AMERICAN PROPERTY OWNERS NETWORK
Leo Blas, President
C. Ann Chin, Secretary/Treasurer
Linda Sevilla, Board Member
Micheal Levitz, Board Member
OPEN LETTER TO 2022 ELECTION CANDIDATES:
Dear Candidate:
American Property Owners Network, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation organized in the State of Wisconsin and operating as a 501(c)(4) entity upon notice to the Internal Revenue Service. Our Board members are located in various states from Alaska to Virginia and Minnesota to Florida. Our purpose is to advocate for justice for homeowners who have been unlawfully dispossessed or are facing unlawful dispossession of their homes throughout the nation by the use of false and forged documents created to make it appear that purported claimants in judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states are entitled to the remedy of foreclosure.
As we are sure you are aware, over ten million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007 and a million more are heading for foreclosure after the pandemic. The issue with the majority of the foreclosures is that the foreclosure claimants are not the real parties in interest with a beneficial interest in the alleged indebtedness. Mortgage foreclosures are proceeding based on fraudulent documents created by third-party vendors or employees of debt collectors calling themselves “servicers” and acting for their own pecuniary advantage on behalf of undisclosed beneficiaries.
For more, please see the Blogpost “Lawyers for Homeowners and Politicians are Missing the Brass Ring” from famous financial expert and foreclosure defense attorney Neil Garfield, posted on his blog April 13, 2022 (and reposted on APON’s blog April 15th). In it he states that 2022 candidates should consider the voting power of the 80 million properties in America that are owed restitution from Wall Street financial institutions and their lackeys–not just those faced with “fraudclosure”, but those whose titles are now clouded.
On behalf of the constituency for which we advocate, we want to know, now that you have been elected, what would you do to stop the ongoing Wall Street crime spree and provide justice to the millions of homeowners who lost their homes (or will lose their homes) based on false claims and fraudulent documents created by participants in the fraudulent foreclosure scheme?
Ocwen Mortgage Servicing, Inc. is one of a number of servicers, some of which are federally chartered national banking associations–such as Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America–which engage in unlawful foreclosure practices under the guise of being “trustees”/debt-collectors. See for example, see Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of the Attorney General,the State of Florida, Department of Legal Affairs, and Office of Financial Regulation, the State of Florida, Division of Consumer Finance, Plaintiffs, v. Ocwen Financial Corporation; Ocwen Mortgage Servicing, Inc.; and Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC Defendants, in which the consolidated Complaints allege, for example, at ¶177:
177. Ocwen has engaged in unlawful foreclosure practices. Ocwen has long touted its ability to service and modify distressed loans, claiming, “helping homeowners is what we do.” In fact, Ocwen has failed to accurately maintain foreclosure-related information necessary to ensure that it provides borrowers with required foreclosure protections. As a result of these and other failures, Ocwen has wrongfully initiated foreclosure proceedings and wrongfully conducted foreclosure sales.
Many of your constituents are victims of unlawful foreclosure practices that have embroiled them in seemingly endless litigation designed to exhaust their financial and emotional resources until they give up or are (almost always) defeated in the judicial system. As a result of the fraudulent practices of which our Board members and their nationwide information network have substantial evidence, millions of Americans have lost their homes. The 2008 financial crises inevitably contributed to the destruction of family units, serious health issues including untimely deaths, and in too many cases, homelessness. A foreclosure is a one-time event, but for many families, it’s something that never ends, wrecking years of their lives and the hopes they once had. Further, hundreds and thousands of people could have been saved from illegal foreclosures if the regulatory agencies and law enforcement authorities had followed the law.
“Lawyers for Consumers and Candidates for Office Are Missing the Brass Ring…several candidates who have eschewed contributions from Wall Street did very well with soliciting campaign contributions from normal people…COVID merely exposed a fundamental weakness in our economy. That weakness was caused by Wall Street securities firms. They drained out tens of trillions of dollars from U.S. wealth and the economy in general. And they are still doing it. Virtually all installment payment transactions are funded through securitization. But securitization does not mean what is believed by the general consensus. If securitization meant that loans were divided up into parts that were sold to investors there would have been no 2008 Great Recession. Prices would not have sailed far above home values and loans would have been created that were properly underwritten in which appraisals, assessment of viability, and disclosures were all within the parameters required by Federal and State statutes. That is not what happened. ..Consumers thought they were getting a loan. They were wrong. A loan has two parties with a stake in the deal. ..The payment that homeowners (and all consumers) received at the “closing” was merely an incentive to issue the instruments that were used to issue unregulated securities to investors. Contemporaneously with each homeowner transaction, the role of the lender, loan account, risk of loss, and compliance with statutes was completely eliminated. Instead, an infrastructure emerged that was focused on the appearance of debt collection without any debt held by any creditor. In Iceland, they took care of the problem by nationalizing the issue. They reduced all household debt by 25%. The problem was over. Their economy recovered in a few months. Ours has lingered on for more than 20 years. We also nationalized the issue by the takeover of the GSEs Fannie, Freddie etc. But that was to protect the perpetrators of the greatest scam in all human history. .. There is no debt and there is no creditor. By freeing up the process from being actually tied to ownership of any loan, the Wall Street securities firms were able to sell multiple iterations of various hypothetical interests in the performance of the transaction rather than the transaction itself. On average they made at least $12 for each $1 paid to consumers or on their behalf in installment contracts like those that were falsely labeled as loans. Despite the complexity presented here, the message is simple. If there is no loan, debt, or underlying obligation, then the note and mortgage are evidence of nothing. …Candidates who are running an antibank platform need only say that under their plan banks would be forced to settle on highly favorable terms. This would produce a much-needed stimulus of real cash into a real economy.”

On August 5, 2020, the first episode of the new docu-series, The Con, premiered. It is free for viewing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XGZ7F3IPY8. The entire first season of The Con, consisting of five (5) episodes is available at https://www.thecon.tv/watch. We encourage you to watch the five (5) part first season.
At the end of the first episode of The Con, there is a panel discussion. William Black, a former bank regulator during the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and white-collar crime expert, explained that the fraud scheme in which many mortgage loan originators fit a pattern which regulators can recognize. Chris Swecker, head of criminal investigations for the FBI between 2004 and 2006, also participated in the panel discussion at the end of the first episode of The Con. When he investigated the bank fraud, he was ordered to stop. A Congressional investigation into the Financial Crisis of 2008 recommended 11 criminal indictments of Wall Street bankers. The Department of Justice refused to prosecute.
In The Con, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota is also shown opposing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act protections, but the Clinton administration was allowed to push de-regulation of the banks through Congress. Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin supported de-regulation and then joined the Board of Directors of Citigroup, which was the first beneficiary of the repeal of Glass-Steagall because the merger of Citicorp with Travelers Group which was undertaken in violation of the Glass-Steagall Act.
Just as de-regulation of the savings and loan institutions resulted in the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s into the 1990s, the de-regulation of the banking industry led to the Financial Crisis of 2008 which became the Residential Foreclosure Crisis of 2009 and continuing. The rest of the story is still being written.
Our constituency is well-informed about the failures of federal and state regulatory agencies and law enforcement which have allowed this nation’s homes to be fraudulently foreclosed for the benefit of undisclosed third parties.
We invite you to respond to this Open Letter with your proposal for protect the interests of homeowners who have the right to be free from the use of false documents to take their homes for debt that they do not owe. Please send us your questions or ask us for a copy of the APON Policy Memo at our email address. Your campaign’s response to the concerns expressed in this letter will be posted on our website and will be shared with other concerned organization for further publication.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely Yours,
AMERICAN PROPERTY OWNERS NETWORK, INC.