We have PROOF that these are illegal!
Join with us now for justice reversing the illegal foreclosures or winning full compensation. Mass. residents like you are finally winning in our courts. Take action—with SO MANY of us that the government must dismantle this system-wide injustice!
On September 5, 2024, in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court building in Boston, homeowners and homeowner advocates held a historic press conference, revealing documentary evidence of 814 fraudulent foreclosure deeds where the evidence of the fraud is on the deed itself, recorded in an example of one of the 20+ Massachusetts Registries of Deed. This represents some 20,000 fraudulent foreclosure deeds throughout Massachusetts, used in at least 20-60,000 instances to untruthfully commence Massachusetts court cases over the last 20 years; these entire court cases were a “fraud on our courts”. They say that this is a wild underestimate.
This was perpetrated not only on the homeowners of Massachusetts, but also the Massachusetts courts by the Federal National Mortgage Association (also known as Fannie Mae) and its Massachusetts law firms and other agents.
Download Full Press Release ( PDF )
“The physical evidence, brief, legal argument, and extensive Fannie Mae published contractual documents demonstrate what may be one of the worst cases in history of what the courts call “an unconscionable scheme/calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”, explained Ms. Grace C. Ross, Coordinator of the Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending, “If the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will let itself and all our Courts accept argument from those perpetrating such a scheme and ignore the honest homeowners of Massachusetts, they not only fail the wronged homeowners but they role to constitutionally protect the functioning of our judicial system.”
“After 16 years, which started with us on the other side of Beacon Hill, telling Legislators that the predatory home mortgages practices engaged in by the massive U.S. lending industry was going to crash the national markets. Today,” Ms. Ross continued, “we are, perhaps, presenting our second most shocking information that FNMA and its partners also engaged in this same massive pattern of fraud and contractual documents for its agents demanding that they participate in this massive fraudulent conspiracy to steal the homes and lifetime wealth of not just tens of thousands here in Massachusetts, but into the millions across the United States.
“To date, Massachusetts courts have either not understood or looked the other way. We are on the steps of this building to demand that, in the case before the Court right now, FNMA v. Anthony Branch, the Court take the opportunity, where this pattern and practice is again being perpetrated by the same Fannie Mae agents, Harmon Law, and embodied by one of Harmon Law’s lead attorneys in this fraud, Thomas Santolucito, to use the Court’s well established own power to end this historic sized fraud on the Massachusetts courts, this Honorable Court, itself, at the otherwise vulnerable and unprotected homeowners of the Commonwealth.
“This matters not only because Fannie Mae had better loan modification offers and percentage complete rates but if Massachusetts law firms and hundreds across the US signed private contracts to misrepresent the most fundamental ownership of home mortgage loans then their denying they engaged in predatory practices, overpricing loans, forging evidence are no more believable… AND justice will only come when the Courts end this defilement of our legal system…”
This demonstrates the outcome of the almost universal practice of illegally originated and unaffordable home mortgages “doomed to foreclose” since 2000 by this major industry player. This amounts to billions in lost wealth and even more in spending power.
On May 6, 2024, the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) convened a press conference and release of a study that reveals a scam affecting homeowners across Massachusetts who are facing foreclosure or have been foreclosed on. The event took place in Brockton, MA at the Main Street entrance to the Courthouse and was also streamed live on Zoom.
The press release announcing the press conference and study is below.
Download a copy of the Press Release ( PDF )
Today, Brockton, MA, 11 AM, Main Street entrance to the Courthouse
“When I won in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, I told them I had been
tricked into too much debt and not enough house. Today, to share a report that shows, not only how I have been scammed, but how the Housing Court judges I have been in front of have been scammed, and the entire state has been scammed. Tens of thousands of us went to get one mortgage loan, but the underwriting was illegally split into two or more loans to avoid the government regulators that would have found that underwriting prohibited, illegal, and could have shut the banks down for those illegal patterns and practices,” said Mr. Tommy Morris, Brockton resident known for his win in HSBC Bank as Trustee v. Morris, 490 Mass. 322 (July 22, 2022).
“Today, we release proof of one of the key scams that led to the historic foreclosures of homes, still ongoing to date: the 1990 Massachusetts Attorney General, the Division of Banks and the Massachusetts Legislature were right about the onslaught of system-wide predatory lending practices and our courts have gotten it wrong for 20 years. The Commonwealth’s courts, thereby, have been allowing what the other branches of our government recognized needed aggressive review and enforcement: a deluge of illegal foreclosures on tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents by the predatory home mortgage industry,” explained Grace Ross, Coordinator, Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending, “We are in Brockton because this City was targeted and this entire historic rate of foreclosures and personal and financial damage was not only predictable, but actually predicted and outlawed and the Industry got around it.”
Press Conference Wednesday, May 6, at 11:00 am, Brockton Courthouse AND Zoom.
The Brockton Foreclosure Fighter’s homeowners (damaged by prohibited predatory lending), Grace Ross(1) and Dr. Gbetonmasse Somasse(2) publicly presented the results of a pilot study that has been presented for peer review, but not yet published in a peer reviewed journal. They told stories of personal damage and called on the MetroSouth Housing Court judge, scheduled for noon hearing in the Courthouse in the Morris case to wake up and smell the fraud on him as well as the Morrises, tens of thousands of Massachusetts homeowners and whole communities like Brockton.
The Brockton-specific initial study provides evidence that the lenders have engaged in practices that had been identified to be effective in avoiding regulatory oversight in what has traditionally been one of the most regulated areas of U.S. society, that is, the banking industry; the study demonstrates conclusively that these practices were used to avoid that very extensive regulatory oversight. A historic level of damage has been done, by predatory mortgaging first targeting communities of color, borrowers of color, female heads of household and Brockton, which, as the first community in Massachusetts to go majority-minority, may have been and is still being its greatest victim.
—–
1 Coordinator, Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending
2 Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnical Institute
On Friday, April 26, 2024, the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) released a statement to the media announcing the winning of an appeal by Karen Merritt, a pro se litigant seeking equal access to the court system in her fight to challenge the illegal foreclosure of her home.
The text of the press release is below.
Download a copy of the press release ( PDF )
Friday, April 26, 2024 – “This pro se litigant, Karen Merritt, as well as her beloved son, pro se litigant, Charles Cronan just won their appeal in the Massachusetts Appeals Court that the Southeastern Housing Court, Massachusetts, by order of Judge Michaud, erred! The heart of the case was about equal access: our court system extends to everyone whether you’re rich or poor or somewhere in between, that each one of us has a right to justice and to be heard and to live our life under the starry nights of our constitution.
“My family and I had been left for homelessness by our Housing Court, even though my unlawful creditors committed a felony violation of our usury laws trying to collect on a
purported 55% interest rate.
“We had became victims of an illegal indigent hearing. Our rights to confidentiality were
violated. Exposed like some witch hunt in Salem back in 1692, we had been possessed by the devil himself of this evil thing called being poor. At least that’s what it felt like to me.”
– Karen Merritt of Rehoboth (L&S Realty v. Merritt, Massachusetts Appeals Court (2024))
Since the beginning of the historic foreclosure crisis roughly 20 years ago, some 125,000
Massachusetts households have been illegally allegedly foreclosed. The vast majority were
stripped of their lifetimes’ worth of wealth, on top of numerous other damages.
This has made self-represented (“pro se”) homeowners fighting foreclosures and evictions a veritable force for equal access to the courts for everyone in Massachusetts. This includes for everyone who might not be able to afford a necessary cost to continue equally prosecuting their rights to the protections of our courts. For homeowners, court protection is needed for fundamental constitutional rights, like the equal right to own or occupy your home.
The Massachusetts top court took the Frechette v. Brown case off of the Massachusetts
Appeals Court’s docket on its own initiative with Elizabeth d’Andrea as the designated
Appellant.
“What a wonderful honor that my case was chosen by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court. To stand back while others shared in the oral argument while I listened was difficult since my argument, the Indigent Court Cost Law wasn’t clearly interpreted. People like me are not financially able to have the same ability to cover the many expenses in a court case to have a fair chance, the Indigent Court Cost Law is my guarantee for an equal chance to defend myself.
“I am grateful for the briefs of friends of the court who supported this case to level the ground for justice for the indigent litigants. The Massachusetts lower courts have misinterpreted this Indigent Court Cost Law in the last two decades and it is so important to be heard.
“However, your indigency protection is a confidential matter between the indigent litigant and the judge, not the party who you are up against since the financial information can be used against you by the opposing party.
“The argument in my SJC case did not honor that confidentiality commitment, so I have re-filed to get the SJC to follow its own case law and rules published in its legal forms since March 2003.”
– Elizabeth D’Andrea of Webster.
Given that oral argument was scheduled with the Housing Court Plaintiff as the opposing
side, d’Andrea has asked for a new argument since they are not supposed to be part of the
confidential Indigent Court Costs Laws procedure.
“Like Ms. D’Andrea, I have been fighting to be allowed to equally continue the case to fight for my home in the courts ever since my wife and I lost our jobs because of Covid and went
from high paying jobs to no job for quite a while. I am amazed that it was my working with my supporters that we found all of the most critical rules were already firmly in stone, so to speak, because they are in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s promulgated legal forms that all of the courts have seen thousands of times.
“So, I was one of the folks who put in a friend of the court brief on behalf of Ms. D’Andrea
and of all of us who know that our Constitution has guaranteed us an equal right to access and participate in the Massachusetts court system.”
– Emmanuel Asia of Worcester
The Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending is a combined 70 member organization
coalition and hundreds of individual families fighting violation of their rights to their home a key component of its effort is educating Massachusetts residents as to their rights, the procedures and forms to fight in our courts and increasingly win.
“So, I thank God and Grace Ross, Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending,
(MAAPL) for the decision at Massachusetts Appeals Court. And, perhaps, let us be reminded that whether you’re pro se or not, when you have truth and honesty and integrity beside you, doors will open. Come join MAAPL to make a change.”
On Tuesday, February 27, 2024, homeowners Karen Merritt of Rehoboth and Jay Lively of Falmouth issued a press release, stating, “We are very excited to provide to our top court in Massachusetts the legal history irrefutably showing the Court that homeowners fighting a foreclosure are guaranteed their constitutional right to equal access to our courts, that they cannot be categorized for more limited rights of traditional tenants in an eviction case, and that the SJC’s own repeated history that your financial information and your due process rights, when you are indigent, are just between you and the Court.”
Download the Full Press Release ( PDF )
Download Merrit’s ( PDF ) and Lively’s ( PDF ) Amicus briefs in the D’Andrea case
The text of the press release is below.
Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending
www.maapl.info
February 27, 2024
Contact: Grace C Ross, 617-291-5591
Homeowners very excited to provide Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with irrefutable evidence of their equal and due process rights to access our courts, even if indigent.
Boston, MA February 27, 2024 – “We are very excited to provide to our top court in Massachusetts the legal history irrefutably showing the Court that homeowners fighting a foreclosure are guaranteed their constitutional right to equal access to our courts, that they cannot be categorized for more limited rights of traditional tenants in an eviction case, and that the SJC’s own repeated history that your financial information and your due process rights, when you are indigent, are just between you and the Court,” stated Karen Merritt of Rehoboth and Jay Lively of Falmouth in their release this day.
“This is critically important: the very mortgage holders who refuse you loan modifications and refuse partial payments thereby put you in a position so they can bar you from ever being able to pay; then in court use their own barrier to blame you as “wanting a free house,” Liz Bewsee, Co-chair of the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending and staff at Arise for Social Justice Springfield, explained.
“And then a Court giving them, on top of that, your financial information, when you have a right to a confidential conversation with the courts about indigency compounds the travesty of the blaming the victim in these situations. On this day in 2024, I as an Affiant Sworn-Indigent, K. Merritt am a canary in a coal mine used to detect pain and suffering and other toxic constitutional rights violations in the Southeast Housing Court. Consider me as returned gasping for air at the door of the Supreme Judicial Court serving as an indication that it’s unfit for humans.” Karen Merritt, Amicus and miner for justice.
In 1974, as part of the promulgation of Mass Rules of Civil Procedure, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a comprehensive and mandatory law that everyone has to have equal access to our courts, regardless of the ability to pay a purely court-imposed cost. In 2019, in the very comprehensive decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court known as Adjartey v. Central Housing Court, 481 Mass. 830 (2019), the SJC affirmed that equal access constitutional commitment for all litigants in all types of court cases in the Massachusetts court system.
However, since that time, homeowners fighting for their homes after a nonjudicial foreclosure auction in eviction cases have been uniquely singled out to not get that law’s protection for access to the courts, especially for appeals.
Finally, last May 18th of 2023, a homeowner, Elizabeth D’Andrea, got a single justice from the expedited side of our state Appeals Court to recognize that she was being denied that equal access protection. Thankfully, the Honorable Judge Rubin reported her denial of equal access to our courts for review by a Full Appeal Panel. It was then grabbed, on its own initiative, by our top court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
What has not yet been reviewed by the SJC is that homeowners cannot be singled out to be denied access to our higher courts. The SJC has not reviewed, nor agreed to enforce the confidential nature of a decision as to a party’s indigency, financial information, and the procedures to guarantee access to the courts.
Instead, thus far, the SJC has not reviewed the D’Andrea case as the constitutional equal protection suit, nor required the only two interested parties to the question of ensuring affordable access to the courts are heard by the SJC. (Frechette v. D’Andrea, SJC-13497)
Instead, so far, the SJC has appeared to be unaware that nowhere in Massachusetts case law, for almost 200 years, has someone without a lease or rental agreement been treated as a tenant or a “holdover tenant”. Therefore, a homeowner fighting over the title for their home, who clearly does not have a rental agreement with anyone, cannot be treated as a tenant. That has been affirmed by, arguably, the most revered legal research outfit in the United States, Lexis Nexis, thanks to Lively’s efforts and he has reported those details in his Friend of the Court Brief to the SJC in the D’Andrea case just today. “I have spent 4 years with my Lexis Tutor researching real property law and am grateful for the opportunity to help clarify a misinterpretation, and excited that many other homeowners, marginalized for more than a decade, may finally share justice.”
Friend of the court brief filer, homeowner Karen Merritt, has just mirrored back in her brief to the SJC its own 50 year history of guaranteeing a remedy for unaffordable court-ordered costs to ensure court access, even for indigent parties; and its repeated the guarantee that those communications will be confidential between the party and the court and the repeated necessity that the SJC enforce that confidentiality and mandator remedies, because lower court judges have periodically created patterns of violating that constitutional guarantee.
“No, with foreclosures increasing exponentially again is no time for the SJC to fail to continue its and our Constitution’s guarantee of equal access to our courts. With a 90% increase in foreclosures in 2023 over 2022 in Massachusetts and our increased research and thus evidence of systematic illegalities by the wealthy mortgage industry is no time for our equal rights to be curtailed, or as the SJC itself has said it is ‘critical’ that courts act ‘consistently’ ‘to ensure the doors to our courts are not closed to the indigent.’ ” as Liz Bewsee provided for context.
“If SJC agrees with our findings, it appears that a Court must vacate the Frechette judgment on this basis of long settled law it established 170 years ago. Our cases deal with fundamental rights of life, liberty and property. The decisions of our highest courts either preserve or curtail those rights,” said Lively.
(END)
Join MAAPL homeowner foreclosure-fighters across Massachusetts on Tuesday, January 16, 2024 as they hold a series of press conferences across the Commonwealth to demand that the MA Supreme Judicial Court break its silence on the constitutional provisions and laws that outlaw discriminatory predatory lending practices.
Download the Press Advisory ( PDF )
1/16/24 – HOMEOWNERS SPEAK OUT: DEMAND MA SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT BREAK ITS 47 YEAR SILENCE AS TO DISCRIMINATORY AND CONSTITUTIONALLY PROHIBITED TAKING OF THEIR HOMES AND LAND
The Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending homeowner foreclosure-fighters
are holding press conferences across Massachusetts on Tuesday, January 26, 2024 – to demand that the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court ends its 50-year silence on constitutional provisions and laws which outlaw discriminatory predatory lending.
The lack of the “Aggressive enforcement” state government leaders called for in the 1990s has allowed historic rates of predatory loans to be targeted at individuals and communities; this has led to a historic rate of foreclosures, economic, personal, familial and neighborhood damages which the Supreme Judicial Court’s Action now could still repair.
In just 4 years, 2006-2010; US median Black wealth lost 54%; Latino wealth 66%; and Asian wealth 34% (for the loss ascribable to foreclosures.)
Homeowners will tell individual stories, show how they demonstrate extensive illegal patterns and call for justice now.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024 –
Pittsfield/Springfield/Worcester/Boston/Brockton/Hyannis
Pittsfield
7:30 AM
Location TBA
Springfield – (Local press contact/coordinator: Gary Yard, 413-557-8881
9:45 AM Gather for press conference
Arise for Social Justice
38 School St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Worcester
Noon – 1pm
YWCA
1 Salem Street
Worcester, MA 01608
Boston – (Local press contact/coordinator: Laurie Endsley, 978-514-4790)
2:30 PM -3:30
In front of the Supreme Judicial Court
John Adams Courthouse
One Pemberton Square
Boston, MA 02108
Brockton – (Local press contact/coordinator: Maggie Philippe, 508-345-9186)
5:00 PM
Joe Angelo’s Café
11 Crescent St.
Brockton, MA
Hyannis – (Local press contact/coordinator: Lynne A. Rhodes, 617-962-2268)
8:00 PM
NAACP Museum
276 North Street
Hyannis, MA 02601
Statewide Contact:
Grace C Ross, Coordinator, Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending
Grace@graceross.net (if you receive a bounce message, you can assume that I received
the email anyway, unless I don’t respond)
Cell phone: 617-291-5591
As the giving season approaches, please remember the Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL): we are situated to reverse not only the largest foreclosure crisis in U.S. history (with a massive land and wealth transfer to the uber-wealthiest) but also stop practices that were first instigated to keep Black men from ever owning property post-emancipation. Lenders have just perfected and expanded predatory wealth-stripping from there.
Thank you for your generous support of our work!
Download Press Release ( PDF )
On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, members of the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) gathered at the State House with supporters and homeowners from across the Commonwealth to give testimony before the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government during a hearing for House Bill #H.2036, An act enabling municipal pre-foreclosure mediation.
Following the hearing, MAAPL released the statement below to the media.
MASS HOMEOWNERS STILL FIGHT LARGEST FORECLOSURE CRISIS IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, SPEAK OUT FOR PRE-FORECLOSURE MEDIATION.
10/17/23, today, homeowners from across the state gave testimony at the Massachusetts Legislature’s Municipalities Committee hearing in support of pre-foreclosure mediation (House Bill #H.2036, “An act enabling municipal pre-foreclosure mediation.” Sponsored By Rep. Peter Capano.)
While most of those who spoke have now experienced an illegal foreclosure, their impassioned stories of endemic and illegal denials of loan modifications reveal part of the story of how the historic illegal land grab has been accomplished by the mortgaging industry and the need for informed neutral mediators to stop the returning deluge.
Homeowners from across the state – West Springfield and Amherst to the Cape and North shore told impassioned stories – hoping those coming behind them finally get real affordable loan modifications – remedying predatory origination practices more than one speaker identified as making their loans “doomed to foreclose” starting at origination.
More than one speaker identified the common practice of pricing the mortgage more than the real value of the house. This practice is illegal under the bank regulator, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency but was hidden by breaking a single underwriting approval into two loans to escape the regulating agency’s tracking systems.
As Gary Yard of West Spring field explained: “My mortgage was split in 2 and I quickly found it was more than I could afford, now I was trapped in an overpriced loan.” He could neither afford to pay nor sell a house worth less than the debt. No meaningful loan modification ever was offered.
Homeowners addressed the more well-known practices of servicers losing paperwork. They also provided testimony of modifications signed by entities who had no legal interest in the mortgage, who misrepresented the terms and even one which was signed but never honored.
“My trusted CPA gave me a mortgage that now led to a “foreclosuse’ on my home using a 54% interest rate. It’s a felony to intentionally try to collect on a loan over 20%. But it didn’t matter.
Regardless. Today, my CPA went to the bank with my hard-earned equity instead of going to jail. I got no notices. We must have light of day BEFORE an auction. Please pass the bill to support municipal preforeclosure mediation.” Karen Merritt of Rehoboth.
(END)
They are trying to make an example of Alton King again. The statute requires that a warehouse cannot auction your possessions for at least 6 months after they take them at a supposed eviction. It has been only 2 & 1/2 months!
We have exposed to the Western Housing Court that the moving/warehouse company that claims to have Alton King’s possessions has never even applied for a license to be a moving company in Massachusetts. They have never sought a license and do not have insurance on the building that they have kept Alton King’s possessions in.
So, the Western Housing Court judge was told that this business, Race Street Properties, is illegal from one end to the other. Race St. Properties told Al that he should get his stuff out of there without a fee, and the Western Housing Court said he could get his stuff out of there immediately (thus, not having to pay for it) at 6/23/23 hearing Friday.
BUT Race St. Properties immediately advertised to auction his stuff and now have scheduled to auction hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of belongings this Saturday, July 1, 2023, at 9 AM (We need as many people as possible to be there at 8:30 AM at the latest) at 460 Race Street in Holyoke, MA.
We need a massive turnout. Obviously, they are making an example of Alton King, but this criminal warehousing industry is minting money. No one is watching. While Race Street is the worst, in terms of licensing, they all engage in criminal theft, destruction of people’s property and their emotional and psychological lives, on top of their eviction.
Stay tuned for more news and follow-up actions this coming week…
