Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Ignacio Damian Figueroa vs. Merscorp, Inc., Law Offices of David J. Stern, PA, and David J. Stern, individually, is a class action suit on behalf of people who have lost their homes in mortgage foreclosures where MERS and Stern's office were involved. The Complaint is thoroughly researched and well written. It asks for triple damages, costs and attorney fees under the "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act," also known as the RICO Act.
The suit says that Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc.,or "MERS," is a racketeering enterprise. It charges that Stern, along with his law firm and related companies conspired with MERSCORP to deprive homeowners of their property illegally through fraud. The homeowner's attorney in this case is Kenneth Eric Trent in Fort Lauderdale.
The attorney general's investigation targets three firms representing mortgage lenders. The three law firms have handled the largest number of foreclosures in the state. In some cases, the firms handled thousands of foreclosures a month.
The investigation centers on allegations that the law firms used forged and fabricated documents in the foreclosure process, sometimes filing false documents with courts as they sought judgments against homeowners. Potentially thousands of foreclosed homeowners could be affected by improper actions by the firms under investigation.
The three firms under investigation are the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Plantation, the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale, and Shapiro & Fishman, which has offices in Boca Raton and Tampa.
"Law firms are not immune to Florida deceptive and unfair trade practice" laws, said Attorney General Bill McCollum .
Wall Street, armed with tax-preferred vehicles like the real estate mortgage investment conduit ("REMIC") and the somewhat recently
created financial asset securitization trust ("FASIT"), basically hijacked the real estate finance industry to become source of real
estate financing capital. Mortgage Securitization has been used with regularity by banks and insurance companies as way to generate
income hide an asset and manage their balance sheets.
Unlike whole loan lending, an REMIC which is the key part of mortgage securitization,
issues a new financial instrument representing undivided ownership interests in a pool of mortgage loans (not the individual loans
themselves) These “pools” were most often put into Trusts as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV). The mortgage backed securities divided
the individual asset of the mortgage into unrecognizable pieces spread into different trusts and other SPV’s.
In Mortgage Securitization,
these instruments generated “cash” from the pool's loan assets. This loan securitization also included commercial mortgages which
allowed investor to select the level of investment risk -- a selection that is much less precise and more subject to error in a whole
loan investment. In addition, while mortgage loans are inherently not liquid assets, the securities representing ownership of a pool
of real estate loans provide greater liquidity through the use of a pooling vehicle that is separate and distinct from the real estate
loans themselves. Include the concocted Rating of these offerings which was often a “bogus” AAA, the mortgage backed securities were
extremely enticing for hedge funds looking for “safe” investments
One Major part is called special purpose entity (SPE) or special
purpose vehicle (SPV). This created “legal entity”, much like a corporation, but not entirely like a corporation. It is more like
the legal hull of a corporation containing almost only financial assets. Since a (SPE) is a separate entity, it removed the mortgages
off of the bank’s books and off-loaded the financial and legal risk to the banks, and is virtually “untouchable legally”
Here
is an Example of Securitization: A Lender could have 100 Million in cash received for the sale of the mortgages which becomes immediately
available for issuing new mortgages SPE1. With this cash they can start anew with an SPE2. The lender never had any of its own money
in the game, as it was not their money being loaned. These “so called” ingenious bank executives would get a bonus for increasing
profits by more than 50% in one year (just by rearranging the balance sheet, but of course they would never admit that they were clever). As recently reported, executives with AIG, Goldman Sachs (to name a couple) have been quoted saying that “Bonuses were necessary”,
to retain such talent that comes up with brilliant solutions like these. Of course, when they talk about ‘talent’ that must be retained,
they really are talking about themselves!
There is a whole host of such debt instruments that securitized mortgages went into
with names like CDOs, CMOs, CLOs, CFOs, RMBS, CMBS and more. There are even CDOs based on CDSs. This nonsense is called financial
‘innovation’. This entire mess of mortgage securitization was projected as early as 2006 to crash as any pyramid scheme would. Why?
Well, because it was and IS a pyramid scheme/Ponsi scheme. They were simply Hypothecating, creating debt with debt. The Government
Pressure to “Make Housing Affordable” was just smoke and mirrors used to hide the true state of affairs regarding mortgage securitization
scheme!
Today, the same Bankster's, creators and administrators of this massive Ponzi scheme, have already eviscerated these
statutory trusts, all that remains of them are but empty shells. The Banksters though, still use these empty shells of "Trusts" in
their attempt to collect more money in the way of monthly mortgage payments and foreclosures. The banks illegally foreclose
on Mortgage Notes they never lent a single cent on; they produce fraudulent documents, with the assistance of foreclosure
mills to obtain the jurisdiction of our nations court's, allowing them to steal these properties; then they turn around and sell
them at incredibly large discounts, to mostly straw buyers, leaving the homeowner disenfranchised, homeless and with an enormous foreclosure
sale deficiency that destroys any possibility of financial recovery.
All the bankster's in the chain of fraud, (agency) have benefitted by trillions of dollars of profit generated by the sale, multiple times, of your securitized mortgage note metastasized into esoteric financial instruments sold over and over again to investors throughout the world. A typical $300,000.00 mortgage note is calculated to have brought in as much as 5 to 7 million dollars to the interloper Banksters, all without a dime of their own investment, completely off the Banks books and without any risk incurred. To make matters worse your original mortgage was already fully paid off by insurance, collaterizations, cross collaterizations, credit default swaps and government bailouts WITH YOUR MONEY! Everyone has speculated and profited immensely from your home mortgage, EXCEPT YOU! Not one single cent of setoff has ever been applied to your mortgage account. Instead, the creators and administrators of the Ponzi scheme, the Banksters, have generated Billions of dollars in profits, kept offshore and laundered back into the country, they were bailed out by you (bailed out from what?) and they now want to steal your home which they have never owned nor lent a dime on in the first place. They have brought our nation’s economy to the verge of total collapse and they have stolen all the wealth of our nation’s middle class. The Government executives and legislators that enabled this are quilty of treason; the Banks, quilty of Conspiracy!
Our Action plan: Put them in prison where they belong! Both the Banksters and the Foreclosure mills must be held accountable for fraud and Conspiracy. File your Attorney General Complaint today. If your state has not initiated any actions against foreclosure mills in house manufactured documents, file your AG Complaint and have them contact the Florida Attorney Generals Economics Crime Division regarding foreclosure mills, or/and have your AG reference the FBI Economic Crimes Task Force as related to the FL investigation! Justice will prevail but you must never leave your home and you must fight back legally, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!