Nye Lavalle has been fighting foreclosure fraud for more than 20 years.  He is someone that I deeply respect.  Last week Nye filed his comments related to proposed amendments to the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure.  I am not going to try to summarize his 144 page document filled with extensive case citations.  Read it for yourself and let me know what you think.

According to sources on Facebook, Mary McCulley has been released from the high security federal prison USP Hazelton.  She is being transported by a close friend to an undisclosed halfway house in southern Indiana, not far from her hometown in Kentucky.  McCulley appealed her sentence and now has been granted oral argument by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, scheduled for April 6, 2014 at the William K. Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle.

More details as they become available.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Mary’s incredible story:

“If you follow the news of foreclosure fraud and bad banks, you have certainly heard that on February 7, 2014, a Gallatin County, Montana jury awarded Ms. Mary McCulley an incredible $6 million verdict against US Bank of Montana, with $5 million of that figure being awarded for punitive damages.

It’s the kind of victory that foreclosure fighters have…

The American foreclosure crisis gripped our nation, reminded all of us of the dangers of risky loans and left millions without their homes.  At its peak, it was downright scary for homeowners worrying when the bank would repossess their homes.

But we’ve discovered a darker side to the business of home foreclosures; it’s a side that victimizes the most innocent of people.  Banks often contract out the gritty process of clearing out homes, but as we explore in this investigation, contractors often gets it wrong.

Joseph and Priscilla Saavedra know that fact all too well.  The couple lives in Tijeras, but they own a house in the San Miguel County village of San Geronimo, just outside of Las Vegas, NM.  And this isn’t just any house; it’s a home that has been in their family for generations and the home where they planned to live full time after they retire.

A divided federal appeals court in New York allowed more than 100,000 potential plaintiffs to pursue class action litigation accusing Leucadia National Corp and a law firm of fraudulently cutting corners to win default judgments in debt collection cases.

Tuesday’s 2-1 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came after the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission warned that a contrary ruling could undermine the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a 1977 law designed by Congress to police unscrupulous debt collectors.

The lawsuit focused on “sewer service,” a long-running practice where debt collectors fail to serve complaints on debtors, and later falsely certify to courts that service was made and that the cases have merit.

Sewer service often ends in default judgments because debtors do not know to appear in court. It can lead to bank account seizures, wage garnishments and ruined credit scores.

via

The Huffington Post published an article yesterday titled “David Axelrod Describes the No Good, Very Bad Minefield of Obama’s Early Presidency“.  It is infuriating to know that those who were charged with bringing a resolution to the financial crisis only thought about what was in the best interest of Wall Street and not what was in the best interest of the nation as a whole.  In response to the article, Bill Black writes:

Timothy Geithner’s penchant for speaking about things he does not care enough about to get right has led to him uttering many of the most cringe-worthy phrases about the economic crisis. The latest example is in David Axelrod’s new book about the Obama administration’s response to the financial crisis. This column was prompted by Sam Stein’s piece in the Huffington Post about Axelrod’s key points.

“Axelrod was ‘livid’ when he found out that Geithner and…

Empirical economic analysis is a powerful tool. It can elucidate correlations and sometimes even get us to causual explanations. But it has a serious weak-spot:  its value is entirely dependent upon the integrity of the data analyzed. To put the problem succinctly: sh*t in, sh*t out.

This brings us to analyses of the housing bubble. There’s a sizeable academic literature on the housing bubble (and relatedly also expert witness reports on loss causation in MBS litigation) that rely on loan-level data. The problem is that a lot of that loan-level data is suspect. That should hardly be a surprise: the industry even referred to some products as “liar loans”. And there were also FBI Mortgage Fraud reports indicating an uptick in mortgage fraud. But it was easy for economists to ignore the data integrity problem as long as the problems were merely anecdotal (e.g., the mariachi musician with the six-figure…