Las Vegas Sun News3 more notaries face charges in robo-signing scandal
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5 December 2011
2:38 p.m.
Three more notaries face criminal charges in the Las Vegas-area foreclosure robo-signing scandal that erupted Nov. 16.
The Nevada Attorney General’s Office on Monday revealed criminal charges were filed Nov. 30 in Las Vegas Justice Court against notaries Meghan Shaw, Jennifer Bloecker, also know as Jennifer Lowe, and Joseph Noel. They are charged with misdemeanor counts of notarization of the signature of a person not in their presence.
The alleged violations date to 2005 and 2008, the complaint says.
The “person” named in the criminal complaints was Gerri Sheppard in the cases of Shaw and Bloecker, and Gary Trafford in the case of Noel. Sheppard and Trafford were named in an indictment made public Nov. 16.
The state alleges the California residents, employees of Lender Processing Services Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., were responsible for the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent documents with the Clark County Recorder’s Office between 2005 and 2008.
The state alleges that Trafford and Sheppard directed employees to forge the defendants’ names on foreclosure documents and then to notarize the signatures they forged, in the process fraudulently attesting that Trafford and Sheppard actually signed the documents.
While the state says the alleged scheme calls into question the validity of foreclosures associated with the documents, Lender Processing Services has said there were no wrongful foreclosures in which someone not in default on a mortgage lost a home.
Of the three notaries named in Monday’s announcement, the state said in a press release: “Through an investigation led by the Attorney General’s office the notaries charged in this case have confirmed that their job duties included signing another person’s name on a document and then notarizing that signature.”
A fourth notary public and a witness, Tracy Lawrence, pleaded guilty but was found dead prior to sentencing.
Police have not been investigating her death as a homicide, and a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said the prosecution of others in the case would continue.
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Right, because this entire scheme was due to notaries - yea, they benefited their hourly wage by robo signing.
Please, lets get real people. These notaries are being used to make it seem like they were the problem. They weren't the problem. The problem here are the big banks!
"While the state says the alleged scheme calls into question the validity of foreclosures associated with the documents, Lender Processing Services has said there were no wrongful foreclosures in which someone not in default on a mortgage lost a home."
Default is proven by the documents LPS was responsible for checking before notarizing falsely. Someone remind me why anything they say should be trusted.
It's alleged LPS and its notarial minions "were responsible for the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent documents with the Clark County Recorder's Office between 2005 and 2008." Since those documents are what state law requires for foreclosing on thousands of homes, and since LPS did not perform the actual foreclosures, I have to ask why we don't see any banks or other lenders' names mentioned. This is significant in light of our Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Torrealba v. Kesmetis: "an improperly notarized instrument is void." If it's the right document, such as an assignment or transfer, it follows the entire foreclosure is void.
In the end, what matters is what AG Masto and the state is going to do about getting those thousands of foreclosed houses back to their wrongfully-foreclosed owners.
"Why don't the banks want us to see the paperwork on all these mortgages? Because the documents represent a death sentence for them..... in America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it." -- an article from the November 25, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi "Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners"