Mortgage Companies Seek Time Travelers to Find Missing Documents

Recruiters are hiring for a job that shouldn’t exist: finding “missing” documents required to “complete” broken chains of title on mortgages entering foreclosure.

Since all assignments of mortgage should have been prepared and recorded within days of the transfer or sale — and the failure to do so irreparably ruptures chain of title — the companies would seem to be looking for time travelers or magicians.

Or maybe they want to manufacture false evidence to introduce into courts as a means to take away people’s homes.

Without a chain of title documenting the sequence of historical transfers of title to a property, foreclosure proceedings cannot continue in a legal fashion. 

Alluvion Staffing, a recruiting firm from Jacksonville, Florida, posted a listing on Career Builder for a “Default Breach Specialist” for an unnamed mortgage company, who would be tasked with locating “missing assignments needed to complete the chain of title prior to foreclosure referral.” The ad follows a separate search from Select Portfolio Servicing, a Utah-based mortgage servicer, for someone to “provide assistance in demonstrating the Investor has the appropriate legal authority to initiate actions through a complete Chain of Title.”

As I detailed in my book Chain of Title, the various companies packaging loans during the housing bubble routinely failed to follow the precise steps to transfer mortgages into the tax-preferred trusts used to create mortgage-backed securities.

For the most part, these breaches cannot be reversed, because the governing securitization documents, known as pooling and servicing agreements, specified a time limit for conveying mortgages into trusts.

Regardless of this rigid deadline, mortgage companies hired third parties to mock up after-the-fact documents, making it look like they held an unbroken chain of title and had the ability to foreclose. The obvious fabrications have been challenged in court numerous times, and were the focus of a national settlement with leading mortgage servicing companies in 2012.

However, the focus of the settlement — false documents submitted to courts in foreclosure cases — continues to this day.

The multiple job listings for specialists to fix broken chains of title only confirms that nothing has changed in the industry. No mortgage company would require a chain of title specialist if the documents needed to foreclose existed.

It’s possible the missing documents merely need to be located. But the presence of an entire industry of third-party “default services” companies that recreate mortgage assignments suggests that this isn’t a case of lost-and-found. Last September, one such third party, Security Connections of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was caught soliciting individuals to forge mortgage documents.

The Alluvion Staffing advertisement says the Default Breach Specialist must maintain a caseload of delinquent loans “to ensure timely preparation, execution and/or recordation of all needed assignments prior to foreclosure referral.” Alluvion adds that two years of mortgage default servicing and a high school diploma are required for the job, with “college education a plus.”

Select Portfolio Servicing’s job listing seeks individuals who can “facilitate document requests in a timely manner,” while exhibiting a “comprehensive understanding of proving up all Chain of Title requirements.”

The qualified applicant would have document-processing experience, proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel, and mysteriously, the “ability to lift boxes weighing 25 lbs.” The company does not specify a pay range. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Over 6.2 million families have lost their homes to foreclosure since the financial crisis began in September 2008, according to a report Monday from CoreLogic. It is not known how many of those foreclosures were executed with false documents. But we do know that the failure to follow longstanding property records laws in securitization contracts was so systemic that eight years later, special teams of chain of title specialists must be hired to make the problem vanish.

Michael Redman of the recently restarted 4closurefraud.org blog found the initial listing from Select Portfolio Servicing. Foreclosure defense attorney April Charney sent the Alluvion Staffing listing.