18 Notaries Hide Behind 5th Amendment Right, Lawyers Admitting They Can't Vouch for Their own Signatures

• Attorney Thomas P. Dore on Tuesday conceded that five pending foreclosure proceedings should be dismissed because he could not vouch for his signature on documents filed with the Baltimore City Circuit Court. Judge W. Michel Pierson must still determine what action to take, if any, with regard to at least 15 other foreclosures involving notarized documents not actually signed by Dore, who represents lenders.

• Eighteen current and former notaries public invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify regarding their certification of Dore’s signature on the documents. “Truthful answers to questions posed might tend to incriminate them,” the notaries’ attorney, David B. Irwin, of Irwin Green & Dexter LLP in Towson, told Pierson. “I have no doubt that they have a good-faith invocation right.”

• Notaries who knowingly certify false signatures face possible criminal sanctions for misconduct in office or fraud.(1)

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• Dore came under heavy questioning from the judge and a special master appointed to review his foreclosure documents for irregularities. At the end of his testimony, Dore expressed regret to the court for failing to sign the documents himself but said he always acted in good faith.

• “I apologize for having put you through this,” Dore told Pierson from the stand. “I made a terrible mistake,” he added. “It was never my intent to deceive the court. It was frankly stupid, your honor.”

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• [D]ore’s system of authorizing others to sign for him “had gotten out of hand” and he discovered that staff members whom he had not authorized to sign his name had, in fact, signed foreclosure documents, he said.

• “Ethically, I should have signed those affidavits myself,” Dore said. “I realized I made a stupid mistake and we changed our practice.” Dore insisted that at no time did documents leave his office without being carefully reviewed for accuracy.

For more, see Notaries invoke Fifth Amendment in foreclosure hearings.

(1) The recent foreclosure robosigner disaster has revealed that the role of the Notary Public and the fundamentals of notarization are not fully understood either by the public at large or by many of the notaries themselves.

In light of this disaster, the National Notary Association has stepped up and released a whitepaper entitled, “Why Notarization Is More Relevant And Vital Than Ever.”

According to their recent press release, this whitepaper addresses why notarization remains essential to protecting the integrity of today’s transactions, what specifically occurs in a notarial act, and the three primary types of official notarizations. It also details how America’s Notaries Public are supposed to help deter fraud and forgery by serving as trusted, impartial witnesses to millions of business transactions every day, an obligation that these robosigners obviously need to be periodically reminded of. According to the white paper:

• Impartiality [] means that Notaries must operate independently and resist improper or illegal requests or demands of supervisors, customers, friends or family members. There may be times when signers, employers or other third parties request that a Notary take “shortcuts” — like not requiring the personal appearance of a signer — for the sake of expedience. But, such improprieties are a violation of state law and can carry severe criminal and civil penalties.