JOHN L. O’BRIEN, JR.
Register of Deeds
Phone: 978-542-1704
Fax: 978-542-1706
website: www.salemdeeds.com
Commonwealth of Massachusetts 

Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds
Shetland Park
45 Congress Street
Suite 4100
Salem, Massachusetts 01970

NEWS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Salem, MA
February 22nd 2011

Contact:
Kevin Harvey, 1st Assistant Register
978-542-1724
kevin.harvey@sec.state.ma.us

O’BRIEN CALLS ON MERS TO COME CLEAN AND PAY UP: SAYS ESSEX COUNTY OWED $22 MILLION DOLLARS

Essex South Register of Deeds John O’Brien announced today that he will be seeking over $22 million dollars from the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, “MERS” which represents several major banking conglomerates.  O’Brien bases the $22M number on the fact that the Salem registry has recorded over 148,663 MERS mortgages since 1998.  After a careful review of a number of these mortgages O’Brien said it became very clear to him that MERS had assigned mortgages to other entities at least twice without paying a recording fee.  Based on this information the taxpayers have been defrauded out of $22,299,450 in Southern Essex County alone.  It is quite possible that in some cases they may have assigned the notes more than twice resulting in even greater loss of revenue. O’Brien called MERS “one of the greediest schemes ever perpetrated on the American people.  They have compromised the integrity of the public land recordation system and in doing so, have wreaked havoc on our economy”.

Last week MERS announced a major policy change conceding that assignments should be recorded in the various Registries across the country and “assignments out of MERS’s name should be recorded in the county land records, even if the state law does not require such a recording.” In addition MERS instructed its members to “not foreclose in MERS name”. O’Brien further states “MERS has now finally acknowledged that their business model was flawed, and they didn’t adhere to the legal requirement that all assignments of a mortgage must be recorded at the local Registry of Deeds.”  “If they had followed the law the public would know who was buying and selling their mortgage, and it would have been an open, honest and transparent process.  The fact that they deliberately chose to create a for-profit private cyber Registry of Deeds whose only purpose was to avoid paying the same fees as everyone else and keeping the public in the dark as to who was the rightful owner of the mortgage clearly demonstrates to me that this was a scheme of epic proportions.”  “When Wall Street and these major lenders joined together in creating MERS, they plunged us into a housing nightmare with little or no regard for their actions.  It’s obvious that their only motivation was to manufacture huge profits off the backs of homeowners and taxpayers. They should all be ashamed of themselves and step up to the plate and do the honorable thing and make the taxpayers’ whole,” O’Brien said.

The Essex South Registry of Deeds is one of 21 Registries in Massachusetts which have recorded MERS mortgages .O’Brien estimates that based on his conservative estimate of two assignments per mortgage the Commonwealth may be owed statewide upwards of $200 million dollars in lost recording fees.  Nationwide, the amount of revenue lost could be in the billions. O’Brien is calling on MERS to come clean and inform the registers of deeds across the country as to the number of times they assigned mortgages to other entities.   Only then will we get a true picture of the economic impact that this fraud has had on our country.

O’Brien, who in November, 2010, notified Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley about MERS, will now be forwarding to her this additional information. “We need to act quickly to recover these funds,” O’Brien said.

Essex South Registry of Deeds
MERS Mortrgages recorded by community since 1998
MERS
Mortgage Lost MERS Revenue Lost MERS Revenue
Recordings from One missing from Two missing
Since  1998 Assignment Assignments
City by Community by Community by Community
AMES 4,976 373,200 746,400
BEV 10,351 776,325 1,552,650
BRAD 176 13,200 26,400
BXFD 2,558 191,850 383,700
BYF 139 10,425 20,850
DAN 7,769 582,675 1,165,350
ESSEX 844 63,300 126,600
GEOR 2,644 198,300 396,600
GLOU 6,138 460,350 920,700
GROV 2,034 152,550 305,100
HAM 2,054 154,050 308,100
HAV 17,223 1,291,725 2,583,450
IPS 3,548 266,100 532,200
LYNF 3,631 272,325 544,650
LYNN 20,752 1,556,400 3,112,800
MAG 11 825 1,650
MAN 1,317 98,775 197,550
MARB 6,207 465,525 931,050
MERR 1,798 134,850 269,700
MIDD 2,658 199,350 398,700
NAHN 904 67,800 135,600
NBPT 5,172 387,900 775,800
NEWB 1,731 129,825 259,650
PEA 12,924 969,300 1,938,600
ROCK 1,619 121,425 242,850
ROW 1,828 137,100 274,200
SALEM 10,121 759,075 1,518,150
SALS 2,010 150,750 301,500
SAU 7,261 544,575 1,089,150
SWAM 4,265 319,875 639,750
TOP 1,807 135,525 271,050
WEN 956 71,700 143,400
WNEW 1,237 92,775 185,550
Total 148,663 $                11,149,725 $             22,299,450
Total lost MERS Revenue with one assignment $                11,149,725
Total lost MERS Revenue with two assignments $                22,299,450

SOURCE: Massachusetts Registry of Deeds

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4closureFraud.org

h/t Richard

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O’BRIEN CALLS ON MERS TO COME CLEAN AND PAY UP SAYS ESSEX COUNTY OWED $22 MILLION DOLLARS