Florida AG Pam Bondi: Lax on big mortgage lenders; took their campaign money; fired investigators

[seafan]

Here is a tale of two people in Florida.


A Florida businessman:



A Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded



Gary Bogdon for The New York Times

Caption: After his own experience dealing with a mortgage mess, Nye Lavalle set out to learn all he could about the mortgage industry, traveling nationwide to dig into records. In 2003, he compiled a dossier of practices at Fannie Mae. In hindsight, the problems he found look like a blueprint of today's foreclosure crisis.



By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: February 4, 2012

.....

But after losing a family home to foreclosure, under what he thought were fishy circumstances, Mr. (Nye) Lavalle, founder of a consulting firm called the Sports Marketing Group, began a new life as a mortgage sleuth. In 2003, when home prices were flying high, he compiled a dossier of improprieties on one of the giants of the business, Fannie Mae.

In hindsight, what he found looks like a blueprint of today’s foreclosure crisis. Even then, Mr. Lavalle discovered, some loan-servicing companies that worked for Fannie Mae routinely filed false foreclosure documents, not unlike the fraudulent paperwork that has since made “robo-signing” a household term. Even then, he found, the nation’s electronic mortgage registry was playing fast and loose with the law — something that courts have belatedly recognized, too.

You might wonder why Mr. Lavalle didn’t speak up. But he did. For two years, he corresponded with Fannie executives and lawyers. Fannie later hired a Washington law firm to investigate his claims. In May 2006, that firm, using some of Mr. Lavalle’s research, issued a confidential, 147-page report corroborating many of his findings.

And there, apparently, is where it ended. There is little evidence that Fannie Mae’s management or board ever took serious action. Known internally as O.C.J. Case No. 5595, in reference to the company’s Office of Corporate Justice, this 2006 report suggests just how deep, and how far back, our mortgage and foreclosure problems really go.

.....

And then there's Florida's shiny new tea party-backed Attorney General Pam Bondi. (Formerly a FOX News legal commentator.)



Pam Bondi
(AP photo/Steve Cannon)


Instead of using everything in her legal arsenal to go after the criminals who improperly evicted people from their homes, as the attorneys general in the other four of the five hardest-hit states in foreclosure (Nevada, California, Michigan, Arizona) are doing, Ms. Bondi is best known for forcing out two of the most successful fraud investigators from her own office last May.


Orlando Sentinel, August 8, 2011:

.....

In May, Bondi's office quietly dismissed two foreclosure-fraud attorneys, Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who had won national attention (and a $2 million settlement) for exposing lending fraud. But in July, the two women went public, saying their firing was political and releasing their yearly evaluations, which were all glowing.

To make matters worse, another attorney, Joe Jacquot, a holdover from former Attorney General Bill McCollum's term, had taken a job at Lender Processing Services. The company was under investigation and had also contributed $500 to Bondi and more than $40,000 to other candidates and the state's two political parties.

Critics said Bondi was letting the banks slide by and the women were forced out for their aggressiveness. Bondi countered that her subordinates found "numerous problems" with the attorneys' work, but there were no documents to back that up.

Ultimately, she asked Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, a Republican, to investigate.

.....

People were outraged. And they started to take notice of what Bondi was doing.


Critics: Bondi lax in pursuing big mortgage lenders amid continuing foreclosure crisis, December 18, 2011


On foreclosure fraud, Bondi comes up short, December 20, 2011

And while the 'investigation' into the attorney firings by Bondi
dragged on for months, headed up by Bondi's colleague Jeff Atwater...


Finally, in December, Atwater's inspector general's report not surprisingly 'cleared' Bondi of wrongdoing in the ousting of these two investigators who had successfully snagged a $2 Million settlement for exposing fraudulent lending.

Bondi claims that this report should end any remaining questions about why she fired these two highly competent attorneys who both had stellar job reviews in their records.


January 6, 2012, from Tampa Bay Online:

“I think it clearly shows in no way it was politically motivated,” Bondi said on Friday.

Bondi said that she had gone over the report numerous times on Friday and said that even she was “taken aback by the utter lack of professionalism and performance by these two staff attorneys.”

“Sloppy work will not be tolerated in this office,” she said.

What's very interesting is that both of these women, Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, had received national attention for their tough investigation into law firms that were handling foreclosures for banks. Significantly, these law firms had contributed money to Bondi's election campaign. And one of Bondi's former advisers left the AG's office to go to work for one of the companies under investigation.


But Ms. Bondi says there shouldn't be any more questions about all of this, because her Republican colleague Jeff Atwater's inspector general put his stamp of approval on these attorney firings by Bondi.


Right.

The firings set off a firestorm against Bondi because she also had opposed a nationwide settlement with banks that would have proposed cutting the principal owed by homeowners.

Orlando Sentinel, December 18, 2011:

Meanwhile, Orlando-area members of a faith-based nonprofit group called Focus complain that they have come away from meetings on foreclosure-settlement issues with Bondi representatives in recent months disappointed with what they describe as a seeming lack of interest in foreclosure fraud.

"We wanted to convey the idea that we want her to put pressure on the banks to be positive and forthright with their clients," said Jerry Pena, a community organizer with the Orlando group. "… Her stance was that she didn't feel the banks were as liable as the media portrayed them to be, and people shouldn't have gone ahead and signed the mortgage paperwork, and that they knew what they were getting into."

Sure doesn't sound as if Ms. Bondi is interested in looking out for Floridians who were fraudulently forced out of their homes, does it?


Bondi has dragged her feet further:

Florida's once-heralded foreclosure mill investigations have fizzled as the attorney general's office has failed to find the right strategy to continue its pursuit and three law firms call for the cases to be dismissed.

This week, an attempt to have the Florida Supreme Court weigh in on whether the state has the authority to subpoena the Law Offices of David J. Stern was denied by the 4th District Court of Appeal.

.....

In December, after losing an appeal in the 4th District Court of Appeal to subpoena Stern, Bondi asked the court to certify its decision as one of "great public importance" so she could appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

But some foreclosure defense attorneys believe the move was a hollow gesture to appease critics.

Instead of looking to the Supreme Court, Bondi's office could have issued subpoenas under a different statute, possibly criminal investigative subpoenas, Ice said.

"But the attorney general's office hasn't availed itself of that opportunity, which leads me to believe the certification request was a mere pretense for political purposes," he said.

So, the upshot is that....

Subpoenas against the Law Offices of David J. Stern and the Boca Raton-based Shapiro and Fishman were quashed in the 4th District Court of Appeal, with judges ruling Bondi has no power to pursue firms under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

.... and this effectively ends the investigations into these law firms as they stand accused of falsifying paperwork in order to speed foreclosure on people's homes.


This is what the people of Florida get from Ms. Bondi. Nothing.


After Bondi was on record opposing a nationwide settlement with banks, she praised yesterday the mortgage settlement coming Florida's way--about $8.4 billion. She said:

"This settlement will provide substantial relief to struggling Florida homeowners, and ensures that our state gets its fair share of the relief being provided nationally," Bondi said. The deal "holds banks accountable and puts in place new protections for homeowners in the form of strict mortgage servicing standards."

But because so many Southwest Florida borrowers have either lost their homes to foreclosure, are delinquent in paying their mortgages or are underwater because their homes have lost so much value relative to their total debt, the settlement is being met with blistering criticism from attorneys and other real estate professionals and analysts.

.....

"The settlement amounts to a proverbial drop in the bucket for homeowners in our area who are upside-down by hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Anne Weintraub, a real estate attorney with the Sarasota law firm of Band Weintraub. "Most who have lost their homes due to robo-signing and other shady practices will not find a couple of thousand dollars as a conciliation prize rewarding or helpful."

.....

"Two thousand dollars for 750,000 people who may have lost their homes illegally to the banks is not very much," (Jack) McCabe (a Deerfield Beach real estate consultant) said. "To me it's a sham and pocket change compared to what people really should get after losing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Two #*@%^$@ thousand dollars, for homeowners who lost everything to these criminals.





So, this is what the former 'tart-tongued guest legal commentator on Fox News' brings to the Florida Attorney General's Office.


Scott Maxwell at the Orlando Sentinel is correct about Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Something stinks.



Photo: Steve Cannon/AP



Corruption. Indifference for the people's plight. Betrayal of legal and moral principles.


Just the right traits for climbing the GOP ladder. And peddled by Fox News.


Floridians deserve infinitely better than this.