Another installment of the "Five minute mortgage fraud investigation" and learning to master the obvious...

It's that easy folks! Yesterday we left off with a troubling deed that we found on the Miami Dade County clerk of courts website that involved a company owned by convicted mortgage fraudster John Romney. We asked our readers to take a good look at the document and see what didn't seem kosher about it. Here's the document again...

The document is simple enough, a simple deed from the seller, Raul Romero, to the buyer, Property Collateral Inc which is owned by John Romney.

Let's start with the most obvious problem with this document, the dates. From the notary section on page two we see that a notary named Aned Perdomo notarized this deed on November 21, 2006, no problem right?

But then a closer look at the top right of the first page reveals that the deed wasn't recorded till nearly four years later!

WTF is that about? Why wouldn't the closing agent record the deed right after the closing?

Moving on, we can also deduce the sales price of the home to Property Collateral through the documentary stamps, in this case based on the clerks stamp it looks like the doc stamps were $4,530.00. In Dade county the doc stamps are calculated at the rate of 60 cents per hundred dollars of the sales price, so in this instance based on the doc stamps the sales price of the home would have been $755,000. So far so good right?


What's troubling is that after another search of the County Recorders Office we can't seem to find a mortgage for Property Collateral's purchase of this property which means that it must have been paid for in cash. Interesting, let's go back to the recorders office website and see if we find anything else regarding this property...

HUH? Check the item high lighted in yellow, it's a lis pendens for this very property! According to this it looks like Deutsche Bank began foreclosure proceedings against this property on November 9, 2009. Let's take a look at that document...

How can you file a lis pendens in 2009 when the deed wasn't recorded till 2010? This must mean that there was a mortgage somewhere between November 21, 2006 when Property Collateral aquired the property and November 4, 2009 when the foreclosure action was initiated. So where's this mortgage? It can't be in Property Collateral's name otherwise we would have seen it when we searched the County Recorders website. What now? Let's take another look at this Lis Pendens, specifically who's being sued...

Perhaps searching the recorders website using one of these other defendants names will provide a clue as to what's going on. Let's give it a shot...

Bingo, now we find another lis pendens for the same property that didn't appear in our previous search, one that was filed a little over a year before the others. Huh?! Let's take a look at the document...

JEEZE! Let's take a look at the defendants...

DAMN! They're suing everyone and their brother! At the very least we can identify Raul Romero as being the guy who sold the property to Property Collateral, but who the hell is "Leonor Essonreid"?

This is where things get really interesting, back to the County Recorders website and a quick search for Leonor Essonreid...

Viola, there you have it. Two mortgages for the same property apparently recorded after Property Collateral aka John Romney purchased the property or so it seems...

The next part gets real good, we'll discuss on Monday.