By Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Florida's purported largest foreclosure law firm filed thousands of documents to take people's homes that contained deceptive and intentionally ambiguous information, according to a proposed class action lawsuit.
The suit, filed last month in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, says David J. Stern and his Plantation-based legal team violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by generating fraudulent mortgage assignments when pursuing foreclosures.
An assignment is held by the entity that has the right to receive mortgage payments.
Stern's practice, which the lawsuit claims filed up to 7,000 new foreclosure cases in Florida every month last year, also is alleged to have pursued foreclosures for lenders that didn't own the debt on the homes.
"There really is no proper plaintiff to sue and foreclose and that's what this charade is designed to cover," said Fort Lauderdale attorney Kenneth Eric Trent, who is seeking class action status and filed the suit on behalf of Oakland Park resident Ignacio Damian Figueroa. "There is no real holder of the note and the mortgage anymore because they broke it up and sold it to 10, 12, 20 people."
During the real estate boom, loans traded hands often, sometimes being bundled or split up and sold to investors.
Tracking the true owner of the debt sometimes can be a challenge. When pressed for proof of debt ownership, Trent said Stern's office would create an assignment signed by a Stern employee instead of a representative of the lender attempting to foreclose.
"The assignments were meaningless shells designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the judiciary and ease the burden upon the unknown real parties of interest," the lawsuit states.
Miami attorney Jeffrey Tew, of Tew Cardenas law firm, is representing Stern. He said Stern and his company have done nothing wrong, and that it is accepted practice for a firm employee to be given power to approve assignments.
"This foreclosure crisis was not created by David Stern, but it is so huge and a lot of people are in very bad shape, so some of the finger-pointing goes to him," Tew said.
Trent also named the Mortgage Electronic Registration Service Corp. as a defendant. The private entity, known as MERS, was created by banks in 1995 to track mortgage ownership electronically and reduce paper documents.
Trent says MERS helps hide the identity of loan ownership and that it conspired with Stern to "confuse everyone as to who owned what."
Tew called that claim "fantastical." He did acknowledge, however, that errors can happen.
West Palm Beach foreclosure defense attorney Thomas Ice found 21 examples last year of assignments from Stern's office that had been executed with a date before the notary's commission was issued.
In a deposition, a Stern employee agreed with Ice that "sloppiness" was to blame for the irregularity.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser, who handles the county's foreclosures, said she's dismissed cases when she found problems with assignments. She wasn't speaking directly about cases filed by Stern, and said it's only happened a few times.
"I haven't seen any widespread problem," Sasser said.
Reprinted courtesy of The Palm Beach Post, original article appears here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/lawsuit-claims-that-floridas-largest-foreclosure-firm-faked-839393.html
