Dallas DA Fires Shot At MERS; Sues Suspected Racket, Others Over Alleged Mortgage Recording Fee Dodge Costing County Million$

In Dallas, Texas, the Dallas Observer reports:

• District Attorney Craig Watkins on behalf of Dallas County, Texas, commenced an action against MERSCORP, Mortgage Electronic Registration System ("MERS"), Bank of America, and others seeking a judicial determination of whether the MERS System established by the mortgage banking industry to electronically track home mortgages violates Texas law related to the public recording of interests in home loans and the mortgages securing them.

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• Dallas County, Texas, believes that the MERS System may violate a number of laws applicable to the recordation of mortgages in Texas and has asked the court to order MERS and the other defendants to pay statutory penalties to Dallas County for having filed mortgage records which improperly claim that MERS is a beneficiary of tens of thousands of mortgages filed in the Dallas County deed records and for the filing fees that Dallas County would have been paid had all transfers of the subject mortgages been properly recorded in the deed records.

For more, see Craig Watkins Makes Good on Threat to Sue Mortgage Processor Over "Tens of Millions"

For the lawsuit, see Dallas County, Texas v. Merscorp Inc., et al.

See also, Reality Check: Dallas County, Texas Sues BofA through MERS for over $2.8 billion.

(1) The Dallas Observer describes the lawsuit as one:

• [w]hich reads less like a lawsuit -- at least, initially -- and more like a treatise on the events leading up to the financial collapse of 2008, the history of the mortgage system in the U.S. and why "public recordation of mortgage interests in the U.S dates back to at least the middle of the 17th Century," augmented with charts, graphs and quotes from Frederic Mishkin and Paul Krugman.