Starting Soon! 3PM Pacific/6PM Eastern-Attorney Charles Marshall & The West Coast Foreclosure Show: Using the LPS Consent Order and FOIA to obtain information.

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The Power of FOIAs to uncover Foreclosure Data

Read about Eric Mains here.

LPS Consent Judgement

On the last West Coast Foreclosure Show (August 3, 2017), California attorney Charles Marshall was joined by former FDIC team manager Eric Mains who has been fighting his own foreclosure case.  Mains believes an important tool is the use of Freedom of Information Requests to obtain information regarding the LPS Consent Judgement that was signed by all state Attorney Generals.

The LPS Consent Judgement required that foreclosure violations be corrected and forgeries remediated.  Violating the consent judgement and commencing and proceeding with forgeries in a foreclosure action is a damage that targets the foreclosure mills (bank attorneys) who knew they were violating the consent judgement, but also LPS and servicers.

When you write to your Attorney General, remember it wasn’t just “Linda Green” whose name was forged on LPS documents, there were hundreds of people doing the exact same thing for LPS/BlackKnight.  LPS employees were signing other employee’s names to documents, notaries were signing off on these fraudulent documents and also backdating assignments when necessary.

Lynn Szymoniak’s qui tam lawsuit named dozens of suspected LPS forgers by name and location, so it is a cakewalk to see if their names appear on assignments used in past foreclosures or current ones. Simply google the name on the party that endorsed your note or signed your assignment.   You can start comparing signatures to see if they match.  It is highly likely that even though required to remediate the forgeries rather than proceed with litigation (as in my case) that many attorneys hired and retained by LPS/Black Knight proceeded with foreclosure anyway in violation of the CJ’s terms. 

Although you may not get a past foreclosure overturned, the consent judgement specifically allows consumers to sue because they were damaged by litigation which was commenced and proceeded based on forged documents in violation of a consent judgment.

Livinglies has a client who recently discovered he lost his Appeal against a servicer because its attorneys, who used LPS/Black Knight for “foreclosure services”, altered a mortgage note by adding an endorsement in its Appellee brief in 2014.  Although this is fraud on the court, his attorney at the time failed to catch the forged endorsement until the court had already ruled against the homeowner.   This is clearly a violation of the consent judgement if the forged endorsement can be tied back to LPS/Black Knight.  That is why it is important that homeowners demand that their Attorney General release information related to the consent judgement because it appears that LPS/Black Knight did not stop its illegal practices after all.

Eric Mains brings up the Statute of Frauds: 10 years for liability and Rule 60(b) Motions to overturn foreclosure judgement based on forgery. Check your state time limits.  Unfortunately, you may not be able to get your home back, but you might be able to sue for damages.    If  foreclosure-mill law firms working for servicers like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank, Nationstar and others continued to order documents that were prohibited by the consent judgement, and LPS supplied them, these law firms could be sued for discovery violation, fraud, fraud on the court and racketeering.

Obtaining information about LPS/Black Knight could result in another round of class actions against law firms and Black Knight for deliberately violating the consent judgement’s terms.

The state AG offices have troves of information that can be used by damaged homeowners, but the information is being illegally withheld.  If dozens of forgeries are discovered to have been used in foreclosures despite the required terms, the AG’s are cornered and will be forced to take action because the public will condemn that they took money from LPS and did nothing else to protect homeowners when they are REQUIRED to have followed up and taken action on these forgeries.  Obtaining the Compliance Reports is key and the AG’s are on the hook through January 2018 to enforce compliance with the consent judgement.

All consumers and their attorneys should be looking to see if any LPS robosigners were used in their foreclosures, and if so, looking to file for damage claims with the knowing violations of the consent judgement as the basis.

Eric Mains has taken action by demanding that the AG provide the information that is required to be submitted to the AG in the consent judgement.  If EVERYONE from consumers to new outlets and attorneys start FOIA’ng each state’s AG office using the same form he did- the AGs will have a BIG problem because there are 50 separate AG offices and millions of homeowners damaged by LPS/Black Knight.  Not every office will be able to hide the information when homeowners unite and sue their AGs to comply with the consent judgement.

Eric Mains is not going to go away quietly while his appeal is pending with the SCOTUS.  He intends to go to every media outlet, consumer organization and attorney with an interest in this information.  He believes that the judiciary will not allow the AGs to block the release of information that is in the public interest, but that does not fall under attorney privilege.

Are you ready?  Livinglies recommends that readers organize and create state committees to demand that the AG in their state provide the information mandated by the LPS/Black Knight consent judgement.

Eric will also discuss his experience with Onewest Bank and Financial Freedom while employed with the FDIC.  He was assigned to a group overseeing HECM Loans…when he became aware Financial Freedom was asking borrowers to sign loan documents years after the fact that were unenforceable.

Attorney Charles Marshall can be contacted:

Charles Marshall, Esq.

Law Office of Charles T. Marshall

415 Laurel St., #405

San Diego, CA 92101

cmarshall@marshallestatelaw.com

Phone 619.807.2628

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