My letter to Wexler

I wrote this in Sept 2009 and sent it out to many government agencies and politicians.  Much of the foreclosure mill bamboozling continues unabated in my own case and the cases of millions of Americans across the nation. 

This is a three ring circus where the audience pays the highest price possible for admission, gets the fleecing of a lifetime, and on the way out of the tent is handed a few peanut shells to use as building material for a lean-to shelter.

Florida Default Law Group Reprimands for filing FALSE AFFIDAVITS

BLACK DEEDS  ---BOGUS mortgage assignments = illegal foreclosures

Database of Fraudulent Signatories

4/29/2010 Florida Attorney General opens a civil investigation

10/21/2009 Comment to the Florida Supreme Court

Dear_____________________,

By way of introduction, I am a working mother and also a  pro se litigant fighting a residential foreclosure, in a state that ranks among the hardest hit. My lawsuit, one of thousands filed monthly against your constituents, was initiated on early 2009 in  Florida.

May I prevail upon you to read this lengthy letter, which I agree, may be too much to ask? I hope to shed light on what is befalling millions of us out here across the nation.

I write to you with several purposes in mind.

First and foremost, I must convey my outrage at the roles recently played by Wall Street in the world's cataclysmic near revisiting of The Great Depression. Never have I witnessed such massive destruction of individual and national wealth due to Wall Street's greed and recklessness, more specifically with its recent love affair with mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps and other exotic derivatives. As one deeply affected and financially devastated by this unbridled avarice and opportunism that Wall Street, hugely unregulated, visited upon the world, I wish to be instrumental in sharing information that might help effect change.

Second, I've made hurried visits during my limited lunch hour to local courts, where I witness many judges, who seem to exhibit no pangs of conscience when they rubber-stamp the foreclosing of hard-working peoples’ homes, and often resort to an impersonal and unjust "rocket docket" approach to clearing the thousands of foreclosure cases they, short-staffed, are burdened with managing. From this experience, it appears the scales of justice are tipped inequitably to mostly benefit corporate interests (many that even are recipients of TARP taxpayer money). This bias is magnified by severe cutbacks to court budgets, assuring defendants little if any ‘due process.’ I find most abhorrent the pervasive judicial blindness paid to The Fourteenth Amendment, part of The Constitution judges everywhere are sworn to uphold, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  

Third, for my own foreclosure case, I've searched in vain for affordable, competent, and effective legal representation. Most foreclosure defense attorneys are swamped, and those who’ve updated their 20^th Century knowledge base to deal with the 21^st Century products we know as securitized mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and the like, are few and far between, and often come at a premium. The attorney I most seek would serve as a mentor or guide through the process, reviewing/editing advising me on my strategies and my tactics, court filings; etc, sharing his valued professional judgment while allowing me the opportunity to provide much of the work for my case. For such a qualified attorney, I would not require his ‘appearance’ on my behalf, but would gladly pay for an hour of those services per court filing (within the limits of my reduced circumstances). In the alternative I am open to a barter arrangement working in such an attorney’s office. Such an arrangement could be mutually beneficial, providing the attorney an additional source of revenue and me valued legal coaching.

Please indulge me further as I flesh out for you an illustrative example of a case which epitomizes what befalls millions of like situated embattled homeowners across this vast nation. This case involves the foreclosure of my home which I bought in 2007. Currently (and apparently subject to frequent change), I am up against US Bank National Association, a formidable well-funded plaintiff. During the pendency of this foreclosure, one plaintiff has been substituted for another in a subtle, footnoted, astericked method that must follow some civil procedure rule of which I remain unaware. The current plaintiff is served by a raft of new hires at Florida Default Law Group, a foreclosure mill notorious for its many sanctions for fraud upon the court and for egregiously acting in bad faith in general (e.g. generating fraudulent affidavits, not serving copies of pleadings on defendants despite affirming under pains and penalties of perjury that proper service was made, etc.). FDLG has been sanctioned by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John K. Olson in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, for filing false affidavits in federal bankruptcy court. (Florida Default Law Group Sanctioned by Federal Judge John Olson for filing fake affidavits (http://tinyurl.com/FDLGSanction)  Clearly, those sanctions were not a sufficient deterrent.

US Bank was not my lender, but through slight of hand or some legal shell game maneuver involving questionable successive assignments and endorsements, is now a plaintiff claiming the right to foreclose upon me.

Though I have zero legal training, and am flying by the proverbial seat of my pants in the serious, lofty atmosphere of the state judicial system, I am taking on my legal adversary, and standing up against the illegal and improper practices employed by this improper plaintiff and its counsel.

In the intervening months since my own foreclosure case was initiated, I have during my lunch hours and days off spent countless hours researching, reading, thinking, and reviewing files of hundreds of foreclosure actions at my local courthouse.

Each day, I am further astounded and sickened that financial institutions are tacitly given the legal authority to foreclose on millions of Americans' homes unchallenged, without so much as a single document or piece of credible evidence attesting to their right to do so.

From recent media releases, it appears that some judges are finally beginning to act as custodians of the vaunted judicial process that promises to serve all the nation with justice for all. These conscientious judges neither acquiesce to unproven claims of proper standing to bring the foreclosure action, nor blindly accept incompetent affidavits, nor do they accept the clownish legal tactics used by the foreclosure mill attorneys to bamboozle their way into court and foreclose on families whose homes should be protected by the judicial system.

Among these jurists known for their daring leadership and conscionable rulings are New York State Judges Joseph Maltese and Arthur M. Schack,  Ohio State Judge Kathleen McDonald O’Malley, Florida State Judge Donna Pader Berlin, Federal District Judges David D. Dowd Jr. and Christopher Boyko in Ohio, US Bankruptcy Judges Samuel L. Bufford in Los Angeles and John K. Olson in Ft. Lauderdale.

In my own case, we have an excellent example of the fraud and deception practiced by the foreclosing entities. The Complaint was filed with a ubiquitous “Re-Establishment of Lost Note” as Count II.  Since then, several incompetent affidavits, doctored and/or faulty documents, and outright false statements have been filed or produced by the Plaintiff in my case.  Many of the affidavits have affiants attesting to knowledge of facts as of a date several months AFTER the notarized date of the affidavit itself. One may be tempted to infer such affiants are possessed perhaps of psychic abilities and this is why they’re of special value as witnesses in the service of my Plaintiff.

Permit me to drill down a bit with specific details to further illustrate what we are up against out here. My Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Standing (which I filed in response to the original complaint) was responded to by Plaintiff on 6/3/09.  In that response, Plaintiff produced a defective and invalid, unrecorded Mortgage Assignment, dated three months after the case was filed, and assigned to Plaintiff in this case - US BANK NA as trustee for JP MORGAN MORTGAGE TRUST.  Plaintiff also produced an alleged indorsed (in blank) copy of the Mortgage Note.  This copy is indorsed to JP MORGAN CHASE BANK NA, a different entity than is the assignor on the mortgage assignment. 

U.S. Bank NA seems to have proven all on their own that they hold the Mortgage Assignment but that the Promissory Note is held by a different party who is not named as a party to my foreclosure suit, nor identified in any way in any of Plaintiff’s filings.  Then, in one of Plaintiff’s Affidavit’s, each time U.S. Bank NA is written, there are two handwritten asterisks, with a tiny footnote, “**Chase Home Finance LLC As-Attorney-in-Fact-For”.  Is this now yet another entity introduced in a strange and improper manner?

U.S. Bank NA, J.P. Morgan Mortgage Trust, Chase Home Finance, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank NA, MERS, DHI Mortgage, all these are entities involved in this case; one could benefit from an organizational chart!

Plaintiff submitted a copy of the alleged indorsed Mortgage Note. This copy is altered in subtle ways from the original Mortgage Note. This was attached by Plaintiff to their original complaint and is also on file with my original lender, (e.g. the loan number is missing on page 1 & 3, the stamp missing on page 1, etc.) 

After the near miraculous locating and submission of the alleged indorsed Mortgage Note to the court (it having been creatively improved from the pesky, unendorsed original Note), Plaintiff dropped Count II since the "Note" has been found.  As a trusting citizen without legal education (save for what I have undertaken on my very own) I naively had assumed fabricating evidence wasn’t a widely accepted practice, as surely it was punishable by appropriate jail time. 

Oddly, my Mortgage Servicer’s address is Chase Home Finance, LLC  3415 Vision Drive, Department G-7, Columbus, OH 43219-6009 which is also the address listed for my Plaintiff , U.S. Bank, N.A.,on their own submitted Mortgage Assignment.  How two financial behemoths can occupy the same office space remains a mystery to me.

Another confounding item is MERS’ address which is, per a letter mailed to me by Plaintiff’s counsel, MERS 12357 Riata Trace Pkwy, Suite C150, Austin, TX 78727, yet MERS’ officers personally appeared and signed notarized assignment of Mortgage in the County of Franklin in the far off state of Ohio.  I am unsure of the wisdom of U.S. Bank’s willingness to be assigned a non-performing loan on May 21, 2009  by MERS, as nominee for DHI Mortgage.  U.S. Bank must have planned this out well in advance in light of their prescient action in initiating the foreclosure suit in Feb. 2009 a full three months before U.S. Bank was assigned the Mortgage.

In addition, the person Whitney K. Cook, was the affiant representing JP MORGAN CHASE (the servicer) on one document filed by Plaintiff, yet on another document, this self-same woman signed as an officer of MERS.  I filed a Motion to Strike one of Whitney K. Cook’s affidavits, which inspired Plaintiff to file the exact same affidavit signed by a new affiant. Whitney Cook of Akron, Ohio, is on FaceBook, as a 23 year old young woman who apparently easily finds high level jobs in the mortgage industry, despite a lengthy recession hitting especially hard her chosen field.   After I filed a Motion to Strike Ms. Cook’s Affidavit of Amounts Due and Owing, Plaintiff in my case simply filed the exact same Affidavit with a brand new Affiant, Beth Cottrell.

I have many other examples if needed; and all this in one foreclosure case, in one county, in one state.  May I assure you that my case is neither special nor unique, as I review hundreds of similar, local cases weekly?

Please forgive my sarcasm born both of disbelief and incredulity. I hope through my lengthy synopsis, I have armed you with an example of what is happening nationwide. What most galls me is that these ‘pretender lenders’ are working the odds to unjustly enrich themselves, betting through their rapacious law mills that the low lying fruit – those who easily cave and do not contest foreclosure no matter how illegal or unjust – will far outnumber those who put up a credible fight.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. Please let me know how I might serve to broadcast to others news of the realities of this growing injustice I experience manning the foreclosure ramparts.

Sincerely,

Lisa E, Pro Se

Florida Default Law Group Reprimands for filing FALSE AFFIDAVITS