Hello, I got information today from a home investor that LB&N had some type of lien or had attached an $8000.00 dept to my home, I am trying to avoid foreclosure, and am trying to sell fast, as I also have a new job which will have me out of state for 4 weeks starting the 5th of OCT. Any way that $8000.00 would come out of the price I do get for the house, problem is I am getting less than that after pay off.
I have not received any certified mail regarding this, and the last piece of mail I did receive was back in 2002 or 2003, it was for a repossessed car in 2002. I want to call this place tomorrow and ask if they will take less, but after google searching their name to get a phone number and running across nothing but the words "scam" "rip off" and many other negative reports filling the entire first page of the search window I am a bit hesitant. Please I need good advice.
ANSWER:
I certainly would advise against contacting LBN in any way because judgments have a 5 year statute of limitations in Oklahoma. If there has been no collection activity for 5 years after the judgment as entered against you then there is no judgment against you. It is null and void and unenforceable. The fact of the lien may make that a different story but although I don't know what the length of time a lien can remain on a property may be in Oklahoma I think there is a limit on that too. You can do your research on Oklahoma liens here --
An Oklahoma County court case
I would be very hesitant to label LBN as some websites may have done. They hardly fall under the scam classification regardless of what many of their victims may say about them. While indeed they are one of Oklahoma's most aggressive law firms that fact does not make them scam artists by any means.
You say you are trying to avoid foreclosure by selling the home before it happens? That isn't going to be easy to say the least. If you are going to get less than you owe out of the home then the lender isn't going to let the sale go through. Seems you have some real problems going on and you are going to need some real help if you can't pull out of the foreclosure situation by bringing the not up to date or working something out with the servicer.
Who is the purported lender in your case? The reason I say "purported" lender is that as you may well know by now is that the note may have been sold on the securities and exchange market.
You not only need to get busy trying to get those payments up to date or doing something but you also need to get up to speed on the mortgage meltdown situation and how that works.
The problem also is that while the proposed massive cash influx into the financial arena may shore things up for a while the crash that the politicians are currently trying to stave off isn't likely to work and the economy will crash no matter what they do. If the American economy crashes it will probably make such a huge impact on the entire world that other countries will also see their economies crash setting off a global depression the likes of which are almost unimaginable.
It also is not an economic crisis it is also a worldwide food shortage that confronts us at the same time. Although most don't understand the full scope of the world's problems today I think they will soon enough and the tasting of it will not be good for anybody.
I've been predicting the oncoming crash for the last two years now. The pinch was actually starting to be felt a year ago in July and maybe even before that. What congress is now proposing as a cure is nothing more than a small bandaid on a gaping wound. Secretary Henry Paulson recently stated that if they don't get this legislation passed in a hurry the situation will soon escalate to the point where companies cannot even pay their employees and will have to close their doors. I predict that is going to happen no matter what they do because it will become a chain reaction. Defaults on credit card debt and automobile loans are escalating rapidly as well. When it is all said and done there won't be enough money in all the world to contain the mess.
I know you don't want to hear that there may well be no escaping the foreclosure but I would start thinking in those terms while doing all you can to keep it from happening. I'd starto learning how to fight the foreclosure before it starts happening. As soon as it does you will start getting letters from scam artists telling you that they can save your home from foreclosure with their so called mortgage fraud programs and mythical attorneys who will go to court and fight for you. I know of most if not all of those scam artists here in Oklahoma. I'm working with some of the victims of those scams now.
What happens is that the scammers will have you sign a response to the summons and complaint that looks like it really ought to get the job done but is actually nothing but legal gobble-de-gook that will get you nowhere yet cost you another bundle of money. They will be talking about such foolish ideas as accord & satisfaction, contributory negligence, duress, Estoppel, Fraud, illegality, laches, waiver and regaling you with tales about how their mortgage fraud investigators will scrutinize your mortgage and find all the fraud and RESPA violations so you can sue the lender for those violations.
They may very well include a long list of interrogatories, demand for admissions and production of documents and the whole thing will look very legitimate. When the attorney returns with a laundry list of cut and past objections they may even be smart enough to file a motion to compel the plaintiff to comply with those demands but when the attorney comes back with an objection your scammer runs out of bullets to fire back with and suddenly they lose interest in your case and you are left hanging out to dry but the attorney is still full of fight.
The response that the scammers are now providing also include a laundry list of complaints that they file in a counter claim. Most of those counter claims might very well be valid complaints but the proper place to file them is not in local court as a counter claim but in a federal case against the lender. Local judges don't want to hear all that stuff because they are far to busy to go into the lengthy trials that would ensue if they paid them any attention. Their remedy is to simply dismiss your counter claims no matter how valid they may be and move on to give judgment to the plaintiff and you lose. Of course you lose your property and all the money you invested in that but you lose any money you paid the scammers as well.
The next problem you face is that since you didn't know how bad the scammer's supposed magical cure really is you also can't hire an attorney because you aren't equipped to know whether they are any better than the scammers plus they will cost you much more money than the scammers will. One is as bad as the other.
There is a good possibility that you will be facing LBN all over again or if not them then Baer, Timberlake & company. Between the two of them they probably do the majority of foreclosures in Oklahoma.
Of course, I don't know what county you live in but if you live in Oklahoma County I know most of the judges although not personally but I do know what they are like and how they treat defendants. Most are about as friendly as a pack of wolves on a dark and wintery night.
You might want to call in to my Friday night conference call which starts at 7:00 P.M. central time. The number for that is 712-432-1601 and the pin number is 508548#. You might also want to call in to my Monday night Radio talk show. The number for that is (914) 803-4464 The show starts at 10:00 P.M. central time.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: I received the following email after filling out a home investors/we buy houses fast site.
I called the guy and I feel like it is one of those too good to be true deals, as he told me they (Jim Maroney) and himself (Win James) could write my letter of intention to file in the court in such a way that it would force them to come up with all the originals, plus since my signature is not on the mortgage, yet on the deed I might be able to get it dismissed. I think I just want it to be on the up and up so bad that I am over looking something shady, I am so naive.
I am contacting you because you filled a form out on one of our forms. . My name is Winston James, I ask that we talk about your home and the promise to stop foreclosure
Your choices to stop foreclosure does not include bankruptcy. Do not even consider bankruptcy because the new Bankruptcy laws, in my opinion, favor the creditors.
I know from experience what you are going facing. If you see my name on court documents you will see MANY foreclosures under my name. But none of the foreclosures have actually completed. Some are about to be dismissed.
You can call me as soon as possible, or I will call you.
Regards,
Winston james
James Properties, LLC
405-535-9400
I had to use the tinyurl.com substitute for the 253 character long url which is the actual url. I think that if you will check out his statements against what the court records show you will be able to draw your own conclusions. But before you let that be your decision maker you should check out the following cases.
Check out Case #3 to see if anything looks similar to the above situation.
Then check out the pleadings and journal entry of judgment in
Case #4
Then look at this one. Again notice the similarities.
Case #5
Then look at this one. Again notice the similarities.
Case #6
I can refer you to many more case for your research.
You say the following:
He says that you might be able to get it dismissed I called the guy and I feel like it is one of those too good to be true deals, as he told me they (Jim Maroney) and himself (Win James) could write my letter of intention to file in the court in such a way that it would force them to come up with all the originals, plus since my signature is not on the mortgage, yet on the deed I might be able to get it dismissed.
___________________________________________________________________
That is interesting to say the least. I can't help wondering where Winston James came up with that idea? How many cases can he point to where he has used that ploy with success? Will it get the case dismissed?
Probably it will. And if it does then what? What comes after that? My guess (for whatever it may be worth) is that the plaintiff will simply refile the case leaving you off next time. Now what will you do? What will you (or he)use for ammunition the next time around? If there is no better offensive strategy in place for the second time around then what do you hope to gain except a little time? If that is the only bullet you have then you will lose the second time around.
I would suggest that you study those cases above very carefully to see if you can come up with some ideas as to what your present and future actions should be. As you can see, all of the cases are very recent. Only a couple of months old. Decisions have not yet been made in most of them.
But what interests me most is where James came up with the idea that you can get the case dismissed because you were not on the note but ended up getting sued anyway. Maybe he just heard about it from somebody else but has never actually done it himself. The interesting aspect is that there really are not all that many cases where the plaintiff has put a party on as defendant who never signed the note so there isn't really a lot of history for Mr. James to go on. I don't know of any cases that have been both filed and adjudicated where that scenario has taken place. So with little or no history to go by then he almost had to have been tipped off by somebody who probably heard about it from somebody else. That would be my guess.
But the burning bush question is what will Mr. James do to pull your fat out of the proverbial fire after he gets the case dismissed and they refile? What magic rabbit will he pull out of the hat after that?
If he has no solid and viable answer to that question then there is no point whatever to even bother about getting it dismissed in the first place. The only way to get even a partial win out of the deal that will keep you in your home is to have a solid plan of action and know how to implement it. There are at least two ways to get the job done that I am familiar with. What you have to understand is that the deck is very much stacked against you to start off with so it takes some doing to get the job done.
The problem is that there is no possible defense to the question before the court which is whether or not you failed to meet your mortgage payments on time. It is a well proven fact that even if you are provably current on payments and in fact have overpaid on your note you can and quite possibly will be foreclosed on.
Since you don't have a defense to that single question and may very well lose even if you were never late on any payment, what chance does a simple diversionary trick have? Of course, the answer to that question is that you probably have no chance whatever to win in local court.
No amount of wrong doing on their part can be used as a defense. You can demand all the documents you want and none of it will provide you with a workable defense. That isn't true in many states where some of the courts have ruled that if they do not have the wet ink note at the hearing the court won't let them foreclose but I don't know of any Oklahoma County courts that have taken that position and if any have so ruled I probably would have heard about it.
Does all of that mean that no matter what you do you will lose? No, not necessarily. There are ways to win but getting the case dismissed because they sued you when you didn't sign the note is just the start of the battle.
By the way, what county are you in and what is your case number?
I do hope to hear back from you soon.
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