Florida Foreclosure Mill Lawyers Yet To Face Serious Sanctions Over Robosigning Rackets Despite 100s Of Complaints; State Bar Drags Feet While State AG Does Nothing

In Orlando, Florida, The Associated Press reports:

• Since Florida's mortgage crisis began about six years ago, banks have agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle allegations that they wrongfully foreclosed on thousands of homeowners. Prosecutors have charged loan servicers with filing fraudulent documents on behalf of banks.
  
  But the law firms and lawyers that homeowners and judges contend took part in those same practices? Some critics are accusing Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Florida Bar of not going after them hard enough.
  
  More than two years after wrongdoing by lawyers caused banks to stop foreclosures temporarily, these lawyers and their firms, which handled hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, have been accused of falsifying documents through fake signatures and backdating records and not giving homeowners proper notice that they faced foreclosure. Yet they continue to practice without facing any type of discipline, either from the criminal justice system or the Bar.
  
  Bondi says her attorneys' hands were tied after an appellate court blocked an investigative subpoena from her office, saying it lacked authority under the state's unfair trade practices law. Because of the court decision, she said any discipline would have to come from the Bar, which so far has initiated disciplinary proceedings against two attorneys out of more than 330 cases it has investigated.
  
  Attorneys for homeowners say there are other ways Bondi could go after firms that engaged in fraudulent practices other than using the unfair trade practices act. State prosecutors could have gone after subsidiaries of the law firms or pursued criminal investigative subpoenas.
  
  "The door was left wide open and the AG did nothing," said attorney Tom Ice, who has represented homeowners who say they were cheated.
  
  Added attorney Matt Weidner, "You have an attorney general shrugging her shoulders and walking away. How is this allowed to occur?"

For more, see Little discipline for foreclosure lawyers.