Yet again, Atlantic County in NJ tops nation in foreclosure filings

Over the first six months of this year, one out of every 54 homes in Atlantic County was the subject of some foreclosure activity.

Statistics of new default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions found Atlantic County continues to leads the nation, according to data from RealtyTrac.

“We’ve been talking about Atlantic City for quite some time, because its been near the top (of national foreclosure rankings) for the last year or so,” said Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac.

Read on.

FBI: Government conspiracy group may have helped fugitives escape

(CNN)John and Julieanne Dimitrion scammed good people out of their homes, the FBI says, and then they disappeared.

They were the “masterminds of a large fraud scheme,” the FBI’s Brandon Simpson told CNN’s “The Hunt with John Walsh,” which hit Tricia Dano’s family especially hard.

Dano blames the Dimitrions for the loss of their cherished family home in Honolulu’s Kaimuki neighborhood.

For Dano, it started in 1999 when she moved from Washington state back to Hawaii to help her mother take care of her ailing grandmother.

Her grandmother “felt that if she was going to pass, she wanted to be at home, right where she belonged,” Dano said.

When the family began having trouble making house payments, they decided to refinance their mortgage.

Seeing an ad for the Dimitrions’ company, Mortgage Alliance on TV, Dano and her mother made an appointment.

The pitch

The Dimitrions didn’t arrive until an hour into the meeting, Dano recalled. The couple made a memorable impression as they made their pitch wearing designer clothes and expensive jewelry.

The FBI said the Dimitrions pitched their scam like this: “We will have someone buy your property — but in name only. You’ll continue to live there and we’ll fix your credit and a year from now you’ll be able to buy that property back. You won’t lose it to foreclosure and you can keep your family home.”

“I thought, ‘These people definitely know what they’re doing,'” recalled Dano. “So we signed over the title, thinking that, ‘OK this is the first step to the rent-to-own process.'”

Then the Dimitrions found a “straw buyer” who purchased the Dano property in their name. That buyer was an acquaintance named Laura Cristo.

“They explained it to me that it was a short sale, that I wasn’t getting involved,” Cristo said.

She thought the Dimitrions were good people trying to help others, so Cristo said “OK.”

“I just started initialing and signing,” she remembered. “I never really read the papers.”

Read on.

Class Slams Detroit on Tax-Foreclosure Crisis

DETROIT (CN) — Going to bat for thousands of distressed homeowners, most of them black, the American Civil Liberties Union claims in court that Wayne County’s foreclosure crisis is worst Michigan has seen since the Great Depression.
County treasurer Eric Sabree is going after homeowners for unpaid property taxes, but the ACLU says those tax rates are woefully out of date.
“The city of Detroit has failed to conduct properly the legally mandated property tax assessments for at least two decades,” the complaint states, filed Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court.
“Further, after the values of homes began to drop precipitously in 2008, the city of Detroit failed to reduce the assessed values of the homes to match the actual true cash values, a fact which city officials have acknowledged,” the complaint continues. “As a result homeowners, including plaintiffs, were taxed as if their homes were worth many times their actual true cash value.”
The ACLU brought the suit as a class action, with the Morningside Community Organization as lead plaintiff.
That nonprofit is joined by seven individual homeowners and three other community groups.

Read on.

U.S. Century Bank settles foreclosure against ex-director

U.S. Century Bank has settled a foreclosure lawsuit that named one of its former directors and modified the associated mortgage.

That ends a dispute between the Doral-based bank and Rodney Barreto, who was previously a board member for nine years. His is currently chairman of the Miami Super Bowl Host Committee and the head of lobbying and consulting firm Floridian Partners.

U.S. Century Bank filed a $15.31 million foreclosure lawsuit in Collier County on May 10 against Barreto; former business partner Warren Sands; and real estate ownership companies Doral Club LLC, Gladiolus Petroleum Developers, Hancock Petroleum Developers, Ortiz Petroleum Developers and Alico Petroleum Developers. The lawsuit targeted the 14,318-square-foot clubhouse at 8250 N.W. 112th Court in Doral, plus four gas stations in Southwest Florida.

Barreto was a director of U.S. Century Bank at the time the loans were made from 2007 to 2009.

Read on.

Homeowners: From $150 HOA fee to foreclosure

Hillsborough County homeowners are battling their HOA in a foreclosure fight, but one missed payment could cost the family their home.

“Because of $150, we’re going to lose a $300,000 home,” says homeowner Tina Lopez.

The Riverview family is taking on the Rivercrest Community Association, who just sold the home at auction.  The Lopez family claims they didn’t have any warning.  Now, the HOA fight could leave the family homeless.

“This is our life.  This is our family,” says Tina Lopez.

The Lopez family has called their Rivercrest neighborhood home since 2005, when they bought if for around $270,000.

The HOA put a foreclosure lien on the house and recently sold it at auction for $19,000. The family’s cut: $14,000.

“You have a company that comes in and says let’s just take your house away.  It’s not right.  There’s no compassion.  It’s not morally right,” says Tina Lopez.

Read on.

ACLU: Foreclosure process violates Fair Housing Act

African Americans in Wayne County are suffering from a tax foreclosure crisis more severe than any this region has seen since the Great Depression. But unlike during the Great Depression, the homeowners today are at risk of losing their homes for taxes they never should have been required to pay in the first place.

This week, the ACLU of Michigan, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Covington law firm filed a lawsuit to prevent tens of thousands of homeowners from losing their homes to illegal tax foreclosures. We hope this lawsuit — filed against the Wayne County Treasurer and the City of Detroit — will keep people in their homes, prevent the blight that occurs following foreclosure and stabilize the neighborhoods and lives of countless residents.

The tax foreclosure crisis threatening black homeowners stems from two major causes. First, Detroit has failed to follow state law requiring the city to base the property taxes on the true cash value of the home. Second, the city has made it nearly impossible for poor people to obtain a “poverty exemption.”

Read on.

Judge sues foreclosure defendant who filed $2.4 million “criminal complaint” against him

Last year, Judge Thomas Minkoff issued an order that a house owned by Leslie and Martin Armstrong be auctioned at a foreclosure sale.

That order sparked a legal saga that saw Mrs. Armstrong filing a “criminal complaint” against Minkoff, his legal staff, Wells Fargo and its attorney that alleges they deprived her of her constitutional rights. Mrs. Armstrong alleges that they civil value of the 242 counts in her complaint add up to $2.4 million that she’s owed. Minkoff is a civil court judge in the Sixth Judicial Circuit for Pasco and Pinellas Counties.

In the latest chapter, Minkoff, who is represented by sAttorney General Pam Bondi’s office, filed suit Friday alleging that the criminal complaint is full of false representations. He’s asking the court have them expunged from the record and that an injunction be issued preventing Mrs. Armstrong from filing any more “false documents.”

Neither Minkoff nor Mrs. Armstrong could be reached for comment. But the court documents tell the story.

Read on.

Trump University Taught Students How to Exploit Disabled Homeowners

Trump University, the former for-profit business education venture that has landed Donald Trump in various courts to defend himself against claims of fraud, promised to teach students the secrets of Trump’s financial success. One particular course offered by Trump U presented a particularly blunt strategy for making money: target destitute, “completely disabled” homeowners headed into foreclosure and convince them to sell their homes at a discounted price. That is, exploit disabled people for profit.

That advice comes near the end of a nearly three-hour audio lesson—paired with a workbook—that was offered by Trump University in 2006, shortly before the housing market collapsed. It was a year after the opening of Trump University, which shut down in 2010 and has prompted lawsuits against Trump from former students who allege that the school was a scam that ripped them off.

The 2006 course, titled “Real Estate Goldmine: How to Get Rich Investing in Pre-Foreclosures,” begins with a monologue by Trump, who says, “We’re not peddling get-rich-quick schemes, no blue-sky promises or an easy road to riches.” But he pledges that his course will offer a “real estate gold mine.” Then Trump University’s Jon Ward interviews real estate investment adviser Gary Eldred about the best strategies for taking advantage of homeowners facing foreclosures. Throughout the course, Eldred provides a variety of tips on spotting homes that are in pre-foreclosure—for instance, look for an owner delinquent on payments because he could be foreclosed on imminently—and he offers strategies for persuading owners to sell their homes at a discount when they’re facing foreclosure. He repeatedly notes that a buyer should be kind when approaching pre-foreclosure owners about purchasing their properties, because these potential sellers are going through a stressful time.

Read on.

1st Cir. Rejects Borrower’s Attempt to Permanently Enjoin Foreclosure Due to Cancellation of Prior Foreclosure

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently held that the cancellation of a foreclosure sale prohibits a borrower from obtaining a permanent injunction to bar a foreclosure, as they would not suffer irreparable harm.

A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.

In 2005, the plaintiff borrowers obtained a refinance mortgage loan on their home. The borrowers defaulted on their mortgage in 2007 and again in 2009. The loan was modified but the borrowers still had not made a mortgage payment since 2009.  Between 2011 and 2013, the borrowers negotiated to again modify the loan. The negotiations were unsuccessful and a foreclosure sale was scheduled for September 2013.

The borrowers then filed an action in state court and obtained a preliminary injunction barring the foreclosure sale from moving forward. The foreclosure proceedings were subsequently cancelled, but the borrowers’ lawsuit remained pending.

Read on.

Delonte West Loses $130K After His Home Was Sold At Foreclosure Auction

Total Pro Sports:

It’s been a rough couple of years for former NBA player Delonte West as he has struggled with mental illness which has caused him to act out in public. He’s been photo’d shoeless outside of a Jack-in-the-Box in Houston, video’d randomly dancing and yelling at kids, and given the wrong medication by a facility that’s supposed to be taking care of him.

Now, another hit to the former NBA point guard, he’s lost his Maryland home as it was sold at an auction,according to BOSSIP.

“Ventures Trust, which holds the $450,000 mortgage on West’s two story, three bedroom house in Brandywine, Md., bought the house at auction July 1 at a steep discount. The company paid just $270,000, or 67 percent of the $400,000 that West paid for the pad in 2005, according to Prince George’s County Md. records.

 Ventures Trust sued West in February, alleging he’d fallen nearly $45,000 behind on his $450,000 mortgage and hadn’t made the $3,283 a month mortgage payments in nearly two years. There was still almost $400,000 left on the mortgage when Ventures Trust sued West, and the company threatened to seize the house if he didn’t pay the debt back.”