Reply #109: Jennifer Brunner: Notarize This: The Brewing Foreclosure Storm

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Jennifer Brunner: Notarize This: The Brewing Foreclosure Storm

Ohio Secretary Of State

Posted: October 1, 2010 04:36 PM
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Notarize This: The Brewing Foreclosure Storm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-brunner/notarize-this-the-brewing_b_747461.html


Please read it all!

This does it no justice..

snip:

What happens when the homeowner can't pay the mortgage anymore -- because of job loss, medical expenses or excessive credit card and other debt? Foreclosure. But in Ohio a court has to grant it. In a lawsuit for foreclosure, documents are presented to a court to decide if the homeowner is in default and by how much. The lawsuit is supposed to be brought by the person or institution who holds the note for the mortgage being foreclosed. If ownership of the note has passed through many hands, a "chain of title" must be established to prove that the person who claims rights to foreclose on the home is the person actually owed money on the mortgage. Once the court grants foreclosure, the court can then order sale of the home and eviction of its owners.

Under today's financial schemes, foreclosure documents are routinely created to demonstrate the transfer of the interest in the note so the right person brings the foreclosure lawsuit. In the case of Chase Home Finance, LLC, its Columbus, Ohio employee, Beth Cottrell, testified in her deposition that she helps create foreclosure documents by signing on behalf of the banks and financial institutions (including MERS) that have been involved. Then, a small group of notaries at Chase notarize her and others' signatures on various foreclosure documents (about 18,000 documents a month at Chase Home Finance, LLC).

While serving as a Chase Home Finance, LLC employee, Beth Cottrell's name has appeared in foreclosure affidavits from 2008 through 2010 in the Florida court system on documents showing mortgage amounts owed on behalf of Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Federal National Mortgage Association, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, People's Choice Home Loan, Wachovia and Citi, even though she was an employee of Chase Home Finance, LLC in Columbus.

In Ohio, I read two depositions of Beth Cottrell taken in Columbus, Ohio in May of this year, about a Florida foreclosure. I was frankly chagrined to read her description of the notary activity to process the 18,000 documents a month by the company she works for alone--using just eight notaries. In her deposition, Ms. Cottrell's stated that: no oath is administered for the signing of each document; notaries (not signers) are filling in numbers in the affidavits used in court ordered foreclosures; notarized documents are not verified by the person signing them, but rather, signers are relying on verification by others, and notaries know this at the time they notarize documents; and large numbers of documents are signed in bulk and notarized in bulk separately.