{"id":23625,"date":"2014-10-23T08:48:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T12:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=23625"},"modified":"2014-10-23T08:48:05","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T12:48:05","slug":"loughery-files-suit-against-banks-on-recording-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=23625","title":{"rendered":"Loughery files suit against banks on recording fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chester County seeks $10M in fees not paid on mortgages<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"RickLoughery\"<\/a>

Rick Loughery, Chester County Recorder of Deeds.<\/p><\/div>\n

WEST CHESTER \u2014 Chester County Recorder of Deeds Richard Loughery announced Wednesday that he and Chester County have filed a lawsuit\u00a0against several of the nation\u2019s largest banks and others in the residential mortgage industry to\u00a0recover millions of dollars in recording fees for mortgage assignments the banks failed to record in the\u00a0County\u2019s public land records.<\/p>\n

Loughery said he estimates that as much as $10 million in recording fees may be due from the\u00a0banks.\u00a0The suit, filed on Oct. 10 in the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County, names Bank of\u00a0America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and Wells Fargo Bank, among\u00a0others, as defendants.<\/p>\n

The suit claims that the defendants conspired to circumvent the county\u2019s Recorder of Deeds\u00a0Office and evade paying recording fees by creating a private electronic registry system known as MERS\u00a0(Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) to track mortgage assignments among themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis practice violates the Commonwealth\u2019s recording laws and has caused gaps, omissions and\u00a0inaccuracies to appear in the County\u2019s land records which undermine the integrity of our public land\u00a0recording system,\u201d said Loughery in a statement.\u00a0\u201cFor hundreds of years the citizens of Chester County have relied on the accuracy and\u00a0completeness of our records to verify title to properties, trace ownership of land, and know who holds the\u00a0mortgages on their properties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from the financial implications for the county, Loughery said that individual property owners were being hurt by banks’ actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the banks\u2019 use of MERS, property owners are no longer able to verify the true identity\u00a0of the holders of their mortgages because thousands if not tens of thousands of mortgage assignments\u00a0have not been publicly recorded and do not appear in our records,\u201d Loughery said.\u00a0\u201cAs bad as the damage defendants have caused to the integrity of our public land recording\u00a0system, their failure to pay required recording fees has also hurt the county by depriving it of much needed\u00a0revenue to fund essential county services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The millions of dollars not paid by the banks, Loughery said, directly impact county taxpayers, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fees collected by my office not only maintain the operations of the Recorder\u2019s office, but\u00a0are also used in part by the county to fund children and youth initiatives, veterans\u2019 affairs, emergency\u00a0services, the operation of the Pocopson Home, and care for our seniors,\u201d said Loughery.\u00a0\u201cWithout this revenue, the county has fewer resources for programs at a time when some of these\u00a0banks are making billions of dollars in profits. I find this unconscionable and wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loughery said the suit was necessary to get the banks and other financial institutions to operate within the law.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, said Loughery, \u201chas been brought to require the banks to record every mortgage\u00a0assignment affecting title to land within the county and to recover the funds the county lost because of\u00a0the defendants\u2019 unlawful conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit is pending before Judge Jeffrey Sommer and is expected to go to trial next October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chester County seeks $10M in fees not paid on mortgages WEST CHESTER \u2014 Chester County Recorder of Deeds Richard Loughery announced Wednesday that he and Chester County have filed a lawsuit\u00a0against several of the nation\u2019s largest banks and others in the residential mortgage industry to\u00a0recover millions of dollars in recording fees for mortgage assignments the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[6284,29,1467,6286,6285,6283],"class_list":["post-23625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-banks","tag-chester-county","tag-fees","tag-lawsuit","tag-mortgages","tag-recorder-of-deeds-rick-loughery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23627,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23625\/revisions\/23627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}