Modern Investigative Reporting Aids Those in Foreclosure

Warning: Off-topic subject, although it illustrates the value of old-fashioned investigative reporting.

After this post was written and scheduled, I came upon a news story that sets the context for the story. I will paste it here, in italics.

It’s easy to judge someone who spends more money than he makes and gets into financial trouble. It’s irresponsible. At first, that is the way I felt about all people who bought too much house, then lost their homes to foreclosure.

The more I read the background news stories, the more I came to believe many were lured into a snare designed by certain financial organizations to be a massive money-making machine. Select lenders and investment banking institutions purposely behaved irresponsibly because they had a plan. They figured out how to make money using “mismanagement”  and avoid consequences. (The perfect legal defense: “Your Honor, I used poor judgement and made some bad management decisions.”) Stupidity isn’t a crime, unless it can be proved to be a smoke screen for outright fraud. Once these banks were en masse in insolvency (they all did the same inane, irresponsible acts), then step two of the devious plan kicked in: suck massive amounts of free money out of the general populace through tax-supported bailouts. With no paybacks. Forever. (Where can I get me one of them? I’d like $40 million dollars a month indefinitely for being criminal stupid.)

Lend– bad loan, good loan, it doesn’t matter. Make money. Package and sell the bad mortgages to investors, teachers’ retirement funds, firemen’s retirement funds, policemen’s retirement funds, your retirement funds, foreign governments. Make money. Pass off the consequences to unsuspecting others. Mortgages defaults. Pension funds lose the money they need to pay out retirement benefits. Get government to tax citizens and give the $$$ to lenders–no strings attached, no pay back required. Bail out. Make money. Foreclosure.  Real Estate is sold. Make money. The cycle begins again. Make Money.

Sadly, citizens do pay consequences for bad behavior. That’s where the news story comes in. The institutions which figured out how to profit from fraud haven’t paid consequences–yet. That’s where the original post comes in. Someone clever has figured out a way to turn the game back on the banksters in certain circumstances.

But first the newly added news clipping from Reuters:

Spain promises to spare needy from eviction after suicides

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos promised on Monday that no needy family will go homeless over mortgage arrears, responding to public fury at a homeowner’s suicide as she was being evicted.

Facing accusations that politicians and banks are complicit in de facto “murder”, Spain’s banking association said its members would suspend eviction orders for two years for those borrowers worst hit by economic crisis and record unemployment.

Banks have repossessed close to 400,000 homes in Spain since a property bubble burst in 2008 and the nation subsequently sank into recession, throwing millions out of work and unable to keep up mortgage payments to the banks.

Last Friday’s suicide of 53-year-old Amaia Egana has inflamed a public already angered by what they see as a lack of compassion among Spanish banks, many of which have benefited from taxpayer-funded bailouts organized by the political elite.

Now to the originally scheduled post:

An investigative reporter discovered that a segment of the mortgage banking/ investment banking community purposely defrauded investors and homeowners. His investigative findings are now compiled in a book called Clouded Titles.

The subject bankers defrauded pension funds and other investors by selling worthless mortgage backed securities. The same bankers also unscrupulously by-passed laws governing title and mortgage records so that millions of homeowners with a mortgage may not be able to sell their homes. Why? Because the homeowner will not be able to provide clear chain of title, solely due to lender fraud and mismanagement. Further, the banks skipped out paying millions in taxes and fees to local governments when they short-cut the law through robo-signing and other techniques. So the mortgage-handling entities cheated investors; they swindled homeowners; they skipped out like a dead-beat parent on paying their fees and taxes to local, state and federal governments.

Currently, a multi-BILLION dollar lawsuit has been filed by the U. S. federal government seeking damages. There is a successful movement growing among injured mortgagees who are suing  in court to prevent eviction and foreclosure. Some have seen the courts stop the banks from foreclosing or even from collecting mortgage payments.

For anyone who has received repeated letters about a change in who owns your mortgage or a change to where you send your house payment, you may eventually learn your title is clouded and you may be paying someone who doesn’t legally own your mortgage, and therefore, your home.

For those persons, I am providing the following information about the author and his  book Clouded Titles.

Dave Krieger is a former major market radio news reporter and news director and television news reporter/anchorman and investigative journalist, who won national and state news awards from Associated Press Broadcasters. Dave was a former member of Radio and Television News Directors Association. Dave began studying law in early 1990; specializing in real estate, tort, consumer credit and collection issues.

His first self-published work, The Credit Restoration Primer, a 263-page, self-help, credit repair book, was first released in 1995 and is now entering its 4th Edition.

Dave currently serves as a paralegal and legal research analyst for Wade Kricken, an attorney in Dallas, Texas, who specializes in consumer and real estate law and foreclosure defense. He has lectured at the Texas County Clerk’s school hosted by the V.G. Young Institute and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and currently conducts audits of county land records and instructs attorneys on the subject of Chain of Title Assessments & Quiet Title Actions in continuing legal education courses around the country.

The newest version of his book, Clouded Titles, is 396 pages of updated information about the aspects of foreclosure defense, strategic default, quiet title actions and county land record functions; coupled with a detailed Index and Table of Case Citations and comes highly regarded by attorneys.

Additional commentary from MSNBC on a related subject– listen to the end to hear the “banking corruption” remark. Ignore the politics. This is your chance to look behind the curtain in OZ. It’s your life. You are the one behind the eight ball. You and your kids and your grandkids. Know who is using the system and putting the screws to you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TZ0LqnaeuA&feature=share&list=PL2WWM-Cq2nuJ59drKmEEfsSkwZ9C2n5Gm

Justice: Part 3, The Finale

Justice: Part 3

by Fay Moore (c) 2012

“Good god, man,” says the Chief. A pause, then, “Call me later with the rest of the findings.”

The Chief of Police is silent. Six pairs of eyes focus on him, trained to read the faces of men to reveal what is in the heart.  At the moment, the face of the Chief is tabula rasa. Under the circumstances, the eyes stay riveted to the chief’s face, mining data from each subtle nostril flare, each bat of an eyelid, each pupil dilation.

Standing, the Chief hands off the cell phone to an assistant, straightens his uniform coat, then locks eyes with his audience.

“There’s been a fire at the GS Global Investments building. All the senior executive offices burned. Once the blaze was controlled, firemen made a cursory search through the suite, to be sure all flames were extinguished. In the executive bathroom, they found a pair of severed hands on a plate, covered in blood, under a glass dome. The coroner said the hands appear to have been removed from a cadaver. You know, one of the pickled bodies used for training in medical schools. Thank God for that. I was afraid the hands belonged to another investment banker.”

One of the detectives in the room chuckled. “Blood on your hands.”

“What?” asked the Chief.

“Blood on your hands. The perpetrator is sending a message. The investment banking community has blood on their hands.”

“If you count the kills in Asia, Europe and here, we have eleven dead bankers in forty-eight hours. I’d say you’re right that whoever is behind these hits is sending a message, a very lethal message.”

“Did they find anything else?”

“Yes. Under the glass plate holding the hands, there was a copy of an article from a San Francisco newspaper, written by a Bill, Phil, or Will somebody and called “Unrepentant and Unreformed Bankers.”

Another voice responds, “I saw that article on the Internet. It has gone viral on the free video channels. That crowd sees our perpetrator–or perpetrators–as a kind of Robin Hood. You know, delivering justice where the regulators and courts won’t.”

The Chief growls in reply, “Let me remind you that we deliver justice, not some vigilante. You can’t have people taking the law into their own hands. Remember that! Now show me the article. You said it’s on-line?”

The detective uses the Chief’s computer to find it. The search returns several references to the article, as it has been printed not only in the San Francisco newspaper, but also in the Huffington Post and on various Internet web sites.

The Chief scans the article as the detectives peer over his shoulder.

“Money laundering. Price Fixing. Bid rigging. Securities fraud. Talking about the mob? No, unfortunately. Wall Street,” a detective reads aloud. There’s a laugh around the room. “Old Phil Angelides knows how to start an article off with a bang. You know, Chief, he’s got a point.”

A glare from the Chief silences the speaker. “We have crimes to solve. Now get to work.”

It takes weeks of coordinating investigative efforts with global law enforcement and intelligence organizations to turn up bumpkus. The police entities can’t identify who is behind the mayhem. The killings have stopped: the spree is short-lived and focused. Nowhere is there sympathy for the victims.

Over and over, excerpts from the Angelides article appear on television. In coffee shops, barbershops, taxicabs and airports, the buzz is the same: the banks and their leaders have faced no real political, economic or legal consequences for their wrongdoing. The banks are cozy with the regulators and with legislators. Wall Street is solipsism, a world of utter madness that, till now, others could not affect.

——-

Somewhere in Hong Kong, an octogenarian is on his deathbed. He is thinking about the Year of the Dragon; it is a year of bravery, of passion, a time to eliminate negative chi from the past. He considers his life. He has been favored in business and industry. His personal fortune exceeds the total economy of many individual countries. Before he dies, he wishes to leave a gift to his children and grandchildren. He believes he has done it. He believes he has made their world better.

How does he know?

He is watching the news. The broadcaster describes a global reordering of the financial world. In the aftermath of the multiple murders, fear seizes those who ran the old order, and they flee to hide in their hidden bunkers. Systems that have been in place for decades are being disassembled. The central banking system breaks up into small localized units. Fiat currencies are replaced with asset-backed money. Sovereign debts are forgiven. Taxpayers are off the hook. Governments cut size and balance budgets. International banking criminals are arrested and prosecuted vigorously.

Optimism and hope are in the air. Economies will be rebuilt. He can die in peace.