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.

Like countless others banks, Bank of New York got their hand caught in the cookie jar. But now they are trying to remove their hand before it slams on them.

While the lower courts have sided with the bank and refused to overturn the dismissal, the 4th District Court of Appeal has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a question of “great legal importance, which in their own words, “has the potential to impact the mortgage foreclosure crisis”, since “many, many mortgage foreclosures appear tainted with suspect documents.”

The question is whether banks can avoid punishment simply by dropping a foreclosure lawsuit.

So now you know why this case, and the legal implications it carries, has the entire banking industry shaking in their ratskin boots.

Even though Pino has already settled with Bank of New York, and ‘remarkably’ got to keep his home, the effect this decision will have will go far beyond Roman Pino.

It could finally mean justice for homeowners throughout the state of Florida.

The Mortgage Bankers Association and the Florida Bankers Association have filed a brief with the court, as have the American Land Title Association and the Florida Land Title Association.

Guess who they are backing?

All of these organizations are asking the Court to rule in Bank of New York’s favor, so they can continue the status quo.

The banks are playing a shell game, trying to get the Court to overlook the obvious frauds committed by Bank of New York, all in the name of a “potentially devastating” economic effect a judgement against Bank of New York might have.

In their brief the Bankers Associations claim that banks will write less home loans if they can’t dismiss and then re-file a foreclosure.

Is that a threat?

What they are really saying is ‘Just let us keep doing what we’ve been doing, and let’s forget all about the rules of law.”

The housing market will be just fine. This is a scare tactic on the part of the banks, so please don’t be fooled. They are just worried their con-game will come to an end.

What the Pino case is really about is the court protecting the integrity of the judicial system and protecting the constitution. It is imperative for court to rule against Bank of New York to keep its own integrity above repute.

It’s unfathomable that a bank could simply avoid punishment for a crime that would land you or me in jail just because they decided to drop their lawsuit.

Bank of New York is arguing the case should be left alone, because engaging in fraud is not reason enough to overturn the dismissal.

If the justices dismiss this case, banks will be able to walk away from their transgressions whenever they choose. It’s not only inappropriate, but outrageous.

Roman Pino vs Bank of New York goes to the heart of protecting our constitutional democracy, and it’s critical that the Florida Supreme Court reign in the illegal conduct and behavior of the banks, because as Ice wrote in his brief, the court should not “draw a line that protects wrongdoers and blesses fraud upon the court.”

If the justices side with the banks they will be encouraging continued falsehoods, their impartiality will be implicated, and a form a anarchy that will ultimately lead to total disrespect for our constitutional principles will be unleashed.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

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.

Even after the banks burglarize a home, when I have proof of a crime that would land you or I in jail, I am told it’s a civil matter, if I even get that.

Usually all I am left with is a big shrug. Banks can change locks or even tear a house apart, yet when a few ladies decide to pick up trash and try to better a neighborhood, that’s when the cops decide to enforce the laws?

Why do the property rights of banks, banks that simply do not care about their neighbors, mean more to the police than that of good citizens?

As Newsweek joined the voices wondering if in fact the banks are too big to jail, I ask you, how can we put them behind bars if we can’t even get an officer to respond?

Bankers have access and influence that just hasn’t been broken, even by a President who promised hope and change.

Newsweek points out that when it comes to justice in the financial sector, President Obama has not lived up to the hype.

Now he’s been busy when it comes to civil rights or health-care fraud, but when it comes to financial fraud the feds just can’t be bothered.

Prosecutions of financial crimes are at 20 years lows, and they’ve dropped nearly 40 percent since 2003.

Once again, it comes down to two sets of rules. Bankers get to pick and choose which rules they play by, but citizens trying to do some good don’t get that luxury.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

• 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.

The threat of foreclosure blight is far from simply cosmetic. They become havens for illegal activity, for drug use and gangs.

The Sun-Sentinel cited a Miramar toddler’s 2009 death where a boy wandered into the backyard of an empty foreclosed house and drowned. The boy’s mom told the police the water was dark and full of garbage.

Foreclosure blight is just impossible to ignore, not that the banks and many at the top haven’t tried. Thankfully Florida governor Rick Scott finally took notice, not that I expect much to come from it.

On the one hand he sounded concerned, but in his very next breath he deflected blame from the banks, pointing instead to the poor economy as the reason for the rapid spread of foreclosure blight.

Last time I checked the economy doesn’t own these homes. Banks do.

Let’s not forget who put this governor into office. The banks fully supported Rick Scott’s campaign; I can’t imagine that he will do anything that will harm the banks.

Which means it’s up to the local cities and town to nail the banks and take back their neighborhoods.

Some municipalities are now trying more aggressive tactics, from issuing subpoenas to bank officials to citing banks before they have the title in their hands. But many just haven’t had the mustard to really go after the banks.

Most of the fines or liens issued against the banks just get ignored.

These are at best desperate tactics, if cities really want to get the banks attention, they should hire outside counsel and sue the pants off the banks.

Most local governments just don’t have the resources to take on the banks in a court of law, so just like homeowners, they need to lawyer up.

But the truth is most of these abandoned homes are just too far gone. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for banks to step up.

As I said in my last blog, Pam Bondi should be giving some of the $300 million Florida is getting from the foreclosure settlement to give to cities and towns, so they can raze these decrepit homes and take their neighborhoods back.

It’s time for the banks to stop being slumlords and rotten neighbors.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi

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.

Your local cities are already going after the banks to try to force them to maintain their homes, as any property owner SHOULD do, but liens and fines mean nothing to these “Too Big To Fail” banks.

So give the money to local Florida municipalities so they can condemn and demolish these eyesores. Then let the cities buy these properties from the banks at their ‘true value’ and auction them off. Let new homes be built.

This will stabilize Florida’s neighborhoods and the real estate market, and in the end reduce suburban blight.

Take Back Your Property Records

Next, support your local clerks by giving them some of the money to support their investigations into MERS. Banks have violated the rules of real estate ownership with this fraudulent record keeping system and thankfully a few clerks, both in Florida and across the country have taken action by filing lawsuits against MERS.

This is the type of action you need to be encouraging and funding. MERS has destroyed our recordation system and turned what once was one of America’s strongest selling points and turned it into a laughing stock.

Our ability to control property ownership records used to be protected by our government, but over the last few years records have been bastardized and suddenly we’re more concerned with protecting banks ownership interests instead of the rights of regular citizens.

The banks have lost control over their own mortgages and it’s time to give your clerks the ability to seize control of these records back from the banks.

Give All Your Constituents Access to Legal Counsel

Lastly, it’s important that anyone have the access to good legal advice when defending their home. Not everyone can afford to hire a foreclosure defense attorney, and when homeowners go without representation, the banks trample all over them.

There are not-for-profit legal counsels offering help to homeowners, but many are understaffed or undertrained. Pam you could help fund these centers with the foreclosure settlement money,

If needed, use the money to offer specialized training to their staffs, so they can offer the same legal advice I offer to my clients.

Homeowners need help in undoing the wholesale violation of their property and constitutional rights, rights which are the bedrock of this nation. They need these rights restored.

Finally if you have any funds left bring an anti-trust action yourself, on the grounds that the banks are too big, anti-competitive and have harmed the state.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

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.

“When the robosigning crisis hit, there was effectively an 18-month moratorium on foreclosures,” said Roy Oppenheim, a foreclosure defense attorney with Oppenheim Law in South Florida. “The banks got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and the lid slammed closed on it. Fraud, robosigning — it all came to a stop. But through this $25 billion settlement, they’re using the crisis to their advantage. The settlement creates a major incentive for the banks to do short sales.”

Read More from Lawyers.com

Short sales pick up in housing market

Lenders are pricing short sales more aggressively, RealtyTrac adds. In January, the average short sale price was 10% lower than a year earlier, exceeding the drop in U.S.home prices.

Some mortgage servicers started pursuing short sales more aggressively months ago. Bank of America says it did 107,000 short sales last year, up from 92,000 in 2010 and double the 2009 volume. New measures are also likely to boost short sales.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which own or guarantee 60% of home loans, will soon require lenders to decide short sale offers within 60 days. Realtors have complained that short sale offers often linger. The recent $25 billion mortgage settlement also encourages short sales.

New rules have slowed foreclosures in many states, increasing short sales, says Florida foreclosure defense attorney Roy Oppenheim.

Read More from USA Today

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?

False documents, forged signatures, tax fraud, all in the name of the mighty dollar. Coulson would likely have admitted that everything the banks have done since the bubble burst is 1,000 times worse than anything he and his cronies did.

There have been many great injustices throughout our nation’s history, and when the book is finally closed on this era of “Too Big To Fail”, I think the banks illegal foreclosures efforts and their bastardization of our legal system will clearly outweigh Watergate.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

Maybe you weren’t convinced the first time I told you the era of the short sale was finally upon us.

I can’t blame you for thinking that banks were acting irrationally when it comes to the foreclosure process.

But Lender Processing Services just offered up the most convincing numbers to date that short sales are no longer just some pie-in-the-sky dream for distressed underwater borrowers.

For the first time in the US, LPS says there were more short sales in a single month then there were foreclosures.

In January short sales made up 23.9 percent of home sales, while foreclosure sales made up 19.7 percent of all home purchases.

Of course that means that over half of all real estate closings are for distressed homes.

A year before, the percentages were skewered in the opposite direction. In January 2011, 16.3 percent of home purchases came through short sales, and 24.9 percent were foreclosures.

Why are the banks now convinced, as I was long ago, that going through the long and harrowing process of a foreclosure is not their best option?

The proof is once again in the numbers. On average, foreclosed homes sold for 29 percent less than non-distressed properties in January.

Homes sold via short sale? They went for 23 percent less. Here in Florida, LPS says short sales have outnumbered foreclosures since July.

That means short sales are a better deal for the banks, plain and simple.

The truth is banks don’t want to own these properties, they certainly can’t handle maintaining these homes, and they just end up laying waste to neighborhoods by hanging on to them.

It’s just better for banks to sell the home and get a new buyer inside, rather than engage in a legal battle with a homeowner over whether they even have the right to foreclose in the first place!

And it’s better for homeowners who want to walk away from their homes, because they can do so legally, and leave the threat of foreclosure behind for good. It’s simple logic, yet it took the banks eons to come to this conclusion.

At Oppenheim Law we’ve saved homeowners over 22 million dollars in deficiencies. Homeowners are able to walk away from their obligations without any lingering repercussions of a deficiency judgement chasing them around for 20 years.

The bottom line it’s just sound business sense for banks, and its the best way to legally walk away from your underwater mortgage.

From The Trenches

Roy Oppenheim

Judge Signs $25 Billion Foreclosure Settlement

It’s finally official. The so-called $25 billion foreclosure settlement has been signed off by a federal judge.

This comes after the settlement was filed in court last month. DC District Judge Rosemary Collyer did the honors Wednesday.

I won’t rehash my thoughts about what’s good and what’s bad about this settlement. Everything that needs to be said about it has been said.

You and I know that the banks will get more of a pass than they are entitled to for all of their robosigning shenanigans. In reality they are really only paying out about $5 billion in actual money, and I’ve still haven’t seen a single banking officer jailed.

Just remember this fight ain’t over yet!. This settlement was a necessary step, in order for the feds to move on to their investigation into securitized trusts.

THAT is where the banks will hopefully get what’s really coming to them.

Mortgage settlement oversight begins in North Carolina

Now that the settlement is official, the new government agency that will be watching the banks is now open for business.

North Carolina Banking Commissioner Joseph Smith is going to oversee the office and how the banks will receive “credits” towards the settlement for providing homeowners mortgage relief.

Relief, unfortunately, will often come in the form of transactions, such as short sales, that the banks were already doing before the settlement was announced.

“By itself, this settlement will not remedy every problem that system faces. But trust in our mortgage system can move forward if we use this opportunity to show fairness, transparency and accountability,” Smith said. “

Let’s hope!

“Dramatic” 65 percent increase in Palm Beach County foreclosures

Just as I predicted! Last month I told the Palm Beach Post that banks had been given the green light to prosecute new foreclosure cases, and lo and behold, that is exactly what has happened.

The Post now reports that Palm Beach County saw a 65.4 percent increase in new foreclosure filings last month, compared to March of 2011.

Palm Beach Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock called the jump “dramatic”. I call it completely expected. The settlement has given banks a road map on how to proceed.

But as I have already said, with the Clerk’s Office about to have their budget significantly reduced, you will see another logjam in the court system.

Without the necessary support staff, it will be nearly impossible for the courts to keep up with the banks.

Fed lays out rules for banks to rent REOs

Another idea I’ve long advocated is beginning to see the light of day.

The Federal Reserve has laid out the groundwork on how banks can rent out foreclosed homes. There is nothing to be gained by allowing homes to remain empty, so this is an absolutely necessary step if the housing market is going to recover.

Of course there are many landlord/tenant, state and federal housing regulations that will need to be followed, and we can’t trust the banks to be good landlords on their own.

In their report the Federal Reserve says that banks “should use a framework that appropriately records the organizations’ rental decisions and transactions as they take place”

Let’s just hope that those records are better than the ones the banks kept during the robosigning era.

HA!!

Have a great Passover and Easter Holiday!