Foreclosure Fraud Fallout

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- As the most massive, systemic fraud in the history of human commerce continues to unfold before us, there is no lack of topics and issues -- while we poke through these cesspools of Wall Street slime.

By now, everyone has heard ad nauseum the announcements by U.S. fraud-factories that they were "suspending" foreclosure proceedings "in 23 states." An automatic question which arises from these announcements is: What about the other 27 states?

We have a situation where Wall Street banks (and the "foreclosure-mills" they hired to do their "dirty work") didn't just "cut corners" in processing these foreclosures, they threw the rule-book out the window and willfully committed millions of fraudulent acts -- any and every time it was convenient to do so.

Yet despite the severity of the acts of which we already know, most of these fraud-factories are still steaming ahead with getting corrupt judges to rubber-stamp these systemic acts of fraud, in more than half of all U.S. states. This begs another question: What sort of defective legal systems, and defective land-titles systems must these other states have -- so that even after this massive fraud is exposed, the bankers are still ramming through fraudulent foreclosures with impunity?

Bear in mind that unlike countries which maintain honesty and integrity in their legal systems in general, and their land-title registries in particular, virtually none of the millions of foreclosures being rubber-stamped in the U.S. are "final" judgments. Thanks to greedy Wall Street bankers totally abandoning a legal process which was perfected over a period of two centuries (so they could boost profits by a few more percent), permanent defects have been created in (at least) millions of residential properties, and more likely tens of millions -- leaving all of these properties open to future legal challenges, indefinitely.

In this respect, my own opinion is conservative. A recent edition of MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show provides a more extreme view of this issue. U.S. attorney, Michael Pines: "As bad as you think it is, it's probably a thousand times worse."

Pines was responding to a question from Ratigan about Pine's clients: the Earl family. This middle-class family was trying to get caught up on its mortgage, and making payments to the bank. The Earls allege that even after large payments were made on their account (more than $100,000 in total), that there was no change in the balance owing. The moment the Earls requested an "accounting" on their mortgage (which is obviously within their rights), the bank refused to provide an accounting, and simply sent them a "notice of default" (foreclosure) instead.

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