Will the mess in Florida foreclosures (and other states) spread to a case near you?

In Florida, the state Attorney General's investigations have uncovered more than robo-signing.  They have found people working at the law firms who represented the lenders forged documents.

Yup, that's right. In many cases, the pressure from the lenders to produce results led to secretaries signing for the attorneys.  Not their own names, mind you.  They signed the attorneys' names to documents to be filed in foreclosure cases.  Further, the were found to have created assignments after foreclosures were filed.

Now this doesn't seem as big as forgery, however stop and think about what was done.  The assignment created after the filing in court is the same as creating evidence to back up your allegations.

If the original Note is never reviewed by the law firm, and they create an assignment, the assignment may never get attached to the original.  Further, upon review of the original, the assignment may be found to exist already, thus making the new one redundant (and obviously done to create evidence to support allegations).  And the original may contain an assignment that is not on the one created by the firm.

The law firm may, at their client's direction, create a document that is wrong (putting a cloud on the title), or even create an assignment for a bankrupt and closed lender who was in the chain of title (forgery again, if there is no officer available from the defunct firm to sign the assignment).

In Florida and perhaps many other states lawyers careers are coming to an end. Permanently.  One Florida firm that once had over 150 attorneys working there has been shut down permanently, the attorneys all under investigation.

I am pretty confident that if investigations were broadened, it would be discovered that lenders nationwide practiced the same as they did in Florida.  And I am confident that the investigation would lead to many of the same practices being uncovered in bankruptcy court too.

So what are the odds of it happening where you are?  I guess it depends upon the defense bar (bankruptcy as well as foreclosure defense), and how hard they push back, along with that state's Attorney General.  In my book, Florida won't be the last state where attorneys loose careers.

So look for fraud investigations to be coming to a court near you.