Realty
Reality Ocwen Series Essays, Part 2 Dear Ole Bear Editor, I read your Realty Reality regularly. I just read the latest on Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] and I must relate my personal experience with them. I would love to have you use my letter or any parts of it in Realty Reality, and you may use my real name. Keep up the great work on Realty Reality. Best
Regards, Dear Reader of Realty Reality: What you are about to read is a real life story on insider predatory lending, insider foreclosure, and perhaps mortgage servicing fraud. This story represents the experiences of the Bruce Fried Family in Peabody, Massachusetts, and is a joint effort of Mr. Fried and yours truly. Although Mr. Fried and his Bride, were not the victims in this scam, being of sound mind and body, they figgered out the scam! In relating the story, I am impressed with this author’s compassion for the victims of the scam. The Fried Family was an actual buyer on the hook for their dream property, when Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] foreclosed on the seller, who had a bona fide contract to sell the property to the Fried’s in Lynnfield under the Bay Colony’s Commonwealth Law! Somewhat defies reason, does it not? All Editor’s comments are shown in green in our featured guest essay with our final comments shown in black text. – Ole Bear, Editor
A
Case Study on Ocwen Federal Bank It is amazing that Ocwen has gotten away with what they have gotten away with nationwide. I guess I was lucky that I wasn't the homeowner, but imagine what would have happened if we sold our house one day, expecting to close on the other house a day or a few later and they foreclosed in between – that would have been ugly. My Bride would never have forgiven me! I was told outright by the new realtor (Terry Sullivan at Remax in Beverly, Massachusetts) that the bank would not have let me buy the house at auction. On the funnier side, the previous owners’ lawyer contacted my lawyer a month after the foreclosure to ask if we still would buy the house from him, to which my lawyer replied – "How can you sell us a house that you don't own anymore!???" We had a good laugh and a good cry from all of this. – Bruce Fried The Money Trail and the Foreclosure Documents The “foreclosed on” owners’ names were David J. Charette, Sr. and Rosanne Charette. The property address is 858 Lynnfield Street, Lynnfield, Massachusetts. Here is a link in www.salemdeeds.com to the history of the property [there are other properties that the Charettes owned, so just look at documents for 858 Lynnfield Street]. The foreclosure stuff is on the 3rd and 4th pages with images of the documents. This link will detail the loans and refinancings of this subject property: Our research support is the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds for following the money trail, of refinancings, possible defaults, and assignment of the loans to other lenders in the secondary mortgage market game. Foreclosure Document 1, is Massachusetts Foreclosure Deed to Ocwen Federal Bank, FSB Recorded February 2, 2002. Foreclosure Document 2, is the Complaint to Foreclose Judgment Recorded February 2, 2002. Series of Documents for the Subject Property Foreclosure, following the money trail:
Total Resource Links’ HTML Above, See Footnote. [4]
We Just Want to Buy Our American Dream Home! We love this place! In the fall of 2001, I negotiated a tough deal on a 3700sf Colonial in Lynnfield, Commonwealth of Massachusetts [formerly the Massachusetts Bay Colony]. The Bay Colony is one of the 13 original colonies, and have ancestors who are Founding Fathers, having signed the Declaration and the US Constitution. Having the feeling that the owner was in financial trouble, and after three weeks of tough negotiating, we signed a Purchase and Sale Agreement [P&S, or a sales contract, a legally binding document] to buy the house at $427,000. The original asking price of $565,000, had been reduced to $497,000 at the time we had looked at the home and the seller accepted our $427,000 offer. You do the math. We were getting a heck of a deal! To good to be true?!!! As Ole Bear would say in his fashion, we been a lookin’ for a Month of Sunday’s, and we found Manna from Heaven! This was our Massachusetts Bay Colony Dream Colonial! No, I am not made of money… I have to sell my house, too, for all this to work! Two week-ends later, when the Realtors where to have an open house on my property which I prudently popped on the market, since this Yankee good ole boy isn’t made of money, the nice Realtor sales associates showed up at my door-step. They told me that my house that I had a P&S on [sales contract] had been foreclosed on. Being in the semi-conductor engineering field, I am not generally anally retentive! However, it took me about thirty seconds to process this information through all my synapses. I was in shock to realize that the nice Realtor Folks were talking about the house we had the P&S [sales contract] on! For you dummies out there, that’s the house of our American Dreams that My Bride and Me want! My Realtors told me that in the days leading up to the foreclosure and auction, that the lawyer for the owner had faxed and Fed-Exed the P&S [sales contract] to Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions], whom had assumed [purchased, assigned by purchase, or taken over for a fee? Or other banking cartel agreements?] the mortgage just two-months prior. Ignorance is not bliss, among sharks when there’s blood in the waters… Ocwen Federal Bank ignored the fact that the homeowner had a buyer and foreclosed anyhow, buying the house back at auction for $337,000 plus the $9,000 in property taxes owed in arrears. I was never notified by anyone, and when my lawyer contacted OCWEN FEDERAL BANK [AND THEIR MINIONS] they laughed at us. The Minions told us to talk to the new Realtor in charge [Charles in Charge, a hit TV comedy!] of their newly acquired property. We offered to buy the property for the same price that we had offered before, and they laughed. My attorney, and my Bride and I – were somewhat in shock and awe! This just didn’t make any dang sense at all! Not even to a Massachusetts Yankee!!! Weapons of Mass Eviction, Dummie! It Makes the Game Play Longer! It took six months to evict the previous owner, who destroyed the house to the best of his ability, even taking out the replacement windows and putting the old windows back in [they stripped and destroyed the place]. He was angry and I would have been, too! Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] would not hear from us as a potential buyer. Ocwen put the house on the market for $472,000 and got close to it. The previous owner was basically ripped-off for all his equity, and my wife and myself were left bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.
I have been in the realty valuation gig since 1976 – I have never seen a REO foreclosure property that was in top market condition. There is a generally stigmatism to the process of foreclosure for decent honest folk human beings. They cannot pay to keep their home for whatever reason financially. It is a financially and emotionally humiliating experience to go through. Sometimes human nature reacts to trash the property or destroy it in the humiliation? Or, is the property vandalized by someone other than the seller who got foreclosed on? It does open up a whole new ball game, does it not? I have a really hard time believing all foreclosed on property owners are financial scumbags and would destroy their own home! Many times, they custom built the rascal! This is in fact, a Christian nation, founded as a Republic. I sing in the Chancel Choir at my Methodist Church… anyone in the congregation could become a victim, given the right circumstances? We Almost Had Our Old Adobe Hut Sold, and Ocwen Squirrels the Deal We had three offers on our house at the open house. Not willing to give up to buy our New American Dream Home, we obviously had to string our potential buyer along for several months before we realized by surfing the internet that OCWEN FEDERAL BANK [AND THEIR MINIONS] is a predatory lender that is making it's profits by stealing houses from people without the means to fight. Here this poor guy is selling his house due to financial trouble, and at way less than he really should, and they still pulled the rug [plug from his pacemaker?] out from under him. Ocwen took it all. I will say that the owner was no angel. The supposed Cherub was on the 2nd mortgage company that he had defaulted on. Then, probably smelling blood in the water, Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] came along and bought the mortgage [probably at a discount?] and foreclosed. The point here is that the owner had a legit buyer, and this ruthless banking cartel still didn't care. They ignored everything and just took the property to make a profit, sticking it to the homeowner. Luckily we did not sell our house and were soured to the whole thing – the shooting match with fireworks. I refinanced last year down to a 15-year 5.125% fixed rate for now. When the real estate market is right I will be ready to move to a bigger, better dream house, but I will always remember what happened to the other guy and always remember what dirt-bags Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] are. Down deep in my heart, I felt sorry for this guy – I wanted his house at a reasonable fair market price for its current observed condition. This seller agreed to the P&S contract price with me – I did not hold a gun to his head at all. He wanted me, and my Bride to have this Bay Colony Colonial! The Re-sale of the Foreclosure Ends the Crap Game! We actually had a signed accepted offer letter, did an inspection and had a signed Purchase and Sale agreement (sales contract signed by buyer and seller) and had a $17,000 deposit in escrow for two weeks, when the sellers were foreclosed on. We did get the deposit back, but it took till the end of the P&S [contract performance expiration date], when it was obvious that the sellers could not perform [consummate] the sale to us, because they didn't own the house anymore. This was a legal contract and we held our end up. We were astounded that the bank [Ocwen] would not just sell us the property for our original deal, because they would have made decent money by doing so [Your definition of decent money is not Ocwen’s definition of decent money growing the balance sheet with no accounting footnotes, Ole Buddy!]. The seller had every intention to consummate the sale to us, and had no intention of reneging on the sale to us – we were getting them off the hook. Now we know that the re-sale of the foreclosure ends the insider banking cartel shell game! We didn’t then – it defied all common reason and logic. I guess part of Ocwen’s problem was that they still had to evict an angry owner that they had ripped off.
If it takes Ocwen’s Legal Eagles six months to get an owner out of a foreclosed on property, they are not as good as I think. Actually, they are better than I think they are. Of course this defies all logic and reasoning to honest folks! The crap game of the fraud is that the money is made during the period of ownership of the foreclosure. Taking six months to evict a seller sounds somewhat strange. But, six months is a good time to collect insider fees and other perks in the scam. Was Ocwen the actual owner of the property at the foreclosure, or merely acting as a foreclosing agent [agency]? They obviously made money here. From whom? Actually we suspect the new listing Broker/Realtor did a BPO [Broker’s Price Opinion] for Ocwen Realty Advisors, and they told them what to tell the public upon inquiry – since he or she hadn’t been paid for their BPO yet, sent online through Ocwen’s BPO software that the Realtor had to purchase from them – in order to get their listings. Great Game, Ehhh? I wonder if the Realtor collected his BPO email transmission as to his opinion of the market price the property would bear? Call him or her and ask! Ocwen ended up spending money managing the property while they held it and probably netted about $20,000 more in the end than they would have if they had just sold it to us.
Ocwen spent someone else's money during the foreclosure holding period, and probably charged them to manage the property. They made a profit here, Folks!
The
Day After the Supposed Eviction, or the Day the Home Was Placed on the
Market – Prozac for all or just a morning after pill? I have to tell you also that we were allowed into the house the day after the eviction, because I happened to drive by and see the new Ocwen Realtor there. There was trash piled up in every room about two feet deep in the center, the glass stove top had been smashed by some frozen steaks that were left to rot, and there were flies everywhere. They punched holes in the walls and removed the replacement windows and took them with. [Is the seller “they” – or someone else? No way of knowing, but it is a good question, is it not?]
Old Crow is Potable… Dead Crow is Not Palatable! An ill omen? When the house was cleaned up, we went back to look at our American Dream Home about two weeks later and were told the new asking price. I certainly wasn't going to pay a bunch of thieves this kind of money for the house! The thing that finally made my Bride and me let go [we really loved this Massachusetts Bay Colony Colonial!] was when we went to the 3rd floor. There was a black crow lying dead – legs up in the air in an otherwise clean house. Realtors, bless their Lil’ Ole Pea Pickin’ Hearts are rather Priceless [Clueless]: "Oh I don't know how that could have gotten there!" [Either it flew in and was attacked by a bevy of Ocwenian [Orwellian?] eating gadflies, or it was put there by the Bird of Paradise to extend the fees to Ocwen another 3 months! – Get Real!] We considered the “feet in the air Dead Crow on the Third Floor” to be an omen of bad karma. The Bride and I finally gave up, figuring that the bank would be stuck with the house. Much to our surprise, two Asian men [who were brothers] bought the house together for $470,000 and moved their 2 families and their parents in. The house went from a single family highest and best use to a three family property zoned for single family use. Talk about downzoning in the Bay Colony! I hope they did some sort of ceremony to alleviate the bad karma. Three families doing the bad karma feet in the air crow jig, should probably do it! I have since known in the back of my head that the Lovely Fellows at Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] would eventually get theirs. When I see them plastered all over CNBC and the WSJ someday, I will probably be a firm believer in Ole Bear's Mississippi Delta Homespun: “What Goes Around, Comes Around, Pal!” [5] Our Legal Purchase & Sale Agreement was for $427,000, with $17,000 in cash with a $410,000 mortgage loan [purchase money loan] contingency. Ocwen took the property at foreclosure according to my sources for $337,000, plus about $9,000 in back taxes, totaling about $346,000 [actually $347,569.37]. The bank sold the property for $470,000 about 7 months after the foreclosure was hammered down [or one month after the supposed six month eviction process]. Doing the new math, $470,000 - $427,000 is $43,000 as the difference between the re-sale of the foreclosure American Dream Home and our initial contract to buy from the foreclosed on seller. $470,000 - $346,000 is $124,000. Ocwen didn’t lose. How much money did they really make on the perks, insider deals, managing fees, and other kick-backs? Ole Crow as a Deep South Libation mixed with Coca Cola I can drink…. But, Dead Crow is not a libation most Yankees, like me, are fond of.
Bruce, Ole Buddy, I cannot tell you. This bank holding company and their minions are not transparent at all. I can tell you that the company is a start up in the early 1990s. The Erbey Brothers appear to run the company, but I don’t know for whom. They have had exponential growth since inception, and appear to be darlings of Wall Street in their business model, which is now moving part of their operations off-shore, which hasn’t already been sent off-shore. This, in effect, makes the company even less transparent. As they say in the Navy: All A-shore, that’s going A-shore!
It's very easy to see what happened here. The Homeowner/Seller is in financial trouble and defaults. He refinances again, and defaults again one year later. He again refinances, and the blood is in the water. Then Ocwen Federal Bank [and their minions] buys the loan [gets assigned, or gets paid a foreclosure and management fee by the last lender who’s in trouble?] and immediately forecloses – ignoring the fact that there is a legit buyer waiting to buy the property – foreclosed on under contract! Boy! – were we lucky that we didn't sell and close on our house first! Bruce
Fried
Mr. Fried is in the Engineering Department at a major Semi-Conductor Company in Massachusetts. Being an Engineering Technician by training and schooling, he understands the difference between a sine, tangent, co-tangent, and a ‘co-sign.’ I suspect he knows a lot about Calculus and could teach Mr. Greenspan some new math as well. Given accounting transparency, I suspect he’d be a bloodhound on point looking over the real books at Ocwen. We also suspect he understands the Linkages between Ponzi and Electricity. The man is a true Massachusetts Bay Colony Patriot, and sent me a series of emails, which we were able to share in this guest essay effort with our readers. We can certainly tell from the “Nanook of the North” picture of Mr. Fried shown above taken on one of Ole Boston’s -8 Degree Days, we suspect our guest author has a wonderful sense of humor. His Family will, one day, find their Colonial Dream Home. Happy Dream Hunting!
Ole Bear, Editor Comments – Patriotism and the Massachusetts Bay Colony Most of our relevant comments we interjected in the guest essay text as ShakesBearean Asides. When I was helping Mr. Fried put the essay together and editing the text, I did not have the photograph of the subject property Colonial. One picture is worth a ten-thousand words. With my love of architecture, I can certainly see why anyone could fall in love with this American Dream Home. It has curb appeal, style, grace, and beauty. It lost its honor and dignity for a while during the insider foreclosure process, however, the property will forget these injustices… the market however, never forgets the injustices of the insiders. I too, feel very sorry for the borrowers who were victims of two predatory loans when interest rates 4 years ago were at 40 year lows! Had the Charettes been able to have received a mortgage in the 6-7% range, even though their credit history may not have been the best, they may never have lost their property. It is when one actually checks the paper trail of documents, that we have provided in this essay, that one can really appreciate how sad a fraud this is on the American Public. When one prints the full text of Mortgage of $300,000 and reads all thirteen pages, the fraud is absolutely frightening! Ole Bear, Editor Editor’s Comments and Footnotes:
[1]
The cart getting before the horse? This
document is very interesting for a number of reasons. It was
obviously prepared February 10, 2000, but not recorded until January
14, 2002, almost two years later. The date of the original mortgage
to New Century is dated February 4, 2000, six days before this
document was prepared. The subject property is in Essex County
Massachusetts, yet the original document took place in Orange
County, California. Whoever typed the document, didn’t know they
were in Orange County California, not Essex County Massachusetts.
The amount of hen scratching written in by hand is very suspect, indeed. New Century is shown as a beneficiary. Is Ocwen their life insurance policy? Ocwen Federal Bank, FSB appears to be linked to Firstar Bank – Milwaukee. Gina Gonzales appears to be an Assistant Vice President, but what the heck is a “Shipping Manager” – I don’t know the term at all. The address of our subject property is hand written in after the document was prepared. Instrument number is not cited, and the Book and Page of the original DOT or mortgage is penciled in also. So is the Loan Amount of $300,000. Gina Gonzales’s signature is even less recognizable than that of George W. Bush. Mom Alice always told me that folks who can’t sign their name legibly have something to hide – well, Heck, I am from the Mississippi Delta, and I live in the Show Me State, Pal! I am not an attorney, but it seems to me this document should have been filed first before the previous document, Ocwen’s intent to foreclose. Further, previously all recorded documents from out of state have been recorded by Law Offices, PLC in Massachusetts. Now we have Court Explorers in NYC doing the recording. OCO 1362 looks like a Court Explorers, Inc. file number, and OFB#99911653 looks like an Ocwen Federal Bank file/dossier number. I have no idea what DN: 228014 is a reference to. “Signed and seal in the presence of:” looks completely bogus to me. Who is the witness and what is the signatory of the witness? If I were Magda Solorzano, I would probably suspect I could lose my job with this bogus document. I still want to know what a shipping manager is. The document is recorded, but it reeks and smells to high heaven. Just because a document is recorded, does not mean it is legal, Folks! Because of the dates of the document, regardless the date of recording, it appears that the loan was made in anticipation of foreclosure after assignment of the loan.
[2]
Legal
Mumbo Jumbo. How did the loan go from $300,000 to $347,569.37 US
Dollars? Beats me! None of the lender participants would have lent
more money on the property if they were planning to foreclose on it,
would they? No records of New First Century or First Star Milwaukee
adding a second deed of trust for a home-equity line appear! Where
did almost $48,000 in increased loan balance come from? I don’t
know! – but, it is a great question! The phrase “ grants to
Firstar Bank, NA, as trustee of 1675 Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard,
West Palm
Beach, Florida 33401, the premises conveyed by said mortgage” is
absolutely mystifying. Who is the trustee of whom? Who owns whom?
Does Ocwen own New Century Mortgage Corporation in Orange County
California and Firstar Bank in Milwaukee, or do either of the first
two own Ocwen in Florida? Where is the transparency here? We suspect
New Century to be a subsidiary of either Firstar in Milwaukee or
Ocwen… and we suspect there are connections to Firstar Bank’s
holding companies to Ocwen, just as there had to have been some
connection between Ocwen and Southern Pacific Funding for the
original $260,000 mortgage. In dealing with both Southern Pacific
Funding and New Century Mortgage, the borrowers were ultimately
dealing with Ocwen Federal Bank as the mortgage servicer all
along.
[3] Again, another signatory one cannot read!
Mere hen scratching on paper with an ambulatory of political and
legal clout by whom? Who are the real players here? Can William
Newland at Ocwen Federal actually sign his own name, or will he just
obfuscate his signatory for the Congressional Record when he’s
called to testify before Congress when Ocwen Federal Bank is
investigated like Enron? Men who do not write legibly, in our view,
as Mom Alice in Kansas City says: “Have somethin’ to hide! Look
at George W’s signatory….Barbara Bush should be ashamed!”
[4]
Our Follow the Money Trail is based on these links below:
http://www.salemdeeds.com/searchresult.asp?type=bookpage&book=14705&page=506
[5]
When we use this phrase we go full circle –
it is also interesting to note that the corporate symbol for Ocwen
Federal Bank is a circle inside a broken square, which shows as
a registered trademark. This is most interesting because they have
blatantly registered as a corporate trademark the mathematical
impossibility, or the riddle of squaring
the circle or the quadrature of the circle – i.e. Pi [p]
is a transcendental number [never ending], therefore a square and a
circle cannot have the same area. This was proven by the German
Mathematician Lindemann
in 1882.
©
2004 Bruce Freid with Gale Bullock |
GLOBAL
REAL ESTATE MARKETS FORUM
