Judge Cancels Previously-Ordered Foreclosure Sale After Reviewing Testimony In Expert's Affidavit As To Dubious Nature Of Robosigner Documents

A recent story in the South Florida Sun Sentinel describes the approach taken by homeowner Gerta Kachko and foreclosure defense attorney Geoff Sherman in an attempt to get a previously-scheduled foreclosure sale cancelled:

• Sherman said the Aug. 10 [summary judgment] hearing lasted only a few minutes, with a Broward County Circuit Court judge ruling in favor of Deutsche Bank and setting a date of Dec. 8 for the condo to be repossessed.

• Sherman said he later read about issues in other cases involving an accused robo-signer. Intrigued, Sherman investigated further while Eugene Kachko hired an expert on mortgages and foreclosures to review his mother's case.

• The expert, West Palm Beach attorney Lynn Szymoniak, wrote in an affidavit that "it is clear" that Deutsche had not acquired the Kachko mortgage at the time it moved to foreclose. Szymoniak testified that Deutsche filed a document proving that it owned the Kachko mortgage only after filing the initial foreclosure, and it attempted to make the document effective retroactively.

• The document was signed by Linda Green and Linda Thoresen, who were identified as representatives of America Home Mortgage. But Szymoniak said Green and Thoresen actually were employees of Lender Processing Services Inc., a Jacksonville-based company whose services include drafting missing documents to facilitate foreclosures.

• Green and Thoresen "signed thousands of documents each week as needed in foreclosure cases, without any personal knowledge of the documents, often without any authority from the entities they claimed to be their employers and, in most cases, without ever reading such documents," Szymoniak wrote.

• She also noted that LPS told federal regulators in August that its document production operations were the subject of state and federal investigations. A spokewoman for LPS did not respond to an interview request.

• On Aug. 20, Sherman filed a motion for a rehearing, asking that the judge's ruling for Deutsche be vacated on the grounds that the bank allegedly committed fraud. Judge Eli Breger granted the order on Sept. 24, canceling the Kachko foreclosure. Four days earlier, GMAC Mortgage had become the first lender to suspend foreclosures.

Source: Broward homeowner alleges robo-signer wrongdoing in foreclosure case.