Christopher King, a former Assistant State and Escrow attorney who has worked in residential and corporate real estate in various capacities for over fifteen years, presents compelling evidence as to how, despite making agreements to the contrary, banks are continuing to push homeowners out of their homes and how these actions are costing taxpayers money.
In an interview with The Blue Republican, King explains how banks are using “dual tracking” to go against the HARP rules and cover their tracks with MERS. MERS, or the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, is a database that is supposed to track mortgages and deeds of trust. If you have a MIN number, you are dealing with MERS. King states any dealing with MERS should cause concern as MERS employs bank executives and they absolutely do not have your best interests at heart.
Filling in the gaps
Why worry? MERS is a database to track your information, right? Wrong, according to King. MERS has been created for the explicit purpose to cover up the messy situation that banks have found themselves in, in regards to the mortgage process. King alleges (and has some compelling evidence to be discussed below) the banks have separated the mortgage or deed from the note; as the note is the homeowners promise to pay the mortgage, they should never be separated. However, they have indeed been separated and this begins a falsification process whereby the banks scurry to retroactively correct mistakes made in the process.
Here’s the example King gives: Let’s say Bank of America winds up with a deed of trust and they say okay, where are the documents that go with it? Where are the supporting chains? And there’ll be gaps in that chain and so to fix that then falsified documents are created. How are these gaps filled? MERS.
Hiding dual tracking
King believes MERS is one of the leading offenders and creators of these falsified documents.
The banks have violated the very HARP rules they previously agreed to, and by breaking these rules, and participating in “dual tracking,” they have put themselves in a situation of constantly trying to cover their tracks. If you’re unfamiliar with dual tracking, this is the process that occurs when banks attempt to push homeowners out of their homes while simultaneously state they are negotiating a new payments plan with the very homeowners they’re attempting to remove. This scheme has been targeted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in an effort to create stricter legislation.
Because the banks have engaged in dual tracking, the chain of title has been corrupted. Their solution was to create a database to “hide” any malfeasance. What database was this? MERS. MERS has been used to avoid the payment of millions of dollars of recording fees to counties and cities all over the country, leaving tax payers short large sums of money, which are being assessed elsewhere at the tax payer’s expense.
Auditing for proof
Sound like a conspiracy theory? Well, it is, a little bit. King has proof, however. Marie McDonnell, a certified fraud examiner and forensic mortgage analyst, was contracted by the city of Seattle to perform an audit on MERS documents. She surveyed 195 documents; each one showed MERS attempted to transfer legal interests in the mortgage, to another entity.
According to Washington law, MERS wasn’t legally able to even be the beneficiary. MERS attempted to change the language, calling themselves the “nominee for the lender” rather than the beneficiary, but it seems to serve the same purpose.
Over 4 million dollars in taxpayer money
By pretending to transfer interests that MERS didn’t own, the assignments were fraudulent according to Washington law. As if this wasn’t enough, since the vast majority of the documents were never properly recorded, proper recording fees were not assessed. McDonnell found over 4 million dollars that could’ve been recorded with the county had proper recordation fees been assessed and the fines for improper/illegal documents been realized. Instead, the taxpayers are making up for this missing money.
This isn’t just happening in Washington. King contends this is a nationwide epidemic that homeowners and taxpayers need to be made aware of, immediately. If you’d like to read more about what King has found through his investigation, he regularly updates his website.
What do you think: is MERS a front for falsifying documents?
#MERSConspiracy
