Self Serving Fabrications: Watch for "Attorney in Fact"

In short, the proffer of a document signed not by the grantor or assignor but by a person with limited authority and no knowledge, on behalf of a company claiming to be attorney in fact is an empty self-serving document that provides escape hatches in the event a court actually looks at the document. It is as empty as the Trusts themselves that never operated nor did they purchase any loans.

If you had a promissory note that was payable to someone else, you would need to get it endorsed by the Payee to yourself in order to negotiate it. No bank, large or small, would accept the note as collateral for a loan without several conditions being satisfied:

1. The maker of the note would be required to verify that the debt and the fact that it is not in dispute or default. This is standard practice in the banking industry.
2. The Payee on the note would be required to endorse it without qualification to you. Like a check, in which you endorse it over to someone else, you would say “Pay to the order of John Smith.”
3. The bank would need to see and probably keep the original promissory note in its vault.
4. The credit-worthiness of the maker would be verified by the bank.
5. Your credit worthiness would be verified by the bank.

Now imagine that instead of an endorsement from the payee on the note, you instead presented the bank with an endorsement signed by you as attorney in fact for the payee. So if the note was payable to John Jones, you are asking the bank to accept your own signature instead of John Jones because you are the authorized as an agent of John Jones.  No bank would accept such an endorsement without the above-stated requirements PLUS the following:

1. An explanation  as to why John Jones didn’t execute the endorsement himself. So in plain language, why did John Jones need an agent to endorse the note or perform anything else in relation to the note? These are the rules of the road in the banking and lending industry. The transaction must be, beyond all reasonable doubt, completely credible. If the bank sniffs trouble, they will not lend you money using the note as collateral. Why should they?
2. A properly executed Power of Attorney naming you as attorney in fact (i.e., agent for John Jones).
3. If John Jones is actually a legal entity like a corporation or trust, then it would need a resolution from the Board of Directors or parties to the Trust appointing you as attorney in fact with specific powers to that completely cover the proposed authority to endorse the promissory note..
4. Verification from the John Jones Corporation that the Power of Attorney is still in full force and effect.

My point is that we should apply the same rules to the banks as they apply to themselves. If they wouldn’t accept the power of attorney or they were not satisfied that the attorney in fact was really authorized and they were not convinced that the loan or note or mortgage was actually owned by any of the parties in the paper chain, why should they not be required to conform to the same rules of the road as standard industry practices which are in reality nothing more than commons sense?

What we are seeing in thousands of cases, is the use of so-called Powers of Attorney that in fact are self serving fabrications, in which Chase (for example) is endorsing the note to itself as assignee on behalf of WAMU (for example) as attorney in fact. A close examination shows that this is a “Chase endorses to Chase” situation without any actual transaction and nothing else. There is no Power of Attorney attached to the endorsement and the later fabrication of authority from the FDIC or WAMU serves no purpose on loans that had already been sold by WAMU and no effect on endorsements purportedly executed before the “Power of Attorney” was executed. There is no corporate resolution appointing Chase. The document is worthless. I recently had a case where Chase was not involved but US Bank as the supposed Plaintiff relied upon a Power of Attorney executed by Chase.

This is a game to the banks and real life to everyone else. My experience is that when such documents are challenged, the “bank” generally loses. In two cases involving US Bank and Chase, the “Plaintiff” produced at trial a Power of Attorney from Chase. And there were other documents where the party supposedly assigning, endorsing etc. were executed by a person who had no such authority, with no corporate resolution and no other evidence that would tend to show the document was trustworthy. We won both cases and the Judge in each case tore apart the case represented by the false Plaintiff, US Bank, “as trustee.”

The devil is in the details — but so is victory in the courtroom.

Tags: Attorney in fact, Chase, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, fraud, Power of Attorney, securitization, US BANK, WAMU
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