The following is the list of mortgage servicers (lenders) that have been initially targeted by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot’s office for possible foreclosure fraud.

If your loan is in a foreclosure status or you have been wrongfully foreclosed within the last four years please seek assistance immediately.

- The Bank Slayer

This may be one of the most important posts I have ever published.

We have reached a point in the housing crisis where we must decide:  Continue to cower before and believe whatever the bank’s attorneys claim OR ask for proof of their claims?

Quite simply, why won’t you let the dog sniff your locker?

Right now we’re assisting a homeowner who has three different “banks” all pursing him for the SAME loan!!

Time and time again the foreclosure mills and/or the banks they represent them seem to have no problem fabricating the documents necessary to “claim” ownership of the mortgage.

Take a trip with us down to the courthouse and see the shenanigans these people play.

Below is an article highlighting how JP Morgan Chase is no different than any of the other large banks and is willing to do whatever they see as fit to establish their claims and legitimize their seizure of a person home many time AFTER the loan has been paid off.

GMAC is making headline news for their role in supporting an industry that makes its living pumping out fabricated documents at the rate of 10,000+ a month or 1 per minute.

I incorporated Neil Garfield’s comments from his site as well as they are important in understanding what is happening.

Just think…we’re supposed to trust these people with our money?!?

- The Bank Slayer

“As basis for the legal case, WaMu had submitted an assignment of mortgage, which however the court just found never actually belonged to WaMu, and instead was carried on the books of Fannie Mae.”

NEIL GARFIELD’S NOTE: It’s an old story to us but it’s news to everyone else. Yes it IS fraud, and all you have to do is look, inquire and aggressively press the opposition.

Just like Wells Fargo in Massachusetts, GMAC now in 23 states so far, the story is always the same — the lawyer doesn’t know who he/she represents and doesn’t care, the documents submitted are fabricated and forged and the representation that the would-be forecloser is a creditor is a plan and simple lie — only revealed AFTER they are pressed to support their claim of standing, real party in interest, holder of the note etc.

ALL the foreclosures and notices of sale, motions to lift stay, motions for summary judgment start the same way. Some party picked at random from the securitization chain comes in and starts a foreclosure sale (non-judicial) or a foreclosure lawsuit after documents are fabricated showing a chain of title that never happened and doesn’t exist.

MOST of the time borrowers and the Courts are intimidated by the presence of a “Bank” (which is neither acting as a bank nor was it the lender, creditor, or payee at any point in the process of the closing of the transaction between the homeowner as borrower and the investor as lender).

SOME of the time, borrowers are successful in their challenges to the foreclosure. The reason is not that the rest of the foreclosures are proper, right, legal or equitable. The reason is that in those cases where the borrower is successful they managed to get the Judge to pause long enough to actually look at the documents being presented and to allow the borrower to inquire as to their authenticity and authority. If there is such an inquiry the borrower wins. If there is no such inquiry, the borrower loses.

ALL of the proceedings in which foreclosures were initiated in both non-judicial and judicial states are fatally defective and has resulted in a pile of debris called “title” when in fact no title has been transferred, no credit bid was ever submitted and no deed was issued with authority from a party who possessed the right to convey title.

Each day an angry judge realizes he/she has been duped for years by these antics of people he knew and trusted. Criminal acts, contemptuous of the law and the Courts have been committed in millions of foreclosures.

None of the agencies that are charged with responsibility to regulate the activities of these banks, institutions or companies has lifted a finger to impose existing rules and regulations that were designed to prevent this behavior and punish it when it occurs. None of the Courts want to apply clear Federal law on the subject in the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act. Because when it comes right down to it, the facts unfolding in the lead news stories and in the court orders being entered are downright unthinkable.

We have now come to that fork in the road where we must stop anyone who asks”why would they lie?” and simply admit that it has ALL been a BIG LIE and we have been living this lie for 10 years, hence the name of this blog.

So there is no mistake about it I am stating the opinion that NONE of the foreclosure sales on residential property in which the loan was originated as part of a securitization scheme are valid. They are void. If you think you lost your home you’re wrong no matter what anyone tells you. Any lawyer who studies this instead of responding from a knee-jerk “I remember that issue from law school” will come to the same conclusion — the title chain is not just clouded, it is fatally defective. That means the foreclosures were void according to existing law. It is the same effect as if I signed a warranty deed conveying title to YOUR home now. Such a document might LOOK good, but it is fraudulent, because I don’t have the title to convey much less warrant that it is good title.

But if Judge won’t let you speak or won’t even consider the possibility that I would flat out lie and file a totally fraudulent deed, I’ll win and you’ll lose. That’s what is happening.

JPMorgan Brings Foreclosure Case In Mortgage In Which It Was Just A Servicer, Court Finds Bank Committed Fraud

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2010 16:37 -0500

• Fannie Mae
• Florida
• WaMu

An interesting development out of Jean Johnson, Circuit Judge in Duval Country, Florida, where in a case filed by JPMorgan/WaMu, as Plaintiff, and law firm of Shapiro and Fishman, attempted to evict defendants Hank and Marilyn Pocopanni. As basis for the legal case, WaMu had submitted an assignment of mortgage, which however the court just found never actually belonged to WaMu, and instead was carried on the books of Fannie Mae.

Once this was uncovered is where this case gets really interesting: In point 5 of the filing we read that the “plaintiff predecessor counsel made “clerical errors” when it represented to the Court that the plaintiff was the owner and holder of the note and mortgage rather than the servicer for the owner.”  Which means that only Fannie had the right to foreclose upon the Pocopannis, yet JPM, as servicer, decided to take that liberty itself.

And here the Judge got really angry: “The court finds WAMU, with the assistance of its previous counsel, Shapiro and Fishman, submitted the assignment when [they] knew that only Fannie Mae was entitled to foreclose on the Mortgage, and that WAMU never owned or held the note and Mortgage.” And, oops, “the Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that WAMU, Chase and Shapiro & Fishman committed fraud on this Court” and that these “acts committed by WAMU, Chase and Shapiro amount to a “knowing deception intended to prevent the defendants from discovery essential to defending the claim” and are therefore fraud.

While the Judge in this case did not also find declaratory damages against the plaintiff, and while the case of the defendants is unclear (we would expect Fannie to file a foreclosure act on its own soon enough), the question of just how pervasive this form of “fraud” in the judicial system is certainly relevant. Because if JPM takes the liberty of foreclosing on mortgages as merely servicer, when it has no legal ground for such an action, who knows how many such cases the legal system is currently clogged up with. The implications for the REO and foreclosures track for banks could be dire as a result of this ruling, as this could severely impact the ongoing attempt by banks to hide as much excess inventory in their books in the quietest way possible.

Our advice to any party caught in a foreclosure process is to immediately go to www.fnma.com and use the Lookup Tool to see if Fannie is still mortgage owner of record, if a foreclosure suit has been brought up by a plaintiff other than the GSE. (Neil  Garfield’s Note: He’s not exactly right here. All you will know is that FNMA claims on its site that it is the owner. The “owner of record” is the party who shows up in the title search of the only place that counts — the county recording office — which is why we tell everyone to get that from us or another party. 99 times out of 100 the “owner of record” is the originating lender who is often out of business — and THAT is why I insist on repeating that these loans are not and never were secured and that no security instrument has ever or could be filed for perfecting a lien on the home.)

It’s simple, follow the money.   Everyone understands the purpose of a compensation plan.  Develop a plan that uses money to motivate a certain behavior.

For the past several years we’ve been saying that the banks/servicers WANT to foreclose properties.   It is the fastest way for them to generate fee income as well as convert a home to cash.

4closure fraud.com and Mandelman matters posted a great article about an interview with a past JPMorgan Chase employee.    He echos some of the same things that one of our employees who used to work for IndyMac/OneWest states…

While GSE’s like Fannie & Freddie tout efforts to slow foreclosures… and “Fannie Mae guidelines allow for modifications to be considered...Seemed like more than 95% of the time, the instruction came back ‘proceed with foreclosure…”

While homeowner after homeowner is ready to sell their soul to save their house the reality as this employee states is  “They’re [sp] whole focus is to foreclose, not to modify.  They put the borrower through every hoop and obstacle they can, so that when something fails to get done on time, or whatever, they can deny it and proceed with the foreclosure.  Like, ‘Hey we tried, but the borrower didn’t get this one document in on time.”

Face the reality that you need to take matters into your own hands and fight hard if you are going to win versus a large and powerful bank.

- The Bank Slayer

JP MORGAN INSIDER – “CHASE is in the Foreclosure Business, NOT the Modification Business.”

“JPMorgan CHASE is in the foreclosure business, not the modification business’.”  That, according to Jerad Bausch, who until quite recently was an employee of CHASE’s mortgage servicing division working in the foreclosure department in Rancho Bernardo, California.

I was recently introduced to Jerad and he agreed to an interview.  (Christmas came early this year.)  His answers to my questions provided me with a window into how servicers think and operate.  And some of the things he said confirmed my fears about mortgage servicers… their interests and ours are anything but aligned.

Today, Jerad Bausch is 25 years old, but with a wife and two young children, he communicates like someone ten years older.  He had been selling cars for about three and a half years and was just 22 years old when he applied for a job at JPMorgan CHASE.  He ended up working in the mega-bank’s mortgage servicing area… the foreclosure department, to be precise.  He had absolutely no prior experience with mortgages or in real estate, but then… why would that be important?

“The car business is great in terms of bring home a good size paycheck, but to make the money you have to work all the time, 60-70 hours a week.  When our second child arrived, that schedule just wasn’t going to work.  I thought CHASE would be kind of a cushy office job that would offer some stability,” Jerad explained.

That didn’t exactly turn out to be the case.  Eighteen months after CHASE hired Jared, with numerous investors having filed for bankruptcy protection as a result of the housing meltdown, he was laid off.  The “investors” in this case are the entities that own the loans that Chase services.  When an investor files bankruptcy the loan files go to CHASE’S bankruptcy department, presumably to be liquidated by the trustee in order to satisfy the claims of creditors.

The interview process included a “panel” of CHASE executives asking Jared a variety of questions primarily in two areas.  They asked if he was the type of person that could handle working with people that were emotional and in foreclosure, and if his computer skills were up to snuff.  They asked him nothing about real estate or mortgages, or car sales for that matter.

The training program at CHASE turned out to be almost exclusively about the critical importance of documenting the files that he would be pushing through the foreclosure process and ultimately to the REO department, where they would be put back on the market and hopefully sold.  Documenting the files with everything that transpired was the single most important aspect of Jared’s job at CHASE, in fact, it was what his bonus was based on, along with the pace at which the foreclosures he processed were completed.

“A perfect foreclosure was supposed to take 120 days,” Jared explains, “and the closer you came to that benchmark, the better your numbers looked and higher your bonus would be.”

CHASE started Jared at an annual salary of $30,000, but he very quickly became a “Tier One” employee, so he earned a monthly bonus of $1,000 because he documented everything accurately and because he always processed foreclosures at as close to a “perfect” pace as possible.

“Bonuses were based on accurate and complete documentation, and on how quickly you were able to foreclosure on someone,” Jerad says.  “They rate you as Tier One, Two or Three… and if you’re Tier One, which is the top tier, then you’d get a thousand dollars a month bonus.  So, from $30,000 you went to $42,000.  Of course, if your documentation was off, or you took too long to foreclose, you wouldn’t get the bonus.”

Day-to-day, Jerad’s job was primarily to contact paralegals at the law firms used by CHASE to file foreclosures, publish sale dates, and myriad other tasks required to effectuate a foreclosure in a given state.

“It was our responsibility to stay on top of and when necessary push the lawyers to make sure things done in a timely fashion, so that foreclosures would move along in compliance with Fannie’s guidelines,” Jerad explained.  “And we documented what went on with each file so that if the investor came in to audit the files, everything would be accurate in terms of what had transpired and in what time frame.  It was all about being able to show that foreclosures were being processed as efficiently as possible.”

When a homeowner applies for a loan modification, Jerad would receive an email from the modification team telling him to put a file on hold awaiting decision on modification.  This wouldn’t count against his bonus, because Fannie Mae guidelines allow for modifications to be considered, but investors would see what was done as related to the modification, so everything had to be thoroughly documented.

“Seemed like more than 95% of the time, the instruction came back ‘proceed with foreclosure,’ according to Jerad.  “Files would be on hold pending modification, but still accruing fees and interest.  Any time a servicer does anything to a file, they’re charging people for it,” Jerad says.

I was fascinated to learn that investors do actually visit servicers and audit files to make sure things are being handled properly and homes are being foreclosed on efficiently, or modified, should that be in their best interest.  As Jerad explained, “Investors know that Polling & Servicing Agreements (“PSAs”) don’t protect them, they protect servicers, so they want to come in and audit files themselves.”

“Foreclosures are a no lose proposition for a servicer,” Jerad told me during the interview.  “The servicer gets paid more to service a delinquent loan, but they also get to tack on a whole bunch of extra fees and charges.  If the borrower reinstates the loan, which is rare, then the borrower pays those extra fees.  If the borrower loses the house, then the investor pays them.  Either way, the servicer gets their money.”

Jerad went on to say: “Our attitude at CHASE was to process everything as quickly as possible, so we can foreclose and take the house to sale.  That’s how we made our money.”

“Servicers want to show investors that they did their due diligence on a loan modification, but that in the end they just couldn’t find a way to modify.  They’re whole focus is to foreclose, not to modify.  They put the borrower through every hoop and obstacle they can, so that when something fails to get done on time, or whatever, they can deny it and proceed with the foreclosure.  Like, ‘Hey we tried, but the borrower didn’t get this one document in on time.’  That sure is what it seemed like to me, anyway.”

According to Jerad, JPMorgan CHASE in Rancho Bernardo, services foreclosures in all 50 states.  During the 18 months that he worked there, his foreclosure department of 15 people would receive 30-40 borrower files a day just from California, so each person would get two to three foreclosure a day to process just from California alone.  He also said that in Rancho Bernardo, there were no more than 5-7 people in the loan modification department, but in loss mitigation there were 30 people who processed forbearances, short sales, and other alternatives to foreclosure.  The REO department was made up of fewer than five people.

Jerad often took a smoke break with some of the guys handing loan modifications.  “They were always complaining that their supervisors weren’t approving modifications,” Jerad said.  “There was always something else they wanted that prevented the modification from being approved.  They got their bonus based on modifying loans, along with accurate documentation just like us, but it seemed like the supervisors got penalized for modifying loans, because they were all about finding a way to turn them down.”

“There’s no question about it,” Jerad said in closing, “CHASE is in the foreclosure business, not the modification business.”

The article in the Seattle Times about the collapse of WAMU is hilarious.  Thanks to my friend Loren Steffy at the Chronicle for highlighting the madness.  A famous lawyer in New York used to say No Witness, No Case.  WAMU’s behavior flips this one…No ability to pay, No problem.   We catch these guys pulling fast ones ALL THE TIME.

Here is an excerpt for your reading pleasure.

Someone in Florida had made a second-mortgage loan to O.J. Simpson, and I just about blew my top, because there was this huge judgment against him from his wife’s parents,” [Fay Chapman, WaMu's chief legal officer from 1997 to 2007] recalled. Simpson had been acquitted of killing his wife Nicole and her friend but was later found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit; that judgment took precedence over other debts, such as if Simpson defaulted on his WaMu loan.

“When I asked how we could possibly foreclose on it, they said there was a letter in the file from O.J. Simpson saying ‘the judgment is no good, because I didn’t do it.’ “

Classic.  I love it!  The old “wasn’t me” is alive and well.

- The Bank Slayer