The Melbourne Florida Foreclosure Attorney at the Bowin Law Group has witnessed first hand some of the Fraud that Mortgage Companies and Mortgage servicers have committed in Florida Foreclosure cases. When news broke out in late 2010 that mortgage servicers were filing fraudulent documents in court, it came as no shock to those lawyers who practice foreclosure defense in Florida. It was discovered that the mortgage servicing firms were employing so-called "robo-signers" to sign all their affidavits to be filed in court. They were called robo-signers because they signed thousands of affidavits each day without even a brief review of the facts they were attesting to by signing. What's the problem with this? The problem is that each time they signed these affidavits and filed them in court, they committed perjury. When the robsigners signed the affidavits, they were signing under penalty of perjury that they reviewed the affidavit and personally verified the facts they were attesting to. In hundreds of thousands of cases, the robosigners not only failed to verify the facts in the affidavit, but they failed to even review the affidavits at all. So what's the penalty for committing perjury? That answer depends on whether you are an individual or a huge multinational financial institution.
Filing a false affidavit in court is exactly the same as taking the stand in court and lying to the court. As an attorney, if I filed just one false affidavit on behalf of my client, my bar license would be revoked and my client would be sanctioned and would probably face criminal charges. So what punishment have the banks recieved after admitting to committing perjury tens of thousands of times a month over several years in foreclosure court's around Florida and the entire country? None! Not one sanciton or fine or criminal charge from the Florida Attorney General. We've all heard of too big to fail. Apparently, the banks are also too big to judge. Although the State of Florida has done nothing to bring the banks to justice, there is apparently some hope yet.
The Nevada Attorney General has filed civil charges against the largest mortgage servicing company in the country for its role in the robosigning scandal. The Nevada Attorney General filed a civil lawsuit seeking what could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars from Lender Processing Services Inc., DOCX LLC, LPS Default Solutions Inc. and several subsidiaries.
The civil court filing came after state prosecutors last month obtained a more than 600-count grand jury indictment accusing LPS officials Geraldine Ann Sheppard and Gary Randall Trafford of directing a "robo-signing" scheme that led to the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent foreclosure documents in the Las Vegas area.
Before anyone reading this blog misunderstands me, I want to make it clear that I am not an anti-bank zealot or anti-capitlist. I hope all the banks make tons of money and their executives receive large bonuses when they do a good job. I am not anti-profit or anti-corporation. I am anti-FRAUD...whoever perpetrates it. The banks have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They have even admitted their wrong doing in court papers. It's time they are held to the same standard every other american is, whether a private individual, small business, or a Fortune 500 Company. One country, one set of laws.
I'll believe it when I see it.
A more detailed report on the Nevada case can be viewed at Nevada Sues Lender Processing Services, Inc.