Tweet
[Ed. note: Pay attention to this case very closely. You're going to see some of these names again soon.]
The Florida Attorney General has subpoenaed records of Fidelity National Financial, Inc., also known as DOCX (H/T cbl). The subpoenas are here. The first thing you notice is the caption: “Economic Crimes Investigative Subpoena Duces Tecum”. I like the ring of that, economic crimes. But I bet there is a group of people for whom it has a really scary sound.
What is the AG looking for? First, they want records of a comprehensive range of dealings between DOCX and several Florida foreclosure law firms, Florida Default Law Group, P.L., The Law Offices of David J. Stern, P.A., and Shapiro & Fishman, L.L.P., and The Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, P.A.
Interesting enough. They also want documents authorizing named employees of DOCX to sign documents for other companies. As an example, they want to see documents showing that Linda Green is authorized to sign as Vice President, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., as nominee for American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Inc. They also want a copy of every document signed in any capacity by Linda Green.
They want documents showing that Korell Harp, Jessica Ohde, Pat Kingston, Christina Huang, and Tywanna Thomas had authority to sign “in any capacity for any lender and/or servicing company.” They want a list of employees, identifying those who provide notary services. And they want policy and procedure manuals and training materials related to the business of DOCX.
Most of the time, when a subpoena is issued for records, the employees don’t know about it. This time, the employees of DOCX and those law firms are lucky. The subpoena is on the internet, and they have a great opportunity to protect themselves, if they find out about it.
I’m guessing that the Florida AG doesn’t blame the employees of DOCX, and maybe the employees of the law firms. That is why they want the manuals and training materials. If I’m one of the people named in the subpoena, or an employee who notarized documents for DOCX, I’m getting on the phone to a lawyer to represent me in criminal proceedings. I do the same thing if I work for one of those law firms. I’m telling my story to my lawyer, and asking for help in cooperating with the Florida AG. I don’t worry about the cost.
But, you say, surely they’re better off working with the firm; they’ll protect their employees because that protects them. Just saying it out loud makes you laugh, doesn’t it?
So, if you are one of those people, this is your big chance to get in front of this mess. If you know one of these people, or know that one of them goes to your Church, or your kid knows their kid at school, or your brother used to date someone who worked for one of those firms, do the right thing and talk to them. It’s ugly under the bus. You don’t want a friend down there.
27 Comments
Good advice — as usual — Massacio.
And isn’t it lovely when the “little people” who carry out the dirty work suddenly get a chance to roll over on their bosses and sing like canaries in court?
Whattya bet those folks are gonna get subpoenas to appear at a whole bunch of individual homeowner foreclosure proceedings, too?
Ship, meet iceberg.
Looks like we’re headed for the full-employment season for defense attorneys.
“Just saying it out loud makes you laugh, doesn’t it? yup.
Hmmmm. Wonder if I could waive in to Fla. – even tho’ I haven’t been practicing for years.. But defending those folks could be very satisfying.
Help ‘em deliver up their evil bosses…
At least there will be one positive blip in the employment arena.
And plenty of work for the trial lawyers, title lawyers, and anybody else who practices real estate law or consumer protection law… :)
We’ll have plenty of work here in Texas soon. Title companies will start needing a lot more attorneys than they have already. And homeowners will too.
I’ve already seen another side effect. Willing Buyers and Willing Sellers can’t do deals because banks can’t lend. In steps attorney. I’ve picked a lot of owner-financing clients wanting to cut the banks out. Its a CYA-intensive, but worth it. Realtors don’t touch those anymore since 2005 because the legislature required all lease-to-buy and owner-financing or contract for deed transactions to be run by the attorneys. And the nice thing about it is that we can make sure that all parties at the transaction have lots of plain-english transparency in the closing and make sure all parties’ rights and responsibilities are clearly stated. Maybe owner-financing will be able to help stop-gap this collapse and be a good outlet for homeowners and buyers and sellers who need to move.
Thanks for this, Sloppy Tom!
I wouldn’t be to sure the AG won’t go after them with criminal charges. Remember the first rule. Go after the little people. Besides one way or another the firms are going to get around to blaming it on the employees and making it a matter of personal responsibility. Remember corprorations cannot do wrong, only people can. As many little people as possible and no big ones if possible. If not the latter than 1 or 2. Who may be found guilty in 5 years and win on appeal in 10.
However, ‘under-the-bus’ has really simply lovely decor.
We gays have been here practically forever.
Always first to gentrify an otherwise unlovely spot, right?
Yes. Soon expect the company PR spin about “disgruntled” employees who aren’t “playing ball”
They will be called out as “bad apples”. Companies will tell the press that the “I was just following orders” doesn’t count when you are asked to committ fraud. They should have said “no ” and resigned if they didn’t like the practices. They must take responsibility for their role in this. Just like the people are suppose to take responsibibly for paying their mortgage.
Teddy and Kelly, ROFLMAO.
And you may soon expect at least one blogger to point out the incestuous financial relationship between the companies in question and certain elected officials including at least one member of law enforcement.
;-)
Didn’t know that, since I’ve been out. Imagine, the legislature did something right – never saw a contract-for-deed that wasn’t skewed against the buyer. Some terrible abuses there.
And for Spocko, and others: we mustn’t hurt the corporations’ feelings. (Dahlia Lithwick-how did corps get more personal privacy than humans?)
Very good advice. The whole country is pissed as hell at the banksters so SOMEBODIES going to go to jail. And it probably ain’t going to be the bank CEOs (at least not yet).
Any idea if and/or when other state AG’s will follow suit? Let’s get this party started.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I hope there are lots of lawyers-in-process in the law schools, ‘cuz something tells me there’s gonna be a need. OTOH, wouldn’t this be the exactly time that the Tan Man, if he becomes Speaker, will chose to put tort reform high on the agenda of the US Senate. BTW, here’s a hint for some folks less familiar with Title insurance. The back page of many documents is a list of exceptions to your Title committment. Look it over carefully before you sign for that new house. It may give you some clues in regard to possible problems.
But what I really wanted to mention is that Affidavits of all sorts have been used and abused for years, and many people have no real feel for their importance. For instance, when I was in my very early twenties and had purchased my first home with my husband (at the time), I used to receive an Affidavit with some information on it in regard to a mortgage exemption. The instruction I got from my mortgage company, who was the servicer of my loan (I lived in IN at the time), was for both parties to sign in the appropriate place and return it by such and such a date in a self-addressed, stamped envelop which they provided. They would then notarize the document in their office and send it on to the Assessor’s office to file the yearly mortgage exemption. I was young and didn’t know any better; just did what I was instructed and figured this was done as a courtesy and was for my benefit. Today I recognize this whole thing as a “victimless” crime, but a glitch all the same. I think eventually the legislature changed the yearly filing requirement to file it once and when the mortgage is paid, the exemption is cancelled. Same thing if the property is sold.
Years later, I worked for the University on a program testing the viability of a Guaranteed Wage for the Federal Government (It was a Nixon social experiment done to see about changing the Welfare or ADC system.) The idea was that about (I think)twenty six hundred families were selected for the program. Each family would complete “Income Report Forms” in detail, and they would receive a check each month based on the income information provided. I believe at the end of the year they also had to provide their income tax forms for all wage earners to make sure that everything pretty much matched. If they didn’t file taxes, they were instructed to sign an Affidavit that we sent to them along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. They were informed that we would have them notarized in our office. One year I remember that some of the families were slow at providing the tax info, and their checks were not based on the tax info anyway, so they got lax. To provide the lacking incentive to comply, the university bosses of the program, all economists and some working on their doctorate with this program, decided to threaten to withhold the families’ checks if they didn’t return their tax forms. Well, our office was the one that withheld the checks and caught most of the flack for it when respondents complained. However, we were unaware that what we asked them to do was patently illegal. We were informed of that when one of the respondents who worked in city hall and knew about Affidavits and Notaries, and laws and such, told us that she would sue if we continued to try to coerce folks in that illegal a manner. Needless to say, once the chief economist heard about the kerfuffle, he said to send out the remaining checks immediately. This was the first time I had seen my boss, a very dynamic 5’1″ fellow, assemble all his bosses in his office, and in his best bellow read them the riot act! Well, they accepted the chewing out because they knew he was right and because it was “Don”, who had worked his way up in the hierarchy just based on his knowledge and determination and exceptional judgment and inventive problem solving ways that made him utterly indispensable. He was undoubtedly the heart that of the program and what made everything else go smoothly. I do remember his immediate supervisor reluctantly saying, “Well okay, Don, but you don’t have to yell!” To which he replied, “Yes I do, because this is my office and that’s the way I do business.” He could be heard throughout the building, but I’m pretty sure his bosses did not hear all of us snickering and cracking up in our offices. But that was my lesson in the importance of Affidavits.
Ah, my other question! I thought Corporations, for all their complaints and trying to squirm out of stuff, were ultimately responsible for the actions of their employees. Especially so when there is evidence that the failure was systemic, not limited to one individual trying to defraud or cause harm to anyone, but the incident was likely caused on the orders of higher ups. The woman that won her civil case against McDonald’s for scalding her with hot coffee didn’t sue the girl at the window that poured the coffee and gave it to her. The liability was all to McDonald’s Corp, wasn’t it?
Abuse of paperwork is probably so common that it’s basically “normal”. But this is apparently happening to hundreds of thousands of people at the same time more or less so the sh8t has hit the fan.
Signing something means you prepared it and/or read it… don’t it?
took the words outta my mouth. job creation!
So, Bill McCollum is actually doing something? Helpful? Or is his staff taking advantage of the fact that he’s a lame duck to actually enforce the law? Or is this a “few rotten apples” fishing expedition (pardon the mixed metaphor)?
I suspect there may also be jobs for “support persons” to the attorneys: secretaries, court reporters, paralegals [should that, in the spirit of "attorneys general," be paraslegal? Naw.]
If I were anywhere near any of this impending action, I’d be spiffing up my resume, or thinking about waiving in to the local bar. [That's Bar Association, not "bar."]
Most notaries for non judicial foreclosure are not in your state. But laws in their state may cause them to lose their waxy yellow buildup on that notary stamp they schwump down on any piece of paper the boss tells them. California notaries commit felonies if they are involved in fraudulent documents regarding 1-4 family residences.
Look at your documents. Won’t take long to realize they are photocopies where the original should be real.
Don’t count on the bar, they protect their own. They won’t lift a finger until the tide has turned so far they are drowning. Your AG is the only help you have, give them the documents that don’t pass the smell test. They are based on fraud, control fraud and racketeering. It is really that simple. It has been since the 80′s.
Given this administration, I seriously doubt either the banks or their employees have anything to worry about. The banks as well as the politicians are backed into a corner and lawsuits are breathing down the necks of the banks. If you think for a moment that ouir elected elite are going to let the banks fail, guess again.
Congress will pass a law called something like “The Financial Modernization and Stability Act of 2010” that will retroactively grant mortgage pools the rights in the underlying mortgages that people are worried about. All the screwed up paperwork, lost notes, unassigned security interests will be forgiven by a legislative act.
The put-back crisis is not driven by economics. It is driven by legal rights. And there’s simply zero probability that the politicians in Washington are going to let Bank of America or Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase fail because of a legal issue.
So here’s what I expect will happen. The lame duck session of Congress will pass a bill that essentially papers over the misdeeds of the banks that originated mortgage securities. Every member of Congress and every Senator who has been voted out of office will cast a vote for the bill. And the President will sign it.
Will the public be outraged? Probably. Financial bloggers will scream from the high heavens against another bailout of the banksters. Congress may try to create some cost for banks in exchange for the forgiveness, perhaps requiring more mortgage modifications.
I have to agree with Rapier. I saw McCollum on my local news last night. He kept repeating over and over “This isn’t about fraud by the banks. It looks like it’s just some bad policies and low level players not following the rules.” Remember that he is a Jeb Bush protege and just got smacked out of the governor’s race by a Tea Bagger. He is deep in Republican corruption and protection. After the interview my takeaway was that this is a show trial and he is going to pick off a few low hanging fruit so he can claim that he went after this foreclosure fraud but no one in the upper echelon need worry.
Greetings! As I’ve been reading more about this, I’ve come to the conclusion that it may be time to actually do something about things. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a career change, so maybe I should check into the nearest local LSAT testing center and go ahead and try to get that JD. If I start now, I should be able to finish in 3 or 4 years, when things are really heating up! There is a call-in show on NHPR called The Exchange and yesterday’s topic was “The Forclosure Mess”. The guest panel included a Representative of the Real Estate Industry – claiming that “We can’t afford to have a crisis right now!”, a journalist from the Washington Post – “This is going to get worse before it gets better”, and a Professor from South Carolina. The focus of the show was primarily driven by the Real Estate Guy, that this was just a little documentation problem. I managed to get on the line and get through and tried to explain that this was not “A little problem – that in Florida, as much as 20% of the foreclosure cases had forged or falsified documents, that the mortgage servicers had been falsifying documents, and in states with judicial foreclosure, committing fraud on the courts. I also mentioned that the problem extended past the foreclosures, but also included the documentation that might or might not exist for those home owners who were not in foreclosure. I also said that the attempts to blame the homeowners who were in foreclosure for the problem was a red herring. The Banks created this mess, and they are responsible for the whole thing Finally, I said that the investment devices created by the slicing and dicing of the mortgages may in fact, be unsecured, and not worth the electrons they are stored with.
They didn’t really talk about most of my comments, but the Real Estate Guy was really trying to get back to the “Blame the Victim” “Just a few paperwork issues” ideas. At least I tried! Have a great weekend!