Fraud on the courts has been part of the strategy used by major lenders to circumvent the law to obtain quicker foreclosures against homeowners, often when lacking any of the paperwork whatsoever. In recent years, lenders have pursued foreclosures against homeowners by using perjured affidavits. Bank agents blindly sign sworn court affidavits that state facts about the loans without ever checking if any of the facts are actually correct. In this process – known as “robo-signing” – individuals signed thousands of these affidavits each month, sometimes in 30-second intervals. Irwin Levin, Cohen & Malad’s managing partner, explained that lenders were insatiable in their appetite to sell more and more mortgages that could be bundled together and sold as securities to investors. Caring more about ongoing profits and less about keeping good records, major lenders like Countrywide and Bank of America joined together and set up a straw man, called MERS, which used an electronic registration systems instead of conventional real estate documents. The system was a nightmare, losing track of and improperly entering loan information. “In their zeal to sell these securities that brought our economy to the brink of collapse, lenders ignored the fundamental rights of homeowners by failing to keep track of who owned mortgages and how much, if any was owed. When the payment stream came to an end, lenders then recklessly pursued foreclosures without determining whether they actually owned the mortgage or whether it was even delinquent. This flies in the face of the private property rights that we cherish in our country.” The class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Indianapolis today. It brings class action claims against Countrywide Home Loans, Inc, Bank of America, N.A., and other Bank of America entities, alleging that the lenders engaged in racketeering and fraud on the courts by knowingly filing perjured affidavits. The lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of homeowners whose properties were foreclosed by Countrywide or Bank of America. The Plaintiffs in the case, Dwayne and Melisa Davis, said “It’s been really heartbreaking.” As for the robo-signers, Mrs. Davis said “I don’t know how they sleep at night.” Levin continued: “Although some regulators have recently expressed interest in investigating these widespread abuses in the lending industry, we are now taking concrete steps to protect the rights of homeowners who have been stripped of their homes based on false information in violation of the law. The banks created a shoddy, expedited recordkeeping system to drive up their profits and then resorted to perjured affidavits to pursue foreclosures. But it is banks – not the homeowners or the courts – who must pay the prices for those failures.” Cohen and Malad, LLP has been on the forefront of ground-breaking litigation, including having served on the Steering Committee of efforts to obtain compensation and restitution on behalf of Holocaust victims against Swiss Banks (which resulted in a $1.25 billion settlement) and against German industries on behalf of Nazi era slave laborers (which was settled for $5 billion). The firm has most recently served as co-lead counsel in a successful anti-trust class action and has a record of representing classes of injured plaintiffs for over 20 years. For more information please contact Irwin Levin at 317-670-6900 or Richard Shevitz at 317-636-6481 Irwin B. Levin Cohen and Malad, LLP One Indiana Sq., St. 1400 Indianapolis, IN 46204 317-636-6481