A group from the Miami Workers Center clean up the area around an abandoned bank-owned house, as police officers wait nearby (Photo Courtesy:Miami Workers Group)
It never ceases to amaze me the glaring duality of the world I live in.
I am constantly reminded that we live in world where you and I have to play by one set of rules, yet the vast financial complex that resides on Wall Street isn’t held to even a fraction of those standards.
A few members of the Miami Workers Center, a grassroots organization, arrived at an abandoned foreclosed home, a property that like countless others is nothing more than a glorified trash dump.
Their nefarious plot? To clean the home up, and try to make it a little less of an eyesore.
Scary right?
And what did this group, which included a grandmother and an pregnant woman, encounter when they arrived at that home?
About a half dozen cops, who threatened to arrest any of them if they stepped foot on the Bank Of America-owned property.
The protesters, to their credit, didn’t give up and cleaned up the public areas around the home. Not once was a burglary tool spotted.
The officers watched over these men and women like mother hens as they picked up beer bottles and broken glass, among other fabulous ‘accessories’ the home had accumulated over the last few years. (Bank of America took the home in 2010.)
But when the banks not only trespass, but break into my clients homes? How many police officers can I get on the case? Not a single one. (more…)
It’s time to call them out once more. Not for another column, but rather, a lack of one.
In October 2010 their column“The Politics of Foreclosure” made light of the plight many of my clients have undergone, and shrunk the foreclosure crisis down to a mere inconvenience for a few Washington insiders.
And as the crisis grew wider and wider, and the expansiveness of the banks fraud became even more apparent,The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Boardcontinued to be a haven for outdated ideas, protection of the status quo and disgust for anyone trying to do good by the American homeowner.
I found it disturbingly amusing that a settlement that was basically little more than a public spanking for the banks angered them so. The settlement didn’t land a single banking executive in jail, yet the columnists at The Wall Street Journal still treat the banks as the victims in the housing crisis.
The crisis, you know that the banks basically created.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board still believes the banks didn’t illegally foreclose on a single homeowner, something I personally know not to be true.
Either their editorial board is remarkably stupid or just ignorant.
And so I shouldn’t be all that surprised that they have been silent after the Department of Housing and Urban Developmentreleased auditsthat laid out how pervasive the culture of fraud was amongst our nation’s lenders. (more…)
As 2011 got underway we were presented with a fascinating yet disturbing report by the Florida Association of Court Clerks called “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases”. It brought these horrible practices into the harsh light of day.
“What we got from this is the state has had the opportunity to see where the laws have been broken,’ Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock said at the time, “and frankly, it is in large part thanks to the work of the defense attorneys.
We cited April Charney from the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Peter Ticktin and many others wonderful attorneys who have taken bank officers’ depositions, challenged judges rulings and fought the good fight for the Florida homeowner.
Somewhere along the line, the overly ambitious bankers on Wall Street had the “great idea” of slicing and dicing the interest of the Promissory Note and literally severing it from your Mortgage. Why? Convenience,expediency, and, arguably, greed. And much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall, the banks couldn’t bring the mortgages and their corresponding Notes all back together again. The banks were accused of fraud and perjury trying to do just that.
If Americans are right, 2012 will finally be the magic year for the housing market. Over 2,000 adults were polled by Trulia and RealtyTrac , and the majority, 22 percent, said most Americans think the housing market will fully recover in the new year. A mere 10 percent thought a recovery would happen this year, while nearly a quarter of those surveyed predicted a bumpy road until 2015 and beyond. (more…)
Oppenheim Law would never accuse the banks of committing fraud, perjury, impersonation, notary fraud, contempt of court, lying, violating Constitutional protections, or being tax cheats. Nevertheless, we do make this advisory: Be careful of what you sign.
Why?
As soon as you think the coast is clear, it’s the return of the robo-signers.
Suspected robo-signed documents are cropping up again in county deed records, according to the Associated Press. These new documents suggest the previous document mill scandals are part of an endemic problem at banks, not a one-off affair like the banks would have you believe.
In explaining the document mill scandals, banks claimed they were crushed by a gigantic amount of paperwork. It was while attempting to deal with such a large amount of paperwork that “mistakes” were made, according to the banks. Such claims are now being met with a raised eyebrow.
Registrars in several states have reported seeing suspicious documents. But now, the banks can’t claim they are under a mountain of paperwork: foreclosures, sales, and refinances are all at lower levels than they were in the past several years. Most of the documents under suspicion now are not even related to foreclosures. Rather, they mostly deal with new home purchases and refinances.
The banks are even using some of the exact same names heavily publicized when the scandals first broke like Linda Green and Crystal Moore. Such behavior points to an industry that sees itself as untouchable: too big to fail and too big to be regulated.
The proposed settlement between the banks and the states includes no criminal charges. Critics say that such slaps on the wrists only foster a culture of impunity, and they appear to be right. (more…)
Who would ever have thought that the most respected names on Wall Street would cheat the house by playing with a marked deck?
Dear Wall Street: We’re not in Vegas anymore! The Sin City “players” of Wall Street might be trading in the fancy hotel rooms for prison cells.
The SEC is now following the Federal Reserve and the Senate is chastising Wall Street for effectively causing the economic crisis. The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that they too will be joining the bandwagon and fining the major banks on Wall Street for fraudulently causing the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. They follow on the heels of the Federal Reserve and the United States Senate in lambasting the “banksters”.
Toxic foreclosures, robo-signers, rocket dockets, bank busters, dirty titles and clean homes! The new lingo in real estate law is making a name for itself and leaving frustrated homeowners with questions.
If you have questions about Florida foreclosure news and how it affects you, post them in the blog comments and next week we will post a blog with Frequently Asked Questions and Answers.
Today “robo-callers” are speed-dialing to encourage voters to go to the polls for Election Day; no different than the “robo-signers” (the speed signers) who contributed to the foreclosure bank fraud crisis we are in right now. The robo-callers are jamming up the phone systems just like robo-signers have done to the legal system; and allowing foreclosures to fly through the court’s rocket dockets!
2. Tomorrow is Oppenheim Law’s Foreclosure Fraud Workshop and Webcast on OppenheimLaw.tv at 6pm!
Find out what this means to the Florida homeowner as Roy Oppenheim hosts Florida’s Foreclosure Bank Fraud Workshop on Wednesday November 3rd from 6:00 to 7:00pm via webcast or live from a Boca Raton studio.
