Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero and other supports of two-year foreclosure moratorium, Chase boycott
Major banks’ mortgage fraud schemes exposed across U.S.
By Diane Bukowski
DETROIT – As a flood of mortgage fraud exposures engulfed the nation’s largest banks, Michigan’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero has pledged today that he would impose a two-year halt to all foreclosures upon assuming office in 2011.
“I have fought the banks tooth and nail,” Bernero told a cheering audience sporting AFSCME Council 25 t-shirts at an Oct. 8 press conference called by the newly formed “People Before Banks” Coalition.
“I see by today’s newspapers that the Bank of America has just halted all foreclosures in 50 states, as an investigation into the fraudulent practices of the banks and lenders widens. Yesterday, I confronted bank CEO’s in person at the Detroit Economic Club (DEC), telling them, ‘If you do right by the people, you’ll get along with me.’”
Standing ovation for Bernero, People Before Banks
Bernero, mayor of Lansing, the state capitol, first announced his fight against the banks last July. He called for Michigan’s governor and treasurer to pull more than $1 billion in state deposits from JP Morgan Chase. He said that despite the government’s payment of $25 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout tax dollars, the bank has continued to redline Michigan small businesses, driving some out of business.
On Oct. 7, local news media reported that Bernero “stunned” the audience at the DEC forum.
“If you are part of the Wall Street breed that runs over people for ever-growing profits and growing bonuses, you will have a problem, because I’ve had it,” he told the businessmen who comprise the Club’s membership. “We’re up to here with it. Enough is enough.”
Accused of “bullying” the members of the Club, he told a Detroit Free Press reporter, “I’ll tell you who feels bullied. It’s people that have been thrown out of their homes, especially by mistake, fraudulently. It’s 600 a day in Michigan, that’s who’s being bullied and that’s got to be stopped immediately, now.”
GRASS ROOTS PUSHED POLITICIANS TO TAKE STANCE AGAINST BANKS
The astounding anti-bank stance adopted by Bernero and other government officials has exploded in the wake of groundbreaking efforts by Detroit’s Moratorium NOW! Coalition against Foreclosures, Evictions, and Shut-offs. It was taken up nationally by the United Auto Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in a march of thousands in Detroit Aug. 28 and later in Washington Oct. 2.
Rubie Curl Pinkins and her lawyer Vanessa Fluker demonstrate against her eviction at Bank of America in downtown Detroit
FLOC has zeroed in on Chase because it is a chief investor in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which it says imposes horrendous working and living conditions on FLOC farmworkers in North Carolina, among others.
Attorney Vanessa Fluker, of Moratorium NOW! declared at the Oct. 8 press conference, held at the Central United Methodist Church in downtown Detroit, “We’ve been calling for a moratorium for three years now. There are laws on the books in Michigan that provide for it. All we need is an executive order from the governor. We must collectively come together and stop the banks’ destruction of our communities.”
Other speakers at the press conference included U.S. Representative John Conyers, Rev. David Bullock, Detroit chair of Rainbow PUSH, Rev. Ed Rowe, and the Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman.
In an interview later, Attorney Jerome Goldberg, also of Moratorium NOW!, said a national moratorium on foreclosures is needed, but that U.S. President Barack Obama has so far opposed such an action.
“Housing is a fundamental right,” Goldberg said. “People have a right to stay in their homes in the face of rampant predatory lending and the banks’ illegal refusal to renegotiate mortgage payments to affordable amounts. The government must stop bailing out the banks committing these heinous practices.”
Fluker and Goldberg, who share an office, have each spent long hours fighting their individual clients’ foreclosures over the past several years.
A lawsuit challenging essential flaws in foreclosure paperwork, filed by attorneys Paul Nicoletti and Chiketa Palmore-Bryant in federal court in Detroit, and others which challenge predatory lending practices in Michigan, have also helped spur the flood of voluntary and involuntary foreclosure freezes currently swamping the nation’s major banks.
Yvonne Cross, second from left, and Vanessa Fluker, second from right applaud Bernero with others
Palmore-Bryant and Yvonne Cross, a chief plaintiff in the Detroit federal court action, which was scheduled for a class action certification hearing in front of U.S. District Court Judge Marianne O. Battani Oct. 14, were on stage during the press conference. Palmore-Bryant has estimated that up to 80,000 foreclosures in the county may eventually be invalidated by their suit.
HOLD BANKS TO THE “BLACK LETTER OF THE LAW”
On Aug. 19, Detroit’s 36th District Court Judge Ruth Ann Garrett pronounced that Palmore-Bryant’s stance that the mortgage companies must be held to the “black letter of the law,” as are homeowners, was irrefutable, in a decision invalidating a foreclosure of Aug. 19.
“In looking at the mortgage foreclosure statute as a whole,” Garrett ruled, “the statute is construed strictly. There’s a redemption period for the homeowner. . . .Clearly, in some instances, I’m sure homeowners have come forward and said . . . ‘I’m a day late and a dollar short. Can I get the extension?’ And the statute has been construed strictly. So, in all fairness, the Court believes that the mortgagees’ rights are so important that the statute should be construed strictly.”
In a separate interview, Cross said she first discovered what many brushed off as minor clerical errors in foreclosure proceedings initiated by the office of Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano six years ago, when she was fighting foreclosures on several of her properties.
Moratorium NOW! members march in Detroit Aug. 28
Since that time, she has pursued detailed analyses of foreclosure actions throughout Wayne County, even proceeding to Sixth Circuit Court pro se, until she was able to obtain the help of her current attorneys.
“I have been in contact with attorneys in Florida, Ohio and New York, where foreclosure freezes have now been instituted as well,” said Cross. “But it was not until today that Michigan’s attorney general Mike Cox finally announced that he is taking action, although we received no response from Cox or from Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy over the last several years when we lodged complaints.”
BOA, CHASE, ALLY (GMAC) TEMPORARILY HALT FORECLOSURES, OTHERS FOLLOW
The Bank of America announced last week that it has halted all foreclosures. JPMorganChase and Ally Financial (previously known as GMAC, now owned by the federal government) have followed suit with partial freezes. North Carolina’s attorney general gave 14 major lending agencies until Oct. 12 to halt foreclosures until they can show that their processes comply with the law, including Wells Fargo, Citi Mortgage, PNC Mortgage, HSBC, MetLife Home Loans, and others.
“The Bank of America stopped their foreclosures because of an issue we raised,” Cross said.
“The law says that anytime mortgage notes are separated from promissory notes, the mortgages are invalid and the homeowner owes nothing. Lenders have fraudulently been destroying original promissory notes, making copies and having them signed on a mass basis to speed up foreclosures. The Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems have been transferring mortgages from bank to bank without registering them with the local deed offices. Banks have also been transferring mortgages before the required 30-day waiting period is up.”
Attorney Goldberg cautioned, however, that banks and lending institutions may just be borrowing time to get their acts cleaned up during the foreclosure freezes. He said despite the the BOA freeze, the bank has proceeded with the foreclosure of one of Fluker’s clients, among many others.
“The grass-roots work done by everyone has brought this situation to a head, and it is exciting,” Goldberg said. “But a moratorium defined by the people, not the banks, must be instituted, and it is the government’s duty to back the people.”
Goldberg said an online petition demanding a national two-year moratorium on foreclosures, directed to President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Donovan, members of the House and Senate Banking and Finance Committees, the Joint Economic Committee, Congressional leaders, local Congressional delegations and Governors, and media representatives is available for people to sign at http://www.moratorium-mi.org/.
For further information on the battle for a national moratorium contact 313-319-0870. To get involved in the gubernatorial campaign of Virg Bernero, go to http://www.votevirg.com/, or contact VIRG BERNERO FOR MICHIGAN at PO Box 10067 Lansing, MI, phone (517) 999-8696, virg@votevirg.com.
