Lost Note Foreclosure Defense
Photo by Ed Duggan
Joe Lents has been living in his foreclosed Boca Raton, Florida home since 2002 — without making a single payment to his lender.
Is Joe a criminal? No – he is only following the law.
Get Foreclosure Thrown Out In Court
There is a secret strategy for defending your home that the banks don’t want you to know about.
When Washington Mutual took Joe to court to foreclose on his home, he asked them to produce the original note that he signed. But they had conveniently lost this note, which is his legal promise to pay the mortgage. Without this original signed document, the lender could not prove the debt, and so the judge threw out the case.
According to LoanWorkout.org,
“If you’re going to take my house away from me, you better own the note,” said Joe Lents. The since-failed lender failed to prove that it owned Lents’ mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.
More homeowners are becoming aware of this foreclosure defense. This CNN video on Mortgage Squatting shows Ohio Representative Marci Kaptur telling her constituents to stay in their homes by using what she calls the “Produce The Note” strategy.
In October 2007, Ohio Federal Judge Christopher Boykin dismissed a number of foreclosure cases and instructed the attorneys representing the lenders to “come back to my courtroom with the original mortgage note or a certified copy.”
In about 40% of foreclosure cases, the lender simply cannot provide the note.
Photo by Peat Bakke
Why? Because the minute you finalized your mortgage, they sliced, diced and “securitized” it, and in many cases they secretly changed the terms of the loan. Since altering the loan without your knowledge is fraud, they want to hide the evidence — which means conveniently “losing” that little piece of paper with your signature on it.
A University of Iowa study describes how sloppy most foreclosure cases are:
“…of more than 1,700 bankruptcy cases stemming from home foreclosures, the original note was missing more than 40 percent of the time, and other pieces of required documentation also were routinely left out.”
Stay In Your Home
When a bank sues you for foreclosure without the original note, they are committing fraud on the court.
But it happens every day. Most people go into a panic the moment they receive a legal document, and assume that as the little guy, they will automatically lose.
Know your rights! Get more information about the lost note strategy in Chapter 12 of my book, Get Out Of Credit Prison.
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