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Foreclosure firm under fraud investigation By: Max Rameau, 14-Apr-11

As part of the process of securitizing mortgages and screwing up the economy, banks passed ownership of the mortgage and note- who you actually owe the money to- back and forth lots of times. In order to keep track of who actually owns the mortgage, banks have to file with the state an 'assignment of mortgage,' in effect saying to the homeowner 'You are supposed to make payments to Bank A, but now you have to make payments to Bank B.' Just a way of legally and clearly knowing who actually owns the mortgage and, therefore, has the right to be paid and to foreclose. This is standard- and good- stuff. Because this is such a big deal, one party, after all, is forking over their right to collect $200,000 or so, a legal representative from each party has to sign off. This is really important, because if I owe you $200,000, and you register that loan with the government to make sure I pay, the last thing you want is for my brother to go down the courthouse and, without your knowledge, "assign the note" to himself. Suddenly, I don't owe you any more money and you are screwed. So, a vice president from Bank A must sign the assignment to give the right over the mortgage to Bank B. You do not want Bank B going in there and signing the mortgage over to themselves- that would be mass chaos. The problem, if you are a bank executive who can only think about your $10 million annual bonus, is that getting lawyers and vice presidents to sign things and have a notary assure the signature is true, takes alot of time and you know the saying: time is money. It would actually be way quicker, and way cheaper, if, instead of a lawyer or Vice President signing the document, with a notary witnessing, banks could just pay people $8 per hour to pretend as if they are a lawyer or Vice President and have the notary sign the document anyway. Of course, they can't do that, because that would be forgery and fraud. ***** In Cathy Lennon's case, the mortgage was immediately assigned from Countrywide Mortgage to MERS, which is actually not a mortgage holder, but an electronic mortgage service tracking system (1). Because MERS is really just a tracking system, not an actual mortgage holder, as the mortgage meltdown began in 2007, many argued that MERS had no right to initiate foreclosures themselves, but had to assign the mortgage back to the banks for the foreclosure filings (2). On December 17, 2008, an assignment of mortgage was filed with the Monroe County, NY clerk transferring the ownership of the mortgage from MERS back to Countrywide. The assignment was signed by Elpiniki Bechakas, as assistant secretary and vice president of MERS. Sounds legit, right? the VP of MERS signing off on assigning the mortgage to Countrywide. Except what Ms. Bechakas left out of her title is that she is actually the lawyer for Countrywide.

40% of foreclosures in New York state are handled by the law firm of Steven J. Baum. The same Baum law firm under investigation for widespread fraud (3). Countrywide hires the Baum firm to foreclose and the Baum firm assigns the mortgage from MERS to their own client, Countrywide. Remember the conflict of interest we talked about earlier? This is no trivial matter or merely a technicality. In fact in May 2010 a judge dismissed a foreclosurewith prejudice- on a case that not only featured similar facts as this one, but also featured the exact same law firm and exact same lawyer (thanks to foreclosurehamlet.org for the research). There is, in fact, no evidence that Elpiniki Bechakas is an officer for MERS, which means she lied in an official document just to gain standing from which to evict Catherine Lennon from her home. If Ms. Bechakas had no right to assign the mortgage to Countrywide, that means that Countrywide had no more right to foreclose on Catherine Lennon than Pee Wee Herman (sorry Pee Wee). This is more than a technicality, it is highly irregular and the basis from which to void a foreclosure proceeding. But that is not all... Oddly enough, in Catherine Lennon's file there is not one assignment of mortgage from MERS to Countrywide, but two, filed 4 months apart. The second one is filed on March 18, 2009, 3 months after the foreclosure notice was filed with the court on January 6, 2009. It certainly looks like our friends at the law firm of Steven J. Baum might have lost some paperwork, and having been familiar with the 'show me the note' strategy, were trying to cover their tracks by re-filing an assignment of mortgage. Of course, one cannot file for foreclosure until after they filed the assignment of mortgage, which means if they filed for foreclosure before getting the assignment, that would be an illegal filing. Just by dumb luck, it seems, Baum and company did file the assignment on 12/17/2008, so that seemingly reduces their second filing to a mere attempted fraud. Of course, Elpiniki Bechakas signed the paperwork, but I noticed something a bit funny. Take a look:

Signature on 12/17/2008

Signature on 03/18/2009

Do the signatures look like they were not made by the same person? I am not a handwriting expert, so I did more looking around. Here are some more Bechakas signature samples:

www.scribd.com/doc/51849246/Elpiniki-Bechakas-signature-sampler www.scribd.com/doc/51849195/Spurious-Elpiniki-Bechakas-Assignment Still not totally convinced, I went to this solid legal blog, Wall Street, Main Street. In it, attorney Nicholas Moccia talks about his run ins with Elpiniki. He has defended many homeowners, including a fair amount that had their cases dismissed because of irregularities from Bechakas and the Baum firm. In this particular case, however, he noticed that Bechakas' signature changed drastically from one style to another entirely. So, he filed a motion to dismiss claiming that Bechakas, a lawyer, did not actually sign the documents, but, instead a non lawyer robo-signer did the dirty work. Read the Wall Street, Mainstreet blog for yourself. Just to be perfectly clear, getting someone else to pretend to be a lawyer to robo-sign documents and then have a notary witness the signature is far more than mere "irregularities"- it is out and out fraud. If the two signatures on those two assignment documents do not match, this is a clear case of fraud. An expert needs to look at these documents and determine who signed them. If the right to foreclose on Catherine Lennon was gained through fraud, then Countrywide- which was later absorbed by Bank of America- had no right to foreclose on or evict her. So, the real question is not should Catherine Lennon get her home back, it is how many people at the Baum firm, Countrywide, Bank of America and Fannie Mae should go to jail for putting the Lennon-Griffin family through this hell? These irregularities and potential fraud is exactly what 60 minutes covered a few weeks back. Watch: NOTES (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MERS (2) http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/13/us-usa-foreclosures-mersidUSTRE69C69720101013 (3) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/business/09foreclose.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all Take Back the Land www.takebacktheland.org afrimax@takebacktheland.org PO Box 4570 Washington, DC 20017 786-231-3446 fax: Powered by NiaCMS.