mers strawman

8/7/2019 MERS Strawman

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MERS - Good Strawman or Bad Strawman?

By

Phillip C. Querin, QUERIN LAW, LLCContact Info: www.Q-Law.com

Doublethink: the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back fromoblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while takeaccount of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary. (George Orwell, 1984)

Introduction. To understand MERS requires an exercise in Doublethink. On the one hand, onemust acknowledge that MERS is not a product of any law, statute or ordinance found in this country. Itis an entirely fictional construct, inspired, designed and implemented by the U.S. lending industry. Onthe other hand, one must believe that the MERS system of electronically registering mortgages and

trust deeds (collectively, mortgages), is a perfectly acceptable modern day substitute for the age-oldsystem of recording documents. This post asks whether MERS solves the problems it purports toaddress, and, if so, is that a good thing?

How MERS Describes Itself. "MERS" stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. It islittle more than a massive, online database, where member banks "register" their multiple transfers of mortgages between themselves. They go to great lengths to say that they are merely acting solely asa nominee for Lender and Lender's successors and assig ns. Their registered trademark includes thephrase: Process loans, not paperwork. MERS website describes itself as follows:

"MERS was created by the mortgage banking industry to streamline the mortgage process by usingelectronic commerce to eliminate paper. Our mission is to register every mortgage loan in the United States on the MERS System. [Underscore mine - PCQ]

Beneficiaries of MERS include mortgage originators, servicers, warehouse lenders, wholesale lenders,retail lenders, document custodians, settlement agents, title companies, insurers, investors, county recorders and consumers. "
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Elsewhere on their site, they are more specific about their mission:

"To eliminate the need for assignments and to realize the greatest savings, lenders should close loansusing standard security instruments containing language approved by Fannie Mae and Freddie Macwhich name MERS as Original Mortgagee (MOM)."[Underscore mine - PCQ]

Background. Most big banks today are not the simple depository institutions of years past, wherecustomers received a fixed rate of interest on their savings accounts, and the banks loaned these fundsout to borrowers at a higher rate. It used to be that loans, once made, remained with their originatingbank. They were carried on the banks books until paid off. So, when a borrower had trouble meetingtheir payments, they contacted the same lender from whom they first borrowed their funds.

Not so today. Primarily due to the process of securitization , the lending industry bears littleresemblance to its forerunner of a few years ago. The main advantage in securitizing loans (besides theopportunity for many participants to make prodigious amounts of money) was that the loans wereeffectively paid off upon their resale into the marketplace. This resulted in banks being able to lendtheir money over and over again.

A direct consequence of the rampant securitizations that occurred between 2004 2007, was thecreation of a private label secondary market. Since GSEs (Fannie and Freddie ) could only purchaseconforming loans, which were subject to more rigid underwriting requirements, the private labelsecondary market came into existence. It soon began to purchase what we now refer to as toxicloans, i.e. those loans, that due to poor or nonexistent underwriting standards, were almost doomed tofailure. And they did not disappoint. But rather than these toxic loans being a lending banks problem,they became the investors problem. And since the lenders actually lending money in the private labelmarket were being promptly repaid by investors, banks had no significant long term risk. In todaysvernacular, they had no skin in the game. In an article entitled "Mortgage Backed Securities: HowImportant is 'Skin in the Game?'" authored by Christopher M. James, a visiting scholar at the Federal

Reserve Bank San Francisco, he writes:

"Many analysts believe that, during the housing boom of the 2000s, the widespread securitization of residential mortgages fundamentally altered the incentives of key players in the loan origination and funding process. A basic problem with the originate-to-distribute model of lending is that mortgageoriginators and the sponsors of mortgage- backed securities (MBS) have too little skin in the game, these critics argue. In contrast to traditional lending, in which vertically integrated lenders own and service the loans they originate, securitization involves different agents performing different services,often for fees that are unrelated to the performance of the securitized mortgage loans. A resultingdanger is that originators and sponsors pay too little attention to the riskiness of the mortgages they originate or place into pools they sponsor."

One of the major repositories of pooled loans in the GSE and private label markets, were the Real EstateMortgage Investment Conduits, or "REMICs", which acquired the pooled loans as securities and thensold bonds or certificates to large investors. It was these investors monies that flowed back into thecoffers of the many lenders and investment banks who participated in the securitization process.

Of course, the rest is history. The credit markets collapsed because the ratings agencies yes, the sameones assuring investors they were buying AAA bonds - decided in the late summer of 2007 that these
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bonds were actually junk. Almost immediately following the rating downgrades, the dominos began tofall: Large institutional investors dumped their bonds, credit markets seized up, home purchases fell toa trickle for lack of financing, homeowners could not refinance out of their risky loans much less reselltheir homes the housing market collapsed, the commercial market followed suit, municipal and staterevenues slumped and failed to meet budget, mass unemployment followed as public and privateemployers tightened their belts, housing-related industries collapsed, confidence eroded, and voila , thecountry found itself in the Great Recession. But I digress.

The Lending Process. When taking out a loan, borrowers must sign two major documents:

The mortgage - or its functional equivalent, the trust deed. The trust deed is used in non-judicial foreclosure states, such as Oregon, Washington and California. In non-judicial states,foreclosure does not require a court filing. Mortgages are used in the states where theforeclosure process requires filing a complaint in court. They are referred to as judicialforeclosure states.

The second document is the promissory note (or note), which is the borrowers IOU,promising repayment to the lender. It is rarely, if ever, recorded.

Together, the note and mortgage is the sin qua non of all loans. The mortgage acts as security for thepromissory note. This means that if the note is not paid according to its terms, the mortgage authorizesthe property to be foreclosed, usually through public auction. A promissory note that has no companionmortgage is said to be unsecured. An unsecured note is enforceable against the signer, but the rightto collect is limited to a legal action for recovery of the unpaid balance due. The unsecured note givesthe lender no special rights to foreclose on any of the borrowers property for that, the accompanyingmortgage is necessary. Conversely, a mortgage without a note is an unenforceable piece of paper, sinceone cannot foreclose on property whose owner has no written duty of repayment. For purposes of thispost, it is best to think of the note and mortgage as being functionally connected at the hip. Where

one goes, so should the other.

What Banks Do With Your Loan. Banks frequently sell their loans between each other. What they arereally selling is the right to receive a stream of income. Whenever a loan is sold between lenders, boththe note and mortgage are supposed to move from the seller of the loan to the buyer of the loan. Thegeneric name of the legal document used to transfer a mortgage or trust deed is an Assignment. If thestate where the property is located is a non-judicial state (i.e. they use trust deeds, rather thanmortgages) the document is called an Assignment of Trust Deed. In judicial foreclosure states, it iscalled an Assignment of Mortgage. Unfortunately, through negligence or design, it now appears thatbanks frequently failed to sign the necessary assignments, either between each other or when theywere supposedly depositing the pooled loans into the REMIC trusts.

It is important to understand that the process of transferring ownership of a promissory note issignificantly different than the assignment of a trust deed or mortgage. While one assigns a mortgageor trust deed, subject to certain exceptions, one transfers ownership of a promissory note through awritten endorsement, much like how checks are transferred e.g. from the first party, to the secondparty, etc. While most people regard third party checks with suspicion, among lenders who routinelytransfer promissory notes, multiple endorsements are not uncommon.
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Thus, to transfer an entire loan ( i.e. both the note and mortgage) - the mortgage instrument isassigned from one bank to another via an assignment document, while the actual promissory note iscontemporaneously "endorsed" (or "indorsed" per Article 9 of the UCC) over to the receiving bank. [Note: This is admittedly an oversimplification. - PCQ]

Recording of a mortgage provides significant legal protection to lenders. In Oregon and most states,subject to limited exceptions, the first to record the mortgage has priority (i.e. superior rights to theproceeds at the time of the foreclosure auction) over subsequently recorded mortgages or other liens.Thus, a first mortgage has greater protection in the foreclosure process than the holder of the secondmortgage, and the holder of the second has priority over the third, and so on. Since there are only alimited amount of proceeds generated from a foreclosure sale, in todays depressed housing market,most lenders in a second or subsequently recorded position get little or nothing. It is for this reason thatalmost immediately after a loan is closed, it is recorded on the public record, thus establishing itspriority over all other subsequently recorded lenders or other lien holders.

Life Before MERS . Before the advent of MERS, when one checked the public records at the countycourthouse, they could track the successive assignments (if any) from the original lender all the way tothe present owner. Thus, the continuous, unbroken recorded chain of successive transfers left littlequestion who the true owner of the mortgage was. However, as noted above, a bare mortgage, withoutthe accompanying promissory note, means nothing, and is therefore impossible to foreclose, since thereis no underlying debt. But, if the promissory note is transferred by successively signed endorsementsalong with successively assigned mortgages, the owner or holder of both instruments has the legal rightof foreclosure.

Life After MERS. MERS is the child of the mortgage industrys biggest players. Its current ownersinclude: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wells Fargo, AIG, GMAC, Citigroup, HSBC, and Bank of America. Today, MERS members consist of almost all 3,000 mortgage lenders in the country. According to therecent Congressional testimony of its President, R. K. Arnold, MERS tracks approximately 31,000,000

active loans. MERS is essentially the alter ego of the biggest players in the lending industry. Asexplained below, it is not unreasonable today to conclude that the free-wheeling lender secondarymarket securitizations during the easy credit years of 2004 - 2007, was the 'raison d'tre for MERS.

The MERS Registry. MERS gives its members one of two options for registering mortgages throughthem rather than placing them on the public record. One method is to have MERS named as thenominal owner of the loan on the m ortgage document itself. Thus, upon recording of the mortgage atclose of escrow, the holder of the mortgage is shown as MERS. Although MERS goes to great lengthsto explain that it is only the nominal owner of the mortgage (in place of the bank), in reality, itspermissible functions go far beyond those of a mere agent or nominee, which has not gone unnoticedby some courts recently.

The other method banks may register their mortgages through MERS is for the original lender to keepits own name on the original mortgage as of the date of closing the loan, and then promptly assign themortgage to MERS - again, as merely the nominal owner of the loan. As noted above, this system of electronically "registering" a mortgage on the MERS system is not a statutorily recognized method of recording documents. The term strawman seems closer to the truth. The definition of strawmanfound in Blacks Law Dictionary is the following:
http://www.mersinc.org/MERSPRODUCTS/publications.aspx?mpid=1http://www.mersinc.org/MERSPRODUCTS/publications.aspx?mpid=1http://www.mersinc.org/MERSPRODUCTS/publications.aspx?mpid=1http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2026http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2026http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2026http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2026http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.htmlhttp://www.mersinc.org/MERSPRODUCTS/publications.aspx?mpid=1


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"n. 1) a person to whom title to property or a business interest is transferred for the sole purpose of concealing the true owner and/or the business machinations of the parties. Thus, the straw man has noreal interest or participation but is merely a passive stand-in for a real participant who secretly controlsactivities. ***"

Once a mortgage becomes registered with MERS, all future assignments of the mortgage are off thepublic record. *Note, once a lenders priority is established by publi cly recording the mortgage at thetime of closing, all subsequent off-record assignments of that mortgage still retain their original priority. PCQ]

According to its website , if one is a member of MERS, by using the powerful MERS iSearch toolsubscribers may submit customized, pinpointed queries to retrieve same -day information from theMERS System. This would seem to suggest that the MERS registry could serve the same purpose aspublic recording, by tracking the travels of a mortgage over its lifetime. However, this is not necessarilythe case for several reasons : (a) MERS Members may fail to register their own assignments; (b) If theoriginal lender is not a MERS member, no assignments of their mortgage is ever registered - at leastuntil it gets assigned to a MERS member; (c) Access to the powerful MERS iSearch tool is forsubscribers" not members of the public. Thus, the MERS model appears to work for its members onpaper - though not in reality, especially when foreclosure becomes necessary.

MERS Foreclosures. At the time of foreclosure, there are some very problematic consequences of MERS private registry process: First, by eliminating the need to publicly record all assignments afterthe original mortgage is recorded, no one readily knows who owns that mortgage at any point in time. If foreclosure becomes necessary, the MERS program provides two options: (1) If MERS appears as theoriginal record owner of the loan, it may foreclose in its own name a rather surprising task for a merenominal owner of the mortgage; or, (2) MERS may assign the mortgage to the real owner of theloan, who then proceeds with the foreclosure process. For a summary of the requirements nowimposed by MERS before it will foreclose, click here . In most cases today, MERS assigns the mortgage

to its member bank to pursue the foreclosure in their own name.

The MERS Parallel Universe. This is where things get surreal. When foreclosure becomes necessary(oftentimes years after the loan was actually made) and MERS appears as the record owner of themortgage, it transfers the mortgage to the foreclosing bank, but ignores all of the intervening off-recordassignments by completing a Hail -Mary Pass to that lender. Virtually all originating lenders of recordare guilty of making the "Hail-Mary Pass" by assigning the mortgage to a designated foreclosure bank,while ignoring all prior unrecorded assignments. Lest one think this is no big deal, it is important toknow that in many states, including Oregon , foreclosure law require that all successive transfers of themortgage (and appointments of successor trustees) be recorded prior to foreclosure. See, ORS86.735(1) . In this way, the entire chain of successive assignments from the original lender to theforeclosing lender, are accounted for, and there can be no question that the lender conducting theforeclosure is the one that has the right to do so. *This is referred to as standing in federal bankruptcy court s ruling on the issue. - PCQ]

However, in Oregon (and presumably other trust deed states) due to the MERS electronic registry, theintervening off-record assignments are never recorded except for the final assignment ( ergo the Hail -Mary Pass) from MERS to the current lender who purports to have the right of foreclosure. Today, itseems most borrowers in default assume that the lender foreclosing them has a legal right to do so. Asdiscussed below, there is good reason to believe that in some cases, this simply cannot be true.
http://www.mersinc.org/http://www.mersinc.org/http://www.mersinc.org/http://www.mersinc.org/MersProducts/index.aspx?mpid=8http://www.mersinc.org/MersProducts/index.aspx?mpid=8http://www.mersinc.org/MersProducts/index.aspx?mpid=8http://www.mersinc.org/foreclosures/index.aspxhttp://www.mersinc.org/foreclosures/index.aspxhttp://www.mersinc.org/foreclosures/index.aspxhttps://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/http://www.losangelesbankruptcylawmonitor.com/2010/08/articles/foreclosure-1/mers-acting-solely-as-nominee-has-no-standing-to-foreclose/https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735http://www.mersinc.org/foreclosures/index.aspxhttp://www.mersinc.org/MersProducts/index.aspx?mpid=8http://www.mersinc.org/


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Unfortunately, since beleaguered homeowners have neither the money nor the appetite to raise theissue, this intentional subversion of ORS 86.735(1) is rarely raised. But, without the recorded chain of title of continuous and successive assignments, there is absolutely no proof that the foreclosing lenderis the true owner of the loan. In some nationally reported cases , foreclosures have been dismissedbecause the lender purporting to own the note and mortgage cannot prove they have any right to do so.

And when it becomes necessary for the MERS assignment document to be signed, the process borderson the bizarre. MERS assignments are normally signed by a Vice President or Assistant Secretarywho MERS calls a Certifying Officer. However, MERS Certifying Officers are not actually officers inany conventional sense. Nor are they employees or contractors hired by MERS. They are notcompensated by MERS. In short, Certifying Officers have no direct relationship with MERS. MERSmerely lends them an official title solely for purposes of signing the assignment of mortgage. How manysuch Certifying Officers does MERS have? According to Mr. Arnold, approximately 20,000. Not bad fora company that, according to the deposition of its Secretary-Treasurer at pages 69-70, has noemployees.

According to Mr. Arnolds Congressional testimony , in order to be a Certifying Officer, one must first bean officer of the MERS member. So what happens? The MERS member - say the bank responsible forthe foreclosure - names one or more of its own employees as Vice President, Assistant VicePresident (or AVP), or a similar official title. This subterfuge thus entitles the MERS membersemploy ee to qualify as a Certifying Officer for MERS.

Lest one think that this is a simple process, Mr. Arnold explained to the Congressional Committee thatMERS Certifying Officers are required to pass a qualifying examination consisting of ten multiplechoice or true/false questions, eight of which must be answered correctly for a passing grade. There isno explanation as to how many tries these folks are given to pass the quiz. But to limit the risk of failure,MERS website provides its members employees with a primer and sample questions, such as Whereis MERS incorporated? Not exactly a Mensa membership test .

If it is possible to abuse even the appearance of legitimacy, that appears to have happened here. Thereis good reason to believe that some of the MERS Certifying Officers actually have no direct relation toa foreclosing lender, but in fact, are affiliated, instead, with the law firm or private foreclosurecompanies responsible for handling the actual foreclosure process. (See deposition of MERS Secretary-Treasurer at page 60.) [In many cases I have observed private foreclosure company employees acting inmultiple capacities for multiple companies: (1) As a Vice President of MERS; (2) A Vice President (or attorney in fact) for the foreclosing lender; and (3) As the Trustee signing the Notice of Default and Election to Sell. No conflict s of interest there.PCQ+

Then there is the robo-signer controversy that the lending industry has characterized as meretechnical paperwork problems. However, in fact, it was almost an inevitable consequence of theopportunity MERS gave its lender members to freely assign their mortgages and trust deeds betweenthemselves, off the record, and with no public accountability. Whether by negligence or intelligentdesign, it appears that many lenders ignored certain basic commercial laws (discussed below), and maynot have executed their assignments with the formality necessary for recording. The upshot is thattracking down the successive assignments of a MERS mortgage to find the current owner of the loan isas elusive as tracking down Sasquatch. Since most states, judicial and nonjudicial alike, depend uponsome evidence of a loans ownership before foreclosure, this meant that thousands if not millions of
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documents needed to be prepared and signed in order to commence foreclosures from 2007 to thepresent time.

In order to meet this demand, lenders and lender processing services hired lower level employeeswhose job it was to robo -sign thousands of foreclosure documents monthly. These robo-signers didnot know or understand what they were signing, and never reviewed the underlying documents, as theiraffidavits represented. Moreover, their signatures were often notarized at different times and placesthan what the documents stated. Since notarization is essential for recording, the notaries appear tohave been knowing participants in the scheme. It was a direct consequence of the robo-signer scandalthat several of the major bank s suspended all foreclosures, while they went back to correct theirdocumentation.

As if this were not enough, there is a fundamental flaw in the entire MERS registry model, which again,has enabled lenders to play fast and loose with their paperwork. MERS only registers the mortgage. Ithas nothing to do with the other essential component of all loans, the promissory note.

According to its rules, when an assignment of the mortgage occurs, the member is to notify MERS sothe transfer may be tracked. However, since MERS only tracks the ownership of the mortgage, andignores the note, there is no assurance that both documents are actually owned by the same entity at the same time . As noted above, these two doc uments are, figuratively speaking, joined at the hip andboth essential for the lender to have, in order to foreclose. However, that does not appear to have beenthe case. In actuality, it does not appear unusual for these documents to have been separated at birth(i.e. at closing), one traveling one way and one going another. Where each instrument goes is a matterof conjecture, both harmless and sinister. But the fact remains that when called to produce the notewith the mortgage during a foreclosure, some lenders have been unable to do so.

The problem is briefly explained as follows by Yves Smith, the nom de plume for the author of NakedCapitalism, an entertaining and authoritative economics website:

"if MERS is actually a mortgagee, then while it may have authority to record mortgages in its ownname, both MERS and financial institutions investing in MERS-recorded mortgages run afoul of longstanding precedent on the inseparability of promissory notes and mortgages. Since the 19th century a long and still vital line of cases has held that mortgages and deeds of trust may not be separated fromthe promissory notes that create the underlying obligation triggering foreclosure rights." [This is what has been referred to as the split note and trust deed problem on various websites discussing theissue. See, link . - PCQ]

But, heres the mystery: Given MERS state -of-the- art technology, why cant their member -banks tracktheir elusive assignments? And if they can, wouldnt they lead to the actual owner of the loan? And, if

they find the true owners of the mortgages, they should also find the holder of the promissory notes.Right?

These many flaws have not gone unnoticed by some of our local [Oregon] federal judges:

Judge Elizabeth Perris, one of Oregons highly regarded federal bankruptcy judges, noted inan unpublished opinion , [link may be temporarily down PCQ] that the relationship betweenMERS and *one if its member banks+ was akin to a straw man.
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Judge Garr King, another well respected federal judge for the Ninth District, quoting JudgePerr is strawman analogy, concluded that a borrowers argument that MERS had created asplit note problem, was at least initially persuaded the [plaintiff-borrower] has a likelihoodof success on the merits .

Judge Michael Hogan, another long time federal judge for the Ninth District, recently concluded

that the foreclosing lenders failure to record all of the intervening assignments of trust deed, inviolation of ORS 86.735(1), was fatal to MERS' motion for summary judgment filed against aborrower facing foreclosure.

And most recently, In Re: McCoy , in which Chief Bankruptcy Judge Frank R. Alley, III dismissedthe adversary proceeding brought by MERS and US Bank NA, holding that the beneficiarysright to foreclose non-judicially is limited by Oregon law 86.735(1 ) which requires the recordingof all trust deed assignments.

Finally, heres perhaps the greatest conundrum of them all: Unquestionably, in recent years leading upto the collapse of the credit markets, billions of dollars of residential loans were made and promptlysecuritized into the private label secondary market. According to the Pooling and Servicing Agreements("PSAs") governing the trusts holding these pooled loans, each mortgage and each promissory note hadto be irrevocably and physically transferred into them before the Cut-Off Date identified in the REMIC'sPooling and Servicing Agreement - which is generally no longer than six months after the REMIC wascreated. Once in, subject to limited exceptions, that is where the mortgages must stay.

But if this is so, why do we see - shortly before a foreclosure is commenced, but years after the loan wasmade - the bank that first originated the loan assigning it into the REMIC today for its trustee toforeclose? If the loan was actually transferred into the trust when it was supposed to have beenaccording to the PSA and prospectus, the originating lender has nothing to transfer today. And if itwasn't transferred by assignment when it should have been, then the REMIC trustee conducting theforeclosure today is doing so for a mortgage over which it has no present authority (since it was notinside the trust before the Cut-Off Date). And why do we see assignments from originating lenders to

other lenders who are not REMIC trustees, for purpose of handling foreclosures today, if we know thatthe loan had supposedly been deposited into a REMIC years before (as represented in the prospectus)?In short, loans that are legally INSIDE the trust by its Cut-Off Date may be foreclosed by the trustee, and

those OUTSIDE the trust by its Cut-Off Date may not.

How can the lenders, the private foreclosure trustees, and bank attorneys, turn a blind eye to this entirecharade? Or are they simply betting that they can outspend anyone who raises these issues as adefense against their own foreclosure?

Is MERS a Good Strawman or Bad Strawman? I suppose it all depends on which side of the streetyoure walking. There is no question that MERS has streamlined [their word, not mine - PCQ] theprocess by which loans are transferred. It uses 21 st century computing to replace the manual recordingmethods brought to this country from England centuries ago. But whether intentional or not, byignoring the time-tested and legally recognized system of public recording, MERS has created theopportunity for its lender-members to play fast and loose with how loans are transferred today.Remember, MERS is nothing more than the alter ego of its members. The result is that many, if not

most, of the foreclosures conducted in Oregon and elsewhere over the last few years, appear to haveignored some of the basic and fundamental legal rights of our citizens. People must speak up.

QUERIN LAW, LLC
http://media.oregonlive.com/finance/other/King_ruling.pdfhttp://media.oregonlive.com/finance/other/King_ruling.pdfhttp://media.oregonlive.com/finance/other/King_ruling.pdfhttp://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://www.q-law.com/?p=1385http://www.q-law.com/?p=1385http://www.q-law.com/?p=1385https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735http://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttp://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttp://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttp://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttp://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttp://www.q-law.com/glossary_p.asphttps://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/86.735http://www.q-law.com/?p=1385http://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://dockets.justia.com/docket/oregon/ordce/6:2009cv06244/94446/http://media.oregonlive.com/finance/other/King_ruling.pdfhttp://media.oregonlive.com/finance/other/King_ruling.pdf

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