Solari North American Video Server

“If I have one piece of advice to give your audience, it is to impress upon them the importance of maintaining and safeguarding a complete mortgage file in two parts: 1st) a permanent archive of the mortgage loan documents they received from and supplied to the lender from application to closing (i.e., the inactive file); and 2nd) an annual file containing their monthly mortgage statements, real estate tax bills, homeowners insurance premiums, year-end 1098 mortgage interest statement, annual escrow account disclosure statement, correspondence, etc. (i.e., the active file). They should retain these documents until, at least, one year after they have paid off their mortgage loan.” ~ Marie McDonnell

By Catherine Austin Fitts

Entering into a home mortgage is a major legal and financial undertaking. It quite literally “pays” to take the time to understand your options and to ensure that application and closing process are correctly done. After closing, you must ensure that all terms and conditions that were agreed are maintained. It will be your responsibility to make sure this enforcement is the case.

To help you do so, I invited Marie McDonnell, President of McDonnell Property Analytics, to join me this week on the Solari Report. Marie is a Mortgage Fraud and Forensic Analystâ„¢, a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and a Master Analyst In Financial Forensics (MAFF) with significant experience in transactional analysis, mortgage auditing, and mortgage fraud investigation. Her firm provides a variety of analytical services to individual clients and offers litigation support, mortgage-backed securities research and foreclosure forensics to attorneys nationwide. McDonnell Property Analytics also advises and performs services for county registers of deeds, attorneys general, courts and other governmental agencies.

Because mortgage finance is a complex affair, Marie has generously prepared and provided supporting documents. Please login to find handouts, including:

  • The Mortgage Loan Origination Process and Pitfalls How to Recognize the Red Flags of Fraud
  • Document Custodian Checklist
  • Glossary of Terms

One point you will hear emphasized repeatedly – it is essential that you understand the documents that you are supposed to have and that you sign and that you maintain all copies. Unfortunately, horror stories abound of what can go wrong. However, if you take care to manage your origination, closing and payment of your mortgage and do a good job of archiving your documents, you should be able to avoid potential pitfalls and present your proofs if things outside of your control go wrong – such as your mortgage being transferred to a sloppy or fraudulent servicer.

Marie McDonnell is our Solari hero this week. She and I have been in communication for more than a year, hoping that she could join me on the Solari Report. It takes hard work, intelligence and grit to represent consumers in the mortgage process and mortgage litigation – courage too!

Once you make sure the legal and financial aspects of your home are well organized, there is no sense in stopping there! In Lets Go to the Movies, I will review the new series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidying guru whose goal is to “spark joy” in your home.

My all time favorite pro for making your home beautiful inside and out is Eunice Boston who joined me on the Solari Report for Coming Clean: Transforming Lives through the Power of Cleaning with Eunice Boston.” If you have not listened to this interview, please do check it out. Eunice produces miracles – indeed, as described in our discussion, one of them saved my life when it was threatened by one of the worst perpetrators of mortgage fraud in the world.

E-mail or post your questions for Ask Catherine at the Money & Markets commentary here.

Talk to you Thursday!

Similar Posts

18 Comments

  1. Guess what blessing showed up for my review on Wednesday? Yes it was THIS Solari report! It was the day before I was going to be closing on a new mortgage for a residential property purchase. How timely! I learned a lot from the excellent interview and saved my bacon at closing.

    The title companies and banks no longer give you a copy of the original documents. There were errors on the documents that I hand corrected. Only the original set of closing documents with my signature, the loan officer, the notary, etc. would do. I made the people wait while I used Adobe Scan on my phone to take an image of every single page of documentation for the closing. Adobe Scan app did a fantastic job of it. I stopped every 25 pages and ripped to PDF and uploaded to my Adobe Document account.

    So the moral of the story is that I would not have any proof of what the exact documents were that I signed, with my signature, with the hand corrections, and everyone else’s signatures except I did this essential step today.

    I just want to send a big thank you to Catherine and to Marie. Thank you so much for having such excellent content.

    I also had some good pointed questions for them in the closing using the document checklist. Because of the document checklist and the training materials I got in this report, I knew to ask for the servicing agent contact information NOW and not wait for something to magically show up in the mail. Without that prompt, I would not have the servicing agent contact information because the bank sold the loan immediately and the servicing agent on the loan was the bank, not the servicer and loan holder they sold it to.

    Wow what sneaky garbage goes on!
    Anyhow, I strongly recommend everyone go get Adobe Scan and scan every single page before you hand over the documentation. You have chain of custody and this is the only way you will ever know they did not tamper with the docs. You have to have a real copy of your original. All my digital files are properly timestamped as well. The document history in Adobe Document Cloud shows exactly when I uploaded them and that is a non-volatile list. So 15 years from now I can prove that those were the real original documents.

    1. Felicia:

      So glad it helped! Amazing how this really falls to the borrower to do – and how tricky and sneaky it can be. Make sure you listen to the servicing one that posted tonight.

      Catherine

    2. Felicia:

      Also – strongly recommend you keep a paper or digital copy (I try to have both) of all your original documents OFF LINE – don’t depend on the cloud alone.

      Catherine

      1. Agreed. I have two datacenters and air gapped backups for my business. We do hosting for clients because they don’t trust the “cloud” either. Few people ever think about how you have no 4th Amendment protections over items hosted on servers not in your owned premises.
        Our hosting business is growing because people who look at the clauses from Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Orion, etc. they are all pathologically one sided. They all have clauses about how if they receive complaints that your hosted content is “offensive”, then they will disable your entire account. I call bull scrape on that. Who gets to decide what is offensive. Offensive is not illegal. Would someone actually put their business at risk by putting assets into a hosting company with a B.S. policy like that? I sure as heck would not. That’s why we are doing in-house hosting in our own datacenters for clients now because there are no cloud providers that have honest agreements.
        I think it is all because they are all using the same back-end tier 1 datacenters with little exceptions. True that Google and Microsoft are running some, but not most, of their datacenters in offshore rigs. The rest of the resources are all concentrated in Santa Barbara, Australia, Virginia, and a few other places. And they are all owned by the same tier 1 company. So the policy from the behemoth trickles down. Almost no one knows about the problems with these hosting strategies.

        1. I learned early. DOJ targeted and slapped subpoenas on all my ISPs and vendors. If you are going to falsely frame someone, you have to get control of everything, and deny them a copy of everything. I am alive today because I was always able to keep a copy. Same with Binney. Ross Ulricht is in jail today because he did not. It is literally the difference between life and death.

  3. I really enjoyed the interview and it being transcribed, love it. Just an FYI – in NJ if an expert is hired by a party the communications are discoverable (can be required to be produced during discovery if requested by institution during litigation) however if the property owner’s attorney hires the expert all communications are not discoverable.

    I am very interested to hear what “suggestions” both Catherine and Marie would have to help address this issue – for example Ocwen entered in a Consent Judgment for deceptive practices with 49 US AGs in Dec 2013 and is in violation again doing the exact same things, another case was then filed against Ocwen in 2017 by CFPB in Florida, hence these cases against Ocwen have not created any change. How about a “think tank” to development a solution or at least a form of remedies for these actions?

    There are very few qualified attorneys in this area which creates a huge issue – I know of the Max Garner program and I have called them with no success. Most want to put a person in an unnecessary bankruptcy instead of litigating a fraudulent foreclosure – I find on average the attorneys make false promises of their knowledge base and end up being an additional liability. Any suggestions?

    Thank you for such a great presentation of information.

  4. What do you think about bringing your own Security Paper (that won’t work on scanners or copiers) to the closing signing and demanding the use of it just for your signature pages? There may be a bargaining process to get them to use it, like demanding to see their policies of data security, etc. You then establish a procedural record that you don’t sign without security paper or a embossing stamp for when fraudulent loans are taken out in your name, they are fraud or new servicing companies don’t have your signature. How can you apply this with services like DocuSign or other e-signature methods other than never use them for originating documents?

    2. Hello Jeffrey, what a brilliant idea! A week ago, I would not have known how best to answer your question…but I do now.

      I am in Destin, Florida this week to give a deposition on a case I am working on locally. I have spent the past two days with a Paper Scientist and Forensic Document Examiner by the name of Doug Cobb. Doug has developed a number of technologies to evaluate and test paper, and to encrypt paper with fool-proof technology to prevent forgery.

      I spent two days with Doug watching him as he used his instruments to evaluate whether a mortgage note deposited with the court is, in fact, the original. Doug has yet to analyze the data and write a report but we pretty much knew the results immediately.

      Now, I have the knowledge I need to challenge defects in the court documents as we move on to trial. I am so impressed that I want to bring Doug into every expert case I have. The science is irrefutable!

      Doug has also developed what he calls SecureDoc 5 Fingerprint Technology which he describes as follows:
      >>Our SecureDoc5 Fingerprint Technology is a legal document security printing service integrates a 5-layer anti-fraud protection process that places hidden encrypted codes within your legal document, permanently protecting it from fraudulent activity.

      >>Every page of your document is given its own unique fingerprint.

      Every page is uniquely encrypted, tamperproof and can be verified.

      >>Lifetime Encrypted Cloud Storage so a copy of your document is always protected and can be re-certified and re-produced if your original is ever lost or destroyed through our Re-Certification Process.

      You can learn more about Doug Cobb and his amazing technology at: https://www.paperforensics.com/.

      I hope this helps.

      Marie

  5. Excellent resources – live in Australia and I am sure there are many similarities here

    2. Hello Timothy, thank you for your comment.

      I visited your beautiful country last year when I joined Catherine on a Solari Event in Uluru. I would love to go back there, so please give me an excuse!

      Australians are experiencing the same problems as Americans. Your loans have been securitized then leveraged to the hilt.

      Not long ago, I was contacted by an Australian farmer and learned about the dire problems farmers are having with the Australian banks.

      I don’t know if there is anyone in Australia who is doing the type of work I do here in the U.S., but if you know of anyone, I would be happy to consult and share what I know.

      Payla!

      Marie

  6. Hi Catherine, Does Marie review Mortgage documents when in process? Meaning during the origination and purchasing process?

    1. Yes. If using her review is of interest, just call her and see if what you need is a good fit.

      1. Catherine,

        Thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the Solari Report subscribers. I am eager to know what people are most concerned about and to learn from their suggestions.

        Appreciatively,

        Marie

    2. Hello Mary,

      The answer to your question is “Yes” we can assist you at any step in the process and, most importantly, before you sign the mortgage loan documents.

      Please feel free to call my office at 774-323-0892.

      All best,

      Marie

Comments are closed.