Sheriff Dart Suspends Foreclosure Evictions Filed by Leading Banks

Tuesday, October 19, 2010— With three of the nation's leading mortgage lenders admitting to questionable and perhaps illegal practices in their mortgage foreclosure actions, Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced Tuesday he will not carry out any evictions involving those lenders until they can provide complete assurance that the foreclosure was done properly and legally.

The moratorium is set to take effect Monday -- giving the affected banks 5 business days to respond to a letter Dart sent to them last week. It impacts foreclosure eviction orders filed with Dart's office by Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and GMAC/Ally Financial -- which, along with their subsidiaries, make up about 1/3 of the approximately 3,700 eviction orders filed with Dart's office annually.

In recent days, each of those lenders has admitted it is uncertain about the legitimacy of some of their foreclosure actions. Specifically, some employees said they never read foreclosure documents before attesting that the foreclosures had been verified and were justified. Though some lenders put a freeze on new foreclosures or those in the midst of legal proceedings, nothing was stopping eviction orders already given to sheriff's deputies from being carried out.

On Monday, Bank of America announced it had reviewed thousands of foreclosure documents in Illinois and elsewhere and will properly re-file some of its foreclosures beginning next week -- though Dart questions those already waiting for his deputies to execute or those already done.

Right now, Dart's office has 500 eviction orders waiting to be executed,
with 1,000 more being prepared to be executed - 1/3 of which would be
impacted by such a moratorium.

"I can't possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can't say for sure everything was done properly," Dart said. "I need some kind of assurance that we aren't evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks. Until that happens, I can't in good conscience keep carrying out evictions involving these banks."

Dart plans to extend the moratorium on evictions to any other lending institutions which also publicly admit to or which investigators find engaged in similarly questionable practices.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Cook County Sheriff
• Tom Dart
• Sheriff Dart
• Evictions Foreclosure
• Cook County

[bengilroy]

An honest sheriff we ought to have him stuffed and mounted lest we forget what one looks like!

[zennith559]

GOOD JOB....