Friday, April 6, 2012

Avoiding Foreclosure Scams - the CORRECT way to do it may SHOCK you.

If you’re like many homeowners facing foreclosure, you haven’t a clue as to what to do to stop the foreclosure process. And, when you turn to the internet to find help, you’re immediately flooded with a host of companies — all promising that they can help you stop foreclosure. And you also may see many seemingly innocent websites that claim to give advice on how to avoid scams.

Easy does it . . . there are a lot of foreclosure scams out there. AND, there are also a lot of legitimate companies as well who can help you stop foreclosure. Following are six things that can help you tell the honest companies from the con-artists, and avoid foreclosure scams. The information you are about to read runs COMPLETELY counter to everything the banks and their government cronies are telling you about how to save your home - but it's VITAL to saving your home. If you simply follow the conventional "how to avoid scams" advice from the corporate media, your lender/servicer, and the thousands of bank-funded "nonprofits" and "loan modification shops" with ulterior motives, then you're making a FATAL mistake and you could quickly find yourself in a world of hurt.

stop-foreclosure-scams


Anti-Scam Tip #1: DON'T Work with Nonprofits

Ask anyone these days how you can avoid getting scammed by phony "foreclosure relief" companies, and you'll probably hear them say "work with non-profits, HUD counselors, and so on". This is actually some of the WORST advice you could ever get. Now that doesn't mean that every company that charges a fee is good - many of those can be scams as well. But if you work with a non-profit group, you will quickly discover that they have NO INTEREST in doing anything that gets results for you. And this is for three reasons:

1. Non-profit agencies are staffed by volunteers and minimum wage workers - NOT foreclosure prevention professionals. They don't know any more than you do about fighting foreclosure and saving your home, and most barely have a high school education. All they are trained to do is fax in paperwork that the bank will throw away anyway. Do you really want to literally bet the house on them?

2. HUD and FHA-approved housing counselors are only allowed to pitch you "options" that benefit the banks (for example, loan modifications, short sales, deed-in-lieu, cash for keys). These programs have no requirements for the bank to do ANYTHING to help you - and in order to "qualify" they force you to fall behind several months, waste precious time resubmitting paperwork, only for them to sell your house at auction behind your back! HUD-approved nonprofits have the worst failure rate of any foreclosure prevention companies - so far they have not prevented a single foreclosure! No wonder, since HUD and FHA are run by bank lobbyists, for the benefit of the banks. They were the ones that pumped trillions in cheap credit into mortgage banks and created the housing bubble in the first place. And even the nonprofits they approve are not clean - they are only kept afloat by massive donations from the banks themselves - talk about a conflict of interest!

3. Nonprofit mortgage counselors have NO ATTORNEYS and offer you NO LEGAL REPRESENTATION. In other words, they can't stop the bank from doing anything, and they never investigate the mortgage's chain of title to see if your bank even owns your loan! So you could be wasting time on loan modifications that never go through, with a bank that has no intention of helping you (and every intention of stealing your house to collect on mortgage insurance) because they have sold the note to investors and therefore won't modify it. Nonprofits are IGNORANT of most of the federal laws that banks have been violating with their shady mortgage practices, and they have no legal power to protect your home from fraud and wrongful foreclosure! (How many of them know that Bank of America practically bankrupted the insurance giant AIG by fraudulently milking them for billions worth of insurance payouts for properties that they ILLEGALLY foreclosed on and gave the borrower no chance whatsoever to repay!)


You need seasoned professional lawyers to negotiate with the bank, NOT minimum-wage pencil-pushers. Otherwise you have no investigations and no EVIDENCE against the bank to negotiate with. How do nonprofit employees expect to get anything done for you when they have no evidence of fraud and no legal standing to make the banks do anything? The government programs they pitch are BROKEN and don't require the banks to do anything, they can deny you on a whim without even giving a reason why. HUD is not some kind of magic bullet, and being HUD-approved doesn't mean a company is trustworthy. Quite the opposite- remember, HUD and FHA are huge bureaucracies run by bank lobbyists, for the benefit of the banks. They, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were the ones that pumped trillions in cheap sub-prime credit into mortgage banks and created the mortgage bubble that wrecked the housing market in the first place. HUD is not on your side!



Anti-Scam Tip #2: Avoid Loan Modification Services like the plague - EVEN if they are free

There is a huge amount of ignorance and bad advice being spread on the internet about loan modifications. The banks and their HUD-approved counseling partners are basically claiming that the only option (short of bankruptcy or selling your house) is applying for a loan modification through either a government program like HAMP or an in-house bank loan mod program - both of which are equally ineffective and toothless. Essentially, they want you to beg for your home rather than know your rights to DEMAND it. 

In reality, a loan modification is one of the WORST options you could choose. It damages your credit often beyond repair, since arrears are not wiped out but simply stuck on the back of the loan, and what's more, you are forced to fall behind 60 days on your mortgage to even qualify, and then for the next 30 days the bank hems and haws, making no decision on your case, and then suddenly you find yourself 90 days behind on your payments - which officially puts you in DEFAULT and then the bank starts foreclosing on you. Loan mods force you to fall behind and default on your loan, and therefore make you into the "delinquent borrower" that the banks love to demonize. Once you are in default, the bank has you by the throat. They can simply claim that you "missed your chance" and failed to submit the loan mod paperwork (often they simply shred it and pretend they never got it), and then foreclose and sell the house within weeks, often without warning. Even if you did everything right, it's your word against theirs once you are in default, if all you were relying on was a loan modification. And without any evidence backing you up, who is the judge going to believe? The little guy who's 90 days behind, or the big powerful bank with billions of dollars and top-tier attorneys at its disposal, which claims it gave the little guy so many chances to turn things around with their pie-in-the-sky offers of loan modifications? As far as the judge is concerned, you're probably just another lazy sub-prime bum who wants to live in a house for free - because when you have no actual evidence proving wrongdoing by the bank, the judge will believe the bank.

In the end loan mods not only fail to provide any legal defense for your rights as a homeowner - they ACTUALLY strip you of any rights to your home and turn you into a renter, after which point the bank usually uses renter's laws to evict you from the property - and then you are an open target for them to seize your assets to cover the unpaid deficiency on the loan once they sell the house at rock-bottom prices. You may be wondering, how can this happen? It is theft, pure and simple. And loan modifications, far from being a remedy to foreclosure, actually exacerbate the process and make it far more devastating to the homeowner. Meanwhile those apathetic minimum-wage workers at the HUD-approved nonprofit are being subsidized by the banks, and don't make enough to care where their next paycheck is coming from, let alone care what happens to your property after they submit your loan mod application. So as you can see, loan modification services are a TRAP and a SCAM, even when you don't have to pay for them out of pocket. You WILL ultimately end up paying dearly for such incompetent "free" services - with your home, your credit, and possibly your entire life savings.




Anti-Scam Tip #3: Expect to pay SOME upfront cost if you expect ANYTHING to be done


Many bank and government-funded "scam alert" sites out there will tell you to beware of any company that asks for an up-front fee to do loan modifications. By now it's a well-known fact that this is a HUGE red flag. But that doesn't mean that you should expect real help for free. Nonprofit counselors and other free services have no legal representation and therefore no power to make the banks do anything to help you. Paying for legal muscle to stop your foreclosure is going to be necessary in most cases. The thing you have to pay attention to is WHAT you are paying for.

Yes, it IS illegal to charge upfront for one type of service - that's loan modifications. But what the banks and even most government sites will NEVER tell you is that loan modifications are non-binding and useless even if you get them done for free - the bank can always choose to reject your application at will even if you qualify. They never tell you that there are PLENTY of other avenues for stopping foreclosure that work far better than a loan modification - these alternatives to a loan modification are far more effective and perfectly legal, but unlike loan mods, they can only be performed by experienced professionals, and therefore are NOT free. For example, a tier-III securitization audit of your loan can mean the difference between keeping and losing your home, but it HAS to be done by experienced Bloomberg-certified securities auditors and handled by an actual LAW FIRM with attorneys specializing in not just real estate law, but also banking law and securities law, and up to date with the latest regulations in all three areas. As you might guess, such firms are not very common (your local property or bankruptcy attorney literally has NO CLUE how to handle today's post-housing bubble foreclosure cases). Ever since 2001, the vast majority of mortgages have NOT been traditional hard-money loans. They have been securitized, converted into bonds and sold on wall street to private investors - in the process a huge amount of fraud was committed - destroyed notes, broken chain of assignments, sales of the mortgage debt instrument between investors not documented at all, forged documents, robo-signers, negligent misrepresentation, multiple MERS violations, the list goes on and on....

Any of these problems could be affecting your loan, and in most cases they render any foreclosure ILLEGAL because the paperwork is so predatory and flawed that the bank literally can not even prove that they own your loan. They have already sold it to private investors and gotten their money back - so it is likely they have no claim on you home. However the only way to save your home is to prove any of this. And to prove it you NEED a top-tier law firm handling your case. Attorneys do charge fees, as do auditors. It's not a scam, it's a fact of life. Nobody will work on your case for free, unless they are already being funded by the banks. And you don't want those kinds of two-faced turncoats "helping" you out.

That said, there ARE plenty of scammers out there who also charge upfront fees. When you do pay someone, know exactly what you’re getting for your money. Don't pay attorneys to file a lawsuit unless you have already paid for a securitization audit and it returned conclusive proof of fraud. Without a successful audit, the evidence is unknown and you don't have a case, and filing a lawsuit without evidence is a total waste of time and money regardless of how skilled your attorney is.

Also, make sure that it's a tier-III Securitization Audit and not a forensic audit. Forensic audits have not been proven to get any results in stopping foreclosure. They have been extremely over-hyped in the press, but they rarely find proof of fraud because they only go as far as the original closing documents - they never look into the loan's ownership history during the time AFTER it was bundled up and securitized on Wall Street, and that is the period during which the vast majority of mortgage lending and servicing fraud actually took place.

Finally, never pay to join a class-action or a mass-joiner suit. There is nothing worse than PAYING to line up behind thousands of other foreclosure victims waiting years for a pathetic $20 check in the mail while your house is lost and your credit is destroyed, only to have some flashy class action attorney pocket millions that should have gone to you and the other victims. To prevent foreclosure without bankrupting you, you need an individual audit and litigation process tailored to YOUR specific case and circumstances, with attorneys focusing specifically on your case to force a quick settlement outside of court. And as Kramer & Kaslow showed us, many class-action lawsuits that require an upfront fee to join are scams.

And in case you're still wondering.... NO, attorneys do not take on individual foreclosure cases for free.  At least not if they're real attorneys with a bar certification and an actual law degree.



Anti-Scam Tip #4: Know What You’re Signing!

Many foreclosure scam artists get unwitting homeowners to sign over the deed to their properties. They also get them to sign powers of attorney unknowingly. This powerful document allows them to conduct financial business in your name. Of course, the banks have already been gambling with your home and your credit in a very similar way.   It’s incredibly easy to get scammed into sign over the deed to your house or sign a power of attorney. Why/how? As every homeowner knows, you sign a lot of papers when you decide to buy, sell, refinance or "modify" a mortgage. Hence, one of these documents could easily “slip by you.”

So, pay attention to every document you sign. DO NOT sign over the deed to your house if you intend on keeping it. And if you do want to walk away from your home, don't sign any grant deed contract unless it explicitly states in writing that the company offering the contract is BOUND to litigate on your behalf to stop all deficiency judgments against you on the mortgage. Make sure the people you are working with are exactly what they say they are. For example, don't assume that you are working with an attorney unless he shows you proof that he is indeed an attorney. NEVER hire anyone who claims to be an attorney until you have ordered a professional audit on your loan. And, if you don’t understand something, don’t sign it. Period.


Anti-Scam Tip #5: A specific outcome is NEVER guaranteed


If a company unconditionally guarantees that they can get you a certain result (e.g., lower your payment by 50%, get your loan modified, etc.), then run for the hills! When it comes to fixing a broken mortgage, you can NEVER guarantee anything without qualification or conditions - it's ILLEGAL.

Nobody can guarantee a principal reduction, a lower interest rate, or reduction of late fees and arrears in every case. Foreclosures can only be handled on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately whether your foreclosure can be stopped let alone reversed depends on the strength of the evidence found in a comprehensive tier-III audit on your mortgage, as well as the laws of your state. While working with a foreclosure prevention law firm can increase your chances of obtaining a desired result, every reputable attorney and legal counselor will tell you that they can’t guarantee a certain outcome. The ONLY guarantee they can legally make is a refund on the audit on the condition that it comes back clean and you don't have a case against your lender. However even that is strictly conditional. Finding fraud on the audit per se can never be unconditionally guaranteed, since it's an investigation with many possible outcomes.


Anti-Scam Tip #6: Use Common Sense & Trust Your Gut

If something just doesn’t “feel right in the pit of your stomach,” trust that. If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is (even if it's free). And, no matter how desperate you may be to stop foreclosure, by going against your instincts, you could be getting yourself into even more financial hot water.

Warning Signs

If you're looking for help to save your home, avoid any business that:

  • guarantees to stop the foreclosure process no matter who your lender is or what your circumstances are;
  • only sells you loan modifications or other unproven products like REST reports or Forensic audits;
  • tells you not to contact your lender, lawyer, or financial legal counselor;
  • claims that most or all of its customers get their loans written off or their homes free and clear
  • charges upfront for foreclosure prevention seminars "guaranteeing" that you will be able to stop your foreclosure yourself with what you learn in their seminar
  • asks for an upfront fee before even asking about your hardship or giving you a consultation (unless it's a lawyer you've checked out thoroughly);
  • accepts payment only by credit card or moneygram/wire transfer;
  • offers no option other than to lease your home so you can buy it back over time;
  • tells you to make your mortgage payments directly to it, rather than your lender;
  • tells you to transfer your property deed or title to it in order to keep your home;
  • offers to buy your house for cash for much lower than the selling price of similar houses in your neighborhood (i.e. "cash for keys"); or
  • pressures you to sign papers you haven't had a chance to read thoroughly or that you don't understand.


If you suspect you are being scammed by either your lender or a loan modification company, or your attorney is not honoring their end of the retainer agreement you signed, please call our offices at (855)529-5559 to find out your rights and whether you have legal recourse to stop your foreclosure without paying the scammers any more money. Also, report offenders to Ripoff Report, the FTC, and the American Bar Association.

Good luck in not becoming a victim of a foreclosure scam.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

YOUR BANK could be committing FRAUD and ILLEGAL FORECLOSURE!



MORTGAGE FRAUD and ILLEGAL FORECLOSURE is not just a news story - IT IS REALITY.

If you are facing foreclosure and your bank is refusing to work with you, railroading you into endless loan modification processes, losing your paperwork, giving you the runaround, etc. YOU ARE PROBABLY A VICTIM OF MORTGAGE FRAUD and the bank is HIDING the truth about your loan. According to a groundbreaking new independent audit of the mortgage market, 99% of mortgages in foreclosure have ERRORS in the chain of assignments that make the note invalid and the foreclosure ILLEGAL. And 84% are tainted by outright FRAUD and VIOLATIONS of the Law.






The MORTGAGE FRAUD FACTORY - DocX
This is the paper mill that Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and many other banks used to forge documents to illegally foreclose on unsuspecting homeowners. Most of the time the bank no longer owns the mortgage note (having sold it to private investors and already made their money back many times over) and therefore has no right to foreclose on the home - instead they hire dishonest FRAUD companies like DocX to make FAKE mortgage notes with fake signatures and often wrong dates, to illegally steal your home!

DocX - Document "Sweat Shop" subsidiary of Lenders Processing Services (LPS)
DocX - NOW CLOSED !!! this "paper mill" office ..... now considered...... a crime scene



Evidence of ROBO-SIGNING and FRAUD on Mortgages
LINDA GREEN'S MANY SIGNATURES - Linda was LPS's most successful employee - there were HUNDREDS of Linda Greens with thousands of different signatures and handwriting styles.



BANKS COMMITTING FRAUD ACROSS THE NATION:




MASSACHUSETTS:
"My registry is a CRIME SCENE as evidenced by this forensic examination...
I can tell you that every single assignment of mortgage that was recorded for the purpose of foreclosing the homeowner is invalid, overtly fraudulent, or criminally fraudulent. This is disgusting, and this is criminal" (John O'Brien - Massachusetts Register)

This CRIME ....has affected thousands of homeowners..their property rights trampled on and their chain of title compromised. This evidence has made it clear....  banks such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and others...... have played fast and loose with people’s biggest asset – their homes. My findings also show.....clouds on title due to the recording of defective and invalid discharges and assignments of mortgage.


NORTH CAROLINA:     
REGISTER REJECTS ROBO-SIGNED DOCUMENTS 
Documents included 1,947 signed by Linda Green with 15 different signature variations
REGISTER OF DEEDS JEFF THIGPEN REFUSES TO CREATE A CRIME SCENE
Register of DeedsThigpen sent state and federal regulators over 4,500 robo-signed documents submitted by DocX, a company owned by Lender Processing Services contracted by Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and MERS amongst others. See letter sent to Iowa Attorney General "detailing crimes" (HERE)


Marie McDonald (McDonnell Property Analytics) through a legal affidavit, explained the results of her independent audit of Register John O’Brien's registry. It reads in part:  ...."the banks set up in-house document execution teams, or outsourced the  preparation of their assignments to third parties who manufactured them out of thin air without researching who really owns the mortgage.… "What this means is that the degradation in standards .....so fatally flawed that the institutions, including many pension funds, that purchased these mortgages don’t actually own them because the assignments of mortgage were never prepared, executed and delivered ....in the normal course of business at the time of the transaction.


Lawyer Extraordinaire!Lynn Symoniak
A FRAUDclosure victim in the 60 minutes story but a "Hero" to homeowners.  Lynn has sacrificed for all of us - Great Job Lynn!

Watch her 60 Minutes story (and her exposure of the Linda Green mortgage forgeries) HERE:




Michigan AG
The attorney general said he is seeking information about documents signed by DocX employees both male and female FRAUDulently signing as “Linda Green.” “Allegations of forged mortgage documents are very serious and require a thorough investigation, I will continue to work closely with federal and local authorities to find answers.

FLORIDA:     R. B. "CHIPS" SHORE - Manatee County - Clerk  As Florida’s foreclosure crisis continues, Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller, R.B. “Chips” Shore, suggests that property owners conduct regular and routine public records searches for faulty liens and other documents that may be filed against their property. As the foreclosure process and “foreclosure mills” came under scrutiny for inaccurate documentation and other issues, the need to show clear and accurate title to one’s property came to the forefront.
Who's authorizing the filing of FRAUDulent documents on Florida property owners?



WASHINGTON:
Washington State Attorney General (Rob McKenna) filed a lawsuit against the Bank of America's "Recon Trust" for conducting ILLEGAL FORECLOSURES on THOUSANDS of Washington State homeowners.

The suit alleges, amongst many charges, that "ReconTrust":






  • CREATED or permitted the use of documents that were FRUADulently and improperly executed, notarized or sworn to....and the notices and agreements contained conflicting dates and improper notarizations and ReconTrust employees sometimes FRAUDulently signed as officers of other entities.






  • "ReconTrust ... repeatedly broke the law and refused to provide information requested during our investigation," McKenna said. “ReconTrust’s illegal practices make it difficult, if not impossible, for borrowers ... to stop those foreclosures.”

  • Washington Attorney General sues ReconTrust for illegal foreclosures (press release here)

    Some examples of the Bank of America & ReconTrust documents below:                     
    (The Art & Science of Robo-signing (New & Improved Document Fabrication)

    PENNSYLVANIA:
    Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds Nancy Becker is urging registers of deeds across state and the country to withdraw public money from any banks affiliated with the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS), which she claims is undermining the practice of accurate land recording.
    "In recent years, mortgages have been assigned and reassigned multiple times, and when a bank or other entity doesn’t properly report these transfers, it makes it very difficult for homeowners to determine who holds their mortgages. It clouds the chain of title, and it’s prohibiting (officials) from recording revenues they should be recording," Becker said.

    OHIO: Sherrod Brown introduces SB-824 Anti- Fraud (Robo-Signing) Bill

    (Click below) Read this 35 page Senate Bill titled - Foreclosure FRAUD
    FORECLOSURE FRAUD SB -824 bill

    (Click below) Press release - Showing how this bill - has solutions - to stop FRAUD
    PRESS RELEASE
    (Click below) OUTSTANDING letter outlining FRAUD and problems
    Outline-Explanation of FRAUD and Problem



    Are YOU a victim of mortgage fraud and illegal foreclosure? Do you suspect your bank is NOT telling you the whole truth?


    CALL US TODAY TO KNOW YOUR RIGHTS! Our risk-free consultation will let you know IMMEDIATELY what you need to do to protect your home, regardless of income or how far behind you are on your payments. 
    Call 1-855-LAW-5559.