Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure’
Friday, May 18th, 2012
States are taking settlement money right from under us!
It’s pretty hard to find a single housing advocate or foreclosure defense attorney, myself included, who didn’t find the national mortgage settlement to be, at the very least, flawed.
It may have been a necessary step to getting the housing market back on track, but we know that it didn’t come close to compensating homeowners who had been illegally kicked out of their homes, and in the end, the banks are getting off remarkably light for their robosigning crimes.
Which is why what a multitude of states are doing with some of the banks money is downright revolting.
At least a dozen states are taking tens of millions of dollars in direct payments from the settlement and treating them like a slush fund.
Let me explain.
Part of the settlement included $2.5 billion that was given outright to the states. Florida took in just over $334 million.
The settlement calls for these dollars to be used to “to avoid preventable foreclosures, to ameliorate the effects of the foreclosure crisis, to enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud, or unfair or deceptive acts or practices and to compensate the States for costs resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the Defendants.”
But much like much of the settlement overall, there is nothing in this language that has any real measure of enforcement. Some states are flat out ignoring these instructions and doing whatever they want with the money they are getting off the backs of good honest homeowners.
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Tags: banking, banking money, causes of the financial crisis of 2007 2009, charlie brown, enterprise community partners, foreclosure, foreclosures, housing crisis, housing market, jerry brown, money, mortgage, mortgage settlement, national mortgage, Pam Bondi, Real Estate, real property law, settlement, settlement money, settling, single house, spending, states, subprime mortgage crisis
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Mortgage Settlement, Pam Bondi | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
The banks are terrified they might actually be held accountable for their actions!
If you haven’t already heard, there is a monumental case that was heard Thursday morning in the Florida Supreme Court, and every single homeowner should be paying close attention to this case.
To watch a replay of the oral arguments, please click here.
The case is Roman Pino vs. Bank of New York. It involves all the customary fraud I have seen in countless cases.
Missing documents, fraudulent assignments, fraudulents notaries, and forged documents, and a bank once again trying to shuffle it’s dirty deeds under the rug like loose dirt.
When Bank of New York first tried to foreclose on Pino, a regular working guy from Greenacres who fell behind on his mortgage when his business dried up, there was no assignment of mortgage.
So Bank Of New York’s lawyers tried to re-file with a new assignment, one which was fraudulently backdated (AKA robosigned).
The bank’s original lawyers, by the way, were from David J. Stern’s office. You know their story.
When our good friend and colleague Tom Ice, Pino’s lawyer, challenged the documents, Bank of New York suddenly decided they didn’t want to foreclosure anymore, dropped their lawsuit and scurried back into their hole.
End of the story??
Not even close. Ice continued to dog Bank of New York like a pitbull, because he, believe it or not, also thinks the banks need to actually be held accountable! (Remarkable I know.)
He tried to have the voluntary dismissal overturned, so that Bank of New York could face sanctions for the forged documents they tried to use to swindle Roman Pino and the court.
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Tags: 4th district court of appeals, attorney, bank, bank of new york, banking, banking industries, banks, case, court, David Stern, district court, Florida, Florida Supreme Court, foreclosure, foreclosures, landmark, mortgage, new york, pino, real property law, roman pino, romans, supreme court, tom ice
Posted in Bank Fraud, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida Supreme Court, Roman Pino Vs Bank of New York | 3 Comments »
Monday, May 7th, 2012
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.
The latest example comes way of a small protest in Liberty City last week.
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.
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Tags: bank, bank fraud, banking, breaks, citizen, cleaning, federal reserve system, foreclose, foreclosed homes, foreclosure, foreclosures, gets, GMAC, miami workers center, police, protest, wall street
Posted in Big Banks, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Fraud | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 4th, 2012
- Banks make bad neighbors.
It’s been one of my mantras for years, and it’s a statement that is again reverberating across the country thanks to The Sun-Sentinel’s 3-part series “Bad Neighbor Banks”.
Thanks to the Sentinel, 60 Minutes, and the National Fair Housing Alliance, we are seeing the hard data that back up my assertion that banks, once they foreclose and take control of a property, just leave them to rot.
The grass no longer gets cut,the garbage accumulates, and before too long you end up with widespread blight not just in urban neighborhoods, but suburbia as well.
It’s the reason why I fight so hard to keep people in their homes. You and I are just better off when you have homeowners, vested in their houses and the neighborhoods they live in, keeping up their homes.
In the Sun-Sentinel’s series there is example after example of banks not doing even the most basic of maintenance. And their argument is usually, ‘It’s not our job’.
A bank has no investment in the neighborhoods you live in, beyond their own bottom line, and the banks have all but admitted it.
“The bank itself has no economic interest or ownership stake in the properties,” a spokesman for Deutsche Bank told the Sun-Sentinel.
So I ask you again, why would you ever want a bank as a neighbor?
The numbers don’t lie. The Sun-Sentinel found 10,300 code violations in bank-owned homes in South Florida since 2007. In the cities they tracked 40 percent of bank-owned homes were cited last year.
So chances are you are living next to one of these eyesores. And I’m betting you’re not too happy about it.
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Tags: bad neighbors, bank, bank owned homes, banking, Deutsche Bank, florida governor, foreclosure, neighbor, neighbors, Pam Bondi, Real Estate, Rick Scott, rotten, sentinel, slumlord, slums, South Florida, Sun Sentinel, suns, urban decay
Posted in Big Banks, Florida foreclosures, Foreclosure Defense | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is now asking for the public’s input on what she should do with the $300 million the state will be receiving directly from the national mortgage settlement.
She is openly soliciting your suggestions through her website from now until May 14th. As a foreclosure defense attorney and one of the people on the front lines of the housing crisis, I have more than a few ideas.
So Pam, please consider this my open letter to you and your office.
First and foremost, here is what you should NOT do with the money. Don’t throw it at principal reduction. It will have virtually no impact on Florida’s communities, it would be like throwing the money into quicksand.
So far, Florida’s efforts to offer financial relief to homeowners have just fallen flat.
Florida’s Hardest Hit program just hasn’t worked, and even recent changes to the program’s requirements will not help it reach enough people.
Move The Banks Out of Your Cities
What you need to do Ms. Bondi, is use the money to make systemic changes to Florida’s housing market.
First, give the money to your towns and cities to clear out Florida’s foreclosure blight. Blight caused by the abundance of abandoned homes the banks own, but refuse to take care of.
I’ve long told my readers that banks are bad neighbors, and the Sun-Sentinel now has the numbers that make my case.
Ms. Bondi, despite what your boss says, banks are the problem and you need to get them out of your cities and towns. Give your local governments the ammo to do it.
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Tags: banking, bondi, consumer fraud, defense attorneys, directly, federal reserve system, Florida, Florida Attorney General, foreclosure, MERS, million, mortgage, mortgages, national mortgage, open letter, pam, Pam Bondi, real property law, settlement
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Mortgage Settlement, Pam Bondi | 7 Comments »
Friday, April 27th, 2012
Survey: Mortgage Foreclosure Scams Surge
Not only is America’s foreclosure crisis still going strong, it now comes with even more fraud and deception.
With heightened media coverage surrounding the recent national mortgage settlement and refinements to government assistance programs, experts say selling “the schtick” has only become easier for criminals. But there are red flags consumers can watch out for when trying to determine whether or not an organization is legit.
First, homeowners should never have to pay anything up front for a loan modification or information on how to negotiate with their lender, says Roy Oppenheim, whose Florida-based law firm Oppenheim Law has handled more than 1,000 mortgage and foreclosure fraud cases over the past 5 years.
“If you’re paying upfront to a non-lawyer who’s claiming they can modify your loan, that’s a big scam,” Oppenheim says.
Read More from US News and World Report
Short Sales Soar as Home Foreclosures Fall
The foreclosure crisis isn’t over, but a new trend in real estate sales could be the light at the end of the tunnel for many borrowers and lenders. Short sales, which occur when homeowners sell their homes for less than what they still owe, outpaced foreclosures for the first time ever in January,according to a new report from Lender Processing Services, Inc.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced this month that mortgage servicers will be required to review and respond to short sale offers within 30 days and make final sale decisions within 60 days. The new requirements, which take effect in June, have kept lenders busy expanding and training the staff needed to catch up with growing short sale demand.
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Tags: american homeowner preservation, banking, defense attorneys, economics, finance, foreclosure, foreclosures, home foreclosure, in the news, law firm, laws, lawyers.com, loss mitigation, MERS, mortgage, mortgage foreclosure, national mortgage, oppenheim, Oppenheim Law, personal finance, Real Estate, real property law, Roy Oppenheim, senior partners, short sale, tv reports, us news and world report, usa today
Posted in Mortgage Scams, Oppenheim Law: In The News, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
What would he have said about the banks fraudulent acts?
Last weekend Chuck Coulson, the man once called Richard Nixon’s ‘hatchet man”, passed away at the age of 80.
Known both for his being one of the ‘Watergate Seven’ and his subsequent 2nd life as a born-again evangelist, I can only wonder what he thought of of our current foreclosure crisis.
I don’t know if he ever gave it much thought, but I suspect there would be a level of amazement.
Watergate, which started over a single break-in, landed almost 50 men in jail, including many top Nixon aides like Coulson.
The banks have broken into thousands of homes in their efforts to secure ‘abandoned properties’. Except you and I both know that most of these homes were anything but abandoned.
Sometimes they weren’t even in foreclosure. I’ve had about a dozen clients who’ve had their locks changed or had their homes ransacked by repo agents who were hired by the banks.
The banks, playing the role of Nixon and his cronies, have used aggressive tactics that Coulson, in his days as Nixon’s legal counsel, might have employed.
Coulson allegedly said he would walk over his own grandmother to get the president re-elected, which sounds appropriate because banks have done almost everything else in order to foreclose on homeowners who often didn’t deserve it.
Yet for crimes that would seem to fit in any file on Watergate, there is not a single banking executive who has been arrested.
I’ll bet good money Coulson would wonder why.
Coulson was convicted for his efforts in trying to discredit the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, but what would he have said about the ‘hatchet job’ banks have done on homeowners?
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Tags: 20th century in the united states, banking, banks, chuck coulson, conspiracy, coulson, foreclosure, foreclosures, hatchet job, hatchet man, homeowners, oppenheim, politics, presidency of richard nixon, richard, richard nixon, watergate, watergate scandal
Posted in Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense | No Comments »
