The missing link in the mortgage mess: courts, bankers and real estate broker collusion

The freezing of ARMs—adjustable rate mortgages, which have not come due, doesn’t help the tens of thousands who have been scammed, flim flammed and defrauded out of their property and money by a process, which has been tainted by special interests and a judiciary, which has too cozy a relationship with banking insiders and a corrupt collection process.

A displaced New Orleans resident has been battling urban land pirates and a corrupt judicial system for nearly five years. She says most of us are missing the boat when it comes to the current financial fiasco in the banking, mortgage and financial services industry.

For all of the hooplah about bailing out the banks—yes, it’s really about the banks, not the home owner, the real problem is the massive amount of insider fraud, corruption and lack of understanding on part of some judges about the tainted process they oversee.

Many judges are issuing garnishment orders based on information, which consumer advocates say is often tainted, forged, and out of date. Crooked debt collectors are having a field day with friendly, compliant judges who are issuing foreclosure and garnishment orders on bills, which have been paid on, paid off or never existed in the first place.

Due to this fraud, many homeowners and consumers have had to ransom their credit and property by paying the false debts, rather than try to fight the promissory note pirates in court. One man paid a $6,000 bill, which he didn’t owe, just to clear his credit in order to purchase a home.

While the cat’s away, the mortgage fraud mice are reportedly having a field day in New Orleans. A Louisiana woman claims a property pirate
“used the identity of defunct mortgagor (sic) GE Capital Mortgage Services to carry out a simulated auction of my residence. Although GE Capital Mortgage Services ceased to exist on October, 5, 2002, it became portrayed as the successful May 2005 auction bidder, and the property deed was transferred out of my name and registered in the name of GE Capital. Three days before Katrina, my family was evicted by mortgage giant Freddie Mac because Freddie became recorded as the subsequent July, 2005 purchaser of my home from non-existent GE Capital.”

The victim admits to being behind on mortgage payments, mainly due to an abusive marriage. She claims that the attorneys trying to collect the debt became extremely abusive and were obviously not really interested in having her pay the debt off. According to the debtor, a combination of threats, extortionate tactics by collector attorneys and, in her words “collusion with the local judiciary” resulted in her loss of a home that she was prepared to pay for.

The thing that makes this case very important is the possibility of judicial corruption in the case. The claim, by the alleged victim, that the judge was in collusion with the collector attorneys, is echoed by hundreds of land fraud victims, who claim that the main problem with the foreclosure crisis is the too cozy relationship between judges, attorneys, real estate brokers and financial institutions.

They say the judges are too willing to accept non-existent debts as being real. In many cases of this type, the paperwork is shoddy, even non-existent. Flying in the face of jurisprudence and federal law, many of these alleged debts are little more than he said, she said, where the powerful “he’s and she’s” are corporate attorneys and collection agents..

And so it is, that as far as many former homeowners are concerned, crooked attorneys and their buccaneer bureaucrats inside some of the most reputable banking institutions in the nation, are ripping people off right and left, all with a complacent, even complicit judiciary waiting in the wings. It is this level of high crimes and misdemeanors inside our judiciary that has both victims and consumer advocates frothing at the mouth over the mainstream media’s coverage of the so-called mortgage crisis.

At the heart of the problem are two main issues: one, that judges are too willing to accept an institution’s claim of a debt, and two, victims are often unable to fight the collection process because they are often ignorant of the law, browbeaten by collection agents and attorneys and intimidated by the whole process.

Those who have represented themselves pro se, claim many US Attorneys have laughed at them in open court and dismissed their reliance on US Code, which is the law of the land. When one Midwestern debtor-farmer cited a particular federal statute from a copy of the US Code that he had pulled directly from a congressional website, the US Attorney allegedly dismissed the citation, saying, “Anyone can say something they found on the Internet is law.”

Many of those who have gone up against real and bogus creditors in court say it’s a bad case of David vs. Goliath and David is getting the shaft. Around the nation, activists say judges are relying too much on US Attorneys and corporate counsel, instead of following the law and forcing collection agents and corporate attorneys to do the same.

At the heart of the issue is the alleged failure of the courts to follow the law of the land, or force attorneys and collection agents to do the same. Hundreds of victims of these illegal takings have a common message: they say the current crisis is in part generated by this alleged collusion between the banking industry, real estate and title company corporate insiders and the judiciary.

As long as the judges are believed to lean over backwards in favor of corporate collection agents instead of following the law of the land, nothing will change. As long as wanna be creditors can generate phony garnishment and foreclosure documents, and then have complicit courts turn fraud into fact, nothing will change.

In short, many say what Congress plans is a Band-Aid over a severed artery. The nation’s property owners and credit users are being bled dry, often by debts, which don’t exist.