I have been in the Real Estate Profession as a Licensed Appraiser for over (25) years. The last seven years in this profession have been deplorable. Every appraisal assignment I went on the homeowner was being foreclosed on. This is NOT normal by any means. As time went on the foreclosure numbers grew rapidly and people weren’t just strangers anymore. They were friends, neighbors, relatives, and real estate colleagues along with just about anyone else you can think of.
Going into vacant homes were families once lived became my daily routine. Seeing the children’s rooms was really heart breaking to me. I told my bank clients that I didn’t want any more foreclosure work. Each bank insisted that foreclosure work was the only work assignments that they had. Foreclosure assignments were the only work available in Middlesex County or any county in New Jersey for that matter. This scared and depressed me enough to stop working, take a step back and analyze what was taking place in the real estate market.
I knocked on doors of homeowners who were in foreclosure but were actually still living in their homes. It soon became clear that no matter which lender their mortgage was with they were all told the same line “We don’t want your home, we want to help you get a modification.” At that time it was mysterious to me as to why not one homeowner was able to obtain a loan modification. These homeowners were giving the banks every penny they had. Some gave as much as $25,000 to become current on mortgage payments and were still denied any loan modification and were still foreclosed on. There were no survivors. It took me years to investigate the “WHY.”
To make a long story short, you can’t modify what you don’t own. They have no rights to foreclose. There are lending laws and the major banks in our country did not follow them. They created their own shadow banking system. They stopped lending with their own money sometime around 1992 and instead used the pension funds of municipal workers across American as well as teachers, police and firemen to name a few.
The beloved “Twinkie” was one of their victims. Their fraud has created major loss of services, jobs, pensions, equity, personal wealth and caused homeless families everywhere in our country. You will NOT see this information on your evening news. It is purposely being kept from you. This fraud has spread globally and if you want to find out what is happening in your own backyard you must turn to alternative means. An insightful depiction of the fraud in our country can be viewed via the internet by watching the documentary “The Great Spanish Crash.”
You can also research and view articles on the internet from reliable sources such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, Huffington Post and several other respected sites such as stopforeclosurefraud.com. 4closurefraud.com, msfraud.org, foreclosuredefensenationwide.com and livinglies.com weblog. I read and reviewed many lawsuits against the banks by homeowners on the site Scribd.com. Most of these sites are written on lawyer level and some are written by lawyers, but they all contain valuable information for homeowners in distress to save their homes.
As the fraud was being uncovered homeowners started to save their homes. There is so much complexity to the fraud it is impossible to fit it all into one article and the banks fight everyday to cover up their trail of deception so there is something new happening and game changes all the time. You don’t have to be in foreclosure to be a victim of mortgage fraud. Every mortgage instrument that contains the language “MERS” in it’s content which can usually be found on the front page is subject to possible fraud that your mortgage was not perfected and possibly unenforceable in a foreclosure action. The banksters with their own shadow banking system separated the Mortgage and Note using the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems or MERS, leaving your Note vulnerable to be sold to multiple investors.
What this means is that one day after your mortgage is paid off, some Tom, Dick or Harry may come knocking looking to be paid for a debt that you thought was already paid. In earlier days when you mortgage was paid off your original mortgage and note were returned to you marked “Paid in Full” and some people had a mortgage burning party. For some reason in today’s world they refuse to return your originals to you and all you get is a document entitled “Satisfaction of Mortgage”.
These documents are supposed to be kept in the care of a Trustee, it is impossible for every Trustee in America to have lost every single borrowers mortgage and note instruments. You’re entitled to get back the originals. Your documents were not protected, your chain of title has been clouded, your documents were destroyed, you were lied to about getting a loan modification and common law was not followed.
These Big Banks have also been found guilty of forcing people with excellent credit into foreclosure by simply paying the homeowners taxes and insurance late on purpose even though the mortgage payment was always paid on time.
What possible reason would they have for doing this? The reason is that there are millions upon millions of homes all across America that have defective mortgage and note documents that are most likely unenforceable in a foreclosure action and if the case is present properly could lead to the homeowner obtaining a “free house.” The sad truth is some Judges still don’t get it. It was a ponzi scheme. The money lent to you came from American’s pension funds not the banks deposit money. The banks put their name on the Notes as the lender a big No, No and Truth in Lending violation. They also insured the Notes in case of default for pennies on the dollar for assets they legally didn’t own. When their scam began to unwind and pension Trustees realized there was no money, lawsuits popped up all across America. The banks ran to the government for a bailout. This was called “Troubled Asset Relief Program” or TARP.
You, the taxpayer bailed out the banks that never lent a penny of their money in the first place. So, to recap, the bank that lent you money at your closing never lent you the money, when you went into default they collected usually the full amount that you owed through the insurance company making the loan paid in full, they also ran to the government and got more money on each loan further paying the loan in full, they continued to extort more money in large sums from homeowners promising to give them modifications on loans that were already paid in full and that they had no legal rights to. They also are alleged to have sold the same Promissory Note over and over to different investors which double or tripled the scam and their profits on money they never lent. It appears we were truly scammed to this extent, tortured and all our money extorted to pay people who should have never been paid in the first place.
Millions of people are homeless, jobless and bankrupt. It is happening more and more everyday. There are estimated over 100,000 homeowners in New Jersey and just reported recently by American Banker that 1 in every 32 homeowners in Florida are in some stage of foreclosure. These numbers are unconscionable. Think of the game of Monopoly, there is only so much money in the game when you start the game. The same is true in the world financial system. There is only so much money. When the average middle class Americans have no money left, it doesn’t just vaporize into thin air. The money moves and when it moves it winds up in someone else’s pocket, this time it all went into the banks pocket.
A ponzi scheme much greater then Bernie Madoff’s. People should try and educate themselves and stand up and fight for their rights and regain the wealth of the middle class. It took me along time to investigate, study and understand the whole process. When I finally felt confident enough, I took my findings to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. They told me they had many complaints from homeowners but none of them had any evidence. I brought them only one quarter of my evidence that fit into a very large brief case. That evidence and my testimony was part of the National State Attorney’s General Settlement that landed homeowners a (25) billion-dollar settlement to save peoples homes and return homes to people who had been wrongfully foreclosed on. Great, wonderful, hip hip hooray! Wrong!!!
As soon as I read the settlement I knew it was prepared in a way to only give each homeowner a total of $2,000 for wrongfully being foreclosing on. I kept my knowledge of this settlement quiet because it was not at all fair to anyone. I let the government play it out and they finally cancelled it on December 31, 2012 a year and half later and considered it as a failure. I also went the FBI with the same information.
I’ve actually been there on several occasions and recently I expressed that this settlement was not working, people were still suffering and I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore waiting for the banks to do the right thing. I told them to be prepared. The banks committed major fraud. Their crimes must be reported to protect you. Report them to your local police department so they can protect you from bank representative who are trespassers, report it to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and to your local FBI. This is the only way they have an indication of what is going on in our lives. You should save and document every phone call, persons name and mail you receive. There are several major banks involved this is why you must seek professional legal counsel.
I must make it clear that this is only legal information not to be construed as legal advice. You should always seek professional legal counsel before acting on any information contained within this article. If you can’t afford an attorney, please try calling Legal Services of New Jersey for assistance. Nothing is a sure thing and the rules change daily, BUT there is strength in numbers. So, tell me who should get the free house because in court only one person can win. Please email me with your opinions, but remember I’m not an attorney and can’t give legal advice. My email address is appraiser58@aol.com I will be happy to share the majority vote at a later time and any further pertinent information.
Susan Batista
Perth Amboy
