Media Probe Draws More Light To Lawlessness In Florida's Court-Run Foreclosure Process

In Central Florida, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports:

• To get a sense of the lawlessness in Florida's court-run foreclosure process, look no further than public records at the Sarasota and Manatee county courthouses. There, on foreclosure documents open to everyone, is the evidence that at least one law firm's employees repeatedly broke a state law in a rush to push cases through the courthouse so banks could seize people's homes.

• The evidence -- missing signatures and misdated documents that could not have been signed on the dates specified -- can be found on an important document called a "mortgage assignment." The paperwork helps prove a lender has the legal right to seize a property. Without it, a bank would have a costlier and more time-consuming legal path to foreclose, even if a homeowner never makes another mortgage payment.

• Faced with that prospect, employees in David J. Stern's law offices bent and broke the rules designed to ensure the documents judges rely on to award foreclosures are authentic, a Herald-Tribune investigation found.

For more, see Shortcuts on the foreclosure paper trail.