The Myth of the Credit Bid – Red-Handed

COMBO TITLE and SECURITIZATION Search, Report, Documents and Comprehensive Analysis

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Credit Charles Koppa (Poppa Koppa) with putting me onto this. He does GREAT work. poppakoppa@hotmail.com. He’s not lawyer but I trust him more than I do most lawyers to get to the bottom of things. He’s kind like one of those dogs that gets a bite of something and then NEVER lets go as the teeth go in deeper and deeper. I like that approach. The pretenders deserve it.

Credit Dan Edstrom with compiling everyone’s work including my own into securitization commentaries that work the material they way it should be done. Besides doing the Subscriber Members COMBO TITLE and Securitization Analysis, and the component parts, he also does a magnificent job of drilling down even further proving two points: (1) that while the borrower is dealing with a “Notice of Default” the Trust and investors are getting reports specifically stating that the same loan is performing — and they a re getting paid! and (2) that the distribution reports at the pool level are either on-going (Meaning the pool still exists) or they are no longer being sent (meaning the pool has been dissolved).

There are so many chairs and shells moving around I know it is difficult to keep them straight. That is exactly the point. The pretender lenders are going to keep them moving as long as they can because they are getting thousands of free houses every week through intimidation, fraud and deception of borrowers, court clerks, and Judges. But there are a few points in time at which the the chairs and shells stop moving or at least slow down. One of them is at the sale on the courthouse steps.

Charles Koppa pointed out the chicanery when he shared an ongoing study with me that showed changes in the bid price just hours before the sale and the resulting windfall to the new “buyer.” With pretenders swarming like flies around you-know-what it is no wonder that they find it easy to slip different entities in and out of the foreclosure process. But here is a simple proposition with far reaching implications regarding tracking the money, tracking the title and tracking the real obligation and the real creditor. ONLY THE CREDITOR CAN MAKE THE CREDIT BID. Anyone else must actually pay money.

Oops. It turns out that virtually no money is exchanging hands at these sales. And the Trustee is accepting a credit bid from an entity that wasn’t even named in the Notice of Default or the Trustee is issuing the deed to an entity that never made the credit bid or any bid at all. THAT TRANSACTION IS VOID ACCORDING TO MY READING OF THE STATUTES, WHETHER YOU ARE IN A JUDICIAL OR NON-JUDICIAL STATE. Maybe in some states it would be considered voidable but either way there is no “clear title” transferred and there is no successor in interest, which means that the homeowner still owns the home after the sale and can file a quiet title action against the originating lender and the party who received the title from the Trustee or Clerk, depending upon the procedure used. There is no defense as far as I can see and there might not even be an attempt at defending. Easier to let one slip by than risk a ruling that says these sales are all void.

But there is the rub. You can kick the can down the road for only so long. It doesn’t change the facts. NONE of the creditors filed foreclosure actions or sales in any of the securitized loan transactions. NONE of the creditors even knew the loan was not performing because they were being told quite the contrary by the very same group that declared the loan in default. ALL of the loans had co-obligors who in fact did pay but were not disclosed to either the borrower or the actual lender (investor). NONE of the notes were assigned at or near the time of the closing of the loans. NONE of the security interests were assigned at or near the time of the loan closing. NONE of the notes or security interests were endorsed or even transmitted to anyone after the loan closed unless the case went into litigation in which case they either “found” or re-created the documentation without admitting what they had done.

NONE OF THE OBLIGATIONS WERE COMPLETELY DESCRIBED IN THE NOTE, MORTGAGE OR DEED OF TRUST. AS PAUL  HARVEY LIKED TO SAY, THE “REST OF THE STORY” WAS IN THE MORTGAGE BOND, PROSPECTUS, PSA, ASSIGNMENT AND ASSUMPTION, INSURANCE CONTRACTS, CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS, TRANCHE STRUCTURING THAT THE LENDER RECEIVED. As I said at the beginning of this blog, this is all going to come down to two doctrines that are inescapably in favor of the homeowners and borrowers, including the ones who THINK they lost their homes: the single transaction doctrine and the step transaction doctrine. NONE of the actions of the securitization intermediaries would have any business reason to occur without the investment by the lender (investor) and the acceptance of the obligation by the borrower. That makes it ONE transaction between the the investor and the borrower no matter how complicated you WANT to describe it.

THE ONLY THING THAT WAS ACTUALLY MOVED WAS MONEY UNDER QUESTIONABLE CIRCUMSTANCES. A SPREADSHEET WAS USED AND SENT ELECTRONICALLY UPSTREAM TO TRANSMIT THE ALLEGED RECEIVABLES THAT WOULD BE CLAIMED AS PART OF POOLS THAT WERE NEVER OFFICIALLY FORMED. THE TERMS OF THAT TRANSACTION INCLUDED CO-OBLIGORS WITHOUT WHICH THE LENDERS WOULD NOT HAVE ADVANCED THE FUNDS FOR WORTHLESS (AND IN MANY CASES NON-EXISTENT) MORTGAGE BONDS.

THE WAY THEY DID IT WAS SIMPLE: GIVE THE BORROWER MONEY, HAVE THE BORROWER SIGN A NOTE TO A SHAM ENTITY AND GIVE THE LENDER EVIDENCE OF A BOND WHICH HAS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TERMS FROM THE NOTE. THAT WAY THEY COULD USE PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY AND PLAUSIBLE EXCUSES FOR NOT SHARING CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION WITH THE THE ONLY TWO REAL PARTIES TO THE TRANSACTION — THE BORROWER AND THE LENDER.

So they wait until nobody is looking, for that moment that appears clerical (ministerial) in nature and then they slip in new entities again, thus cheating the lender (again), but leaving the homeowner with legal title. The homeowner walks from the deal thinking it is over. But in truth, it is only just beginning. Now we enter the NEXT chapter of the mortgage meltdown.