Report of the Florida Attorney General on
Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases (98 pages)
This is the comprehensive report prepared by the two fired Florida Assistant Attorneys General, which reflects the results of the investigation started under former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, Pam Bondi's predecessor in office. The truth is, much of this information was uncovered by private foreclosure defense attorneys, most especially Thomas Ice, of the Ice Law Firm in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, and Lynn Szymoniak, the white collar crime expert who was featured in the 60 minutes report included in our Video Library.
Many of the slides in this document came directly from Lynn Szymoniak. The truth is, we foreclosure defense attorneys were waving this material around for nearly a year before the government took notice and started investigating. Once they were permitted to start, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards (the fired Assistant AGs) did a number of depositions, and expanded the investigation considerably.
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ABOUT THESE
FORECLOSURE RESOURCES
For the property owner who truly wishes to dig deep into the mortgage foreclosure scandal and the highly questionable practices of the mortgage industry and the too-big-to-fail banks, we offer this (partial) list of deposition transcripts and other materials which serve to illuminate this subject. We hope you find these items helpful. There is a LOT of reading here!
A note for the uninitiated: these documents are pretty heavy reading, and sometimes are largely meaningless to the laymen. At their heart, however, they contain admissions (with lots of detail) by the employees who were directly involved, in all of the most damaging,dishonest and sometimes downright fraudulent practices, which, unfortunately, are or have been widespread in the mortgage industry.
The robo signing scandal virtually shut down the nation's entire foreclosure machine in the fall of 2010. Officials in at least three states say the illegal practice continues.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE WAYS IN WHICH ROBO-SIGNING CAN WORK:
—An entry-level employee with little or no banking experience signs off on mortgage-related affidavits without verifying whether the bank owns the loan or whether the homeowner owes the debt.
—A notary stamps the document even though the notary wasn't present at the time the document was signed. The notary signature might also be different that the one on file with the agency that licensed the notary.
—A qualified bank employee signs his name using numerous titles on behalf of more than a dozen different financial institutions.
—In all of these cases, robo-signing involves people signing documents and swearing to their accuracy without verifying any of the information.
