Trouble Connecting the Dots?

It still baffles me how I had all these evil banks - American home, countrywide, BOA, long beach, wamu, DB , chase, and still the Judge didn't get the connection on how I was a victim. Priceless. 

Matt Weidner reports that he went to court on a case where IndyMAc was the plaintiff. IndyMac was one of the first banks to collapse. It was found that they owned virtually zero mortgages and had "securitized" the rest which is to say they never loaned the money or got paid off by a successor. Now the servicing rights on IndyMac have been sold. So when the time came for trial he finds the lawyer fighting with his own witness. It seems that she would not say she worked for IndyMac because she didn't. That meant there was no corporate representative present to testify for the plaintiff. case over? Not according to what we have seen where IndyMac foreclosures continue to be rubber stamped by Judges who do not understand the gravity of the situation.

The precedent being set is for anyone who knows about a default to race to the courthouse with a complaint to foreclose after fabricated a notice of default and asserting themselves as the successor to whoever the borrower was paying. The borrower doesn't know the difference and generally doesn't care because they mistakenly think they are screwed no matter what. So the pretender lender that was collecting takes it time partly because they are simply collecting fees on "non-performing" loans. Meanwhile our creative criminal goes in and alleges that he is the holder of a lost note, submits affidavits, but of course stays away from the essential allegation that there ever was a transaction between himself and the borrower. These days Judges don't seem to require that.

Judgment is entered for our creative criminal and he becomes by court order, the creditor who can submit a credit bid at auction. He makes the non-cash bid at the auction and presto he just got himself a free house which he sells at discount on the open market. He only needs to do a few of those before he vanishes with a few million dollars. In fact, we have learned that such "foreclosures" are going on now sometimes creatively named such that it looks like the name of a bank. That is why I have been saying for 7 years that  the foreclosures, if they are allowed to proceed, will eventually create chaos in the marketplace.

You might ask why the banks don't raise a big stink about this practice. The answer is that there are only a few such scams going on at the moment. And the banks are relying on the loopholes created in pleading practice to get their own foreclosures through the same way as our criminal because they really don't own the loan or even the servicing rights. Yup! That is called a syllogism: if the creative criminal is a criminal for doing what he did, then the bank or anyone else who engages in the same behavior is also a criminal.

And that is why the justice department and regulators are ramping up their investigations and charges, getting ready to indict the bankers who thought they were untouchable. If you read the reports of securities analysts, you will see three types of authors -- those who obviously have drunk the Kool-Aide and believe Bank of America and Chase hinting the stock is a good buy, those who are paid to plant pretty articles about the banks, and supposedly declining foreclosures and increasing housing prices, and those who have looked at the jury conviction of Countrywide, looked at the pace of settlements, and looked at the announcements that there are many more investigations and charges to be resolved, and who have seen the probability of indictments, and they conclude that BOA is soon going to be on the chopping block for sale in pieces and the same will happen with Chase, Citi and maybe even Wells.

While the media is not paying attention to the impending doom of the mega banks, the market is discounting the stock and the book value of these companies is dropping like a stone because real investment analysts under stand that much of what is being carried on the books as assets, is really worthless garbage. Charges of fraud are announced practically everyday, saying that the banks defrauded investors, defrauded Fannie and Freddie, and defrauded each other, as well as insurance companies and counterparties on credit default swaps. In other words it is pretty well settled that the sale of mortgage bonds was a sweeping fraudulent scheme and that the word PONZI scheme is accurate, not some conspiracy theory as I was treated back in 2007-2010.

So now that we know that there was complete fraud at one end of the stick (where the funding for the origination and acquisition of mortgages took place), the question is why is anyone looking at foreclosures as inevitable or proper or even possible. It is the same stick. If one end is burning then it is quite likely that the other end will be burning soon and that is exactly what I predict for the coming months.

Having been in court multiple times over the last month representing clients seeking to retain their homes it is readily apparent that the Judges are changing their minds about whether the foreclosure is inevitable or that collection by these creative criminals is wise or legal --- i.e., whether the enire exercise involves an arrogant willingness to commit perjury. Since the mortgages were part of the scheme and the part where the lender appeared with the money is covered in fraud, it is certainly reasonable to assume that the the fraudulent schemes included the origination and transfer of mortgage paper. And that is exactly the case.

If it wasn't the case there never would have been fraud at the top because the investors would be on the note and mortgage and some some nominee of the broker dealer ("BANK") or they would have been on a recorded assignment closed out within 90 days of the start of the REMIC trust, which would have been funded by money from investors paid to the investment bank (broker dealer) who then forwarded the net proceeds tot he Trust. None of that ever happened, though, which is how the fraud was enabled.

Practice Hint: I like to demonstrate by drawing a large "V" where the bottom is the closing agent, the left side is the money trail and the right side is the paper trail --- and showing that they never meet. That means the paper trail is a fictional story about transactions that never occurred. The money trail is actual facts and data showing actual transactions where money exchanged hands but there was no documentation. The "Trust" was never funded with money or assets, so the money went straight down the left side from the investors at the top of the left side to the closing agent, who applied the investors money to close a transaction that was documented as though the originator had loaned the money. The same reasoning applies to transfers and assignments.

The core of the cases filed by the banks is that the Note is prima facie evidence that a transaction occurred. It is entitled to a presumption of validity. But where the borrower denies the transaction ever occurred, and files the right discovery to get evidence of the wire transfers and canceled checks, the banks go wild because they know their entire case will not only fall apart but subject them to prosecution.

Which brings us to Marshall Watson, who seeks to be licensed again to practice law, and David Stern who is about to be disbarred forever. The good news is that they were disciplined for fabrication and forgery of documents. The bad news is that the inquiry stopped there and nobody ever asked why it was necessary to fabricate or forge documents.

FRAUD! In Foreclosure Court Indymac/Onewest Doesn’t Own Notes and Mortgages, But “They” Continue To Foreclose Anyway
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1051166/

-Suspended Ft. Lauderdale foreclosure mill head seeks return
http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2013/10/24/suspended-fort-lauderdale-foreclosure-mill-head-seeks-return/

Florida Bar referee calls for ex-foreclosure king’s disbarment
http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2013/10/30/florida-bar-referee-calls-for-ex-foreclosure-kings-disbarment/

JPMorgan hit by U.S. bribery probe

How did the banks get away with it? Bribery takes many forms. It doesn't need to be a direct payment, but merely something of value to the regulator or law enforcement officer. In this case it is the hiring of children of banking regulators in China. There is no reason why we should think that couldn't happen here. It did. The revolving door of regulators, law enforcement and the banks has long been known.

Even if it isn't a bribe, the bank is hiring people and then designating them for important positions in government regulation. Jamie Dimon sits on the Board at the New York Federal Reserve. Being immersed in the bank culture, the people involved come to believe the myths repeated every day. It becomes part of their culture.

The reason why the decisions on banking have been so chaotic is that there is a direct conflict between the real world and the illusions created by the banks. Put another way, the difference is between truth and fiction.

The fact remains that practically no mortgage can be satisfied or released because the ownership is completely deranged. The correction can only come from the courts when they realize and learn that the origination of the loan was a sham transaction, not just a table funded loan, and that the intent was fraud on the investors and homeowners (who were also "investors"). The scheme unraveled precisely in concert with investors ceasing to buy the "mortgage bonds" issued by entities in "street name." That is the red flag that alerts authorities that the securitization chain was in fact a fraudulent PONZI scheme. The issuers were designated asset pools that had nothing in them, and in most cases were not funded, directly or indirectly. So the mortgage bonds were worthless.

And now that the facts are being slowly revealed, the depth of malfeasance by the banks is being recognized for what it is --- but the government is sticking with its policy of "no prosecution." Until the government steps up to the mike and says outright that the scheme was a fraudulent scheme in which the borrowers were used as pawn to steal money from investors, most people are not going to believe it. Until respectable economists and legal scholars step up and say that the loan transaction described in the note never existed and was a strawman transaction that should have been revealed to the borrower, this tragedy will stop.

Study the Assignment and Assumption Agreements executed before the first loan application was ever accepted for review. Track the money from strangers showing up at closing as though it was the money of the designated payee on the note and mortgage. The rest will be easy. But until regulators see the public as their boss instead of the banks, don't expect any help from outside the courtroom.

JPMorgan hit by U.S. bribery probe into Chinese hiring

UNFORTUNATELY  THE HELP FROM INSIDE THE COURTS ARE LIMITED AS WELL.

AG Eric Holder pay attention!

Despite the pronouncements by Eric Holder, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, and the obvious reticence of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the vast majority of securities attorneys believe that the banks were (a) trading on inside information and (b) committing securities fraud when they funded and then traded on mortgages that were too toxic to ever succeed.

The first, trading on inside information, is regularly prosecuted by the justice department and the SEC. It is why Martha Stewart went to jail in rather flimsy evidence. The catch, justice and the SEC say is that this only applies to securities and the 1998 act signed into law by Clinton makes mortgage bonds and hedges on mortgage bonds NOT securities. It also makes the insurance paid on the mortgage bonds NOT insurance. This is despite the fact that the instruments meet every definition of securities and both the insurance contracts and credit default swaps appear to meet every definition of insurance. But the law passed by Congress in 1998 says otherwise, so how can we prosecute?

The second, securities fraud meets the same obstacle they say because they can't accuse anyone of committing fraud in the issuance or trading of securities when the law says there were no securities.

So goes the spin coming from Wall Street and as long as law enforcement in each state and the DOJ keeps listening to Wall Street and their lawyers, they will keep arriving at the same mistaken conclusion.

If Wall Street had in fact followed the plan of securitization set forth in their prospectuses and pooling and servicing agreements, assignment and assumption agreements and various other instruments that were created to build the infrastructure of securitization of debt --- including but not limited to mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans etc. --- then Wall Street would be right and the justice department and the SEC might be stuck in the mud created by the 1998 law. But that isn't what happened and therefore the premise behind the apparent immunity of Wall Street Banks and bankers is actually an illusion.

Starting with the issuance of the mortgage bonds, most of them were issued before any mortgage was originated or acquired by anyone. In fact, the list attached to the prospectus for the mortgage bonds said so --- stating that the spreadsheet or list attached was by example only, that these mortgages do not exist but would be soon be replaced with real mortgages acquired pursuant to the enabling documents for the creation of the REMIC "trust." But that is not what happened either.

In no way did the Banks follow the terms of the prospectus, PSA, assignment and assumption agreements or anything else. Instead what they really did was create the illusion of a securitization scheme that covered up the reality of a PONZI scheme, the hallmark of which is that it collapses when investors stop buying the bogus securities and more investors want their money out than those wishing to put money into the scheme. There was no reason for the entire system to collapse other than the fact that Wall Street planned and bet on the collapse, thus making money coming and going and draining the lifeblood of capital worldwide out of economies and marketplaces that depended upon the continued flow of capital.

The creation of the REMIC "trust" was a sham. It was never formalized, never funded and never acquired any mortgages. hence any "exempt" securities issued by it were not the kind intended by the Act signed into law in 1998. It was not a mortgage-backed security, or credit backed security, it was an illusion designed to defraud anyone who invested in them. The purpose of issuing the mortgage bonds was not to fund and acquire mortgages but rather to steal as much money out of the flow as possible while covering their tracks with some of the money ending up on the closing table for newly originated or previously originated bundles of mortgages that were to be acquired. That isn't what happened either.

Wall Street bankers put the money from investors into their own private piggy bank and then funded and acquired mortgages with only part of the money while they made false "proprietary trades" in the "mortgage bonds" that made it look like they were trading geniuses making money hand over fist while the rest of the world saw their wealth decline by as much as 60%-70%. The funding for debt came not from the unfunded REMIC "trusts" but from the investment banker who was merely an intermediary depository institution which unlawfully was playing with investor money. The actual instruments upon which Wall Street relies to justify its actions is the prospectus, the PSA, and the Master Servicing agreement --- each of which was used to sell the investors on letting go of their money in exchange for the promises and conditions contained in the exotic agreements containing numerous conflicting clauses.

Thus the conclusion is that since the mortgage bonds were issued by an unfunded and probably nonexistent entity, the investors had "bought" an interest in an incoherent series of agreements that together constituted a security or, in the alternative, that there was no security and the investors were simply duped into parting with their money which is fraud, pure and simple.

I would say that investors acquired certain passive rights to the instruments used, with the exception of the bogus mortgage bonds that were usually worthless pieces of paper or entries on a log. In my opinion the issuance of the prospectus was the issuance of a security. The issuance of the PSA was the issuance of a security, And the issuance of the other agreements in the illusory securitization chain may also have been the issuance of a security. If cows can be securities, then written instruments that were used to secure passive investments are certainly securities. The exemption for mortgage bonds doesn't apply because neither the mortgage bond nor the REMIC "trust" were ever funded or used --- except in furtherance of their fraud when they claimed losses due to mortgage defaults and obtained federal bailouts, insurance and proceeds of credit default swaps.

The loan closings, like the funding of the "investments" was similarly diverted away from the investor and toward the intermediaries so that they could trade on the appearance of ownership of the loans in the form of selling bundles of loans that were not even close to being properly described in the paperwork --- although the paperwork often looked as though it was all proper.

The trading, hedging and insuring of investments that were not only destined by actually planned to fail was trading on inside information. The Banks knew very well that the triple A rating of the mortgage bonds was a sham because the mortgage bonds were worthless. What they were really trading in was the ownership of the loans which they knew were falsely represented on the note and mortgage. They thus converted the issuance of the promissory note signed by the borrower into a security under flase pretenses because the payee on the note and the secured party on the mortgage never completed the transaction, to wit: they never funded the loan and they made sure that the terms of repayment on the promissory note did not match up with the terms of repayment set forth in the prospectus, which was the real security.

Knowing from the start that they had the power (through the powers conferred on the Master Servicer) to pull the rug out from under the "investments" they traded with a vengeance hedging and selling as many times as they could based upon the same alleged loans that were in fact funded directly by and therefor owned by the investors directly (because the REMIC was ignored and so was the source of funding at the alleged loan closing).

Being the sole source of the real information on the legality, quality and quantity of these nonexistent investments in mortgage bonds, the Wall Street banks, their management, and their affiliates were committing both violation of the insider trading rule and the securities fraud rule ( as well as various other common law and statutory prohibitions and crimes relating to deceptive practices in the sale of securities). By definition and applying the facts rather than the spin, the Banks a have committed numerous crimes and the bankers should be held accountable. Let's not forget that by this time in the S&L scandal more than 800 people were sent to jail despite various attempts to mitigate the severity of their trespass and trampling on the rights of investors and depositors.

Failure to prosecute, while the statute of limitations is running out, is taking the rule of law and turning it on its head. The Obama administration has an obligation to hold these people accountable not only because violations of law should be prosecuted but to provide some deterrence from a recurrence or even escalation of the illegal practices foisted upon institutions, taxpayers and consumers around the world. Ample evidence exists that the Banks, emboldened by the lack of prosecutions, have re-started their engines and are indeed in the process of doing it again.

Think about it, where would a company get the money to have a multimedia advertising campaign blanketing areas of the the Country when the return on investment, according to them is only 2.5%? Between marketing, advertising, processing, and administrative costs, pus a reserve for defaults, they are either running a going out of business strategy or there is something else at work.

And if the transactions were legitimate why do the numbers of foreclosures drop like stones in those states that require proof of payment, proof of loss, and proof of ownership? why have we not seen a single canceled check or wire transfer receipt that corroborates the spin from Wall Street? Where is the real money in this scheme?

FROM OTHER MEDIA SOURCES ----

Foreclosure Victims Protesting Wall Street Impunity Outside DOJ Arrested, Tasered
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16527-victims-of-foreclosure-arrested-tasered-protesting-wall-street-impunity-outside-doj

Watch out. The mortgage securities market is at it again.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/23/news/economy/mortgage-backed-securities.pr.fortune/

Wall Street Lobbyists Literally Writing Bills In Congress
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/05/27/wall-street-lobbyists-literally-writing-bills-in-congress/

Time to Put the Heat on the Fed and FDIC to Fix Lousy Governance at TBTF Banks
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/so-if-shareholders-wont-rein-in-jamie-dimon-time-to-put-the-heat-on-the-fed-and-fdic.html

West Sacramento homeowner uses new state law to stop foreclosure
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/23/5441875/west-sacramento-homeowner-uses.html

The Foreclosure Fraud Prevention Act: A.G. Schneiderman Commends Assembly for Passing Foreclosure Relief Bills
http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/23/the-foreclosure-fraud-prevention-act-a-g-schneiderman-commends-assembly-for-passing-foreclosure-relief-bills/

Where did the California foreclosures go? Level of foreclosures sales dramatically down. Foreclosure legislation and bank processing. Subsidizing investor purchases via HAFA.
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/california-foreclosure-process-hafa-program-subsidize-investor-purchases/

Wasted wealth – The ongoing foreclosure crisis that never had to happen - The Hill's Congress Blog
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/301415-wasted-wealth--the-ongoing-foreclosure-crisis-that-never-had-to-happen

Oregon Foreclosure Avoidance Program gets tuneup
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/05/oregon_foreclosure_avoidance_p.html

ITS COMING AND IT WILL BE WORST THE NEXT TIME AROUND, ALREADY HEDGE FUNDS AND BONDS ARE BUYING UP HOMES TO CONTROL THE MARKET, AND WHEN THIS WAS FAILS, WE WILL BE IN REAL BAD SHAPE. DON'T FOOL YOURSELVES IT IS COMING, SO PREPARE YOURSELVES NOW. 

CREDIT FOR THIS STORY GOES TO NEIL GARFIELD .