Chain of Title (31 page)

Before long, attorney general's offices in dozens of states—Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Kentucky, New Jersey, Washington, Tennessee—received Lisa's reports. Sometimes she sent them to activists who said they could get them to state officials; sometimes she sent them directly. Lisa was an unofficial, unpaid, unknown research volunteer for the fifty-state investigation. And unrequited, too; most offices didn't even acknowledge receipt.

Lynn couldn't get answers, either. When she asked the Justice Department about the results of the confidential information disclosures she spent hundreds of hours drafting, they'd reply, “We can't share that information with you.”

Banks restarted the Great Foreclosure Machine by December 2010. Servicers used euphemisms like “irregularities” to describe systemic fraud, insisted that said irregularities had been repaired, and maintained that they had to resume operations to limit the number of abandoned properties, employing the image of a crime-ridden vacant lot to justify evictions. “
We have not discovered a single instance where the foreclosure sale was unjustified,” said GMAC Mortgage CEO Thomas Marano.

In Florida, clerks of courts wanted more information about whether their offices, full of property records, had become crime scenes. They asked lame duck attorney general Bill McCollum to send someone to speak about foreclosure documents at their annual meeting on December 8. McCollum sent June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards.

The state prosecutors didn't have a ready-made presentation. But they did have Lynn Szymoniak's old PowerPoint slides. Almost a year earlier, Lynn's friends from the U.S. attorney's office in Jacksonville visited her
house to look at all the documents. She prepared slides with help from her son Mark Elliot, an MFA candidate at the New School in New York. They had fun with it, using images like an animated safe with legs, the game board from Candy Land (to show the movement of mortgages through the chain of title), and stock photos of worried-looking businessmen surrounded by paperwork. Behind the humor was a strong introduction to the topic, sort of Foreclosure Fraud 101.

When Lynn first met June and Theresa, she gave them a copy. In December, June asked Lynn if they could use her PowerPoint slides, and Lynn said that was fine. “Do we need to credit you?” June asked. Lynn said no: “Use me like a rented mule, take my stuff.”

June and Theresa modified the presentation—the Candy Land board still appeared—and showed it to the clerks of courts. They titled it “
Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases.” In ninety-eight slides, it reviewed the history of mortgages, securitization, the failure to follow the pooling and servicing agreements, and the document fabrication to cover it up. It identified fake signers, fake witnesses, and fake notaries. It included a dozen different Linda Green signatures and fourteen of her job titles. It showed Lynn's cut-and-pasted allonge, with the lines at the top and bottom giving it away. It had BOGUS documents. It had the 9/9/9999 document. It had documents that were notarized but unsigned. It had assignments with servicers transferring mortgages to themselves. It had assignments executed three years after the closing of the trust, and months after the initiation of foreclosure. It had assignments from defunct companies with no address. It had assignments with impossible notary stamps. It had documents with stamped instead of wet-ink signatures. It had deposition excerpts with David Stern employees talking of forgery.

If you knew nothing about foreclosure fraud, even if you knew nothing about mortgages, after this one-hour presentation you would recognize that county recording offices were polluted with garbage. More important, you would know why. June and Theresa were the first law enforcement officials in the country to produce a detailed, airtight depiction of what was happening.

June and Theresa's immediate supervisor, Bob Julian, attended the meeting. Trish Conners, also from the Economic Crimes division, used the presentation in remarks before the Florida Senate.
That got the presentation
leaked to Kim Miller at the
Palm Beach Post
, days before the end of McCollum's term. The PowerPoint slides included a limited power of attorney agreement from Chase to Lender Processing Services, showing all the LPS employees who could sign for Chase. LPS immediately complained. “
We object to the Florida Attorney General's characterization of the mortgage industry and the securitization process as a game of Candy Land,” LPS attorney Joan Meyer wrote to June and Theresa. The letter argued that LPS's operations were too complex for mere state prosecutors to understand. June and Theresa laughed it off.

But the complaints filtered up to Tallahassee. Pam Bondi, the incoming attorney general,
received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from LPS and its affiliates. A few weeks after Bondi's inauguration, Richard Lawson, a former lawyer for bank executives and the new director of the Economic Crimes unit, visited Fort Lauderdale for a meet-and-greet with June and Theresa. It turned into a meet-and-scream. Lawson said that attorneys for the target companies told him the two women acted aggressively and unprofessionally. “You're all I ever hear about. You're acting like hyenas!” Lawson yelled. He made June and Theresa justify every slide of the presentation. At the end, Lawson said he could probably take the heat for them. “Just don't let me hear anything else about you for the next six months.”

Life under Pam Bondi proved different. June and Theresa were deliberately not assigned to the fifty-state investigation, despite knowing more about foreclosure fraud than any other state prosecutors in America. They were ordered not to speak with other AG offices or share documents. Only Tallahassee could file discovery requests, take depositions, or speak with target attorneys; June and Theresa could merely prepare memos guiding their work. And when their secretary quit, they didn't receive funding to replace her. As documents streamed in from across the country, June and Theresa had to share one secretary with two other colleagues. They had to personally respond to public records requests from LPS and other investigation targets, turning them into glorified clerical workers.
Bob Julian, their supervisor, expressed frustration about what was happening, but he couldn't do anything about it.

Like Tom Cox, Lynn seethed at how the same federal prosecutors and FBI agents who had previously expressed great interest in her case now said they
couldn't get authorization to pursue it further. When she talked to contacts about LPS or DocX or fraudulent assignments, they would change the subject. Lynn read a ruling that referenced a foreclosure fraud investigation by bankruptcy trustees in Pennsylvania and Delaware, and asked the U.S. attorney's office in Jacksonville about it. They said Main Justice brought that under their umbrella. This was a common occurrence; local investigators could interfere with cases above them, so they deferred. It seemed like every criminal inquiry was getting swallowed into that umbrella in Washington.

Michael Olenick, one of Lynn's researcher colleagues, contacted her. He had a friend, an associate producer at CBS, who was poking around the foreclosure fraud story. “Meet with us and have dinner,” Olenick asked. Lynn knew she'd have to be careful, with her
qui tam
case still under seal. But she dreamed of raising a ruckus about fraudulent documents and forcing the government into action. So she went to dinner.

Olenick's friend was Dan Ruetenik; he worked for
60 Minutes
. In Lynn's pitch, Ruetenik saw the makings of a story. The two spent a couple of days in Lynn's front room, poring over mortgage assignments and poster boards. A week later Ruetenik returned to Palm Beach Gardens with senior producer Robert Anderson. After several email exchanges, Ruetenik told Lynn that
60 Minutes
was ready to run a story, if she'd agree to be interviewed. Lynn checked with her lawyers, and they gave their blessing. They knew they couldn't stop her anyway.

One sunny morning in February 2011, a team of cameramen and sound engineers arrived at Lynn Szymoniak's house. They emptied the living room, moving all the furniture onto the driveway. The neighbors must have thought that, at long last, Lynn lost her case and was being evicted. The crew spent four hours positioning lights and cameras. Scott Pelley, the correspondent, didn't arrive until that afternoon. “Let's take a walk,” he said to Lynn, and the two strolled around the subdivision, framed by the manmade lake and aimless fountain in the distance. Pelley said he worked on a story about credit cards where low-level employees spent every day signing court affidavits, using names of people who had been dead for years. So he didn't need much convincing.

They went back inside and began the shoot. Lynn sat in front of her poster boards, the same ones she'd lugged around since that happy hour
at E.R. Bradley's. Lynn handled interrogations from the FBI, so she could handle a TV interview. But every now and then Pelley would stop Lynn and give her tips: “When you lean forward it doesn't work as well; you look like you're trying to sell me something.”

Pelley keyed in on the information about Linda Green and DocX. When they wrapped, he turned to his producers and asked, “So when are we going to Georgia?” The producers hadn't set up a trip to DocX; LPS had shut down the office the previous spring, and many of its workers had scattered. But Pelley was insistent that without interviewing DocX employees, there was no story.

Dan Ruetenik pulled Lynn aside and asked for some DocX contacts. There was one man, Chris Pendley, who had written to Lynn telling her that he signed so many documents he couldn't remember his own name anymore.
60 Minutes
did go to Georgia, but the ex-employees they found were worried about how the FBI in Jacksonville would react if they went public. Ruetenik asked Lynn to call her FBI contact, Doug Matthews, to see if he would allow the ex-employees to come forward. Doug just laughed at her.

Lynn didn't know if or when the story would air. She kept asking Dan Ruetenik over email. Ruetenik had to go to Japan to cover the Fukushima nuclear disaster and responded only intermittently.

Meanwhile, Michael and Lisa continued branching out beyond the Internet.
Moratorium Monday continued and expanded across the state.
Dozens of protesters marched on the Fort Lauderdale courthouse in January 2011. During a popular beach bonfire event in Lake Worth,
Lisa and Michael held Torch the Fraud, setting fraudulent documents ablaze in the night sky. Lake Worth routinely attracts a few thousand people for the bonfires, and homeowner activist Nicole West edited the video to look like they were all there for Torch the Fraud. “How'd you organize that big crowd?” people asked in the comments. Lisa didn't give up the secret.

Lisa brought Jenna to every protest, even the bonfire. Once she gave her coins to throw into the fountain in front of the Palm Beach County courthouse. “What did you wish for?” Lisa asked. Two things, Jenna replied: a bunny, and “that the judges will understand.”

Michael filmed a county sheriff serving Virtual Bank in Palm Beach Gardens with a writ of possession when the bank failed to pay court-ordered
attorney's fees after losing a foreclosure case for inability to prove standing.
The sheriff ordered deputies to remove money from ATMs and other assets to satisfy the lien. “
Deadbeat bank” actions became more widespread, with a Philadelphia homeowner “foreclosing” on Wells Fargo and another in Naples, Florida, “foreclosing” on Bank of America. That one made it onto
The Daily Show
.

When the Florida legislature returned, bills to convert the state to non-judicial foreclosures reappeared, just as Matt Weidner expected. So Lisa and Michael collaborated with the Mortgage Justice Group of Sarasota and organized the
second annual Rally in Tally, another day of speeches and citizen engagement. This Rally in Tally was held the same day as the Florida Bankers' Association Capitol Day. Hundreds of bank lobbyists and homeowners passed each other in the hallways, each with their own agenda. This time Lisa worked with a lobbyist in Tallahassee, Candice Ericks, to schedule lawmaker meetings. She and Michael even got forty-five minutes in Pam Bondi's office, where staffers praised their efforts. Jenna attended the rally, but just as the little girl stepped off the bus, Grace Rucci lost control of a plastic protest sign in a strong wind, and it whacked Jenna on the nose. Lisa later said Jenna was the only one to shed blood for the fight.

The battle continued online as well.
Michael found the e-signature of Shapiro & Fishman lawyer Anna Malone on documents signed months after she resigned from the firm. Lisa's law firm insiders passed her
an instruction manual on how to manufacture affidavits for reasonable attorney's fees by cutting and pasting old signatures. And of course there were horror stories: banks breaking and entering into homes in the name of “property preservation,” with
one company even taking the ashes of a woman's late husband; families
making all their loan modification payments and still getting foreclosed; a woman who
paid off her house and
then
got a default notice; sheriff's deputies
conducting an eviction and finding a dead body.

Finally Lynn got the call from
60 Minutes
. They actually ran two reports:
one on children of foreclosure, focusing on a group from Orlando that lived in hotels and vans,
and her segment, which aired on April 3, 2011.

“One thing weighing on the economy is the huge number of foreclosed houses. Many are stuck on the market for a reason you wouldn't expect:
banks can't find the ownership documents,” began Scott Pelley. The story opened at a NACA event, the camera dollying across thousands of people in line to save their dreams. Pelley noted the irony that borrowers seeking relief needed to provide perfectly rendered financial information, but their lenders screwed up the paperwork on who owns their mortgage in epic fashion.

“In my mind, this is an absolute, intentional fraud,” said Lynn in front of her poster boards, wearing a pink sweater, black slacks, and a bright aqua scarf, perhaps a subliminal nod to her friend Lisa Epstein.
60 Minutes
detailed Lynn's entire story: her foreclosure, her forensic experience (“she had trained FBI agents”), her research on BOGUS documents and Linda Green forgeries and officers of too many banks. “They were sitting in a room signing their name as quickly as they could to any nonsense document that was put in front of them,” Lynn said bluntly.