FILES
OHIO FILES SUIT TO END MERS AND ALL WHO RELIED ON IT
MOST POPULAR ARTICLES
GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION ANALYSIS – CLICK HERE
STATE OF OHIO V MERS AND BANKS
SUBMITTED BY MANDELMAN
MERS Has Trouble, Right There in Ohio, With a Capital ‘T’…
Geauga County’s prosecuting attorney, David P. Joyce has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the county “and all other similarly situated counties in Ohio,” against MERS and everybody else who used the MERS “scheme,” alleging that they violated Ohio law requiring that, “each and every mortgage assignment must be recorded in the proper Ohio county recording office,” and that by doing so, they avoided paying the counties the attendant recording fees.
Former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann says the case does accurately represent what he referred to as “black letter law” in the State of Ohio for the last 200 years. He also described the case as being fairly narrow in that it’s really going after the recording fees that were not paid to each county when the defendants used the MERS system, but in doing so, the case is also going to have to establish the problems with the over all MERS operation.
Attorney Marc Dann
According to Dann, “Ohio law requires that transfers of beneficial interest be recorded in the appropriate county, so either they avoided paying the fees to the counties for what was otherwise a valid transfer, or perhaps the transfers were invalid, in which case many, many foreclosures should not have been allowed to happen.”
Geauga County is a small, rural county near Cleveland, Ohio, and Dann, who has his law office in Cleveland, has been fighting for the rights of Ohio homeowners since serving as the state’s Attorney General in 2007-08. He says that if Geauga County’s prosecutor wins this case, he may be reopening thousands of foreclosures.
“This case asks court very directly whether the MERS system complies with state law. If it doesn’t then I’m going to go back and reopen all of the foreclosures alleging that the transfers were invalid,” says Dann without hesitation.
The class action lawsuit, however, is about damages, and they could be substantial. Dann says that the county recording fees are in the $ 30-$ 40 range, so in a state with over 80,000 foreclosures a year, and I have no idea how many mortgages that have been securitized over the last so many years, the amounts of fees avoided by easily reach into the millions.
The complaint alleges that the MERS system is a “scheme” designed to evade the required recording fees and the suit specifically seeks payment of those fees, saying that in the securitization process mortgages are assigned at least twice.
Also included in the complaint is the allegation that the defendants “systematically broke chains of land title throughout Ohio counties’ public land records by creating ‘gaps’ due to missing mortgage assignments they failed to record, or by recoding patently false and/or misleading mortgage assignments. Further the complaint states that the “defendants’ failure to record has eviscerated the accuracy of Ohio’s counties’ public land records, rendering them unreliable and unverifiable.”
I asked renowned consumer bankruptcy attorney Max Gardner what he thought would happen if the case were to be successful and he said it could put MERS out of business, or certainly make it a costly mistake for all involved.
O. Max Gardner III
“MERS INC. is a wholly owned subsidiary of MERSCORP and has no assets to speak of, and MERSCORP has some assets but it looks to me like a multi-million dollar judgment would be beyond their ability to pay,” Max said.
“So, I guess they’d need a bailout,” he quips. “If it even looks like the prosecutor is going to be able to win this case, it’ll definitely be time for MERS to make a call to Houston, you know to say, we’ve got a problem… and it’s a big problem,” Gardner adds.
Max says that, although this case is somewhat similar to a case previously filed in Minnesota, he’s not aware of “any other case alleging this theory filed by a state or county to-date.”
The complaint states that the “defendant’s purposeful failure” to record the mortgage assignments in compliance with state law has caused “far-reaching, devastating consequences for Ohio counties and their public land records.” And further, that those damages “may never be entirely remedied.” (Emphasis added.)
The lawsuit, which was filed on October 13, 2011, names as defendants: MERSCORP, INC. and Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc., but also names:
Home Savings and Loan Inc., Bank of America Corp, CCO Mortgage Corp, Chase Home Mortgage Corp, Citimortgage Inc, Corelogic, Corinthian Mortgage Corp, Everhome Mortgage Corp, GMAC, Guaranty Bank, HSBC Bank, MGIC Investors Services, Nationwide Advantage Mortgage, PMI Mortgage Services Company, Suntrust Mortgage, United Guaranty Corp, Wells Fargo Bank, and Doe Corporations – names and addresses unknown.
So, obviously this is one to watch, both for the homeowners in Ohio, and elsewhere. The ramifications, should the case be successful, could very well spread to other states, as the Ohio counties involved could receive hundreds of thousands or millions of much-needed dollars.
Once again, the arrogance of MERS and the industry that created it is astounding. I mean, to simply disregard out of hand, 200 years of Ohio state law, without a second thought, is remarkable. And when I read that it may never be entirely remedied, I can’t help but wonder what the ultimate cost of what was done will be and who will one day be forced to pay it.
From talking with Marc Dann and Max Gardner, it looks like this is a case that will cause great concern back at MERS headquarters, and all I can say is… it’s about time.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: bankruptcy, borrower, countrywide, disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, fraud, LOAN MODIFICATION, MERS, modification, quiet title, rescission, RESPA, securitization, TILA audit, trustee, WEISBAND 
Livinglies’s Weblog
HARRISBURG, PA FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY
MOST POPULAR ARTICLES
GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION ANALYSIS – CLICK HERE
$ 2.9 TRILLION MUNICIPAL BOND MARKET WEAKENS
Wall Street’s economic death grip continues to have consequences and repercussions — both politically and economically. The Banks’ push on mortgage bonds, derivative securities, and hedge products has resulted in loss of of money, loss of revenue and loss of prospects. The biggest contributor is the housing and mortgage market, with jobs taking up second place. Revenues are shrinking as money needed to restore the economy to a firm foundation is withheld by the megabanks, some of whom (Goldman) are crying poverty.
According to a Wall Street Journal report written by Michael Corkery and Kris Maher, the capital city of Pennsylvania filed for bankruptcy protection in a case that follows other cities, but its sheer size makes it a case to watch.
Harrisburg rejected selling or leasing assets to pay down debt. In Arizona, the government sold the capital buildings in Phoenix and leased them back in what some are calling a sweetheart deal that benefits the buys more than the state or the taxpayers.
It’s the politics that is even more interesting than the economics. The split city council was taken over by members who were tired by being “pushed around,” an echo of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Last month Jefferson County, Alabama used the threat of bankruptcy to squeeze concessions from creditors.
Since 1980 there have been 48 official bankruptcy filings for cities, counties and other governmental units. But that is the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds more have been negotiating, like Jefferson County in Alabama to get relief from creditors. But what they should be doing is prosecuting claims for impact costs and lost revenues from the Banks, who used a variety of means to evade payment of taxes, fees and expenses relating to the false run-up of prices and housing activity over the last 10 years.
Local government, taking their information from the Banks’ were led to believe that their area was growing and that more services and infrastructure was needed, thus committing themselves to huge debt and expenses that could have been paid if the representations and analysis from Wall Street was true. Like the ratings on the “mortgage backed” bonds, the analysis from Wall Street was false and the ratings firms should have known that, just as they should have known that the mortgage bonds were a scam.
So-called experts are being rolled out by the dozen to say that the Harrisburg bankruptcy does not foreshadow more local government bankruptcies. But a quick look at the finances around the country shows clearly that many, if not most cities and counties, are on the verge of a collapse of their financial system. The money they are missing is sitting on Wall Street the titans of which won’t give it back.
Local government is like small and medium sized businesses. It needs the revenue from ordinary consumers to function, provide fire, police and other social services. It needs that revenue to pay off bonds and other debt to pay for new roads or repairing roads, bridges and tunnels.
The consumer class has run out of money and run out of equity. Ordinary people have virtually no equity equity left in their homes or a steep reduction, their 401k is less, and their pension benefits are being eroded by losses from mortgage bond chicanery and creeping inflation as the Federal Reserve engages in its third round of quantitative easing — i.e., printing money — to cover up the $ 16 Trillion “bailout” of the Banks.
If the federal government and federal reserve spent 1/4 of what turned out to be the Great Bailout of Banks for Nonexistent Losses, this problem would not exist. As taxpayers, we gave Wall Street $ 16 Trillion. We have nothing to show for it except worthless paper transactions involving worthless securities that were fraudulently issued and fraudulently represented as backed by mortgage loans. None of it was true.
At some point, we are either going to get that money back and put it into a hungry economy or we will give up and simply accept the fact that the Banks run the country, that the government of the people, by the people, for the people no longer exists.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: bankruptcy, borrower, countrywide, disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, fraud, LOAN MODIFICATION, modification, quiet title, rescission, RESPA, securitization, TILA audit, trustee, WEISBAND 
Livinglies’s Weblog