The “ta-da” endorsements and other document fabrication schemes are not exclusive to Wells Fargo, as we all know.  It’s just that Wells’ manual has become public knowledge.  And of course, the point of all this document fabrication is to fool judges and/or give judges a halfway-plausible legal tool to rule against homeowners, as Neil Garfield notes:

“There can be little doubt about it. Documents that a real bank acting like a bank would have in its possession appear to be completely absent in most if not all loans that are “performing” (i.e., the homeowner is paying, even if the party they are paying isn’t the right and even if the loan has already been paid off). But as soon as the file becomes subject to foreclosure proceedings, documents miraculously appear showing endorsements, allonges, powers of attorney and assignments. According to a report from The Real Deal (New York Real Estate News), these are frequently referred to as “ta-da endorsements” a reference from magic acts where rabbits are pulled from the hat.

Such endorsements and other fabricated documents have been taken at face value by many judges across the country, despite vigorous protests from homeowners who were complaining about everything from “they didn’t have the documents before, so where did they get them?” to luring homeowners into false modifications that were designed to trap homeowners into foreclosure.”

Judges have to know what’s going on.  They read the news.  They’re not naive.  We’re always told that judges can do whatever they want, and at some point one has to ask–if that is so, why does “whatever they want” almost always seem to be to throw homeowners in the street on the strength of fake documents?

Seriously–a lot of people, even attorneys, will defend judges that routinely find against homeowners.  They don’t defend such decisions, necessarily, but they do defend the judges.  At least publicly.  They will say that judges are under pressure to clear the dockets, or the judge’s hands are tied because you didn’t say the magic words in your pleadings that would magically untie their magical hands so they could unleash magical justice.

However, at some point we have to ask ourselves, are the judges really dupes?  That is, do they really buy all the BS that Wells Fargo and the other banks are feeding them?  Do they really look at a case where there are affidavits swearing that an unendorsed note is true and correct and then suddenly a “ta-da”-endorsed note appears as a deus ex machina and say, “Yeah, I totally buy that?” Given the education and experience level of most judges that hear these cases, one would expect them to have pretty sensitive bullshit detectors.

The only other explanation is that the judges are somehow complicit.  That’s an uncomfortable statement to make and even more uncomfortable to actually contemplate.  And it seems almost impossible to pull off, but then again, it is being pulled off, as Garfield points out:

“The assumption that these are just loans that were to be enforced just like any other loans is naïve. The lending process described in the paperwork at the closings of these loans was a complete lie. The actual lender did not know the closing had occurred, never received the note and mortgage, nor any other instrument that protected the investor lenders. The borrower did not know the actual lender existed. Closing agent was at best negligent and at worst part of the scheme. Closing agent applied money from the investors to the closing of the “loan” and gave the paperwork that should’ve gone to the investors to third parties who didn’t have a dime invested in the deal. Later the investment banks would claim that they were suffering losses, but it was a lie, this time to the taxpayers and the government.

The reason the investment banks need to fabricate documentation is simply because their scheme required multiple sales of the same loan to multiple parties. They had to wait until they couldn’t wait any longer in order to pick a plaintiff to file a foreclosure lawsuit or pick a beneficiary who would appear out of nowhere to start the nonjudicial sale of property in which they were a complete stranger to the transaction.

The reason that homeowners should win in any reasonable challenge to a foreclosure action is that neither the forecloser nor the balance has been correctly stated. In many cases the balance “owed” by the borrower is negative! Yes that means that money is owed back to the borrower even know they stopped making payments. This is so counter intuitive that it is virtually impossible for most people to wrap their brains around this concept and that is exactly what Wall Street banks have been counting on and using against us for years.“

After all, it’s not like there’s ever been any proof that judges are in on a big plot. Oh, wait…

“(NaturalNews) A former county judge from Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for reportedly abusing the criminal justice system by illegally jailing thousands of innocent children for cash. Mark Ciavarella Jr. was recently found guilty of accepting $1 million in bribes from the builders of two private juvenile detention centers in Luzerne County, which profited heavily from the many false convictions that filled its cells with innocent kids.”

That is, of course, an example of complicity by commission. But let’s not forget the example of complicity with the banks by the most favored method–omission:

But last week, a report from the inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael E. Horowitz, set the record straight. Sure enough, the report told us how hard the nation’s law enforcement officials had been investigating these cases. That is, hardly at all.

The report, called “Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud,” covers the period from 2009 to 2011. It vindicates anyone who ever questioned the government’s claim that the reason there weren’t more mortgage-related fraud cases is because the cases just weren’t there to be made.

Most of all, the report is depressing because it indicates that the Justice Department, our nation’s top law enforcement agency, is simply unequipped — or unwilling — to combat complex financial frauds.

Here is one of the report’s conclusions: “We found that, despite public statements by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force and the department about the importance of pursuing financial fraud cases, including mortgage fraud, the F.B.I. Criminal Investigative Division ranked complex financial crimes as the lowest of the six ranked criminal threats within its area of responsibility, and ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest subcategory threat within the complex financial crimes category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not listed as a priority, for F.B.I. field offices in the locations we visited, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.”