State AG's Office: News Of Earlier Probe Into Central Florida Foreclosure Mill Triggered Flood Of Complaints Against Current Trio Under Investigation

A short excerpt from a larger story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on the recently-announced probe into Florida foreclosure mills Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale, Shapiro & Fishman in Tampa, and the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Plantation:

• Another foreclosure mill, Florida Default Law Group in Tampa, is already the focus of a civil investigation by the AG's office into whether it presents faulty bank paperwork in thousands of foreclosures each month. News of that investigation led to a flood of complaints from lawyers and citizens about the three other law firms now under investigation, the attorney general's office said.(1)(2)

Source: State subpoenas records from 'foreclosure mills'.

(1) In a recent story in the St. Petersburg Times (see Attorney general investigates law firms in alleged falsified foreclosures), noted foreclosure defense attorney April Charney weighed on this probe:

• "We have fraudulent documents in each and every foreclosure case of mine and in every foreclosure case filed in this country," said lawyer April Charney, a foreclosure expert with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. "There is layer upon layer of bogus documents in the assignments, powers of attorney, pleading, judgments, affidavits, service of process, etc., from one end to the other," she said. The largest of what Charney and other critics call "foreclosure mills" is the Stern firm.

(2) Does anyone know if Florida U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene has started "selling short" the corporate stock of David Stern's public-held company in order to make another billion??? See St. Peterburg Times: Jeff Greene's real estate dealings need explaining.