Government Suits Targeting Banksters' Recording Fee Dodge Begin To Attract Interest, Gain Traction

Bloomberg reports:

• Bank of America Corp. is among a group of lenders that may face a wave of new lawsuits claiming cash-strapped counties were cheated out of millions of dollars by a system used for more than a decade to register mortgages.



• Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said state attorneys general and county officials across the U.S. have expressed interest in his lawsuit against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. and Bank of America, filed in Texas state court on Sept. 21. Dallas County could be owed as much as $100 million in filing fees, he said.(1)



• “This is a big new front,” said Christopher L. Peterson, associate dean and professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. “This case is scary because if Dallas wins then there are a lot of other counties around the country that are going to follow.”

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• Dallas County called that crisis “a direct result of the financial system’s commoditization, packaging, securitization and sale of tens of millions of mortgages throughout the U.S.,” according to the complaint. “Without the fiction of the MERS system, these activities would not have been possible.”

For more, see BofA Case May Be Followed by More Mortgage Suits by Counties.

(1) See also:

• Dallas Observer: Craig Watkins Makes Good on Threat to Sue Mortgage Processor Over "Tens of Millions",
• Reality Check: Dallas County, Texas Sues BofA through MERS for over $2.8 billion,
• For the lawsuit, Dallas County, Texas v. Merscorp Inc., et al.