The Florida Foreclosure Fraud Weblog
Where Florida homeowners fight back against foreclosure fraud
Foreclosure lawyers may have a duty to set aside foreclosures that were based on robo-signed affidavits, under an ethics opinion recently approved by the Florida Bar. The opinion (below), produced by bar staff in January of this year, responds to a hypothetical question from an unknown lawyer. The Surrogate Signer Hypothetical Under the hypothetical fact-pattern […]
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The Law Office of David J. Stern is shutting its doors for good, according to a new filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That filing, on behalf of DJSP ENTERPRISES, INC. (the public legal-support company that Stern spun off from his law firm) says that: DJSP Enterprises, Inc.’s (the “Company’sâ€) primary customer, the […]
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Ben-Ezra and Katz is having a very bad day indeed. Not only has Fannie Mae just pulled the plug on the firm’s authorization to handle its cases, the firm’s founder had to appear before a Miami-Dade judge this morning to explain why his firm filed several fraudulent documents in a foreclosure case there. The judge […]
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“Many Mortgage Foreclosures Appear Tainted With Suspect Documents” says Fourth DCA Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal is very concerned about foreclosure fraud. In a recent case, Pino v. Bank of New York Mellon [.pdf], the Court considered the case of whether a bank can avoid court sanctions for fraud by simply dismissing its case […]
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When I was a kid, I used to read science fiction novels with aliens who swooped down to Earth, attached themselves to poor innocent human beings, and control their minds to do the aliens’ bidding. When I read this order, the second of its kind from this judge, I have to wonder if that’s what’s […]
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Here’s a great way to end a Friday: I just got an order in one of my cases throwing the case out of court, because the bank’s lawyers disobeyed a fairly simple rule that requires them to swear that the allegations in the complaint are true. The Final Order of Dismissal blasts the bank’s lawyers […]
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Rules are meant to be followed in Pasco County Unlike in Lee County, the judges in Pasco County expect banks to follow the rules in foreclosure cases. The verification rule and its critics Earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs in foreclosure cases had to verify the foreclosure complaint—in other words, they […]
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This ruling is a disgrace: Lee County Judge Hugh Starnes has ruled that banks in foreclosure cases don’t have to follow court rules. At a recent foreclosure hearing, the defense attorney (Conrad Willkomm) argued that the bank had violated an important evidentiary rule: the bank was relying on its business records, but no one swore […]
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Dear Florida judges: You’re under a lot of pressure. We understand. Foreclosure cases are at an all-time high, and still rising – and you have to figure out a way to handle them all. The foreclosure docket threatens to crowd out almost every other civil matter pending before the court – and now that foreclosure […]
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Lawyers for Homeowner Rights, a group of Florida foreclosure lawyers dedicated to protecting the legal rights of Florida homeowners, are set to march on Tallahassee to protest a dangerous new foreclosure law proposed by the banks. What if you were accused of a crime, convicted, and sentenced without a trial? Imagine you were accused of […]
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The Wall Street Journal published an article on the two Sixth Circuit cases I wrote about last week, both the Harpster and the Visicaro cases. The article quotes a lawyer in David J. Stern’s office, Forrest McSurdy, who makes the outrageous statement that: Judges get in a whirl about technicalities because the courts are overwhelmed. […]
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Foreclosure should almost never be granted by summary judgment. That’s what I believe, and that’s what most of the lawyers who defend foreclosures in Florida believe. Now, it looks like there’s at least one judge who is starting to think that way too. Before I share with you why this judge may never again grant […]
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New foreclosure lawsuit rules require plaintiffs’ mills to tell the truth -and boy, are they mad! On February 11, the Florida Supreme Court amended the rules of foreclosure proceedings in a radical way: they want someone to swear that the allegations in the complaint are actually true. (Buncha bomb-throwers, aren’t they?) The amended rule says: […]
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The MERS Conveyance The heart of your mortgage – the most important clause in the entire document – is the “Transfer of Rights in the Property” clause. This is the language that creates the lender’s security interest backing the loan – it’s the sentence that allows them to foreclose if the borrower doesn’t pay. But […]
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When you sell a piece of property you generally presume that you are no longer responsible for what might happen to the property after it’s transferred to the new owners, but that’s not what happened to a recent caller to the firm looking for help. This individual called to ask how she could be responsible […]
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Your mortgage is a thick, dense, practically unreadable document that dictates many of the terms of the relationship between the borrower and the lender on a typical home loan. The document itself is written by the bank’s lawyers, and most of them tend to use specific language that has been tried-and-true in other deals. In […]
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How to beat foreclosure Today’s St. Petersburg Times features a front-page story with the bold-face heading “How to Beat Foreclosure” and tells the stories of people who have stayed in their homes for years by gaming the system. Only one problem: filing bankruptcy time and time again is an abuse of the system, and can […]
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Locked out Imagine this: you’re on a two-week vacation. You come back, and find a notice on your door: Entry by unauthorized persons prohibited. Alarmed, you try your key in the lock – it doesn’t fit. You peek through the windows and see that everything you left behind is gone – your furniture, your clothes, […]
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