Foreclosure Fraud: Case Example from Florida

Despite protestations from Wall Street bankers and their crooked henchmen in congress, massive criminal fraud has been exposed in the ongoing housing foreclosure fiasco.  Major mortgage dealers, such as GMAC, Bank of America, and Ally Financial Inc. have stopped foreclosure proceedings across the country out of concern of their standing in the situation. As has been apparent for more than a year, much of the fine details surrounding exact ownership of individual homes is either incomplete or missing, given the widespread securitization process.  In order to evade actual laws, the banks simply used third party intermediaries to generate missing documentation and bogus signatures out of thin air.  To us layman that's called fraud.

In the following egregious case, Bank of America foreclosed on a Florida man's home in which the bank didn't even have a mortgage for!  As usual, the bank disregarded the customer's complaints for months until the local press became involved.  Once confronted with their incompetence and potential criminality, they then issued their standard "our mistake" line of bullshit.

If Americans don't demand that every person, banker, and entity involved in this massive fraud scheme are sent to jail and banned from ever working in the industry, then the country is no more a nation of laws than any other third world shit-hole bereft of a transparent system of government and independent judiciary.
 

Lauderdale man's home sold out from under him in foreclosure mistake
September 23, 2010
By Harriet Johnson Brackey, Sun Sentinel
 
When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home in December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.

Grodensky knew nothing about the foreclosure until July, when he learned that the title to his home had been transferred to a government-backed lender. "I feel like I'm hanging in the wind and I'm scared to death," said Grodensky. "How did some attorney put through a foreclosure illegally?"

Bank of America has acknowledged the error and will correct it at its own expense, said spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens.

Grodensky's story and other tales of foreclosure mistakes started popping up recently across South Florida. This week, GMAC Mortgage, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers and a major mortgage lender, told real estate agents to stop evicting residents and suspend sales of properties that had been taken from homeowners in foreclosure. The company said it might have to "correct" some of its foreclosures, but was not halting those in process.

In Florida courts, which have been swamped with foreclosure cases for several years, mistakes "happen all the time," said foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner in St. Petersburg. "It's just not getting reported."

And the legal efforts required to resolve a foreclosure mistake are complicated. "Unwrapping it is like unwrapping Fort Knox," said Carol Asbury, a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure attorney. "It's very difficult."

The process is under increasing scrutiny, as Florida's court system struggles with the mountain of cases that have resulted from the housing crisis.

Grodensky said he spent months trying to figure out what happened but said his questions to Bank of America and to the law firm Florida Default Law Group that handled the foreclosure have not been answered. Florida Default Law Group could not be reached for comment, despite several attempts by phone and e-mail. Grodensky said he has filed a claim with his title insurance company, but that, too, has not resulted in any action.

It wasn't until last week, when Grodensky brought his problem to the attention of the Sun Sentinel, that it began to be resolved.

"It looks like it was a mistake in communication between us and the attorneys handling the foreclosure," said Bauwens.