Note from the Clerk of the Court:
His Honor is still vacationing but issued an order requiring the posting of this image.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Could not resist...
Note from the Clerk of the Court:
His Honor is still vacationing but issued an order requiring the posting of this image.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Wells Fargo Caught Pulling Fairbanks Trick
For those who’ve been ‘round the predatory mortgage servicing bay very long, we recall the infamous “BPO” (Broker’s Price Opinion) became more than just an expense to be passed on to Fairbanks’ victims. In fact, not only was it marked up, many of them came from a Fairbanks subsidiary of another name – Residential Real Estate Review and were then marked up by Fairbanks as if they had actually paid someone for it.
Those fraudulent practices must have garnered the attention of giant squaliforme Wells Fargo, because a class-action suit was filed last week in the Louisiana Federal Court for fraudulently created charges for BPO’s (among a few other typically predatory things like mishandling payments).
Given this squaliformes’ size, if a class is certified for trial, one can only guess how many current and former borrowers could see some form of restitution when the settlement is reached.
For those not familiar with how mortgage servicing squaliformes play the fee-stacking game, consider a typical example of how this works and why it works:
BPO’s are authorized in almost all loan documents and can be charged in a situation where the loan is in default, typically when the loan is 30 days late. A payment received past the “grace period” might wind up in suspense while the notice is sent to the borrower, or the servicer may even send the payment back.
In any event, when and if the loan gets to the 30 day late term, it is typically in default and an order to get a BPO is almost automatically generated and a fee charged to the borrower.
Legally speaking, and this can’t be considered legal advice, the servicer can’t mark-up the fees it pays to a third party and thus profit from them, but in practice, they have two ways to get around these laws. First, they can pay the bill as invoiced by the service provider and then for all the business they generate for that provider, they get a kickback, or, as in the Fairbanks and Wells cases, they own the service provider and don’t disclose the fact that they aren’t paying anything on a cash-out per-service-act basis.
This one could be hard for Wells to defend on a fact basis; a Bankruptcy Court Judge has already ruled that Well’s has been charging bogus, inflated fees “disguised as third party costs” in bankruptcy filings, including the rather damning comment that their “management practices are questionable.”
How far back this could reach is going to be something only the court or the settlement can determine; were the case presented here, every penny they ever charged for a BPO would be distributed to the class as should the $1,000 per RESPA violation plus the attorney’s fees.
Then we’d get a rope.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Those fraudulent practices must have garnered the attention of giant squaliforme Wells Fargo, because a class-action suit was filed last week in the Louisiana Federal Court for fraudulently created charges for BPO’s (among a few other typically predatory things like mishandling payments).
Given this squaliformes’ size, if a class is certified for trial, one can only guess how many current and former borrowers could see some form of restitution when the settlement is reached.
For those not familiar with how mortgage servicing squaliformes play the fee-stacking game, consider a typical example of how this works and why it works:
BPO’s are authorized in almost all loan documents and can be charged in a situation where the loan is in default, typically when the loan is 30 days late. A payment received past the “grace period” might wind up in suspense while the notice is sent to the borrower, or the servicer may even send the payment back.
In any event, when and if the loan gets to the 30 day late term, it is typically in default and an order to get a BPO is almost automatically generated and a fee charged to the borrower.
Legally speaking, and this can’t be considered legal advice, the servicer can’t mark-up the fees it pays to a third party and thus profit from them, but in practice, they have two ways to get around these laws. First, they can pay the bill as invoiced by the service provider and then for all the business they generate for that provider, they get a kickback, or, as in the Fairbanks and Wells cases, they own the service provider and don’t disclose the fact that they aren’t paying anything on a cash-out per-service-act basis.
This one could be hard for Wells to defend on a fact basis; a Bankruptcy Court Judge has already ruled that Well’s has been charging bogus, inflated fees “disguised as third party costs” in bankruptcy filings, including the rather damning comment that their “management practices are questionable.”
How far back this could reach is going to be something only the court or the settlement can determine; were the case presented here, every penny they ever charged for a BPO would be distributed to the class as should the $1,000 per RESPA violation plus the attorney’s fees.
Then we’d get a rope.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Ohio is Doomed
Y'all up north sure have some odd ducks in charge of stuff.
Ohio’s “Compact to Help Ohioans Preserve Homeownership” is being promoted as a first of it’s kind in the US by none other than Governor Ted Strickland; it is indeed a first of it’s kind but the guv is seriously confused about this bit of public-relations fluff.
In the first place, while admitting it’s not legally enforceable, they like to call it “a cooperative step.” Strickland defended any lack of legal standing by claiming: "These companies are putting their honor and prestige on the line."
Newsflash, guv – they didn’t put anything on the line. You can't put up what you don't have. Whoever wrote that for you may actually believe those companies are honorable and have any prestige. That either gullible or ignorant staffer needs to find another occupation – one that doesn’t put his or her leader in a position of playing the fool in press conferences.
The servicers (among them some of the most-predatory companies in the industry and notably without uber-squaliforme EMC Mortgage) crossed their fingers and signed up to “work with the state in making every possible attempt to prevent default loans and foreclosures in Ohio.”
Wink-wink, nod-nod and (drum-roll please) here’s what they will supposedly do:
1. Engage in a substantial and large-scale loan modification effort for adjustable-rate mortgage resets and subprime mortgages.
2. Identify, evaluate and make good-faith attempts to contact at-risk or defaulting borrowers as soon as possible.
3. Modify loans to the extent permissible within fiduciary, contractual or other legal obligations and in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices.
4. Create incentives for staff and foreclosure counsel to modify loans rather than foreclose.
5. Report progress to the Ohio Department of Commerce.
6. Enter into a nonbinding agreement with the state for a defined period of time. The agreements extend to June 30, 2009.
Well, let ol’ Judge Bean take a look at those one by one:
Number one is nothing more than meaningless blah-blah-blah-blah.
Question: "What the hell is “a substantial and large-scale loan modification effort?”
Answer: Anything the servicer says it is.
Number two is something they’re supposedly already doing – the hiccup is that pesky thing known as “good faith.” They indeed may make a good-faith effort to contact the at-risk borrower, but many at-risk borrowers know who they're dealing with and may not want to jump into the water with the squaliforme while they're bleeding from fresh injuries. And of course, if they do make contact, whether the servicer will then act in "good-faith" in trying to prevent a foreclosure is supposedly but inadequately addressed in number three.
Three is where the alleged agreement becomes a complete nullity. That little phrase “in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices,” is the problem; the companies are the sole determinants of what those practices are or should be, and prudence dictates staying in business and maximizing returns for the ownership of the company, which among the predatory and opportunistic servicers means defaults and expeditious foreclosures when they alone, deem them appropriate.
Four is interesting because someone is letting it slip that the previous incentives weren’t geared toward what the servicers have been claiming they have been doing all along – trying to maintain borrowers in their homes.
Five is another one of those meaningless statements because there isn’t even an attempt to determine what “progress” is; but whatever they say it is will have to be reported.
And the non-binding agreement has an oxymoronic term limitation of a little over a year.
Finally, consider the clause that Litton Loan 's agreement has:
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Ohio’s “Compact to Help Ohioans Preserve Homeownership” is being promoted as a first of it’s kind in the US by none other than Governor Ted Strickland; it is indeed a first of it’s kind but the guv is seriously confused about this bit of public-relations fluff.
In the first place, while admitting it’s not legally enforceable, they like to call it “a cooperative step.” Strickland defended any lack of legal standing by claiming: "These companies are putting their honor and prestige on the line."
Newsflash, guv – they didn’t put anything on the line. You can't put up what you don't have. Whoever wrote that for you may actually believe those companies are honorable and have any prestige. That either gullible or ignorant staffer needs to find another occupation – one that doesn’t put his or her leader in a position of playing the fool in press conferences.
The servicers (among them some of the most-predatory companies in the industry and notably without uber-squaliforme EMC Mortgage) crossed their fingers and signed up to “work with the state in making every possible attempt to prevent default loans and foreclosures in Ohio.”
Wink-wink, nod-nod and (drum-roll please) here’s what they will supposedly do:
1. Engage in a substantial and large-scale loan modification effort for adjustable-rate mortgage resets and subprime mortgages.
2. Identify, evaluate and make good-faith attempts to contact at-risk or defaulting borrowers as soon as possible.
3. Modify loans to the extent permissible within fiduciary, contractual or other legal obligations and in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices.
4. Create incentives for staff and foreclosure counsel to modify loans rather than foreclose.
5. Report progress to the Ohio Department of Commerce.
6. Enter into a nonbinding agreement with the state for a defined period of time. The agreements extend to June 30, 2009.
Well, let ol’ Judge Bean take a look at those one by one:
Number one is nothing more than meaningless blah-blah-blah-blah.
Question: "What the hell is “a substantial and large-scale loan modification effort?”
Answer: Anything the servicer says it is.
Number two is something they’re supposedly already doing – the hiccup is that pesky thing known as “good faith.” They indeed may make a good-faith effort to contact the at-risk borrower, but many at-risk borrowers know who they're dealing with and may not want to jump into the water with the squaliforme while they're bleeding from fresh injuries. And of course, if they do make contact, whether the servicer will then act in "good-faith" in trying to prevent a foreclosure is supposedly but inadequately addressed in number three.
Three is where the alleged agreement becomes a complete nullity. That little phrase “in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices,” is the problem; the companies are the sole determinants of what those practices are or should be, and prudence dictates staying in business and maximizing returns for the ownership of the company, which among the predatory and opportunistic servicers means defaults and expeditious foreclosures when they alone, deem them appropriate.
Four is interesting because someone is letting it slip that the previous incentives weren’t geared toward what the servicers have been claiming they have been doing all along – trying to maintain borrowers in their homes.
Five is another one of those meaningless statements because there isn’t even an attempt to determine what “progress” is; but whatever they say it is will have to be reported.
"Dear Ohio Department of Commerce:
Progress is good.
Regards,
Servicer."
And the non-binding agreement has an oxymoronic term limitation of a little over a year.
Finally, consider the clause that Litton Loan 's agreement has:
"... is not intended to convey, and does not convey, any beneficiary rights to any person, entity, government or regulatory authority, including, without limitation, borrowers, lenders, investors, counselors or advocacy groups."If this isn’t just a late April Fool’s blunder, Ohioans should be concerned that their Governor is either a simpleton when it comes to making agreements on behalf of the citizenry or he is a simpleton when it comes to selecting staff members to make agreements on behalf of the citizenry.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
The Washington Post Wakes Up - Maybe
How long this will remain up and available is subject to speculation, but in order to preserve the Post's rather remarkable exploration of "Big Brother" already at work, consider this old news presented as something new:
Centers Tap Into Personal Databases
State Groups Were Formed After 9/11
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it's not clear what information those systems contain.
Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues.
Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers' importance to national security, they have generally declined to elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.
Those details have come to light at a time of debate about domestic intelligence efforts, including eavesdropping and data-aggregation programs at the National Security Agency, and whether the government has enough protections in place to prevent abuses.
The list of information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.
Centers serving New York and other states also tap into a Federal Trade Commission database with information about hundreds of thousands of identity-theft reports, the document and police interviews show.
Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver's license photos, while analysts in Rhode Island have access to car-rental databases. In Maryland, authorities rely on a little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans.
In its online promotional material, Entersect calls itself "the silent partner to municipal, county, state, and federal justice agencies who access our databases every day to locate subjects, develop background information, secure information from a cellular or unlisted number, and much more."
Police officials said fusion center analysts are trained to use the information responsibly, legally and only on authorized criminal and counterterrorism cases. They stressed the importance of secret and public data in rooting out obscure threats.
"There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism" said Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. "That's what post-9/11 is about."
Government watchdogs, along with some police and intelligence officials, said they worry that the fusion centers do not have enough oversight and are not open enough with the public, in part because they operate under various state rules.
"Fusion centers have grown, really, off the radar screen of public accountability," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District. "Congress and the state legislatures need to get a handle over what is going on at all these fusion centers."
Fusion centers were formed in the wake of revelations that counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities missed or neglected evidence that the Sept. 11 attackers were in the United States while preparing to strike.
Because they are organized by the states, the centers have developed in different ways. Some are small operations focused on crime, while others are full-fledged criminal and counterterrorism operations. From 2004 to 2007, state and local governments received $254 million from the Department of Homeland Security in support of the centers, which are also supported by employees of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. In some cases, they work with the U.S. Northern Command, the Pentagon operation involved in homeland security.
The centers have been criticized for being secretive, but authorities said that this is largely for security reasons. Activists want to know more about their activities, the kinds of information they collect and how the information is being used.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit in Virginia last month seeking the release of records about communication among state fusion center officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Marc Rotenberg, the privacy center's executive director, said his group was responding to a proposed state law that would sharply limit access to records about the fusion centers' activity.
Sue Reingold, deputy program manager in the Information Sharing Environment office, a federal operation with a mandate to improve information sharing, said state and local officials "must have access to a broad array of classified and unclassified information" to perform their mission. But Reingold said that an "important part of this is appropriate training and oversight that is well understood and transparent to the public."
"Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime, including terrorism," she said.
The list includes a wide variety of data resources along with software that finds patterns and displays links among people.
Most of the centers have subscriptions to Accurint, ChoicePoint's Autotrack or LexisNexis. These information brokers are Web-based services that deliver instant access to billions of records on individuals' homes, cars, phone numbers and other information.
Some of the centers link to records of currency transactions and almost 5 million suspicious-activity reports filed by financial institutions with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Massachusetts and other states rely on LocatePlus, an information broker that claims that it provides "the most comprehensive cell phone, unlisted and unpublished phone database in the industry." The state also taps a private system called ClaimSearch that includes a "nationwide database that provides information on insurance claims, including vehicles, casualty claims and property claims," the document said.
The center in Ohio has access, through authorized users, to an FBI "secret level repository," the document said.
Rhode Island reported that it has access, also through the FBI, to "Top Secret resources" such as "Proton, which allows queries of CIA databases," the document shows. Officials at the Rhode Island State Police, FBI and CIA declined to discuss the system and the kinds of information it contains.
In addition to databases run by Entersect, Maryland fusion center analysts have access to wage and property records, corporate charters, utility records and a host of government files, including criminal justice information and traffic tickets. Jason Luckenbaugh, the center's chief of staff, acknowledged concern about the government's ability to tap into new sources of information. But he said the databases enable analysts to fight crime and protect against terrorism, and help local authorities do the same. "We're not trying to threaten them in any way," he said.
Once again, we can say goodbye personal privacy. This tip-of-the-iceberg realization by the Post is far too little too late to stem the tide.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Centers Tap Into Personal Databases
State Groups Were Formed After 9/11
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it's not clear what information those systems contain.
Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues.
Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers' importance to national security, they have generally declined to elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.
Those details have come to light at a time of debate about domestic intelligence efforts, including eavesdropping and data-aggregation programs at the National Security Agency, and whether the government has enough protections in place to prevent abuses.
The list of information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.
Centers serving New York and other states also tap into a Federal Trade Commission database with information about hundreds of thousands of identity-theft reports, the document and police interviews show.
Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver's license photos, while analysts in Rhode Island have access to car-rental databases. In Maryland, authorities rely on a little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans.
In its online promotional material, Entersect calls itself "the silent partner to municipal, county, state, and federal justice agencies who access our databases every day to locate subjects, develop background information, secure information from a cellular or unlisted number, and much more."
Police officials said fusion center analysts are trained to use the information responsibly, legally and only on authorized criminal and counterterrorism cases. They stressed the importance of secret and public data in rooting out obscure threats.
"There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism" said Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. "That's what post-9/11 is about."
Government watchdogs, along with some police and intelligence officials, said they worry that the fusion centers do not have enough oversight and are not open enough with the public, in part because they operate under various state rules.
"Fusion centers have grown, really, off the radar screen of public accountability," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District. "Congress and the state legislatures need to get a handle over what is going on at all these fusion centers."
Fusion centers were formed in the wake of revelations that counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities missed or neglected evidence that the Sept. 11 attackers were in the United States while preparing to strike.
Because they are organized by the states, the centers have developed in different ways. Some are small operations focused on crime, while others are full-fledged criminal and counterterrorism operations. From 2004 to 2007, state and local governments received $254 million from the Department of Homeland Security in support of the centers, which are also supported by employees of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. In some cases, they work with the U.S. Northern Command, the Pentagon operation involved in homeland security.
The centers have been criticized for being secretive, but authorities said that this is largely for security reasons. Activists want to know more about their activities, the kinds of information they collect and how the information is being used.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit in Virginia last month seeking the release of records about communication among state fusion center officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Marc Rotenberg, the privacy center's executive director, said his group was responding to a proposed state law that would sharply limit access to records about the fusion centers' activity.
Sue Reingold, deputy program manager in the Information Sharing Environment office, a federal operation with a mandate to improve information sharing, said state and local officials "must have access to a broad array of classified and unclassified information" to perform their mission. But Reingold said that an "important part of this is appropriate training and oversight that is well understood and transparent to the public."
"Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime, including terrorism," she said.
The list includes a wide variety of data resources along with software that finds patterns and displays links among people.
Most of the centers have subscriptions to Accurint, ChoicePoint's Autotrack or LexisNexis. These information brokers are Web-based services that deliver instant access to billions of records on individuals' homes, cars, phone numbers and other information.
Some of the centers link to records of currency transactions and almost 5 million suspicious-activity reports filed by financial institutions with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Massachusetts and other states rely on LocatePlus, an information broker that claims that it provides "the most comprehensive cell phone, unlisted and unpublished phone database in the industry." The state also taps a private system called ClaimSearch that includes a "nationwide database that provides information on insurance claims, including vehicles, casualty claims and property claims," the document said.
The center in Ohio has access, through authorized users, to an FBI "secret level repository," the document said.
Rhode Island reported that it has access, also through the FBI, to "Top Secret resources" such as "Proton, which allows queries of CIA databases," the document shows. Officials at the Rhode Island State Police, FBI and CIA declined to discuss the system and the kinds of information it contains.
In addition to databases run by Entersect, Maryland fusion center analysts have access to wage and property records, corporate charters, utility records and a host of government files, including criminal justice information and traffic tickets. Jason Luckenbaugh, the center's chief of staff, acknowledged concern about the government's ability to tap into new sources of information. But he said the databases enable analysts to fight crime and protect against terrorism, and help local authorities do the same. "We're not trying to threaten them in any way," he said.
Once again, we can say goodbye personal privacy. This tip-of-the-iceberg realization by the Post is far too little too late to stem the tide.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
News Flash!
JRB Newswire
4.1.2008
Washington, D.C.
In response to the deepening problems of the investment banking industry, the nation’s top economic thinkers issued a formal set of proposed “Economic Recovery, Realignment and Operating Rule Standards,” promulgated by the President’s recent series of “International Debt, Interest and Optimized Trade Summits.”
Secretary Paulsen, who sent key staff members to the hastily-gathered meetings of major investment bank leaders and market experts, was quick to praise the results, saying, “The ERRORS will send a message to the financial community around the world that this country is stronger than the press would have everyone believe.”
He added that there will be another series of IDIOTS “…sometime in January of 2009.”
4.1.2008
Washington, D.C.
In response to the deepening problems of the investment banking industry, the nation’s top economic thinkers issued a formal set of proposed “Economic Recovery, Realignment and Operating Rule Standards,” promulgated by the President’s recent series of “International Debt, Interest and Optimized Trade Summits.”
Secretary Paulsen, who sent key staff members to the hastily-gathered meetings of major investment bank leaders and market experts, was quick to praise the results, saying, “The ERRORS will send a message to the financial community around the world that this country is stronger than the press would have everyone believe.”
He added that there will be another series of IDIOTS “…sometime in January of 2009.”
Monday, March 17, 2008
Animal Rights (and Wrongs) on Wall Street
What is admiration worth?
No less than Forbes magazine used to rate Bear Stearns among the “most admired” businesses in the country.
How that most-admired status became worth only $2 per share is going to be made more clear in the future, and a good part of it is going to come out in the conflagration of lawsuits that are only now being ignited as angry shareholders howl and lick their wounds.
To say that Cayne (CEO) and his henchmen didn’t see this coming is ludicrous; yet apparently they didn’t take steps with their own holdings to avoid massive personal paper-wealth hits and the company didn’t have golden parachutes for major players.
But as one of the key enablers in subprime mortgage securities, and in owning one of the truly predatory mortgage servicers (EMC Mortgage), Cayne and the directors had to know their scheme could only run so long. Or did they?
We may eventually get answers to the classic: What did they know and when did they know it?
Let’s face it, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, EMC Mortgage’s management was reporting something up through the ranks to Bear’s management. There had to be either signals of impending doom or over-confident fluff moving up the food chain about how quickly the toxic waste dumps could be cleaned up through aggressive loss-mitigation (read: rapid foreclosure) practices. Clearly, while not all of Bear’s portfolios were serviced by EMC, being among the most predatory of special servicers, they should have provided Bear with insight into what could or couldn’t be accomplished by the handful of companies that do the highly-profitable waste-disposal servicing in the subprime arena.
And it may have had that insight. But it seems more likely that the board was getting the fluff version of the story from within the ranks. Either that or we would have seen a lot more action on Bear’s shares from the major players who were in the know.
And that version of the theory makes sense when you consider the culture that has been allowed to thrive at servicers like EMC: Never, ever admit a mistake.
The sudden and stunning collapse of Bear’s value may indeed reflect that culture was being rewarded right up until the bitter end.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
No less than Forbes magazine used to rate Bear Stearns among the “most admired” businesses in the country.
How that most-admired status became worth only $2 per share is going to be made more clear in the future, and a good part of it is going to come out in the conflagration of lawsuits that are only now being ignited as angry shareholders howl and lick their wounds.
To say that Cayne (CEO) and his henchmen didn’t see this coming is ludicrous; yet apparently they didn’t take steps with their own holdings to avoid massive personal paper-wealth hits and the company didn’t have golden parachutes for major players.
But as one of the key enablers in subprime mortgage securities, and in owning one of the truly predatory mortgage servicers (EMC Mortgage), Cayne and the directors had to know their scheme could only run so long. Or did they?
We may eventually get answers to the classic: What did they know and when did they know it?
Let’s face it, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, EMC Mortgage’s management was reporting something up through the ranks to Bear’s management. There had to be either signals of impending doom or over-confident fluff moving up the food chain about how quickly the toxic waste dumps could be cleaned up through aggressive loss-mitigation (read: rapid foreclosure) practices. Clearly, while not all of Bear’s portfolios were serviced by EMC, being among the most predatory of special servicers, they should have provided Bear with insight into what could or couldn’t be accomplished by the handful of companies that do the highly-profitable waste-disposal servicing in the subprime arena.
And it may have had that insight. But it seems more likely that the board was getting the fluff version of the story from within the ranks. Either that or we would have seen a lot more action on Bear’s shares from the major players who were in the know.
And that version of the theory makes sense when you consider the culture that has been allowed to thrive at servicers like EMC: Never, ever admit a mistake.
The sudden and stunning collapse of Bear’s value may indeed reflect that culture was being rewarded right up until the bitter end.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Friday, March 14, 2008
Bernanke’s Principal Blunder
What we can learn from the Fed Chairman’s recent calls for reductions in the principal of troubled mortgage loans is that he knows little or nothing about the reality of life faced by subprime borrowers.
Hello, Ben – the problem isn’t the principal – it’s the interest.
You’ve adopted the theory that being upside down in a loan makes it so a borrower will want to walk away because they think there’s no equity to lose.
Hello, Ben – the problem is they can’t afford the payments because of the interest rates they got slammed with. They would like to stay living in the house. It is their home. You’re not helping them keep it and foreclosure is the servicer's best financial option.
Have you played with an amortization calculator lately, Ben?
Try a simple one, just to learn how people in the real world see things:
$150,000.00 ARM loan, 360 months 5.5% interest rate for 24 months = $851.68 per month.
After 24 months at that rate, $4,155.25 has been paid into principal. $16,285.16 has been paid in interest. The principal balance is now $145,844.75.
Then the ARM’s interest rate jumps to 11%, so the new payment zooms to $1,379.68, which is $528.00 more per month for the borrower who is already trapped or would have refinanced.
Let’s say Ben’s goofy idea to lower the principal is acceptable to the noteholder (if you can find one!). And let’s knock off 20% of the principal ($145,844.75 becomes $125,844.75). Guess what the payment is now? $1,189.22, which is still $337.54 more the borrower would have to pay per month that they probably don’t have.
And worse, at 11% APR, the borrower is now faced with over $303,000 in interest for their $150,000 loan instead of $130,000. That's still a good deal for the investor, Ben.
Wake up, Ben. The problem isn’t principal. The problem is USURY. Plain and simple. Subprime lending is a usurious, predatory scam, Ben and until you admit that the interest rates are the problem, you’re only perpetuating it.
But anyone with a subprime loan should be able to figure this out too. Anyone who has half a brain should walk away because they’re being scammed by usurious interest rates, not because they’re upside down or close to it.
And if enough of the victims do the smart thing and walk, the subprime industry and your friends on Wall Street will get even more of what they’re getting, and they richly deserve it.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Now wait just a damn minute...
Back in January of this year the New York City Comptroller, William Thompson and the New York State Comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli and the New York City Pension Funds became lead plaintiffs in a class-action suit against Countrywide and certain officers (as well as a host of other related defendants) alleging that Countrywide misstated and omitted information regarding its lending practices and other business information, resulting in the artificial inflation of its stock price. Well, we all know what has happened to Countrywide and it's stock value. And a lot of us cheered.
But given the amount of information that is, was and has been out there about Countrywide’s predatory lending and servicing practices over the last several years, what on earth were Thompson and DiNapoli and their pension funds thinking?
Something tells this Judge that NY's participation in the suit should be thrown out under the doctrine of unclean hands; anyone who invested in Countrywide had to have been deliberately ignoring the enormous public outcry regarding subprime predatory lending. And the only possible reasons to have done that are either opportunistic gambling with NY pension funds in Countrywide’s routine abuse of borrower consumers or alternatively, gross ignorance and incompetence. There really can’t be any other position from which to complain, and either one means Thompson and DiNapoli should have nothing to do with managing anything more complex than a lemonade stand.
Any pension fund or investment manager that touches the stock of companies like Countrywide deserves whatever happens to them.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean.
But given the amount of information that is, was and has been out there about Countrywide’s predatory lending and servicing practices over the last several years, what on earth were Thompson and DiNapoli and their pension funds thinking?
Something tells this Judge that NY's participation in the suit should be thrown out under the doctrine of unclean hands; anyone who invested in Countrywide had to have been deliberately ignoring the enormous public outcry regarding subprime predatory lending. And the only possible reasons to have done that are either opportunistic gambling with NY pension funds in Countrywide’s routine abuse of borrower consumers or alternatively, gross ignorance and incompetence. There really can’t be any other position from which to complain, and either one means Thompson and DiNapoli should have nothing to do with managing anything more complex than a lemonade stand.
Any pension fund or investment manager that touches the stock of companies like Countrywide deserves whatever happens to them.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Thank You, Mr. Gramm
If there is any one thing that is more irritating than fire-ants, it’s the obvious lack of understanding on the part of news media reporters and their willingness to parrot the public-relations line of the financial industry and certain politicans.
Over and over again, the “problem” of subprime lending is defined as something that must be laid at the feet of “borrowers with less than perfect credit.”
This magical reversal of the laws of reason is akin to being able to push a rope and have something happen at the other end. For those who can’t seem to make this journalistic alchemy work for them, it is more than just frustrating to see Washington, the US Attorneys Offices and Attorneys General throughout the nation get very excited about CDOs, SIVs, hedge funds and the losses on Wall Street while deliberately ignoring the millions of civilian victims of this massive scheme.
The media is more than happy to keep ignoring the real victims. They like to differentiate themselves from the “people with credit problems” by repeating the discriminatory smear as if it were fact.
The fact is, some number of people who shouldn’t have gotten abusive loans got them. A small percentage of those knew they were on thin financial ice but went ahead anyway. But the vast majority of them were set up to pay usurious amounts of interest and are still, even as I write this, making their payments. And they're suffering as a result.
What we’re really seeing is what I call “wealth recapture.” It’s reverse wealth-distribution; Washington likes to take from the rich and give to the poor. In response, the rich figured out how to get it back from the lower-middle and middle classes through the mortgage and credit-card industry and a hopelessly-fraudulent credit-scoring schema that was used to artificially inflate interest rates. There were enough people in Washington who were willing to see the duplicitous nature of the system but not do anything about it.
What most people don’t realize is the roots of this problem can be found with just a little research. Once the industry succeeded in getting rid of usury laws, the game began. And any potential interference was quickly thwarted by among others, one very powerful Senator, Phil Gramm of Texas. With all the warning flags being raised about predatory lending years back, it was Senator Gramm that blocked any meaningful controls with his ‘you can’t regulate it because you can’t define it’ nonsense.
That effectively cleared the playing field of any defenders and the birth of the monster was at hand. The money flowed like water and large amounts of it went to Washington in both campaign contributions and lobbying expenses.
Millionaires were created by the thousands. All while the average person loaded themselves up with exorbitant interest debt because, conveniently, the game was rigged to provide a tax deduction for it, and still is in terms of the mortgage industry.
There was so much money made so quickly that they got even more creative with it. Too creative. And this creativity has come home to roost – for the gamblers who thought they had the game rigged, that is.
But they couldn’t have rigged the game if folks like Phil Gramm hadn’t been willing to protect them early on and folks like Bob Ney weren’t there to cheer them on in the early part of this decade. (Gramm is now with UBS Investment bank and is an economic advisor to John McCain. Ney is serving time.)
Yet we still have the news fools lapping up the industry PR flack’s line about “loose lending standards” being the root cause of the debacle, without finishing the sentence, which should read: “Loose lending standards designed to entrap as many people as possible."
Then there’s the “call your lender if you think you’re going to have trouble with your payment,” dogma. What that provides for most people who’ve already been abused is a quicker ticket to hell. Instead of a bus, you’ll be on the next plane to moving out of your home. First, the servicer they’re supposed to call is the only party who stands to actually make money in the foreclosure process. Everyone else loses, especially the borrower. Worse yet, the alleged workout deals will effectively shield the lender and servicer’s illegal and fraudulent acts.
“You want a lower payment?”
“Yes.”
“Here, sign this.”
“But it says I can’t sue you for the violations of the law you’ve already engaged in or might engage in in the future.”
“You want a lower payment?”
“We, well, we, yes."
“Then sign it.”
Neat system, eh Mr. Gramm?
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Over and over again, the “problem” of subprime lending is defined as something that must be laid at the feet of “borrowers with less than perfect credit.”
This magical reversal of the laws of reason is akin to being able to push a rope and have something happen at the other end. For those who can’t seem to make this journalistic alchemy work for them, it is more than just frustrating to see Washington, the US Attorneys Offices and Attorneys General throughout the nation get very excited about CDOs, SIVs, hedge funds and the losses on Wall Street while deliberately ignoring the millions of civilian victims of this massive scheme.
The media is more than happy to keep ignoring the real victims. They like to differentiate themselves from the “people with credit problems” by repeating the discriminatory smear as if it were fact.
The fact is, some number of people who shouldn’t have gotten abusive loans got them. A small percentage of those knew they were on thin financial ice but went ahead anyway. But the vast majority of them were set up to pay usurious amounts of interest and are still, even as I write this, making their payments. And they're suffering as a result.
What we’re really seeing is what I call “wealth recapture.” It’s reverse wealth-distribution; Washington likes to take from the rich and give to the poor. In response, the rich figured out how to get it back from the lower-middle and middle classes through the mortgage and credit-card industry and a hopelessly-fraudulent credit-scoring schema that was used to artificially inflate interest rates. There were enough people in Washington who were willing to see the duplicitous nature of the system but not do anything about it.
What most people don’t realize is the roots of this problem can be found with just a little research. Once the industry succeeded in getting rid of usury laws, the game began. And any potential interference was quickly thwarted by among others, one very powerful Senator, Phil Gramm of Texas. With all the warning flags being raised about predatory lending years back, it was Senator Gramm that blocked any meaningful controls with his ‘you can’t regulate it because you can’t define it’ nonsense.
That effectively cleared the playing field of any defenders and the birth of the monster was at hand. The money flowed like water and large amounts of it went to Washington in both campaign contributions and lobbying expenses.
Millionaires were created by the thousands. All while the average person loaded themselves up with exorbitant interest debt because, conveniently, the game was rigged to provide a tax deduction for it, and still is in terms of the mortgage industry.
There was so much money made so quickly that they got even more creative with it. Too creative. And this creativity has come home to roost – for the gamblers who thought they had the game rigged, that is.
But they couldn’t have rigged the game if folks like Phil Gramm hadn’t been willing to protect them early on and folks like Bob Ney weren’t there to cheer them on in the early part of this decade. (Gramm is now with UBS Investment bank and is an economic advisor to John McCain. Ney is serving time.)
Yet we still have the news fools lapping up the industry PR flack’s line about “loose lending standards” being the root cause of the debacle, without finishing the sentence, which should read: “Loose lending standards designed to entrap as many people as possible."
Then there’s the “call your lender if you think you’re going to have trouble with your payment,” dogma. What that provides for most people who’ve already been abused is a quicker ticket to hell. Instead of a bus, you’ll be on the next plane to moving out of your home. First, the servicer they’re supposed to call is the only party who stands to actually make money in the foreclosure process. Everyone else loses, especially the borrower. Worse yet, the alleged workout deals will effectively shield the lender and servicer’s illegal and fraudulent acts.
“You want a lower payment?”
“Yes.”
“Here, sign this.”
“But it says I can’t sue you for the violations of the law you’ve already engaged in or might engage in in the future.”
“You want a lower payment?”
“We, well, we, yes."
“Then sign it.”
Neat system, eh Mr. Gramm?
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Re-re-re-re-re-reruns - A Guide to Debt Elimination Schemes
Sometimes along side the aforementioned (below) band of ignorant (or deliberately foolish) tax protesters and dodgers are their less risk-taking, like-minded, self-interested brothers and sisters who choose to go unarmed into battle with various financial entities with what really are nonsense theories. A lot of these share the same fundamental theoretical roots but there are fewer convicted perpetrators.
What they think they’re armed with, the sure-fire “process,” to get out of debts without paying the creditor is rarely anything more than a revamping of old schemes that have never worked before. Apparently they seem to sound impressive in new prose, but attempting to use any of them dooms what might be an actually defrauded borrower from prevailing in a legal setting. And frequently, they steer actual victims away from legitimate legal counsel.
All of these schemes share some commonalities, including several legal mythologies and various forms of allegedly complex conspiracies mixed with secrets the public isn’t supposed to know. Stir in some suspicion for the evil motives of the powers-that-be, add a pinch of questionably interpreted legal lexicon and you have a product for a receptive target market.
Another thing the schemes share is a sort-of family-tree of promoters, some of which are associates or acolytes of convicted criminals and others that just haven’t gotten into the range of the prosecutor’s radar. Their like-minded genealogy can be traced to the disaffected, conspiracy-driven, anti-establishment community which includes the more radical so-called “patriot” movements and some seriously dangerous even further-out-there groups.
Those foolish enough to take on the IRS are the most exposed to prosecution and their names show up in newspaper stories from time to time while few of the debt-elimination scammers warrant anything other than being outed and derided on the Internet, or in the case of the Dorean Group, a handful of articles in trade news outlets.
Few of the participants are doubly-stupid in today’s information-rich environment, thus we probably won’t see another attempt to use a “UCC / strawman /ALL CAPS NAME / redemption” scheme to thwart the IRS unless someone is working from a really outdated hardcopy source they found among someone’s dusty piles of cheaply produced self-published books. But credit card companies, as utterly abusive and out-of-control as they are, probably get dozens of nonsense letters every day from rookies who Googled their way into a trying (or worse, paying someone for) a process for getting out from under their crushing debt without having to actually pay it. Instead of winding up with no debt, the hopeful debtor learns a harder, more costly and disappointing lesson in how the law really works. And if they had the misfortune to have paid one of the scammers, they eventually discover the doctrine of unclean hands prevents them from bringing any kind of viable civil action.
Because of the Internet, there seems to be no end in sight to the reuse of the same root mythologies, half-truths, tortured logic and context-mangling cut and paste quotes and citations. Web sites are so easy to launch and links to others so easy to implement that anyone with average skills can put themselves into the debt elimination business almost overnight. All you really have to do is blend some number of the old theories into a slightly different, seemingly-coherent message as if there’s a new and improved theory to get paid for.
Finding a new angle will help to differentiate you but plowing overly-creative new ground will take inordinate amounts of your time. And keep in mind there are limits to the beneficial effects of being really creative. Some who peddle nonsense like Paul Andrew Mitchell, David Wynn Miller, David Merrill Van Pelt and Shaini Goodwin have wandered so far off into lala land that even the less-than-knowledgeable reader will shake their head and worry about all the people in this country who can’t get proper medical attention. Others like David Icke are clearly selling nothing more than an entertainment product and are compellingly goofy enough to even get overnight radio promotion time. So making new stuff up, while seemingly easy, can backfire in terms of the numbers of prospective paying customers for a debt elimination scheme.
So, here are Judge Bean’s tips for setting up a debt-elimination scheme:
- It’s probably a little too soon to revive some of the scams, so do your research. For example, mimicking the Dorean Group's highly-complex scheme would be problematic; they’ll be sentenced about the time you get your first web pages published. But there are parts of it that sound so mysterious that it will easily fool some people. Also, the Bill Of Exchange (BOE) thing is a little too hot for a while what with Barton Buhtz 's recent conviction. The private arbitration company thing has proven to be a major loser, too. Then again, your customer base probably doesn’t know or believe any of that, but choose carefully or wait until the stories die off into Google’s later pages before you ressurect another one of those.
- As far as content goes, first and foremost, you need to establish a shared evil opponent, so you have to include mysteries about banks, money and the Federal Reserve. If you don’t like the ones that are out there, feel free to embellish or even rewrite history. Adding things about the IMF and the NWO is nice fluff to fill out some space.
- Try to avoid addressing the issue of accepting FRN’s even though you have to say they aren’t real money.
- Remember “international bankers” sounds more devious than just “banks.”
- Spin in plenty of legal-sounding phrases about promissory notes, bank credit, assets, balance sheets, GAAP and the all-important “wet-ink" signature.
- Assert that you have a team. You have experts in, well, whatever suits your fancy just as long as there are initials after their names that imply credibility.
- Dig up the Credit River myth or at least provide a link to a site that does, but make sure you choose a web site that doesn’t include the whole story.
- Sovereignty isn’t really a big attraction for your average, apolitical, non-fringe element borrower in trouble, but it does give you street cred with the protest-minded. If you decide to tap into that market, remember to use the word “jurisdiction” a lot.
- Be sure to include statements throughout your site that comfort the prospective customer/co-conspirator’s conscience, i.e., assure them your process is “moral.” But don’t stoop to the “it’s moral because the bank screwed you” ploy; you’ll scare off some number of viable prospects. If you’re really creative and your customer base is really gullible, you might try some version of Freedom Club USA ’s “everybody wins” theme.
- Save yourself some time and just replicate one of the UCC strawman packages – the stuff about the ALL CAPS name. (Don’t worry about copyright issues; those will be the least of your problems.)
- Toss in something about why attorneys can’t be trusted because they and the Judges are all part of the BAR.
- If you’ve got the time, resources and verbal delivery skills, have weekly one-way conference calls where you can sell by expounding on the wonders of the plan and the progress being made. It’s a long-distance call for them, so keep it short and sweet.
- If you’re really slick and fast on your feet, “open” the above-referenced call up to questions but be sure you’ve authored them and they’re presented by trusted parties. Try to use people who can ask them without sounding like they’re reading.
- You will need to make up a number of anecdotal and impossible to disprove testimonials from allegedly satisfied, debt-free customers. Don’t make them extravagant but don’t worry about misrepresentations; the FTC would have to have thousands of complaints about you to even look at your website.
- If you really want to have credibility with the furthest fringes of the gullible, mention things about Admiralty and the gold fringed flag (no pun intended).
- If you’re going to use it in your process, at least try to be original with the words you put in front of “Administrative Remedy.” Private and international have been overused and putting in the Admiralty after it has lost a lot of allure.
- Use an invisible hit-counter for your own information but put up your own self-set numerical display to show huge and growing numbers of visitors.
- Now, if you’re really trying to tap into the truly zany realms, you’ll have to put in some links to the other-worldly kinds of nonsense.
- If you’re into the MLM thing and can lead others into it, you might be able to put together a network marketing scheme to get other people to sell for you. At least with this angle, you can get some initial revenue for setting up a web site for each of your marketers and their down-lines.
- Don’t get greedy; this is a business that lasts between a few months and maybe three years if you’re really slick and careful. Better to take the money and disappear than to wait too long and lose it all.
- Finally, get ready to do battle on Internet forums to promote your program, trash your competitors and demean web sites like Quatloos.com and Scam.com. You’ll need to be able to pose as completely different posters; some people, including moderators, can smoke out shills and spammers who don’t know how to conceal their writing style. You need to be creative in broaching the subject on a forum for the first time. Most rookies come off looking really lame with the “Has anyone heard anything about the XYZ program?” kind of thing. Having multiple IP addresses is critical for this part of the business. You may want to revive that old dial-up thingy and sign up with a couple of low-cost ISP’s. Anonymizers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and some sites won’t let you post if you’re using proxy servers.
Which brings me to the Internet playground known as suijuris, more specifically, the forum. This is a two-edged sword but you’re probably going to have to deal with it. “The Law Research Group” maintains the web forum and many of the visitors are among your target demographic, but many are also more than willing to share snippets and advice that will conflict with your sales opportunities or steer prospects away from paying for your program. A few visitors will be people who are in the middle of a financial death spiral who get all kinds of goofy advice and wind up bemoaning the corruption of the courts and attorneys when what they were doing was tossed out of court for perfectly legitimate reasons they will refuse to understand.
But the suijuris forum can be highly instructional in developing your version of the scheme. Some posters will unintentionally reveal flaws in some process and other visitors will chime in and explain what they did wrong.
There you go! Have fun boys and girls! (Can’t wait to see your new-fangled super-duper hottest-thing-since whatever process show up on Google.)
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
What they think they’re armed with, the sure-fire “process,” to get out of debts without paying the creditor is rarely anything more than a revamping of old schemes that have never worked before. Apparently they seem to sound impressive in new prose, but attempting to use any of them dooms what might be an actually defrauded borrower from prevailing in a legal setting. And frequently, they steer actual victims away from legitimate legal counsel.
All of these schemes share some commonalities, including several legal mythologies and various forms of allegedly complex conspiracies mixed with secrets the public isn’t supposed to know. Stir in some suspicion for the evil motives of the powers-that-be, add a pinch of questionably interpreted legal lexicon and you have a product for a receptive target market.
Another thing the schemes share is a sort-of family-tree of promoters, some of which are associates or acolytes of convicted criminals and others that just haven’t gotten into the range of the prosecutor’s radar. Their like-minded genealogy can be traced to the disaffected, conspiracy-driven, anti-establishment community which includes the more radical so-called “patriot” movements and some seriously dangerous even further-out-there groups.
Those foolish enough to take on the IRS are the most exposed to prosecution and their names show up in newspaper stories from time to time while few of the debt-elimination scammers warrant anything other than being outed and derided on the Internet, or in the case of the Dorean Group, a handful of articles in trade news outlets.
Few of the participants are doubly-stupid in today’s information-rich environment, thus we probably won’t see another attempt to use a “UCC / strawman /ALL CAPS NAME / redemption” scheme to thwart the IRS unless someone is working from a really outdated hardcopy source they found among someone’s dusty piles of cheaply produced self-published books. But credit card companies, as utterly abusive and out-of-control as they are, probably get dozens of nonsense letters every day from rookies who Googled their way into a trying (or worse, paying someone for) a process for getting out from under their crushing debt without having to actually pay it. Instead of winding up with no debt, the hopeful debtor learns a harder, more costly and disappointing lesson in how the law really works. And if they had the misfortune to have paid one of the scammers, they eventually discover the doctrine of unclean hands prevents them from bringing any kind of viable civil action.
Because of the Internet, there seems to be no end in sight to the reuse of the same root mythologies, half-truths, tortured logic and context-mangling cut and paste quotes and citations. Web sites are so easy to launch and links to others so easy to implement that anyone with average skills can put themselves into the debt elimination business almost overnight. All you really have to do is blend some number of the old theories into a slightly different, seemingly-coherent message as if there’s a new and improved theory to get paid for.
Finding a new angle will help to differentiate you but plowing overly-creative new ground will take inordinate amounts of your time. And keep in mind there are limits to the beneficial effects of being really creative. Some who peddle nonsense like Paul Andrew Mitchell, David Wynn Miller, David Merrill Van Pelt and Shaini Goodwin have wandered so far off into lala land that even the less-than-knowledgeable reader will shake their head and worry about all the people in this country who can’t get proper medical attention. Others like David Icke are clearly selling nothing more than an entertainment product and are compellingly goofy enough to even get overnight radio promotion time. So making new stuff up, while seemingly easy, can backfire in terms of the numbers of prospective paying customers for a debt elimination scheme.
So, here are Judge Bean’s tips for setting up a debt-elimination scheme:
- It’s probably a little too soon to revive some of the scams, so do your research. For example, mimicking the Dorean Group's highly-complex scheme would be problematic; they’ll be sentenced about the time you get your first web pages published. But there are parts of it that sound so mysterious that it will easily fool some people. Also, the Bill Of Exchange (BOE) thing is a little too hot for a while what with Barton Buhtz 's recent conviction. The private arbitration company thing has proven to be a major loser, too. Then again, your customer base probably doesn’t know or believe any of that, but choose carefully or wait until the stories die off into Google’s later pages before you ressurect another one of those.
- As far as content goes, first and foremost, you need to establish a shared evil opponent, so you have to include mysteries about banks, money and the Federal Reserve. If you don’t like the ones that are out there, feel free to embellish or even rewrite history. Adding things about the IMF and the NWO is nice fluff to fill out some space.
- Try to avoid addressing the issue of accepting FRN’s even though you have to say they aren’t real money.
- Remember “international bankers” sounds more devious than just “banks.”
- Spin in plenty of legal-sounding phrases about promissory notes, bank credit, assets, balance sheets, GAAP and the all-important “wet-ink" signature.
- Assert that you have a team. You have experts in, well, whatever suits your fancy just as long as there are initials after their names that imply credibility.
- Dig up the Credit River myth or at least provide a link to a site that does, but make sure you choose a web site that doesn’t include the whole story.
- Sovereignty isn’t really a big attraction for your average, apolitical, non-fringe element borrower in trouble, but it does give you street cred with the protest-minded. If you decide to tap into that market, remember to use the word “jurisdiction” a lot.
- Be sure to include statements throughout your site that comfort the prospective customer/co-conspirator’s conscience, i.e., assure them your process is “moral.” But don’t stoop to the “it’s moral because the bank screwed you” ploy; you’ll scare off some number of viable prospects. If you’re really creative and your customer base is really gullible, you might try some version of Freedom Club USA ’s “everybody wins” theme.
- Save yourself some time and just replicate one of the UCC strawman packages – the stuff about the ALL CAPS name. (Don’t worry about copyright issues; those will be the least of your problems.)
- Toss in something about why attorneys can’t be trusted because they and the Judges are all part of the BAR.
- If you’ve got the time, resources and verbal delivery skills, have weekly one-way conference calls where you can sell by expounding on the wonders of the plan and the progress being made. It’s a long-distance call for them, so keep it short and sweet.
- If you’re really slick and fast on your feet, “open” the above-referenced call up to questions but be sure you’ve authored them and they’re presented by trusted parties. Try to use people who can ask them without sounding like they’re reading.
- You will need to make up a number of anecdotal and impossible to disprove testimonials from allegedly satisfied, debt-free customers. Don’t make them extravagant but don’t worry about misrepresentations; the FTC would have to have thousands of complaints about you to even look at your website.
- If you really want to have credibility with the furthest fringes of the gullible, mention things about Admiralty and the gold fringed flag (no pun intended).
- If you’re going to use it in your process, at least try to be original with the words you put in front of “Administrative Remedy.” Private and international have been overused and putting in the Admiralty after it has lost a lot of allure.
- Use an invisible hit-counter for your own information but put up your own self-set numerical display to show huge and growing numbers of visitors.
- Now, if you’re really trying to tap into the truly zany realms, you’ll have to put in some links to the other-worldly kinds of nonsense.
- If you’re into the MLM thing and can lead others into it, you might be able to put together a network marketing scheme to get other people to sell for you. At least with this angle, you can get some initial revenue for setting up a web site for each of your marketers and their down-lines.
- Don’t get greedy; this is a business that lasts between a few months and maybe three years if you’re really slick and careful. Better to take the money and disappear than to wait too long and lose it all.
- Finally, get ready to do battle on Internet forums to promote your program, trash your competitors and demean web sites like Quatloos.com and Scam.com. You’ll need to be able to pose as completely different posters; some people, including moderators, can smoke out shills and spammers who don’t know how to conceal their writing style. You need to be creative in broaching the subject on a forum for the first time. Most rookies come off looking really lame with the “Has anyone heard anything about the XYZ program?” kind of thing. Having multiple IP addresses is critical for this part of the business. You may want to revive that old dial-up thingy and sign up with a couple of low-cost ISP’s. Anonymizers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and some sites won’t let you post if you’re using proxy servers.
Which brings me to the Internet playground known as suijuris, more specifically, the forum. This is a two-edged sword but you’re probably going to have to deal with it. “The Law Research Group” maintains the web forum and many of the visitors are among your target demographic, but many are also more than willing to share snippets and advice that will conflict with your sales opportunities or steer prospects away from paying for your program. A few visitors will be people who are in the middle of a financial death spiral who get all kinds of goofy advice and wind up bemoaning the corruption of the courts and attorneys when what they were doing was tossed out of court for perfectly legitimate reasons they will refuse to understand.
But the suijuris forum can be highly instructional in developing your version of the scheme. Some posters will unintentionally reveal flaws in some process and other visitors will chime in and explain what they did wrong.
There you go! Have fun boys and girls! (Can’t wait to see your new-fangled super-duper hottest-thing-since whatever process show up on Google.)
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Monday, January 07, 2008
Wesley and Willie
It’s that time of year again, and the scammers are poised to sell their tax nonsense to another batch of offended and angry taxpayers and non-payers.
Despite the serious risks associated with demonstrating contempt for the tax laws, and the fact that the promoters who sell the alleged “secrets” are routinely convicted and imprisoned, some people will simply refuse to accept reality. Then when confronted with it, they’ll attempt to pose themselves in the light of being a victim of a scam.
But a now-famous cite from a Federal case appellate ruling pretty much says it all:
“Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest. ” Coleman v. CIR, 791 F2d 68, 69 (7CA 1986)
Note the date of the ruling – 1986. Over twenty years ago, Judge Easterbrook, writing for the 7th Circuit court of appeals, tossed Norman Coleman’s appeal of his frivolous tax-protest case, yet more and more disgruntled people seem to find their way to some Internet site and hang on to yet another shop-worn batch of nonsense.
The distribution of a politically-whacko propaganda movie only has served to stir interest among people who may have been nothing more than annoyed or mildly curious. Thus, the “show me the law” movement seems to have gained ground during 2007, and for some of those who want to believe in preposterous things that coincide with their self-interest, they may not look much beyond the façade of the web sites, books and the movie.
I’m guessing the Wesley Snipes case will finally attract the attention of the major media outlets to the ridiculousness of the kind of tax scam Eddie Kahn has apparently gotten him into. Unlike the widely-reported stories of Willie Nelson’s tax sheltering maneuvers that resulted in the auctioning of, among other things, his fishing camp, Snipes fell in with lunatic fringe tax protestors and apparently isn’t willing to deal with reality. Trial is set for this month.
Maybe Hollywood will get the writer’s strike over in time to spin up a plot line that Willie and Wesley can star in - one about the costs of falling for really bad advice.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Despite the serious risks associated with demonstrating contempt for the tax laws, and the fact that the promoters who sell the alleged “secrets” are routinely convicted and imprisoned, some people will simply refuse to accept reality. Then when confronted with it, they’ll attempt to pose themselves in the light of being a victim of a scam.
But a now-famous cite from a Federal case appellate ruling pretty much says it all:
“Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest. ” Coleman v. CIR, 791 F2d 68, 69 (7CA 1986)
Note the date of the ruling – 1986. Over twenty years ago, Judge Easterbrook, writing for the 7th Circuit court of appeals, tossed Norman Coleman’s appeal of his frivolous tax-protest case, yet more and more disgruntled people seem to find their way to some Internet site and hang on to yet another shop-worn batch of nonsense.
The distribution of a politically-whacko propaganda movie only has served to stir interest among people who may have been nothing more than annoyed or mildly curious. Thus, the “show me the law” movement seems to have gained ground during 2007, and for some of those who want to believe in preposterous things that coincide with their self-interest, they may not look much beyond the façade of the web sites, books and the movie.
I’m guessing the Wesley Snipes case will finally attract the attention of the major media outlets to the ridiculousness of the kind of tax scam Eddie Kahn has apparently gotten him into. Unlike the widely-reported stories of Willie Nelson’s tax sheltering maneuvers that resulted in the auctioning of, among other things, his fishing camp, Snipes fell in with lunatic fringe tax protestors and apparently isn’t willing to deal with reality. Trial is set for this month.
Maybe Hollywood will get the writer’s strike over in time to spin up a plot line that Willie and Wesley can star in - one about the costs of falling for really bad advice.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Turbulence
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the players and robber barons from Wall Street are raising a stink about mortgage backed securities. And the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from people being let go is getting louder and louder.
All this Judge can say is "QUIT WHINING!"
If you think anyone is stupid enough to think hedge fund managers believed what the likes of Fitch, Moody's and S&P were shoveling on behalf of their customers, you need to invest in Nigerian 419 scams.
The power players and raters knew exactly what was going on. So did employees. Some of them just didn't get their exit strategy timed correctly. They knew the reality of dishonesty being portrayed in countless court actions, foreclosures, bankruptcies and news stories would catch up to them, they just didn't know when to pull the plug.
No, instead they buried their collective heads up their collective asses and kept raking in the dough, stashing it away in other less risky gambling endeavours as fast as it kept coming in.
And it did come in. And it did go out. And there won't be any serious accounting of the billions of dollars that were taken from everyday people and ground through the machine into accounts held by the people who knew how to play the system without risk of prosecution.
It's a question of timing. You're at the table. You're ahead 200%, maybe even 300%. You see six months of mortgage payments in your grasp. Do you sit and play? Or do you think your run of luck is over and go find a more honest job?
For the employees of the scam artist companies who continued playing beyond rational expectations, it's not a pleasant scenario. They were in it for a few thousand a year in bonuses. For the executives in on the scam early enough, it's a simple bump in the road and the 7-figure lifestyle isn't really going to take a huge hit, unless of course all those political friends they stroked don't want to be seen with you. That can be painful to the ego. Just ask Ken Lay about what a night in the Lincoln Bedroom turned out to be worth.
But the properties, corporate jets, yachts, vacation destinations, casino nights, fine wines and gourmet meals are still within their grasp. They've got lots of people to blame and unlike Lay, their connections run much deeper than just the White House. None of them risk prosecution. They've paved the way to "no admission of wrongdoing" long ago with their influence on K street.
So to the industry workers who've lost their jobs, quit whining already. You went to work with these crooks. You deserve anything that happens to you. Find honest work.
And contact your local FBI office if you want to be able to sleep better at night.
All this Judge can say is "QUIT WHINING!"
If you think anyone is stupid enough to think hedge fund managers believed what the likes of Fitch, Moody's and S&P were shoveling on behalf of their customers, you need to invest in Nigerian 419 scams.
The power players and raters knew exactly what was going on. So did employees. Some of them just didn't get their exit strategy timed correctly. They knew the reality of dishonesty being portrayed in countless court actions, foreclosures, bankruptcies and news stories would catch up to them, they just didn't know when to pull the plug.
No, instead they buried their collective heads up their collective asses and kept raking in the dough, stashing it away in other less risky gambling endeavours as fast as it kept coming in.
And it did come in. And it did go out. And there won't be any serious accounting of the billions of dollars that were taken from everyday people and ground through the machine into accounts held by the people who knew how to play the system without risk of prosecution.
It's a question of timing. You're at the table. You're ahead 200%, maybe even 300%. You see six months of mortgage payments in your grasp. Do you sit and play? Or do you think your run of luck is over and go find a more honest job?
For the employees of the scam artist companies who continued playing beyond rational expectations, it's not a pleasant scenario. They were in it for a few thousand a year in bonuses. For the executives in on the scam early enough, it's a simple bump in the road and the 7-figure lifestyle isn't really going to take a huge hit, unless of course all those political friends they stroked don't want to be seen with you. That can be painful to the ego. Just ask Ken Lay about what a night in the Lincoln Bedroom turned out to be worth.
But the properties, corporate jets, yachts, vacation destinations, casino nights, fine wines and gourmet meals are still within their grasp. They've got lots of people to blame and unlike Lay, their connections run much deeper than just the White House. None of them risk prosecution. They've paved the way to "no admission of wrongdoing" long ago with their influence on K street.
So to the industry workers who've lost their jobs, quit whining already. You went to work with these crooks. You deserve anything that happens to you. Find honest work.
And contact your local FBI office if you want to be able to sleep better at night.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Meltdown Continues
Note from the Clerk of the Court: An industry source passed this to us and His Honor simply cannot resist letting others in on the fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljHjZpC7bnc
Amazing what employees who have come to grips with the reality of their jobs can come up with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljHjZpC7bnc
Amazing what employees who have come to grips with the reality of their jobs can come up with.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Merger-mania will make things worse for borrowers
If you have a sub-prime mortgage loan and aren’t keeping close track of what your mortgage servicer is doing, you better start. As the lenders scramble to buy up failing originators, loans will be moving in and out of the hands of servicers like cards in a game of gin rummy.
Even if you’re not facing foreclosure (like nearly 20% of recent sub-prime loans), get ready for the tsunami of transferred and messed-up mortgage accounts, and keep in mind the servicer who obtains your loan will believe anything and everything on the computer, no matter how screwed up it is. On top of that, the search for profitability will lead to adventures in fee creation as well as opportunistic equity recovery in order to balance out the really upside-down loans in a portfolio.
Contrary to what some industry observers have said, the servicers aren’t exactly in a panic about the 2+ million coming foreclosures of bad loans. In fact, the real predators are positioning themselves to take advantage of the mess, bargaining behind closed doors to divide up the spoils and offer troubled lenders a way out of their servicing-related overhead.
The industry would like Washington to believe that the closing of doors and shrinking profits are evidence of a market that can and will rid itself of bad or weak players. A few of the sub-prime lenders who made bad loans are going out of business and that seems to satisfy the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Chief Economist, Douglas G. Duncan. This is the same person who, in his prepared testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, had the gall to claim: “The primary reason for defaults are family and economic difficulties – not product choices.” To support this half-truth, he points to a Freddie Mac study that looked at reasons for delinquency based on data from their “Workout Prospector® system.” Here’s what his table of reasons looks like:
Unemployment or curtailment of Income 41.5%
Illness or Death in Family 22.8%
Excessive Obligation 10.4%
Marital Difficulties 8.4%
Extreme Hardship 3.3%
Property Problem or Casualty Loss 2.1%
Inability to sell or rent property 1.6%
Employment Transfer or Military Service 0.9%
All Other Reasons 9.0%
Of course the data is from 2002 through 2005 and doesn’t touch the 2006 disaster – but that’s not the disingenuous part. What isn’t going to be one of the options the users of “Workout Prospector®” can enter into the system would be things like “Predatory Loan,” “Borrower Scammed by Lender,” “Illegally constructed loan,” or “Opportunistic Servicer.” And let's not forget, most sub-prime loans aren't touched by either Freddie or Fannie, so the data is even more misleading.
Duncan goes on to promote the “everyone loses in a foreclosure” mythology, conveniently ignoring the fact that the home being foreclosed on is going to be sold to someone, and that someone is probably going to get a new loan to buy it.
He even put this jewel in his prepared testimony: “Servicers do not have an incentive to intentionally cause foreclosures, because profitability rests in keeping loans current and, as such, the interests of borrowers and lenders are mostly aligned.”
His duplicity is glaring; “profitability” for servicers involves far more than keeping loans current and a substantial portion of it comes from fees and charges (legitimate or otherwise). Not to mention the discounted acquisition price some servicers pay for loans the previous servicer doesn’t want to handle.
So at least in Senate Committee testimony, the industry is as fundamentally sly as they are in the loan origination process.
Which brings me back to the original point – the troubles in the sub-prime lending marketplace are going to land in the laps of the borrowers, not the lenders and servicers. Trust me, these predators are not going to slink back under a rock somewhere and not try to minimize their losses.
Washington is going be dancing to the tune of the lobbyists, and the lending industry will spend millions in the coming election year to make sure they don’t have too much interference. And in the mean time, they’re going to grind as many of the garbage loans into mulch as fast as they can.
Anyone with a sub-prime loan best be equipped to prove every stinkin’ payment and stay on top of every little detail in their loan every month. And you’d better at least find an attorney and get him or her ready, because you are a target, especially if you have equity in your home.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Even if you’re not facing foreclosure (like nearly 20% of recent sub-prime loans), get ready for the tsunami of transferred and messed-up mortgage accounts, and keep in mind the servicer who obtains your loan will believe anything and everything on the computer, no matter how screwed up it is. On top of that, the search for profitability will lead to adventures in fee creation as well as opportunistic equity recovery in order to balance out the really upside-down loans in a portfolio.
Contrary to what some industry observers have said, the servicers aren’t exactly in a panic about the 2+ million coming foreclosures of bad loans. In fact, the real predators are positioning themselves to take advantage of the mess, bargaining behind closed doors to divide up the spoils and offer troubled lenders a way out of their servicing-related overhead.
The industry would like Washington to believe that the closing of doors and shrinking profits are evidence of a market that can and will rid itself of bad or weak players. A few of the sub-prime lenders who made bad loans are going out of business and that seems to satisfy the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Chief Economist, Douglas G. Duncan. This is the same person who, in his prepared testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, had the gall to claim: “The primary reason for defaults are family and economic difficulties – not product choices.” To support this half-truth, he points to a Freddie Mac study that looked at reasons for delinquency based on data from their “Workout Prospector® system.” Here’s what his table of reasons looks like:
Unemployment or curtailment of Income 41.5%
Illness or Death in Family 22.8%
Excessive Obligation 10.4%
Marital Difficulties 8.4%
Extreme Hardship 3.3%
Property Problem or Casualty Loss 2.1%
Inability to sell or rent property 1.6%
Employment Transfer or Military Service 0.9%
All Other Reasons 9.0%
Of course the data is from 2002 through 2005 and doesn’t touch the 2006 disaster – but that’s not the disingenuous part. What isn’t going to be one of the options the users of “Workout Prospector®” can enter into the system would be things like “Predatory Loan,” “Borrower Scammed by Lender,” “Illegally constructed loan,” or “Opportunistic Servicer.” And let's not forget, most sub-prime loans aren't touched by either Freddie or Fannie, so the data is even more misleading.
Duncan goes on to promote the “everyone loses in a foreclosure” mythology, conveniently ignoring the fact that the home being foreclosed on is going to be sold to someone, and that someone is probably going to get a new loan to buy it.
He even put this jewel in his prepared testimony: “Servicers do not have an incentive to intentionally cause foreclosures, because profitability rests in keeping loans current and, as such, the interests of borrowers and lenders are mostly aligned.”
His duplicity is glaring; “profitability” for servicers involves far more than keeping loans current and a substantial portion of it comes from fees and charges (legitimate or otherwise). Not to mention the discounted acquisition price some servicers pay for loans the previous servicer doesn’t want to handle.
So at least in Senate Committee testimony, the industry is as fundamentally sly as they are in the loan origination process.
Which brings me back to the original point – the troubles in the sub-prime lending marketplace are going to land in the laps of the borrowers, not the lenders and servicers. Trust me, these predators are not going to slink back under a rock somewhere and not try to minimize their losses.
Washington is going be dancing to the tune of the lobbyists, and the lending industry will spend millions in the coming election year to make sure they don’t have too much interference. And in the mean time, they’re going to grind as many of the garbage loans into mulch as fast as they can.
Anyone with a sub-prime loan best be equipped to prove every stinkin’ payment and stay on top of every little detail in their loan every month. And you’d better at least find an attorney and get him or her ready, because you are a target, especially if you have equity in your home.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Monday, January 15, 2007
Y’all put stupid in the water or somethin’?
Leave it to the news media in the Lone Star State to turn a blind eye to things that affect Texas consumers. Two major legal cases are brewing, one that affects anyone who bought or buys a car in Texas and the other that shows just how ignorant the state is when it comes to identity-theft issues.
First, after years and years of legal wrangling, it looks like a settlement is going to be worked out on a case involving most, if not all of the members of the auto dealers association in Texas. Clever folks they are, they crafted a conspiracy to gouge car buyers by making it appear something called a “vehicle inventory tax” was a tax applied to the buyer at the time the car was sold.
The really crafty part was that the VIT is a tax the dealer pays – in effect, property taxes on their inventory, and there’s nothing that says that expense is to be itemized and specifically paid by the buyer at the time of sale. It’s simply part of the dealer’s business overhead. In a competitive environment, that tax may or may not have any effect on the price someone pays for a car. The ruse effectively made it look like the price was non-negotiable. Therein lies the rub. Gene Fondren, President of the Texas Auto Dealers Association circled the wagons back in 1994 and everyone in the association has been tacking on the VIT and making it look like it was something the state required the buyer to pay on the purchase documentation. It’s a bit like the dealer putting a line item on the sales documentation that shows the salesperson’s Social Security withholding for the deal and telling the buyer that the law required the buyer to pay it on top of the price of the car.
Along comes the suit way back in 1997 charging violations of the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, and it crawled its way through the courts until a recent proposed settlement with most of the defendants. This Judge’s guess is they’ll wind up giving consumers a refund and stop showing it as a “tax” that the buyer is required to pay.
Over the last thirteen years, car buyers in Texas have been gouged – a little bit at a time, yes, but it adds up. And where’s the news coverage? Try doing a Google News search on “Texas Auto Dealers.” Zip. Nada. If the power of the auto industry ad budget isn’t alarming, it should be.
Much as no one in the Texas news media wants to look into the practices of some of the lending predators based in Texas, none of the news outlets wants to tackle the auto dealers and their millions of advertising dollars.
Wake up Texans - when you sign for a car, cross out the VIT and change the total. If they don't like it, get up and leave.
Then comes some skullduggery by some Texas corporations in obtaining drivers license and motor-vehicle data illegally. Instead of complying fully with the spirit of federal privacy laws, Texas will sell personal information to someone who claims they have a legitimate use for it. The gist of a recently-filed class-action suit is that when the Department of Public Safety or Department of Motor Vehicles sells information, they sell the whole database – without regard as to whether or not a person doesn’t want their private information sold or used.
The suit seeks damages from the companies that bought the data for all 20-million+ Texans in the database, and the statutory amount for each violation is $2,500.00. There are twelve defendants. All told, that could be $600 Billion. This ought to be fun.
Looking at the defendants makes it interesting to think about why they would want the personal information on all Texans who own and operate motor vehicles.
ACS State and Local Solutions is a division of Dallas-based automation outsourcing and services giant ACS. Part of what the company does is child support payment collections.
Fedchex is a payment processing and recovery/collections operation based in Irvine, CA.
Gila Corporation, dba Municipal Services Bureau is essentially a collection agent focusing on handling collections for municipalities. Gila is headquartered in Austin, TX.
Global 360 BGS, based in Dallas, provides technology services to a variety of public entities, including public retirement entities.
Centerpoint Energy, American Electric Power, TXU Business Services, Reliant Energy and Houston Electric Power are utilities or utility-related companies.
Southwestern Bell (SBC is becoming AT&T) is the major local phone company in Texas.
The Texas Motor Transportation Association is the state trucking industry trade group/lobbying organization, based in Austin.
The Industrial Foundation of America calls itself a “trade association” and operates under non-profit status. Based in Boerne, TX (near San Antonio), IFA is a data gathering and reporting entity that few, if any consumers or employees know of and only member companies (mostly energy and exploration related) use. Among the things IFA does: Pre-employment screening, accident history reports, criminal reports, motor vehicle reports, education verifications and credit reports.
There are 23 plaintiff’s listed in the suit and of course everyone in the Texas DMV and DPS databases is said to be a potential member of the class. But despite the case being filed January 10th, is there any word of any of this in the Texas press? Zip. Nada.
Given the amount of money energy companies are spending on advertising in the new "less-regulated" utilities market, it isn't any wonder the media isn't helping spread the word.
So at least in other parts of Texas, it appears to this court that all you have to do to avoid being exposed is make sure you spend a lot of money on advertising.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
First, after years and years of legal wrangling, it looks like a settlement is going to be worked out on a case involving most, if not all of the members of the auto dealers association in Texas. Clever folks they are, they crafted a conspiracy to gouge car buyers by making it appear something called a “vehicle inventory tax” was a tax applied to the buyer at the time the car was sold.
The really crafty part was that the VIT is a tax the dealer pays – in effect, property taxes on their inventory, and there’s nothing that says that expense is to be itemized and specifically paid by the buyer at the time of sale. It’s simply part of the dealer’s business overhead. In a competitive environment, that tax may or may not have any effect on the price someone pays for a car. The ruse effectively made it look like the price was non-negotiable. Therein lies the rub. Gene Fondren, President of the Texas Auto Dealers Association circled the wagons back in 1994 and everyone in the association has been tacking on the VIT and making it look like it was something the state required the buyer to pay on the purchase documentation. It’s a bit like the dealer putting a line item on the sales documentation that shows the salesperson’s Social Security withholding for the deal and telling the buyer that the law required the buyer to pay it on top of the price of the car.
Along comes the suit way back in 1997 charging violations of the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, and it crawled its way through the courts until a recent proposed settlement with most of the defendants. This Judge’s guess is they’ll wind up giving consumers a refund and stop showing it as a “tax” that the buyer is required to pay.
Over the last thirteen years, car buyers in Texas have been gouged – a little bit at a time, yes, but it adds up. And where’s the news coverage? Try doing a Google News search on “Texas Auto Dealers.” Zip. Nada. If the power of the auto industry ad budget isn’t alarming, it should be.
Much as no one in the Texas news media wants to look into the practices of some of the lending predators based in Texas, none of the news outlets wants to tackle the auto dealers and their millions of advertising dollars.
Wake up Texans - when you sign for a car, cross out the VIT and change the total. If they don't like it, get up and leave.
Then comes some skullduggery by some Texas corporations in obtaining drivers license and motor-vehicle data illegally. Instead of complying fully with the spirit of federal privacy laws, Texas will sell personal information to someone who claims they have a legitimate use for it. The gist of a recently-filed class-action suit is that when the Department of Public Safety or Department of Motor Vehicles sells information, they sell the whole database – without regard as to whether or not a person doesn’t want their private information sold or used.
The suit seeks damages from the companies that bought the data for all 20-million+ Texans in the database, and the statutory amount for each violation is $2,500.00. There are twelve defendants. All told, that could be $600 Billion. This ought to be fun.
Looking at the defendants makes it interesting to think about why they would want the personal information on all Texans who own and operate motor vehicles.
ACS State and Local Solutions is a division of Dallas-based automation outsourcing and services giant ACS. Part of what the company does is child support payment collections.
Fedchex is a payment processing and recovery/collections operation based in Irvine, CA.
Gila Corporation, dba Municipal Services Bureau is essentially a collection agent focusing on handling collections for municipalities. Gila is headquartered in Austin, TX.
Global 360 BGS, based in Dallas, provides technology services to a variety of public entities, including public retirement entities.
Centerpoint Energy, American Electric Power, TXU Business Services, Reliant Energy and Houston Electric Power are utilities or utility-related companies.
Southwestern Bell (SBC is becoming AT&T) is the major local phone company in Texas.
The Texas Motor Transportation Association is the state trucking industry trade group/lobbying organization, based in Austin.
The Industrial Foundation of America calls itself a “trade association” and operates under non-profit status. Based in Boerne, TX (near San Antonio), IFA is a data gathering and reporting entity that few, if any consumers or employees know of and only member companies (mostly energy and exploration related) use. Among the things IFA does: Pre-employment screening, accident history reports, criminal reports, motor vehicle reports, education verifications and credit reports.
There are 23 plaintiff’s listed in the suit and of course everyone in the Texas DMV and DPS databases is said to be a potential member of the class. But despite the case being filed January 10th, is there any word of any of this in the Texas press? Zip. Nada.
Given the amount of money energy companies are spending on advertising in the new "less-regulated" utilities market, it isn't any wonder the media isn't helping spread the word.
So at least in other parts of Texas, it appears to this court that all you have to do to avoid being exposed is make sure you spend a lot of money on advertising.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Mortgage-servicing Squaliforme takes yet another swing
The seemingly-endless legal saga of Robert John Wright passed another milestone on Tuesday, December 12th, more than 10 years since Bank of America and EMC Mortgage began their relentless and apparently illegal pursuit of his home.
Looking at what’s available in the court records, one can discern that Wright has not only done a lot of his own work over the years (including an appeal to the Supreme Court) but he’s also had a number of attorneys from time to time over the years, including Washington DC’s “Pro bono lawyer of the year,” Rawle Andrews. As it turns out, looking at the case histories in the Dallas courthouse, he’s even been represented by one of the area’s most prestigious firms – for a while, that is.
That’s what probably tripped him up in the long run. The more EMC spent the more they couldn’t afford to lose. They have to spend everything it takes, and obviously will; a precedent ruling against EMC in these cases could attract the plaintiff’s bar in very large numbers.
In one facet of the on-going brush war, Michael Swartzendruber of Fulbright and Jaworski’s Dallas office testified EMC brought F&J in because of who was representing Wright at that time, one Bobby Rubbarts of Hughes and Luce. Good lawyerin’ costs big bucks in that part of Texas.
But Wright, of course, was penniless (he more recently has filed an indigency motion to obtain a transcript of his trial, so that status apparently hasn’t changed), and Rubbarts must have thought there was plenty of fire under all the smoke being generated by EMC’s counsel of record at that time.
Rubbarts took on the Wright case pro bono in 2003, EMC added F&J to their team and the trial actually got going in early December of 2004. After the Judge appeared to run out of patience and time during the trial, she ordered them back into a third settlement conference which took place just before Christmas of '04.
They apparently reached an accord but Wright was disputing that in later filings. According to the property tax rolls, EMC obtained the property in January of 2005. According to the msfraud.com forum, Wright has apparently been in the house since then and is now out.
What went wrong with the settlement is the subject of yet another round of motions and hearings that surfaced in late 2005 and have crawled along ever since, with one of the appeals ending in a rather bizarre scenario if one reads the appeals court ruling – he apparently didn’t pay the fee at the time he filed the appeal. The court record of the dismissal says he was notified twice but given the stakes involved it’s hard to imagine he’d have come this far and then simply let it drop by not paying the fee. But stranger things have happened in this case.
Wright also filed a bankruptcy petition (pro se), late in October, apparently in part to stave off the earlier massive legal-expense ruling he lost. EMC won a round that is still destined for appeal and went after Wright for F&J’s legal expenses. We’re talking well into six-figures in legal expenses for just F&J’s team which is led by Swartzendruber.
EMC, through F&J of course, filed and obtained a lift of the automatic stay after a hearing. Turns out, though, Wright isn’t the owner any more and hasn’t been since January of 2005. To make a long story shorter, EMC apparently obtained a Writ of Possession a few weeks ago.
Now, to say EMC was stupid in this case is an understatement. All told, in ten years, this squaliforme has probably poured out nearly a half-million dollars in legal expenses alone, knowing full well it will never recoup them. At a time where lenders are allegedly worried about the growth in foreclosures, they were willing to spend anything to get this house (which is on the tax rolls for $240,340). Even the $6M loss to the Starks hasn't persuaded them to change the way they play the equity-theft game.
From this distance, it seems All EMC would have had to have done is fix some rather simple accounting screw-ups that Bank of America made when EMC bought the loan. But that isn’t what EMC is in the business to do. In most cases, they get the property and equity much faster. As with most cases that actually involve a lawsuit, they decided to try and spend Wright into oblivion, and when they ran up against attorneys willing to put up a fight, they had to keep spending and spending. Which means there is plenty to hide. Stealing people’s homes can be expensive business and is best done out of the light of day.
Something tells me it ain’t over.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Looking at what’s available in the court records, one can discern that Wright has not only done a lot of his own work over the years (including an appeal to the Supreme Court) but he’s also had a number of attorneys from time to time over the years, including Washington DC’s “Pro bono lawyer of the year,” Rawle Andrews. As it turns out, looking at the case histories in the Dallas courthouse, he’s even been represented by one of the area’s most prestigious firms – for a while, that is.
That’s what probably tripped him up in the long run. The more EMC spent the more they couldn’t afford to lose. They have to spend everything it takes, and obviously will; a precedent ruling against EMC in these cases could attract the plaintiff’s bar in very large numbers.
In one facet of the on-going brush war, Michael Swartzendruber of Fulbright and Jaworski’s Dallas office testified EMC brought F&J in because of who was representing Wright at that time, one Bobby Rubbarts of Hughes and Luce. Good lawyerin’ costs big bucks in that part of Texas.
But Wright, of course, was penniless (he more recently has filed an indigency motion to obtain a transcript of his trial, so that status apparently hasn’t changed), and Rubbarts must have thought there was plenty of fire under all the smoke being generated by EMC’s counsel of record at that time.
Rubbarts took on the Wright case pro bono in 2003, EMC added F&J to their team and the trial actually got going in early December of 2004. After the Judge appeared to run out of patience and time during the trial, she ordered them back into a third settlement conference which took place just before Christmas of '04.
They apparently reached an accord but Wright was disputing that in later filings. According to the property tax rolls, EMC obtained the property in January of 2005. According to the msfraud.com forum, Wright has apparently been in the house since then and is now out.
What went wrong with the settlement is the subject of yet another round of motions and hearings that surfaced in late 2005 and have crawled along ever since, with one of the appeals ending in a rather bizarre scenario if one reads the appeals court ruling – he apparently didn’t pay the fee at the time he filed the appeal. The court record of the dismissal says he was notified twice but given the stakes involved it’s hard to imagine he’d have come this far and then simply let it drop by not paying the fee. But stranger things have happened in this case.
Wright also filed a bankruptcy petition (pro se), late in October, apparently in part to stave off the earlier massive legal-expense ruling he lost. EMC won a round that is still destined for appeal and went after Wright for F&J’s legal expenses. We’re talking well into six-figures in legal expenses for just F&J’s team which is led by Swartzendruber.
EMC, through F&J of course, filed and obtained a lift of the automatic stay after a hearing. Turns out, though, Wright isn’t the owner any more and hasn’t been since January of 2005. To make a long story shorter, EMC apparently obtained a Writ of Possession a few weeks ago.
Now, to say EMC was stupid in this case is an understatement. All told, in ten years, this squaliforme has probably poured out nearly a half-million dollars in legal expenses alone, knowing full well it will never recoup them. At a time where lenders are allegedly worried about the growth in foreclosures, they were willing to spend anything to get this house (which is on the tax rolls for $240,340). Even the $6M loss to the Starks hasn't persuaded them to change the way they play the equity-theft game.
From this distance, it seems All EMC would have had to have done is fix some rather simple accounting screw-ups that Bank of America made when EMC bought the loan. But that isn’t what EMC is in the business to do. In most cases, they get the property and equity much faster. As with most cases that actually involve a lawsuit, they decided to try and spend Wright into oblivion, and when they ran up against attorneys willing to put up a fight, they had to keep spending and spending. Which means there is plenty to hide. Stealing people’s homes can be expensive business and is best done out of the light of day.
Something tells me it ain’t over.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Saturday, December 09, 2006
The action actor plays the fool
The recent media coverage of the "plight" of action-star Wesley Snipes has shed a little mainstream-news light on the schemers who lure people into the legal mythology sometimes referred to as the "patriot" or "sovereign" movement.
In this through-the-looking glass legal lalla-land, old conspiracies seem to gain new life every few years. They get ressurected and thrive on gullible people who really want to believe in them, and the operators of schemes have learned how to put the right spin on some very old and very tired (but completely legally debunked) mythology, including not having to pay income taxes.
There are too many of these crazies to list here (but at the left you can find most of them at the Quatloos site), and in the grand scheme of things, they really don't have a statistically-significant army of followers who will do anything other than read and comment as opposed to act on the recommendations. Some of the promoters are in prison or about to be or are under investigation. Others exhibit simple confused ramblings or completely incoherent and bizarre theories. They argue (colorfully sometimes) among themselves about who has the most successes. A few try to make a living off convincing people they can get out of everything from traffic tickets to income taxes.
Somehow, Snipes found himself listening to an acolyte/promoter of one of the anti-IRS "don't have to pay tax" schemes, one Eddie Kahn. Another long-term promoter of legal nonsense, Barton Buhtz, is being roped in with Eddie and their "defense" is studded with the typical legal absurdities so common to these myths.
In order to understand how far out of reality these promoters operate, one has to step into the realm of believing a long string of utterly absurd conspiracy theories that tie non-existent events together into a tangle of legal nonsense. You also have to ignore competent legal advice and assume the entire judicial structure of the US doesn't really have any authority over you if you just do and say the right things.
A combination of ignorance (in part due to lack of educational focus), an innate desire to believe in conspiracies and of course the Internet itself have created a fertile field for scheme promoters. Years ago, they sold a few books and cassette tapes through word-of-mouth and might have even sold seats in seminars. Now they have the Internet and find a new audience every day.
And it's all just "educational material," and protected free speech, right up until some poor fool winds up trying their new, super-duper-secret strategy in a real legal setting. They make themselves appear not only guilty, but in a few cases even mentally unfit to stand trial. As one Judge put it, the defendant might as well have tried to convince the court that the earth was flat. The defendant wasn't happy about that at all; the "attorney in black robes" was supposed to have simply rolled over and played dead and dismissed the charges under the onslaught of legal accumen. After all, that's what all those guys who post their stories on various forums say happened when they used whoever's method.
Some are less dangerous than others. Some admit they haven't actually tried their techniques in court but of course have heard of lots of successes (which for privacy reasons, they really can't list the actual case cite). One David Van Pelt of Colorado Springs goes by the name of David Merrill (in part to disassociate himself with a prior federal conviction in the Montana Freeman fiasco). He wanders in and out of coherent thought on various Internet forums and on sites he maintains. A short review of his writings, methods and strategies is enough to convince the vast majority of readers that he is truly delusional or at most, just a harmless nut. But someone who doesn't have much common sense or hasn't studied some of the more bizarre nonsense may be lured into trying things that result in being prosecuted.
Of course, Van Pelt risks nothing in trying to get people to try and discern what he's talking about long enough to try his methods; few of these kinds of fiction writers ever do face suit or prosecution unless one of their client/followers (like Snipes) raises their theory to the level of doing things like defrauding the government based on what they have advised.
And a fool willing to try these kinds of things in civil matters (like debt collections or foreclosure) will have unclean hands trying to go after the author/promoter when they lose their case.
So all one can hope to do is warn reasonable folks that taking advice from people who promote unsound and irrational conspiracy-driven legal nonsense is the path to more trouble, not less.
Just ask Wesley Snipes - in a few months.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
In this through-the-looking glass legal lalla-land, old conspiracies seem to gain new life every few years. They get ressurected and thrive on gullible people who really want to believe in them, and the operators of schemes have learned how to put the right spin on some very old and very tired (but completely legally debunked) mythology, including not having to pay income taxes.
There are too many of these crazies to list here (but at the left you can find most of them at the Quatloos site), and in the grand scheme of things, they really don't have a statistically-significant army of followers who will do anything other than read and comment as opposed to act on the recommendations. Some of the promoters are in prison or about to be or are under investigation. Others exhibit simple confused ramblings or completely incoherent and bizarre theories. They argue (colorfully sometimes) among themselves about who has the most successes. A few try to make a living off convincing people they can get out of everything from traffic tickets to income taxes.
Somehow, Snipes found himself listening to an acolyte/promoter of one of the anti-IRS "don't have to pay tax" schemes, one Eddie Kahn. Another long-term promoter of legal nonsense, Barton Buhtz, is being roped in with Eddie and their "defense" is studded with the typical legal absurdities so common to these myths.
In order to understand how far out of reality these promoters operate, one has to step into the realm of believing a long string of utterly absurd conspiracy theories that tie non-existent events together into a tangle of legal nonsense. You also have to ignore competent legal advice and assume the entire judicial structure of the US doesn't really have any authority over you if you just do and say the right things.
A combination of ignorance (in part due to lack of educational focus), an innate desire to believe in conspiracies and of course the Internet itself have created a fertile field for scheme promoters. Years ago, they sold a few books and cassette tapes through word-of-mouth and might have even sold seats in seminars. Now they have the Internet and find a new audience every day.
And it's all just "educational material," and protected free speech, right up until some poor fool winds up trying their new, super-duper-secret strategy in a real legal setting. They make themselves appear not only guilty, but in a few cases even mentally unfit to stand trial. As one Judge put it, the defendant might as well have tried to convince the court that the earth was flat. The defendant wasn't happy about that at all; the "attorney in black robes" was supposed to have simply rolled over and played dead and dismissed the charges under the onslaught of legal accumen. After all, that's what all those guys who post their stories on various forums say happened when they used whoever's method.
Some are less dangerous than others. Some admit they haven't actually tried their techniques in court but of course have heard of lots of successes (which for privacy reasons, they really can't list the actual case cite). One David Van Pelt of Colorado Springs goes by the name of David Merrill (in part to disassociate himself with a prior federal conviction in the Montana Freeman fiasco). He wanders in and out of coherent thought on various Internet forums and on sites he maintains. A short review of his writings, methods and strategies is enough to convince the vast majority of readers that he is truly delusional or at most, just a harmless nut. But someone who doesn't have much common sense or hasn't studied some of the more bizarre nonsense may be lured into trying things that result in being prosecuted.
Of course, Van Pelt risks nothing in trying to get people to try and discern what he's talking about long enough to try his methods; few of these kinds of fiction writers ever do face suit or prosecution unless one of their client/followers (like Snipes) raises their theory to the level of doing things like defrauding the government based on what they have advised.
And a fool willing to try these kinds of things in civil matters (like debt collections or foreclosure) will have unclean hands trying to go after the author/promoter when they lose their case.
So all one can hope to do is warn reasonable folks that taking advice from people who promote unsound and irrational conspiracy-driven legal nonsense is the path to more trouble, not less.
Just ask Wesley Snipes - in a few months.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Bank of America’s “Higher Standards”
Before you walk in to your “friendly neighborhood” BofA branch to deposit a check, you better beware that at least in California, if they decide to have you falsely arrested and jailed, you can’t sue them for what they did.
A San Fransisco man found that out the hard way when he went into a BofA with a check made out to him – a check that turned out to be written by an unauthorized party on a company account. Matthew Shinnick thought he had sold his bicycles on Craigslist and didn’t want to deposit the check in his own account just in case it might bounce and hit his account with yet another creative bank fee. So he asked the teller to verify that it would clear and after a few moments, she told him it would.
Shinnick’s primary mistake was deciding to cash it instead of just depositing it. Maybe he thought having the cash in hand was better than risking a stop-payment some days in the future (and yet another bank fee). Maybe he thought that because the bank said the check wouldn’t bounce that it was good.
Either way, what he didn’t know was what the bank knew. Yes, there was money in the account to cover the check, but the check itself was bogus. The account the check was drawn on was actually flagged for potential fraudulent use. He endorsed it and the teller took it to her manager.
Four police officers soon had him in handcuffs and later led him away to jail where he spent twelve hours as a guest of the City of San Francisco crowded into a tiny holding cell with way too many other men.
And of course the charges were eventually dropped and a Judge has taken the steps to expunge all records of the case, but Shinnick and anyone else who raises the eyebrows of BofA branch employees and gets arrested for it can’t sue for false arrest. Turns out the California Supreme Court decided that criminal reports are privileged communication. Basically, institutions aren’t liable for reporting suspected crimes. (Hagberg v. California Federal Bank.)
With all the check-scamming going on, especially the typical Nigerian 419-style tricks, any time you get a check from someone you don’t know very well, don’t take it into a California bank, especially a BofA.
And even if you do just endorse it and deposit it, don’t assume that just because the money shows up as being in your account that they can’t come back and take it if it turns out to be bogus some days down the road. You might find yourself in the hole. That's still a better hole than the one the Police will put you in, though!
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
A San Fransisco man found that out the hard way when he went into a BofA with a check made out to him – a check that turned out to be written by an unauthorized party on a company account. Matthew Shinnick thought he had sold his bicycles on Craigslist and didn’t want to deposit the check in his own account just in case it might bounce and hit his account with yet another creative bank fee. So he asked the teller to verify that it would clear and after a few moments, she told him it would.
Shinnick’s primary mistake was deciding to cash it instead of just depositing it. Maybe he thought having the cash in hand was better than risking a stop-payment some days in the future (and yet another bank fee). Maybe he thought that because the bank said the check wouldn’t bounce that it was good.
Either way, what he didn’t know was what the bank knew. Yes, there was money in the account to cover the check, but the check itself was bogus. The account the check was drawn on was actually flagged for potential fraudulent use. He endorsed it and the teller took it to her manager.
Four police officers soon had him in handcuffs and later led him away to jail where he spent twelve hours as a guest of the City of San Francisco crowded into a tiny holding cell with way too many other men.
And of course the charges were eventually dropped and a Judge has taken the steps to expunge all records of the case, but Shinnick and anyone else who raises the eyebrows of BofA branch employees and gets arrested for it can’t sue for false arrest. Turns out the California Supreme Court decided that criminal reports are privileged communication. Basically, institutions aren’t liable for reporting suspected crimes. (Hagberg v. California Federal Bank.)
With all the check-scamming going on, especially the typical Nigerian 419-style tricks, any time you get a check from someone you don’t know very well, don’t take it into a California bank, especially a BofA.
And even if you do just endorse it and deposit it, don’t assume that just because the money shows up as being in your account that they can’t come back and take it if it turns out to be bogus some days down the road. You might find yourself in the hole. That's still a better hole than the one the Police will put you in, though!
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Monday, August 07, 2006
Well, a hopeful message for borrowers – maybe
The Squaliformes' bought-and-paid-for congressional committee chair, Bob Ney has finally seen the light and won’t be running for reelection. Hopefully his pro-Squaliforme agenda will see less influence in the coming legislative sessions.
Amazingly, the blame is being put on the Abramoff scandal instead of the more devious but blatant efforts to undermine consumer protections at the behest of predatory lenders and servicers.
Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to federal corruption charges. Ney received gifts and other benefits in exchange for legislative action to benefit his clients, but unlike Abramoff, the lending industry’s massive campaign contributions and lobbyist's influence (including actually writing his legislative efforts) are seemingly above investigation.
At least there is some satisfaction in the public exposure that the Squaliformes knew quite well who they could effectively manipulate in their cultivation of Ney.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Amazingly, the blame is being put on the Abramoff scandal instead of the more devious but blatant efforts to undermine consumer protections at the behest of predatory lenders and servicers.
Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to federal corruption charges. Ney received gifts and other benefits in exchange for legislative action to benefit his clients, but unlike Abramoff, the lending industry’s massive campaign contributions and lobbyist's influence (including actually writing his legislative efforts) are seemingly above investigation.
At least there is some satisfaction in the public exposure that the Squaliformes knew quite well who they could effectively manipulate in their cultivation of Ney.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The thing that wouldn't die
As the Dorean Group saga grinds on in seeming perpetuity through the court, the "victims" of the scheme are also facing the music. Consider the judgment against Greg Poppin, of California, who got a trust set up in Johnson & Heineman's swindle for a property in Grass Valley.
After ordering the bogus Dorean documents cancelled, rendered void and expunged from the county records, the judge left it up to the Plaintiff (lender) as to whether they could go ahead and foreclose, or in addition, collect damages jointly and severally against Heineman, Johnson and Poppin in the amount of nearly $390,000 (plus interest) and over $16,000 in attorney's fees and costs. All of which stands there and collects interest until paid. With the perpetrators incarcerated and facing long sentences, Poppin (the client) was left to face the music.
So another one of the faithful falls on the Dorean sword, while Johnson (or at least someone who purports to be him) posts ever-more bizarre religious dogma on his blog. In between pumping up the martyr angle, he languishes in a California jail generating hundreds of pages of legal drivel with his partner on government-supplied notebook computers.
A lot of what Johnson and Heineman rail on about contains little more than plagiarized cut and paste nonsense from die-hard radicals who have tried for decades to convince their merry band of sycophants they really aren't who they are, the law isn't the law and the whole US Government is bogus, including the court system. If one believes Johnson, Christ has sent angels to burn down judge's homes and continues to counsel him.
This kind of nonsense is even a profitable venture for some. For a few, it's not much more than a notably silly hobby, complete with inane ramblings on multiple web sites that typically espouse almost every conspiracy they can allude to and some that are truly delusional and even completely imaginary. Some of it is quite possibly a strange on-line laboratory experiment; a game of wits vs. half-wits where someone is testing to see just how gullible people can be.
A lot of it is so far out even the late-night AM radio bastion of whacky theories (the Art Bell "Coast to Coast" show) won't give them credence - and that is telling. Thus they're relegated to the Internet, CD's, books and DVD's, group meetings and a handful of hysterically funny public demonstrations. And let us not forget the laughable court filings.
In this culture of self-induced paranoia, the arguments don't evolve; they mutate. Context be damned. Definitions of words can be argued for days, weeks, months. The cycle of lunacy repeats itself when a theory dies under its own weight of stupidity but someone new (or under another name) comes along later and dredges up an old post or link and fans the flames once again.
Proponents and authors of such crap sometimes wind up in actual trouble with the law. Then they often find themselves ruled against in the very courts they've been telling people don't have jurisdiction over them. I suppose we're forced to chalk that one up to deeper and more sinister conspiracies among the Judges and the attorneys.
A lot of the courts are just too damn sympathetic with these nut balls. The amount of time invested in reading some of the voluminous BS and writing some of the more detailed rulings is astonishing. And because it's available on the Internet, the garbage proliferates and shows up in other cases.
I, on the other hand, have freed my court of such burdens. There's a setting on the ol' Acme cattle-prod from 1 to 5. The more pages of loony drivel I have to read, the higher the setting gets. (On "5" the spark can go clean through several pages on its way through the fool's buttock.)
I'm thinking of sending my backup unit to the Northern District of California. Judge Alsup may be able to persuade Johnson and Heineman to move things along a bit.
After ordering the bogus Dorean documents cancelled, rendered void and expunged from the county records, the judge left it up to the Plaintiff (lender) as to whether they could go ahead and foreclose, or in addition, collect damages jointly and severally against Heineman, Johnson and Poppin in the amount of nearly $390,000 (plus interest) and over $16,000 in attorney's fees and costs. All of which stands there and collects interest until paid. With the perpetrators incarcerated and facing long sentences, Poppin (the client) was left to face the music.
So another one of the faithful falls on the Dorean sword, while Johnson (or at least someone who purports to be him) posts ever-more bizarre religious dogma on his blog. In between pumping up the martyr angle, he languishes in a California jail generating hundreds of pages of legal drivel with his partner on government-supplied notebook computers.
A lot of what Johnson and Heineman rail on about contains little more than plagiarized cut and paste nonsense from die-hard radicals who have tried for decades to convince their merry band of sycophants they really aren't who they are, the law isn't the law and the whole US Government is bogus, including the court system. If one believes Johnson, Christ has sent angels to burn down judge's homes and continues to counsel him.
This kind of nonsense is even a profitable venture for some. For a few, it's not much more than a notably silly hobby, complete with inane ramblings on multiple web sites that typically espouse almost every conspiracy they can allude to and some that are truly delusional and even completely imaginary. Some of it is quite possibly a strange on-line laboratory experiment; a game of wits vs. half-wits where someone is testing to see just how gullible people can be.
A lot of it is so far out even the late-night AM radio bastion of whacky theories (the Art Bell "Coast to Coast" show) won't give them credence - and that is telling. Thus they're relegated to the Internet, CD's, books and DVD's, group meetings and a handful of hysterically funny public demonstrations. And let us not forget the laughable court filings.
In this culture of self-induced paranoia, the arguments don't evolve; they mutate. Context be damned. Definitions of words can be argued for days, weeks, months. The cycle of lunacy repeats itself when a theory dies under its own weight of stupidity but someone new (or under another name) comes along later and dredges up an old post or link and fans the flames once again.
Proponents and authors of such crap sometimes wind up in actual trouble with the law. Then they often find themselves ruled against in the very courts they've been telling people don't have jurisdiction over them. I suppose we're forced to chalk that one up to deeper and more sinister conspiracies among the Judges and the attorneys.
A lot of the courts are just too damn sympathetic with these nut balls. The amount of time invested in reading some of the voluminous BS and writing some of the more detailed rulings is astonishing. And because it's available on the Internet, the garbage proliferates and shows up in other cases.
I, on the other hand, have freed my court of such burdens. There's a setting on the ol' Acme cattle-prod from 1 to 5. The more pages of loony drivel I have to read, the higher the setting gets. (On "5" the spark can go clean through several pages on its way through the fool's buttock.)
I'm thinking of sending my backup unit to the Northern District of California. Judge Alsup may be able to persuade Johnson and Heineman to move things along a bit.
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