Already lost your home to foreclosure?
If your property was located in Florida, and you meet certain other qualifications, we may well be able to help you recover at least some portion of what you have lost! We are hard at work setting up a class action lawsuit, to be filed in federal court in South Florida, against the "ultra-fictitious" company "MERS" (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) and the Law Office of David J. Stern. If you think you may qualify to participate and potentially recover damages in this upcoming lawsuit, you are invited to fill out the form under "The Class Action - Learn more & Sign Up!".

What to send us in addition.
What we really need, in addition to your contact information, is a copy of the complaint for foreclosure and the final judgment in your case. If you have those items and can email or fax them to us, great! If you do not have those documents, but believe we may be able to help you, we still want to hear from you!

Here is an explanation I wrote of some of the facts giving rise to our class action:
            In and about the years 2001 and 2002, the mortgage industry introduced new "products" into the American marketplace. These products included "non-documentation loans" and adjustable rate mortgages, known as "ARMS." Mortgage lenders, acting in coordination with one another, relaxed their standards for lending, which made an entirely new class of lower-income individuals eligible to receive loans. This, in turn, drove up property "values." As part and parcel of this scheme, banks and other lenders "accepted" appraisals "documenting" the new, higher values, and approved hundreds of thousands of applications for financing, many of which were irregular on their face and which as a result would never have been approved under normal circumstances. Did the bankers suddenly become stupid, and start giving away money? I think not.

            In the years leading up to the introduction of the new loan "products," the conspirators laid the groundwork which would grow into a new mortgage lending infrastructure: a new paradigm in which the ratios of risk to reward were dramatically altered in favor of these monied interests and to the detriment of common consumers. One material bulwark in the support for this new paradigm was the almost universal inclusion in the new mortgages of intentionally ambiguous and infinitely malleable provisions pertaining to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. ("MERS"). As is the case with most of the written documents routinely used in the scheme, such as "assignments" and complaints for foreclosure, each word concerning MERS in these standardized mortgages is carefully crafted so as to allow those relying upon it to infinitely recede in their positions and to be a moving target virtually unreachable by standard legal means. Upon reading the standard mortgage clauses pertaining to MERS, even persons of high intelligence will have a sense that they should, but do not quite, understand their precise meanings.

           With the oversight of the conspirators, the MERS artifice and enterprise evolved into an "ultra-fictitious" entity, or "meta-corporation." To perpetuate the scheme, MERS was and is used in a way so that to the average consumer, or even legal professional, can never determine who or what was or is ultimately receiving the benefits of any mortgage payments. The conspirators set about to confuse everyone as to who owned what. They created a truly effective smokescreen which has left the public and most of the judiciary operating "in the dark" through the present time.

           It is my considered opinion, based upon facts in my possession and reasonable inferences from those facts, that the mortgage crisis from which our entire Nation is suffering was planned in advance by certain scions of Wall Street. The basis for my opinion is set forth in the class action complaint, which, as public record, is readily available. One supporting bit of evidence is this: On its website, www.mersinc.org, MERS has published a list of its shareholders. Among them are: Bank of America, Chase, CitiMortgage, Inc., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HSBC, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo. These are many of the same institutions the Stern law firm represents, and this list is a veritable "Who’s Who" among American lending institutions. This is no coincidence.

           Unbeknownst to the borrowers and the public, the billions of dollars spent to finance these loans were used simply to "prime the pump." The big institutions and the conspirators were making an investment, but the expected return was NOT the interest they pretended to anticipate receiving as borrowers paid the mortgages. The lenders knew that the new loans were "bad paper;" this was of little concern to them, however, because they sought and believed they would receive profits so great as to render such interest, even if it had been received, negligible by comparison.
Part of the reason this fraudulent scheme has gone largely unnoticed for such an extended period of time is that its sophistication is beyond the imagination of average persons. Similarly beyond the imagination of most persons is and was the scope of the DISHONESTY of the lenders and those acting in furtherance of the scheme. Through the present time, persons acting within the ambit of this conspiracy have continued to operate in a manner consistent with the core principles of dishonesty and obscurantism engendered by the original conspirators. These dark influences have spread throughout the financial services, lending and banking industries into the national economy and beyond, threatening the economic stability of the United States and the world as a whole.

            There is one sort of lie that, when it is discovered, constitutes the strongest possible proof of the speaker's malicious intentions from the outset. What is it? A lie about one’s name or identity. There are many such lies present in this disgraceful affair. The whole purpose of MERS is to allow "servicers" to pretend as if they are someone else: the "owners" of the mortgage, or the real parties in interest. In fact they are not. The standard MERS complaint contains a lie about this very subject. While the title of the standard complaint makes reference to "lost loan documents," in the body of the document, the same complaint alleges that the plaintiff IS the "owner and holder" of the note and mortgage. Both cannot be true unless the words used are given new meanings.

            The attorneys representing plaintiffs in Florida foreclosure actions changed the standard complaint so that it now reads: "Plaintiff, as servicer for the owner and acting on behalf of the owner with authority to do so, is the present designated holder of the note and mortgage with authority to pursue the present action." Yet in this same, new version of the complaint, the lawyers describe an assignment of the mortgage which has already occurred, with the "assignee" being the plaintiff in the case - - the same plaintiff who is simultaneously described as a "designated holder" who is "acting on behalf of the owner."

           Beginning soon after the "ink" on the new mortgages was "dry," the lenders promptly sold the loans, in secretive transactions, to "investors" for some percentage or fraction of what had been the alleged value of the mortgage and the property by which it was secured just days or weeks earlier. The quick sale by the lender of its interest, at what appears to be a loss, would have at first seemed inexplicable, but when considered with the benefit of hindsight, proof of these quick transfers would have been evidence that the lender knew in advance that property values would soon decline. By constantly changing "servicers" on these loans, and by sending out notices of such changes drafted also in intentionally ambiguous verbiage, the bankers behind the scenes cooperated in obscuring the truth as to who had the right to receive the proceeds of the loans, and to foreclose in the event of non-payment. The loans were grouped into "pools" and sold multiple times, thereby increasing profits for the wrongdoers. These "securitized debt pools" were sold on the stock market and elsewhere, and in this manner affected interstate commerce. The real parties in interest also in many instances collected mortgage insurance upon "default."

           Another important aspect of the scheme was (and is) the use of words in ways inconsistent with their traditional meanings, and the creation of new terms which could be used to blur important distinctions between parties and their interests. The revolutionary ways in which words were utilized all shared one characteristic: they made it more difficult to determine who had the right to receive and utilize for their own purposes the payments made on the loan by the borrower. For example, "mortgagee" began to have a meaning other than "lender." "Servicer" arose to prominence and was and is used to further obscure important truths. Specifically, the "servicer" may or may not hold the true beneficial interest in the mortgage, and the Defendants will NOT release any further information on the subject, whether it is requested in discovery in a foreclosure action or in any other context.  

           The conspirators intended to maintain an absolute stranglehold on the American economy for many decades, if not centuries, into the future. This could only be accomplished if the scheme was able to evolve over time in a changing regulatory and consumer environment. The point is that the conspirators adjusted the American lending system and the legal system governing it in a way designed to most effectively gratify their greedy interests over the longest period of time. Through this revolution in the use of words and ephemeral concepts such as the "corporation," the conspirators, including the present Defendants, have by-and-large been successful in changing the paradigm so that the rights of individuals are no longer afforded the safeguards which have been carefully maintained in place since the time of the Magna Carta. As the conspirators and present Defendants have long intended, certain important terms in the mortgages and other legal documents are devolving into a state of meaninglessness. Even the names of the mortgage and lending institutions are tinkered with and interchanged so often that it is difficult to keep track of the constantly shifting parameters of the series of alleged mergers, assertions of subsidiary relationships, "divisions," and the like with which the American economy and consumer populace are deluged in advertisements and mortgage documents. This is not some random trend which resulted from the mortgage crisis. It is, instead, just another tactic in the vast scheme which ultimately caused it. The end result of the continued obfuscatory actions is that the mortgages and associated documents come to mean whatever their proponents wish them to mean.

            The conspirators of course did not want there to be any documentation which could later potentially be used as evidence of their crimes. They did not want to pay the fees associated with recording mortgages and they did not want to be bothered with the trouble of keeping track of the originals. That is the significance of the word ‘Electronic’ in Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. The conspirators, through this exceptionally sophisticated legerdemain, made over the American judicial system’s long-honored requirements for mortgages and foreclosures to serve their own selfish interests and to minimize the possibilities of the victims obtaining any meaningful redress through the courts. They undermined long-established rights and sabotaged the judicial process itself by de-emphasizing the importance of, and eventually eliminating, "troublesome" documentation requirements.

            While conversion to electronic loan documentation will eventually be implemented, it is the People, by and through their elected representatives, who will ultimately bring about this transition through duly enacted legislation.