Foreclosure Law Firm Evicted from Woburn Office

Foreclosure Law Firm Evicted from Woburn Office

The irony…

A law firm that specialized in foreclosing on Massachusetts homeowners is facing eviction from its Woburn offices.

According to a Mass Lawyers Weekly investigation, Connolly, Geaney, Ablitt & Willard has failed to pay rent, stopped paying insurance premiums, and bounced checks in the past few months. Aside from the eviction, employees lost their health insurance coverage, according to the investigation.

Steven Ablitt, who told Lawyers Weekly he was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the firm despite company records listing him as an owner, denied many of the details uncovered in the investigation.

 

Homeowners sue Bank of NY Mellon, Citibank in a federal RICO complaint

Homeowners sue Bank of NY Mellon, Citibank in a federal RICO complaint

MANHATTAN – Dozens of homeowners sued Bank of New York Mellon, CitiBank et al. in a federal RICO complaint, claiming the banks fraudulently claimed to own the homes upon which they foreclosed or are about to foreclose.

Feds Finished Addressing Probe of Rep. Jerry Lewis

Feds Finished Addressing Probe of Rep. Jerry Lewis

(CN) – After nearly three years and more than 2,000 man-hours, the government has sufficiently responded to the demand for information on its investigation of former Congressman Jerry Lewis.
     As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Lewis, a Republican from California, “had substantial say over the fate of billions of federal dollars,” the Wednesday ruling states.
     “When some of those funds landed in the hands of clients of Lewis’ close friends – and when those friends and clients donated some 37 percent of the $1.3 million that Lewis’ political action committee received from 1999-2005 – a federal investigation followed,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg added. “Nothing came of that inquiry, though, and the Department of Justice ultimately declined to press charges.
     “Perhaps suspicious of that outcome,” the judge wrote, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for information related to the committee’s spending.
     Unsatisfied with the Justice Department’s production, CREW filed suit in 2011, and
     Boasberg found the government’s production insufficient last year.
     CREW still contested several categories of withheld documents, but Boasberg said Wednesday that the department had “finally” satisfied its FOIA obligations, after “nearly three years and more than two thousand man-hours.”
     “On their face, most of the documents the government seeks to withhold appear to be classic attorney work product, the disclosure of which would risk putting the government lawyers’ strategy on public display,” Boasberg wrote. “These records include research and analysis, as well as recommendations about possible courses of action, created in preparation for litigation.”
     Rejecting CREW’s characterization of these papers as administrative documents, Boasberg said “an attorney’s mental impressions and strategies can be revealed even by documents that may, at first glance, be characterized as ‘administrative’ rather than ‘substantive.'”
     Though the Justice Department had, on its third review of responsive materials, “identified two documents among the 168 sampled records that were improperly withheld and thus could be released,” Boasberg said this observation did not taint the government’s conduct.

DOJ seeks more than $10B from Citigroup

DOJ seeks more than $10B from Citigroup

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Citigroup (C) for more than $10 billion to settle a probe into the lender’s sale of mortgage-backed bonds in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, according to an article in Bloomberg.

Prosecutors broke off talks with Citigroup on June 9 and are preparing to sue the bank after the lender offered less than $4 billion to resolve the matter, said the person who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private. The Justice Department could file a lawsuit as early as this week, the person said

Rep. Charlie Rangel Getting Hammered In Dem Primary For Wall Street Support

Rep. Charlie Rangel Getting Hammered In Dem Primary For Wall Street Support

And here is another incumbent being hit by candidates for being bed buddies with Wall Street.

Something new is happening in a New York Democratic primary contest: An incumbent is getting hit for being too close to Wall Street.

The unlucky congressman is Rep. Charles Rangel, who was called out by challenger Adriano Espaillat during a recent debate for a vote to water down Wall Street reform. Espaillat, a state senator, has been hammering Rangel for weeks over his ties to the financial industry. On Thursday night, Rangel pulled out of the final debate before the election.

Rangel, 84, has been in office since 1971, but is in a dead-heat with Espaillat in the primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District, which represents Harlem and some sections of the Bronx. Rangel, Espaillat and a third contender, the Rev. Michael Walrond Jr., squared off in a debate Wednesday evening.

Espaillat attacked Rangel’s 1999 vote to repeal the Glass-Steagall separation between traditional banking and risky securities trading, saying economists widely cited it as a cause of the 2008 banking collapse. Espaillat then asked why Rangel voted to roll back a key aspect of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, referring to Rangel’s support for a measure that would reinstate taxpayer support for risky derivative trades by big banks. The bill, HR 992, had been the subject of intense lobbying from the nation’s largest financial institutions.

“Do you know who Barney Frank is?” Rangel responded sarcastically. “Barney Frank supported these changes in that provision of the law. Not only did he, but Nancy Pelosi and most all Democrats supported it.”

Democrats, in fact, broadly opposed the bill when it passed the House in October 2013, with 119 Democrats voting against it and 70 voting for it. Pelosi was among the 11 Democrats who didn’t vote.

IN RE: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC., MERS | 9TH CIRCUIT – FALSE, AND THEREFORE ACTIONABLE, A DOCUMENT THAT IS “FORGED, GROUNDLESS, CONTAINS A MATERIAL MISSTATEMENT OR FALSE CLAIM OR IS OTHERWISE INVALID….PLEADED THEIR ROBOSIGNING CLAIMS WITH SUFFICIENT PARTICULARITY TO SATISFY FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 8(A)

IN RE: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC., MERS | 9TH CIRCUIT – FALSE, AND THEREFORE ACTIONABLE, A DOCUMENT THAT IS “FORGED, GROUNDLESS, CONTAINS A MATERIAL MISSTATEMENT OR FALSE CLAIM OR IS OTHERWISE INVALID….PLEADED THEIR ROBOSIGNING CLAIMS WITH SUFFICIENT PARTICULARITY TO SATISFY FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 8(A)

Fourth, the MDL Court held that appellants had not pleaded their robosigning claims with sufficient particularity to satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a). We disagree. Section 33-420 characterizes as false, and therefore actionable, a document that is “forged, groundless, contains a material misstatement or false claim or is otherwise invalid.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. §§ 33-420(A), (B) (emphasis added). The CAC alleges that the documents at issue are invalid because they are “robosigned (forged).” The CAC specifically identifies numerous allegedly forged documents. For example, the CAC alleges that notice of the trustee’s sale of the property of Thomas and Laurie Bilyea was “notarized in blank prior to being signed on behalf of Michael A. Bosco, and the party that is represented to have signed the document, Michael A. Bosco, did not sign the document, and the party that did sign the document had no personal knowledge of any of the facts set forth in the notice.” Further, the CAC alleges that the document substituting a trustee under the deed of trust for the property of Nicholas DeBaggis “was notarized in blank prior to being signed on behalf of U.S. Bank National Association, and the party that is represented to have signed IN RE: MERS 25 the document, Mark S. Bosco, did not sign the document.” Still further, the CAC also alleges that Jim Montes, who purportedly signed the substitution of trustee for the property of Milan Stejic had, on the same day, “signed and recorded, with differing signatures, numerous Substitutions of Trustee in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office . . . . Many of the signatures appear visibly different than one another.” These and similar allegations in the CAC “plausibly suggest an entitlement to relief,” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 681 (2009), and provide the defendants fair notice as to the nature of appellants’ claims against them, Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1216 (9th Cir. 2011). We therefore reverse the MDL Court’s dismissal of Count I.

 

U.S. BANK NATL. ASSN. V MCCRORY | NYSC – REPEATEDLY VIOLATED BOTH THE STATUTE AND THIS COURT’S ORDERS, AND FAILED TO PROVIDE DOCUMENTATION REQUESTED BY THE COURT. IN SHORT, THE COURT FOUND EGREGIOUS BEHAVIOR AMOUNTING TO LACK OF GOOD FAITH

U.S. BANK NATL. ASSN. V MCCRORY | NYSC – REPEATEDLY VIOLATED BOTH THE STATUTE AND THIS COURT’S ORDERS, AND FAILED TO PROVIDE DOCUMENTATION REQUESTED BY THE COURT. IN SHORT, THE COURT FOUND EGREGIOUS BEHAVIOR AMOUNTING TO LACK OF GOOD FAITH

In short, plaintiff continues to ignore the laws of this state, to flaunt the orders of this Court and to manipulate the legal system with an absence of good faith toward defendants, the court and, apparently, its own attorney. As this Court noted in the previous Decision and Order: A foreclosure action is equitable in nature and triggers the equitable powers of the court [Notey v Darien Constr. Corp, 41 NY2d 1055 (1977)]. Once equity is invoked, the court’s power is as broad as equity and justice require [Mortgage Elec. Registration Sys., Inc. V Horkan, 68 AD3d 948 (Second Dept., 2009)].