Two Maryland Foreclosure Mill Lawyers Come Clean, Confess That They Had Others Robosign Their Names On Affidavits; Could Affect 1000s Of State Cases

The Baltimore Sun reports:

• Lawyers at two Maryland firms handling foreclosures filed court documents without actually signing the papers themselves, a development that is calling into question the validity of at least some of the home foreclosure cases in the state. The two attorneys, one based in Hunt Valley and the other in Bethesda, have filed more than 20,000 foreclosure cases in Maryland courts since 2008.

• The lawyers have acknowledged that in documents filed in court for some of their foreclosure cases their names were signed by others at their behest. The documents, known as affidavits, are the written equivalent of court testimony. Maryland law requires that affidavits be signed by the person whose name they bear, according to the state attorney general's office.

• The lawyers have submitted "corrective affidavits" in counties across the state in recent months in an effort to remedy the signature problem. The courts could not immediately say how many corrective affidavits have been filed, but Mike Morin, an Annapolis attorney who represents homeowners, said there have been hundreds. "We believe the issue extends to thousands of cases," said Morin, who has defended borrowers with other attorneys.

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• In the corrective affidavits filed by Jacob Geesing, of Bierman, Geesing, Ward & Wood in Bethesda, and Thomas P. Dore, with Hunt Valley-based Covahey, Boozer, Devan & Dore, both lawyers said the information in the original documents was accurate — except for the signatures.

For more, see False signatures cloud Maryland foreclosure cases (Two attorneys acknowledge that their affidavits were not signed by them; state removes notaries from positions).