Posted on 07/18/2010 8:22:01 AM PDT by Chunga85
You could call him the foreclosure king of Florida.
As lawyer for several major banks, David J. Stern handles 20 percent of all foreclosure cases in the nation's fourth most populous state. It is from Stern's law firm that well over 100,000 Floridians, including many in the Tampa Bay area, have received the dreaded notice to pay up or face losing their homes.
The foreclosure business has been good to Stern, who lives in a $15 million Fort Lauderdale mansion and reaped $58.5 million by selling his back-office operations to a new public company in which he is a major shareholder.
But as his case load has grown, so have the controversies.
This spring, a Pasco County judge threw out a foreclosure case against a Wesley Chapel man after ruling that Stern's firm had submitted a clearly fraudulent document.
In South Florida, a foreclosure defense lawyer discovered more than 20 mortgage documents submitted by Stern's firm that bore notary seals that did not exist at the time the documents supposedly were notarized.
The Florida Bar reprimanded Stern in 2002 for overcharging and misleading clients, and is now considering a complaint questioning whether he should be allowed to farm out so much of his firm's business to nonlawyers.
Stern declined to be interviewed for this story.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/
Scavengers always find the carcases.
.
Remember this old joke?
Why do buzzards never eat dead lawyers?
Professional courtesy.
The one I heard was
Why don’t sharks eat lawyers?
Sharks don’t eat their young.
Andy’s brother?????
Why is he allowed to practice Law??
......mortgage documents submitted by Stern’s firm that bore notary seals that did not exist at the time the documents supposedly were notarized......
The article is not clear here. Did the lawyer fradulenty notarize the loan documents or the loan originator?
It’s more likely one of his many minions did it for him.
Here is one example of an “Assignment of Mortgage” executed by the Law Offices of David J. Stern.
Witnessed, notarized, yet unsigned.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32979257/Cheryl-Samons-David-J-Stern
Deutsche Bank then turns around and sells the foreclosed property at 40-50% less than the listed mortgage balance at foreclosure. How can they do that and stay in business? Easy when you never actually purchased the mortgage. Pure profit.
Obviously there are some problems with the way Stern runs his law firm..............but it gets worse.
One confidential report from a Florida family revealed that the Law Office of David J. Stern, Plantation, Fla, had mistakenly filed a foreclosure that included a Federal Tax Lien of another man with the same name but with a different SS Number, a different middle name, and a different Date of Birth, who had never lived at the address of the foreclosed property.
In their rush to foreclose the Law Office of David J. Stern, Plantation, Fla, served a Complaint on the United States of America as a co-defendant in the Foreclosure...... b/c they held the Federal Tax Lien on the ”other” man.
The Law Office of David J. Stern then served Foreclosure Complaint papers on the US Attorney’s Office and indicated that the subject of their Federal Tax Lien was the owner of the property in the Foreclosure Complaint..........which was obviously incorrect.
The Law Office of David J. Stern did no research------ obviously never checked the SSN on the mortgage papers of their client Deutsche Bank to see if they were foreclosing on the right person--------and by adding the wrong Federal Tax Lien to the Foreclosure Complaint they have forever ruined the credit of this family, who must now fight off the creditors of some other person.
SOURCE http://pibillwarner.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/law-office-of-david-j-stern-mistakenly-files-foreclosure-on-florida-family-includes-federal-tax-lien-of-another-man
Homeowners Associations: The New Foreclosure - CNBC, 2010 July 16, by Diana Olick
Neither did I, but Goodman's homeowners association did just that in April because he owed $769 in back dues. "I owed the HOA very little money in comparison to what I owed my mortgage company and my mortgage company, which is Chase , bent over backwards to help me," Goodman adds. Even as he was working on a loan modification, Goodman's HOA, Lookout Canyon Creek in San Antonio, TX took title to his home on the steps of the Bexar County Courthouse. They purchased the home for $2,019, about the amount of the dues plus attorneys fees. Apparently this is not at all uncommon these days, as struggling borrowers let the dues slide, thinking it's more important to throw all their cash into their mortgage payments. Thirty-four states allow for judicial foreclosures by HOAs, although the rules and redemption periods differ. The redemption period is the amount of time that a homeowner has to pay up all the dues and fees after the HOA has officially taken title to the home. Texas has a 180 day redemption period. Florida's is just 10 days. "People don't understand that by failing to pay the association dues they can lose their home and be put in the street," says Florida attorney Robert Tankel. He represents HOAs in Florida and his business is positively booming. "I hear the words Nazi and Communist used interchangeably probably twice a week," he adds, but he's gone from a staff of one paralegal and a receptionist just a few years ago to 17 paralegals and a much larger support staff. Tankel makes no apologies for what he does. "The associations and their boards of directors have a duty to the people who pay and the duty is to collect the assessments." ..... "I had no idea that they could foreclose," Tony Goodman tells me.
Then, there is this: Lawyer convicted of mortgage-rescue fraud - Chicago Tribune, 2010 July 13, by Ameet Sachdev, Chicago Law
His conviction offers a cautionary tale for delinquent borrowers who are the most vulnerable to the myriad of mortgage fraud swindles. Helton was involved in a scheme when the housing market was on the way up. But suspect foreclosure assistance programs have become more rampant during the housing downturn, according to federal law enforcement. Helton was the subject of a 2006 Tribune investigation into mortgage fraud. In its investigation the Tribune found that in 2005 Helton helped persuade a 91-year-old woman to sign over her sole asset, a brick home on Chicago's West Side co-owned with her nephew. Nine months after the story was published, federal prosecutors charged Helton with bankruptcy fraud for allegedly concealing home sales from U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The nephew, Kelvin Martin, was one of at least nine alleged victims. After a monthlong trial, the jury convicted Helton of all the charges against him — nine counts of bankruptcy fraud and three counts of wire fraud related to mortgage loans. Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and he faces a maximum five years in prison for each bankruptcy charge. Helton is free on bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for the end of September. ..... Two other defendants, Charles White and Felicia Ford, were later added to Helton's case. They also were found guilty of wire fraud. Gregg Szilagyi, a bankruptcy trustee who testified at trial, described the crime as "despicable." "They were taking advantage of people at their lowest point, facing foreclosure," Szilagyi said. "They wound up stealing their property." ..... Norton Helton, a former Chicago attorney who once offered personal-finance advice on the radio, was found guilty Friday of bilking distressed homeowners through a fraudulent foreclosure rescue program.
Homes lost to foreclosure on track for 1M in 2010 - MC / AP, 2010 July 15, by Alex Veiga
Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. "That would be unprecedented," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. By comparison, lenders have historically taken over about 100,000 homes a year, Sharga said. The surge in home repossessions reflects the dynamic of a foreclosure crisis that has shown signs of leveling off in recent months, but remains a crippling drag on the housing market. The pace at which new homes falling behind in payments and entering the foreclosure process has slowed as banks continue to let delinquent borrowers stay longer in their homes rather than adding to the glut of foreclosed properties on the market. At the same time, lenders have stepped up repossessions in an effort to clear out the backlog of distressed inventory on their books. The number of households facing foreclosure in the first half of the year climbed 8 percent versus the same period last year, but dropped 5 percent from the last six months of 2009, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions. ..... More than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans.
On the light side of populist schadenfreude, there is this news:
Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are Now the Very Rich - CNBC / NYT, 2010 July 09
The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley. Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population. More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic. By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent. Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment. “The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist. Five properties here in Los Altos were scheduled for foreclosure auctions in a recent issue of The Los Altos Town Crier, the weekly newspaper where local legal notices are posted. Four have unpaid mortgage debt of more than $1 million, with the highest amount $2.8 million. Not so long ago, said Chris Redden, the paper’s advertising services director, “it was a surprise if we had one foreclosure a month.” The sheriff in Cook County, Ill., is increasingly in demand to evict foreclosed owners in the upscale suburbs to the north and west of Chicago—like Wilmette, La Grange and Glencoe. The occupants are always gone by the time a deputy gets there, a spokesman said, but just barely. In Las Vegas, Ken Lowman, a longtime agent for luxury properties, said four of the 11 sales he brokered in June were distressed properties. “I’ve never seen the wealthy hit like this before,” Mr. Lowman said. “They made their plans based on the best of all possible scenarios — that their incomes would continue to grow, that real estate would never drop. Not many had a plan B.” The defaulting owners, he said, often remain as long as they can. “They’re in denial,” he said. ..... Lenders are fearful that many of the 11 million or so homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will walk away from them, especially if the real estate market begins to weaken again. The so-called strategic defaults have become a matter of intense debate in recent months. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , the two quasi-governmental mortgage finance companies that own most of the mortgages in America with a value of less than $500,000, are alternately pleading with distressed homeowners not to be bad citizens and brandishing a stick at them. ..... The CoreLogic data suggest that the rich do not seem to have concerns about the civic good uppermost in their mind, especially when it comes to investment and second homes. Nor do they appear to be particularly worried about being sued by their lender or frozen out of future loans by Fannie Mae, possible consequences of default. ..... The rich and successful often come naturally to this sort of attitude, said Brent T. White, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied strategic defaults. “They may be less susceptible to the shame and fear-mongering used by the government and the mortgage banking industry to keep underwater homeowners from acting in their financial best interest,” Mr. White said. ..... LOS ALTOS, Calif. — No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.
Class Action Lawsuit to be Filed Against David J. Stern.
To potentially qualify, one must have lost one’s home to foreclosure within the last three years; the plaintiff must have been represented by the Law Office of
David J. Stern; and your mortgage must have included the standard MERS language.
For more info: http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/profiles/blogs/class-action-forming-relating?xg_source=activity
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