The Fall of Florida’s ‘Foreclosure King’ Will Create Huge Waves
David J. Stern of the eponymous Florida law firm has seen better days. Once known as the “foreclosure king,” Stern was high-flying enough to buy his employees houses and cars, while snapping up several multimillion dollar homes for himself. Now his company’s stock (DJSP) trades for pennies and faces delisting; his firm faces multiple lawsuits and an ongoing investigation by the Florida attorney general’s office; and his companies have lost major clients and shed hundreds of employees.
The Florida AG’s investigation also includes ProVest, a firm that tells homeowners they’re being foreclosed on and Stern used so heavily that it shared office space with his company. According to at least one former Stern employee, problems with giving homeowners notice of the foreclosure were rampant, and related documents were falsified.
The most recent bad news for Stern includes a Florida appellate court just ruling that one of the lawsuits against his firm can continue as a class action. That suit claims Stern told homeowners hoping to avoid foreclosure to pay inflated and improper fees, including for ProVest’s serving notice of the foreclosure. A call to the firm requesting comment wasn’t returned by publication time.
Orphaned Cases
Other than delivering the joys of Schadenfreude, Stern’s fall is newsworthy because of its impact on pending Florida foreclosures and what the firm’s underlying conduct means for the future of the state’s real estate market. As Kimberly Miller of the Palm Beach Post reported, the massive downsizing at Stern has led to many functionally orphaned cases, as thousands of foreclosures once brought by Stern are no longer handled by the firm. A Florida foreclosure defense blog describes the results this way:
“At its peak [Stern’s] firm was handling more than 70,000 foreclosure cases and now that it no longer handles many of those cases, no one is showing up for the hearings from the lenders. Some foreclosure defense lawyers are having trouble setting hearings or even finding someone from the other side to even speak to about the cases! In those instances where other law firms have picked up Stern’s old cases the firms are typically asking for continuances so that they can get up to speed, further delaying the foreclosure process.”
When will Stern start squealing on his esteemed mentor Gerald Shapiro & the LOGS network nationwide! Now that will be interesting. Both are defaulters on obligations and both were in the network of approved and awarded Fannie Mae “Mills”. Do they telemark in Aspen?
* * OUR EXPERIENCE WITH DAVID J. STERN * * :
On December 1st, 2008 we made a business decision to stop making payments to GMAC who was the servicer of our mortgage. Fannie Mae gave the file to David J. Stern on March 16th. Stern filed a lis pendens on April 14th, 2009. His long time employee of 14 years, Cheryl Samons, posing as a vice president of MERS, signed an assignment from MERS to GMAC in order to create supposed legal standing for GMAC to bring the foreclosure. The assignment was dated April 14th (one day before the lis pendens was filed), but stated it was “effective” as of March 16th, presumably because they needed to establish that GMAC was the Plaintiff on the exact date that Fannie Mae gave them the file. First of all, MERS is a scam because they separate the mortgage from the note, and by their own admission have no beneficial interest in the note, and act only as an electronic registration system created to track assignments of mortgages, but I don’t have time to go into that now. Even IF Mers could actually claim they had legal ownership of our note AND mortgage, it wouldn’t have been legal for an employee of a plaintiff attorney to “pose” as a VP of MERS and produce an assignment in order to create legal chain of title. It’s a stretch of the imagination to believe that an employee of a bank can act on behalf of MERS, but again, that’s another argument.
Our case began after the “produce the note” defense was well known, but before the general foreclosure community started paying attention to robosigning and falsified affadavits. In addition to demanding that the plaintiff prove they had standing to foreclose and denying MERS standing to assign our mortage to GMAC, we also brought to the attention of the court that Jeffrey Stephan, acting as a limited signing officer for GMAC, stated in an affadavit that he had custody of and supervised the mortgage accounts and records of the Plaintiff including the accounts and records of the note and mortgage, when he in fact did not. Subsequently, Jeffrey Stephan was deposed by Ice Legal and declared under oath that he had signed thousands of documents without reading them and without any personal knowledge of what they contained.
The last time we responded to anything that Stern came up with was December 31st, 2009. On January 4th of 2010 our “case” was reassigned to a new judge and we haven’t heard anything again since then.
It’s now been one full year and we have heard nothing.
Does anyone know if Stern’s “cases”, which were taken back by Fannie Mae, have been given to new lawyer’s ?
Yes, most of his cases have been handed to the true law firm that is behind the fraud: Carlton Fields.
Thanks for your comment. I checked Carlton Field’s website and he doesn’t seem to handle foreclosures: http://www.carltonfields.com/aboutus/overview/
Am I missing something ?
He is protected by the corporate shield, which he will use until the day he files chapter 7 or 11 (corporate bankruptcy) . There will be no money in those company’s to recoup for those he harmed . Think of Enron, and
the people that lost everything . Why has he not been arrested on criminal charges, when its well documented
now ? How long does it take the AG to investigate ? Long enough for him to move monies to Roadtown,Tortola
in British V.I. , home of his DJSP company , that will not pay back a dime to anyone . Long enough for him to change ownership of his many illgotten assets .
Citizens arrest …………………..trial , and hanging, opps I mean verdict by jury of his peers ….Then sentence .
When is someone going to dosomething not only is STERN putting people out on the street
he put my business in jepoardy he is not paying his bills and no one answers and when I speak with the
Comptroller Esther Surujon or Chris Simmons they are speaking of bankruptcy and using that as an answer
can someone shed some light as to how this piece of s===t company is still running
I called Stern’s lawyer and he told me to complain to the AG I cannot even go after him because it will
be throwing goos money after bad the huy is an animal and so are the people that either represent or
work there the only ones working ffor Stern are the people that will not get hired anywhere else everyone jumped ship What is going on here he is scum why isn’t he locked up and if you read the articles
Chris Simmons states the company has no intention of going bankrupt this was in Nov I was told by Esther Surujon that they were looking at bankruptcy in Oct He has STOLEN money from my company by not paying for
services if this guy gets away scott free then anyone can do anything because there is no legal system