California Judge Stalls Foreclosure Eviction After Being Made Aware Of "Dubious Docs" Signed By Central Florida "Affidavit Slave"

In Los Angeles, California, the Los Angeles Times reports:

• Zeenat "Zee" Ali, who dropped out of medical school to contest the foreclosure of her mother’s Diamond Bar home, won another round in court this week when a judge in Pomona put the eviction on hold at least until November.

• In an order filed Tuesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge R. Bruce Minto said the family had "shown a probability of success" in its claim that fouled-up paperwork invalidated the transfer of the mortgage in 2006 when it was sold in a bundle of loans that were used to create mortgage-backed securities.

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• The defendants are now-defunct Downey Savings(1) of Newport Beach, which wrote the loan; Deutsche Bank; and Central Mortgage Co., a subsidiary of Arkansas' Arvest Bank Group that handled customer service on the loan.

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• Her lengthy battles with the banks in state and federal courts, conducted without benefit of an attorney, were described in a Times article(2) and blog post in early August. At that time, Ali, 23, had just retained a lawyer, Kenneth T. Zwick of Costa Mesa. Zwick filed the request for a temporary restraining order that Minto granted this week.

• Zwick's grounds for requesting the order included the allegation that a document transferring customer-service rights on the Ali mortgage had been signed improperly by Crystal Moore, identified in the papers as a Downey vice president.

• Citing stories in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times,(3) the request said Moore in fact worked for Nationwide Title Clearing Inc. in Palm Harbor, Fla.,(4) where she and another employee had been "robo-signing" thousands of mortgage documents as though they were officers of banks, when in fact they were not. "A few people in Florida pretended to be vice presidents of dozens of banks," Zwick said in an interview.

• Jeremy Pomeranz, a Nationwide Title Clearing senior vice president, said Moore works for his company but denied that anything improper had occurred. Nationwide Title Clearing employees such as Moore are often appointed vice presidents by lenders for the limited purpose of allowing them to sign transfer papers when pools of loans are sold, Pomeranz said. He said that in the case of the Ali loan, Downey’s board had named Moore a vice president for that purpose.

For the story, see Eviction delayed again in challenge to Diamond Bar foreclosure.

(1) The fact that one of the mortgage companies appearing downstream in the loan's chain of title is now out of business can only make it that much more difficult for the current holder to properly establish said chain, thereby enhancing the chances of a favorable resolution for the homeowner.

(2) See Fighting parents' foreclosure, Diamond Bar student wins rounds against Deutsche Bank (With no legal training, Zeenat Ali, 23, has been doing battle in court, winning judgments against the bank and two other companies mainly on procedural grounds).

(3) See When 'Bryan J. Bly' became 'NB,' did he know what he was signing? (St. Petersburg Times, June 20, 2010).

(4) Nationwide Title Clearing is named in Fraud Digest's recently released list of the Dirty Dozen - "the mortgage servicing companies most responsible (in the opinion of Fraud Digest) for flooding courts with millions of fraudulent mortgage assignments and Affidavits in foreclosure cases." (Thanks to Deontos .is for the heads-up on the Dirty Dozen list.)