you have to pay the CURRENT owner of the note.
Banks of sold promissory notes are just servicing agents. For eample Bank of America bought the rights to SERVICE mortages a short while back.
You have no provable chain of custody/title since the note was exectued, if the note even exists.
make no mistake, these are not accidents or a few isolated incidents.
Prove it. There is no evidence that the "giant banks" engaged in some sort of conspiracy to intentionally lose/destroy/alter documentation of mortgages and deeds of ownership.
But in this case the tinfoil hat crowd, Obama and the media have gotten together and are trying to sell that very idea.