October 29, 2012

FDN is now into its 5th year of representing homeowners across the United States challenging foreclosures by non-lenders, servicers, securitized trustees, and alleged “successors in interest”. Through these years, the litigation nationally has gone through several phases, now evolving into what some would call “foreclosure offense” including suits for billions of dollars in damages against not only the banks but also at least one state Attorney General. As most of you know, there is a $43 trillion lawsuit which has been recently filed against the banks as well.

In the early years (2008-09), the response to a foreclosure was “OMG, what do I do now?” People had never heard of things like MERS, securitization, robo-signing, and the other infections in later foreclosures, and simply either filed bankruptcy, let a judgment be entered or a sale proceed, or attempt to give the property “back” to the foreclosing party (which never financed the transaction in the first place) through, for example, a Deed in Lieu of foreclosure. The second phase, which began in late 2008 and early 2009, was the “TILA recission” cry which, unfortunately, was not understood by most of those who attempted to advance it, and which lead to numerous claims being dismissed on Statutes of Limitations and failure of proof grounds.

The third phase came into being in 2010 where certain attorneys and homeowners really began to zero in on the MERS issues, robo-signing, fraudulent affidavits and assignments, non-existant notaries, and other infirmities in the process, leading to affirmative attacks on standing, real party in interest, and chain of title issues. Many of these cases have been discussed over the years on this website.

We have now progressed to the 4th phase: affirmative claims against the banks, servicers, etc. for money damage claims resulting from fraudulent foreclosure activity. The Levin Senate Report and other sources which have detailed the abject fraudulent conduct by the banks has provided an impetus for moving forward against the banks instead of attempting to only defend the foreclosure effort. We have formed a relationship with an expert in securitization, banking, and finance who has been involved in these areas for over 25 years and who actually wrote credit default swaps. This expert is assisting us in preparing new litigation which exposes numerous intentional acts of misconduct by the banks for the purpose of not only creating a false obligation, but also for purposes of stripping all equity from a homeowner and blocking the homeowner’s ability to refinance. There is a lot to this which will be developing over the coming months. Stay tuned.

Jeff Barnes, Esq., www.ForeclosureDefenseNationwide.com