Pam Bondi, lame Florida attorney general
Indian River County foreclosures jumped nearly 150 percent between February, when 50 houses were taken back by banks, and August, when there were 121 final judgments of foreclosure. Numbers stayed high in September and October, with more than 100 foreclosures per month.
The increase coincides with the tenure of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been widely criticized for firing attorneys in her office who aggressively went after law firms engaged in allegedly fraudulent foreclosure practices.
Countywide, 1,127 homes were in some stage of foreclosure at the end of October, according to RealtyTrac, the leading online marketplace for foreclosures. . .
The dramatic increase in final judgments of foreclosure in the county is part of a statewide trend that includes a 200-percent increase in bank repossessions in Miami-Dade County, where more than 25,000 homes are in the foreclosure pipeline.
“Banks are finally working through the problems associated with “robo-signing” that came to light last fall,” says Clay Collins, a loan officer at CenterState Bank. “There were extreme abuses in the foreclosure process, including fake signatures on documents and lawyers showing up in court to repossess homes without being able to prove ownership. Judges starting kicking them out of court. Banks had to go back and redo their whole process.”
In 2010, then Attorney General Bill McCollum launched investigations into allegations of unfair and deceptive actions by eight Florida law firms handling foreclosure cases, stating in a press release that “thousands of final judgments of foreclosures against Florida homeowners may have been the result of improper actions of the law firms under investigation.”
According to McCollum, “because many mortgages have been bought and sold by different institutions multiple times, key paperwork involved in the process to obtain foreclosure judgments is often missing. On numerous occasions, allegedly fabricated documents have been presented to the courts to obtain final judgments against homeowners.”
McCollum’s actions were part of a nationwide trend that forced big banks to suspend foreclosures in so-called “judicial states” where the process is overseen by courts.
Foreclosures, often with false or faulty documents, continued in states where courts do not review paperwork presented by banks and their lawyers.
In Florida, The Law Offices of David J. Stern, which had more than 100,000 foreclosure cases in the pipeline last fall, was forced to shut down its foreclosure business in March as a result of McCollum’s investigation, and banks statewide pulled back from their allegedly fraudulent practices.
Pam Bondi, former Fox news analyst, then was elected attorney general, taking office on Jan. 4, and the trend reversed.
According to numerous press reports, Bondi maintains she is pursuing bad actors in the foreclosure process but she has been harshly criticized by consumer groups and state lawmakers for actions that seem to indicate the opposite.
In May, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, state lawyers who led foreclosure fraud investigations under McCollum, were forced to resign from their posts in the Fort Lauderdale economic crimes bureau.
The two had received positive performance reviews from McCollum and were known for aggressive, effective action against shady foreclosure lawyers.
