, WAMU, and Shapiro and Fishman are excoriated by a judge for document fraud on the court. In this case, Chase attempted to foreclose on a home, when the mortgage note was actually owned by Fannie Mae.
Taking someone’s home should not be done lightly. And it should certainly be done in accordance with the law.
Thank you for your consideration of this request.
Sincerely,
Alan Grayson
Member of Congress
Posted in Alan Grayson, Banks, Corruption, Economic Crisis, Financial System, Foreclosures, Fraud |
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