MERS is at the Heart of the Foreclosure Crisis
Series of articles details how MERS allegedly planned from the get-go to defraud the counties, and the IRS, and the homeowners, and the buyers of the mortgage-backed securities.
Palm Coast, FL – December 31, 2010 – GoToby.com has followed the exploding foreclosure documentation crisis for over two years. Still, most people are unaware of the nature of the problem. It is not a simple recordkeeping mix up. It is very complex and convoluted. It defies solution. In a three-part Huffington Post article, Randall Wray details the workings of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), a vehicle created by bankers to avoid paperwork and disguise the movement and ownership of trillions of dollars in mortgages and notes. MERS has destroyed the public land records by breaking the chain of title to millions of homes.
Wray’s effort is slightly diluted by his occasional political commentary. Nonetheless, his series is by far the most illuminating discussion of MERS; its origin, its structure, and its impact that I have found.
Click on links below:
"The first thing to note is the date. Folks, this strategy was formulated in 1999. The second thing to note is these documents demonstrate that failure to properly endorse the notes and transfer them to the REMIC trustee was not an occasional mistake, but rather was MERS’s business model. As we will see, MERS planned from the get-go to defraud the counties, and the IRS, and the homeowners, and the buyers of the mortgage-backed securities."
"But, in fact, the notes were never transferred, there is no clear chain of paperwork, and in many cases the notes have "disappeared" so that when the servicers or MERS tries to foreclose, they must file "lost note affidavits" claiming rightful ownership even though they do not have evidence. They have also been caught using "robo-signers" to forge documents — and sometimes they have foreclosed on the wrong properties and even seized homes on which there was no mortgage. That is precisely why the law requires proper transfers of the note. Without that, the mortgage is a fraud and foreclosure is fraudulent."
"MERS deliberately undermined the legality of the loans and the records. Homeowners could no longer search the public records to find out who actually held their mortgage — the record would show MERS as owner, but MERS was a shell corporation with no real employees. It was not a servicer, so the homeowner could not make mortgage payments to the purported owner. As a result, checks were sent to the wrong servicers; servicers credited the wrong accounts; servicers claimed delinquencies on homeowners who never missed a payment, and piled late fees and delinquencies on the wrong borrowers; sheriffs were sent to break down the doors of the wrong houses, and threw belongings out on the street in front of homes on which there was no mortgage at all. MERS purposely created the mess, at the behest of banksters who do not want mere legal technicalities to get in the way of stealing homes. The undermining of the public records was not a mistake — it was MERS’s business model, created by the member banks."
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