EXPOSED Federal Reserve Doc: Go from paper homeowner instruments to electronic. Foreclosure fraud? What fraud?

EXPOSED Federal Reserve Doc: Go from paper homeowner instruments to electronic. Foreclosure fraud? What fraud?
10 July 2014 No Comment
**Exclusive****Must Credit****Publish Excerpts Only**

In Legalizing Mortgage Theft? I asked who was behind the push to eliminate paper mortgage instruments and move to an easily manipulated national electronic mortgage registry to the Uniform Law Commission (ULC). ULC is drafting the Home Foreclosure Procedures Act (HFPA).
This is important to ask considering that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) has perpetrated widespread fraud against innocent homeowners through their national electronic registry. If you own a home or live somewhere, this affects you.
MERS, also known as MERSCORP, has been accused of being ground zero of a Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) fraud enterprise that contributed to the 2008 economic collapse. The mortgage bankers used MERS to commandeer the land records without any legislative approval. “MERS’s system is not an alternative to statutory foreclosure law.” (See: Eleazar Salazar, Bankruptcy No: 10-17456-MM13) Today, the damage continues. MERS has been named as a defendant in countless lawsuits nationwide for illegally foreclosing on homeowners.
Enter the Federal Reserve.

In an exclusively obtained letter from Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., General Counsel and Executive Vice President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, to William R. Breetz, the Chair of the ULC’S HFPA Drafting Committee, Baxter wrote: “In contemplating a companion Federal law that would authorize and institute an electronic registry and transfer system for mortgage notes and mortgages, I envision legislation that supports the creation of a national system that moves the industry away from paper but remained information rich, is transparent and accessible to all stakeholders … is credibly governed (suggesting under the supervision of Federal Reserve or FHFA –Federal Housing Finance Agency, HUD etc.) and, where appropriate, freed from state law variations.”
*See NY Fed letter to ULC below
As I previously reported, the ULC’s current HFPA draft erroneously claimed: “A mortgage registry does not presently exist, but there is substantial interest in its creation.” (HFPA p. 29).
In a long, wide ranging, phone interview with the ULC’s Chair of HFPA, William Breetz, after I asked him how HFPA incorrectly claimed that an electronic registry did not exist, Breetz said, “If there is a mix up, we need to correct the text … Of course I am very aware of what MERS is and does. One of their legislative liaisons has been very active with us from the very beginning.”
The Federal Reserve is a privately owned central bank, despite its misleading name suggesting otherwise. The Federal Reserve admits it is privately owned. The American people cannot hold it accountable. It is not known for its transparency.
During a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) court battle with Bloomberg, for instance, the Federal Reserve clearly stated it was “not an agency” of the federal government and therefore not subject to FOIA.
Baxter’s letter is cc’d to ULC’s Lucy Grelle and John A. Sebert and dated October 29, 2012.


Baxter acknowledged the “voluminous litigation,” against MERS which Breetz is also very aware of, and confirmed that “MERS is a financial market utility that is focused on meeting the needs of the lenders who own and control it.” The “lenders” are the major banks.
Baxter wrote to Breetz: “Much attention is now being paid to ways of enhancing MERS to meet the needs of borrowers and the concerns expressed about MERS by some courts.” The “borrowers” are the homeowners.
He blamed the concerns, not on the fraud, but on “the basic foundation on which MERS was built (that it must operate within the current legal infrastructure).” MERS “is fatally flawed because of infirmities in the current legal infrastructure.”
Many would disagree with the NY Fed’s counsel. In an article for Huffington Post University professor L. Randall Wray wrote that MERS is flawed because its business model is illegal:

Wall Street wanted to transform America’s housing sector into the world’s biggest casino and needed to undermine property rights to make it easier to run the scam. The payoffs were bigger for lenders who could induce homeowners to take mortgages they could not possibly afford. The mortgages were packaged into securities sold-on to patsy investors who were defrauded by the “reps and warranties” falsely certifying the securities as backed by top grade loans. In fact the securities were not backed by mortgages, and in any case the mortgages were sure to go bad. Given that homeowners would default, the Wall Street banks that serviced the mortgages needed a foreclosure steamroller to quickly and cheaply throw families out of the homes so that they could be resold to serve as purported collateral for yet more gambling bets. MERS — the industry’s creation — stepped up to the plate to facilitate the fraud. [Judge Robert Grossman NY bankruptcy court] has ruled that its practices are illegal. MERS and the banks lose; investors and homeowners win.

In an interview with Jack Wright of MSFraud.org, who had his house stolen at gunpoint by rogue banks 20 years after his loan was fully discharged, and has studied illegal foreclosures since 1997, warned about the dangers of converting paper real estate notes to be electronic, “A computer or copy machine cannot duplicate or transfer the inseparable intrinsic elements of the original; namely the rights, authority, or monetary value embedded in the original. Yet many of our courts are allowing property to be transferred by entities known for fabricating negotiable instruments and other documents to falsely claim ownership. We just witnessed JPMorgan Chase getting caught for falsifying ownership documents again in Kalicki v. JPMorgan Chase Bank.”
Wright added: “The UCC requires physical possession of the note at commencement. You can’t take a photograph of an original million-dollar painting, print it out, falsely claim it as the original, and sell it for a million dollars. Yet courts across the country authorize and even authenticate the banks’ ‘altered’ copies. In a recent Oklahoma case, the servicer for an unnamed party in interest did not have the original note. In its attempt to prove standing, the servicer eventually submitted three markedly different versions of the missing original. Judge Carlos Chapelle ignored the defendant’s motion to strike and authenticated all three. So the servicer went from having no note – to having three notes on the same property; all done unlawfully with a computer and a printer.”
Homeowners: 2. Bankers: 0
Just last week a landmark decision was handed down by Honorable J. Curtis Joyner in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Nancy J. Becker v. MERS.
MERS lost. Going from paper to electronic lost.
The court found “that [MERS and MERSCORP] are declared to be obligated to create and record written documents memorializing the transfers of debt/promissory notes which are secured by real estate mortgages in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for all such debt transfers past, present and future in the Office for the Recording of Deeds in the County where such property is situate.”
Marie McDonnell of McDonnell Analytics, a forensic mortgage analyst, certified fraud examiner, and an expert witness in Becker v. MERS, said: “If the HFPA proposal becomes law, it will make the theft of real estate in America as easy as pushing a button.”
Another MERS defeat was recently decided in Bank of America v. Greenleaf. MERS was told it does not have the power to assign mortgages in Maine.
Breetz, the HFPA Chair, pointed out there have also been rulings in MERS favor which is true, and said while he has been accused of doing the bidding of the bankers that was not the case.
“We have extended the normal drafting time from 2 years to a third year because of the significance of the issues you raised and many others, and because of the controversy within the mortgage industry and homeowners.”
Breetz also said, “I think we have an enormously dangerous system as it is now.”
The Bankers’ MERS Money Making Scheme
Baxter, who has been with the NY Federal Reserve in his current position since 1995, recognized in his letter to Breetz that MERS was created “to make [the] “securitization process” more efficient and less cumbersome” for the bankers.
That’s true. Banks do not make giant profits on individual homes but they wildly cash in when mortgages are securitized, turned into residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and traded at lightning speed at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).
The DTCC’s depository provides custody and asset servicing for more than 3.6 million securities issues from the United States and 121 other countries and territories, valued at US$36.5 trillion, according to their website. As Business Insider and CNN reported in 2012, when the DTCC’s state of the art vaults failed and were flooded during hurricane Sandy in Lower Manhattan at 55 Water Street, trillions of stock certificates and other paper securities were damaged.
The DTCC reopened for business the next day “electronically.”
Despite court rulings finding MERS acted illegally, Baxter claims that the real problem is that the Nineteenth century laws needed to be modernized and rewritten.
“What exists does not allow MERS to address other problems, like the fact the legacy legal infrastructure locks us into a Nineteenth century paper-based world, where the written form is almost considered sacred,” he wrote, “It also holds the secondary mortgage market, a national market hostage to local variation in real property law.”
Breetz believes the Federal Reserve’s strategy for a national electronic registry is the correct path, because, “like it or not” we are in the modern age and we can’t go back and undo what has already happened but correct it for the future. Breetz honestly believes that ‘going electronic’ is not the problem.
“It all depends on how it is done,” Breetz said, “Electronics could do a lot to solve at least some of the problems.”
The issue here is multi-fold.
First, most homeowners did not know when they bought their homes their mortgages would be securitized by the bankers. Now, as a result of the fraud that occurred during the securitization process—the electronic transfer of their chain of titles, homeowners cannot determine who their lenders are.
“During the mortgage securitization frenzy, original notes were destroyed after they were scanned into a digital image. Now anything on that image can be altered. The image can be duplicated and transferred electronically to any number of recipients instantly regardless of any type of so-called security. But like a scanned dollar bill, the electronic data has no tangible value. At best, the possessor can only allege the image is the original, but without the original, there is no way to be certain,” Wright said.


The results have been devastating—illegal bank foreclosures across the country and worthless, junk RMBS. The repercussions are so vast that pension companies and countries who invested in them lost—big time.
And despite the carnage, no one has gone to jail for the fraud that contributed to the 2008 economic collapse that continues to hurt innocent homeowners today.
Given that Baxter’s justification is the need to keep a “secondary mortgage market” open for business, at minimum homeowners should be given an option as to whether or not their mortgages may be securitized— up-front, in bold lettering; not buried somewhere in fine print that few people read.
Borrowing from Baxter, homeowners should be able choose whether or not they want to be held hostage to the bankers again in another national electronic registry as part of their lucrative money making “secondary mortgage market.”
Truth be told, the fraud, illegal foreclosures, and toxic, worthless RMBS would not have happened if paper mortgage documents were properly recorded. This is what the banks do not want people to see because the bankers make a financial killing off the securitized mortgages. Most homeowners simply wanted to buy a house.
Is the NY Fed exerting undue influence on the ULC and American homeowners? If so, there appears to be a pattern. Yesterday Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ) questioned the NY Fed role in U.S. regulatory risk panel.
Glass Steagall
Banks became casinos after the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was repealed under President Bill Clinton with the help of a Republican Congress. Since the Great Depression, Glass-Steagall kept traditional banks and banking separate from the high-risk investment banks known today as the “too big to fail” banks.
As I previously reported, politicians like Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer (D-NY) warned against repealing Glass-Steagall for that very reason until he supported it and his own warnings became a destructive reality.
Other politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren want Glass-Steagall reinstated and modernized.
Baxter believes these law reforms are in America’s national interests. “Obviously an effort to introduce Federal legislation in support of a national electronic mortgage and mortgage note transfer system is a very ambitious effort,” he wrote.
“I believe that this is also an opportune time to contemplate complementary Federal legislation that would introduce a legal infrastructure that supports a movement away from paper …These ideas have the promise of making these markets more efficient and remedy some of the root problems that make the current system vulnerable to criticism and possible abuse, “ Baxter’s letter states.
The big question that nobody seems able to answer is why would a new national electronic registry potentially governed by the Fed bank not have the same problems as MERS which was also owned by the banks?
When I contacted Baxter for his thoughts on the ULC’s HFPA draft, the NY Fed’s Media Relations office said, “Thank you for the email. Mr. Baxter will not have any additional comments at this time.”
While Baxter says his views do not “officially” represent the position of the Federal Reserve he granted that his views became “more informed following close consultation” with his “Federal Reserve colleagues.” He offered their assistance because the Federal Reserve has worked with uniform law and Congress to enact legislation in the past.
As he wrote, “One example was when they “reformed” UCC Article in the “Check Clearing in the 21st century Act” which allowed checks themselves to be electronified.”
For Breetz’s part, to his credit, he said that he has agreed to have some homeowners who are fighting the banks observe ULC’s meeting on HFPA in Seattle this Friday.
To help him draft HFPA, Breetz said what he needed but was unable to locate were reported cases that he could cite to the other lawyers which prove how the “bad guys” where able to foreclose on homes where the debt had already been paid off.
“These types of cases were easiest to justify a change in law— showing there was no “he said, she said” to the facts.”
Within hours of contacting a couple homeowners I knew who are fighting the bankers in court, Breetz had plenty of cases to choose from.
Sometimes people do not understand the damage the unaccountable mortgage fraud has caused America and beyond until it happens to them.
For more information about the protest with homeowners who are fighting the banks in this epic David and Goliath battle that now involves the Federal Reserve at the ULC’s meeting in Seattle on HFPA beginning on Friday click here.
Thomas Baxter New York Federal Reserve Bank letter to Uniform Law Commission on new foreclosure laws by Marinka Peschmann

Photo of Thomas Baxter from the New York Federal Reserve Bank



Resources for homeowners facing illegal foreclosures who want to fight the bankers
There are scores of homeowners nationwide who have been fighting the bankers in court for years—many pro se. As a result of their efforts, they are not only pushing back against the bankers but have amassed an abundant amount of information and resources for all homeowners to use (free and paid) to join the court battles and restore the rule of law.
Do your own research and follow the best route for your circumstances. Below are some mortgage fraud websites to help get you started. Some of the owners I’ve spoken with directly, other websites came highly recommended. They are in no particular order.
For a complete forensics analysis of your chain of title — the horizontal daisy chain of the documents, consider going to Mortgage Investigative & Research Services or www.MIRSnow.com
MSFraud.org
Defraudednations.com -The Mortgage Crisis Exposed
Fighting for Justice “One Home at a Time”
StopForeclosureFraud.com
Death by a Thousand Homeowners
Watch:

Thanks to: http://www.marinkapeschmann.com