The man who foreclosed on Bank of America

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The Forecloser
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John Oliver of comedy central's "The Daily Show" filed a report on how the Bank of America foreclosed on a couple that had paid cash for their house. This Florida couple never had a mortgage let alone a home loan with Bank of America. Nonetheless, the bank foreclosed on the couple.

After they dealt with the issue at some level of expense, the married couple hired a rookie lawyer to try and get their money back from the North Carolina financial institution. The bank ignored their requests for months, so the couple foreclosed on their local BoA branch, hired a moving a company and went to the location with a Sheriff to foreclose and confiscate the banks furniture and other assets to get the value of their judgement.

Needless to say, after a few phone calls BoA cut the couple a check. While this skit has a lot of laughs, the story is all still true.

Do Forgeries Void Mortgage Foreclosures?

The Washington Post details an interesting example of how forgeries on signatures of numerous foreclosure documents are bound to cause head-aches for bank and opportunities for lawyers to delay foreclosure proceedings.

For example, Linda Green claimed to be an executive of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, MERS and dozens of other lenders while signing off on tens of thousands of affidavits. In many cases her signature looks like it was actually signed by somebody else.

So depending on the paper work, robo-signers (like Ms. Green) claim to have knowledge of the case and the lending documents in question. Now the US Attorney in Florida, attorney generals from all 50 states and many senators are conducting investigations that may lead to the foreclosures being stopped or delayed.

The Washington Post speculates that some judges were being overwhelmed by the les pending procedures as well and perhaps didn't give each case as much attention and scrutiny as what they really deserved.

US Representative Grayson Asks Supreme Court to Stop Foreclosures

According to the Orlando Sentinel Florida's congressional representative has asked the state's supreme court to stop all mortgage foreclosures handled by a few notorious law firms in florida that have supposedly fudged some of the documentation. If you're falling behind on your payments in the sunshine state, this may end up buying you a little bit more time.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson has asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt mortgage foreclosure cases handled by three law firms under investigation by the state's attorney general.

In a letter sent Monday, Grayson urges Chief Justice Charles Canady to suspend cases filed by three firms he calls "foreclosure mills:" the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson; Shapiro & Freeman; and the Law Offices of David J. Stern.

Together, those firms handle about 80 percent of the foreclosures in Florida, according to Grayson. Attorney General Bill McCollum is investigating whether the firms presented courts with fabricated documents to obtain judgments against homeowners.

In one Jacksonville case, a judge blocked a foreclosure brought by Washington Mutual Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank, and their law firm, Shapiro & Fishman, and accused them of fraud when it turned out the mortgage was owned by Fannie Mae.

"I respectfully request that you abate all foreclosures involving these firms until the attorney general … has finished his investigations of those firms for document fraud," Grayson wrote.