by David Dayen
Publicly, Democratic leaders dismissed Lisa’s challenge as a trivial sideshow. Behind the scenes, Mark Alan Siegel tried relentlessly to dissuade Lisa from running. They held meetings over the phone, at Democratic club meetings, at a local Cracker Barrel. Siegel once took out a map of Florida and suggested Lisa should pursue a state House seat instead. “We need your voice in Tallahassee,” Siegel said. He set up calls with the head of the state Democratic campaign committee.
Lisa asked Lynn how she could travel back and forth to Tallahassee, with Jenna about to start kindergarten.
“Why would you be going to Tallahassee?”
“Well, maybe I want that job instead of clerk of courts.”
“What job?”
The night before the filing deadline, Siegel and Sharon Bock met with Lisa until ten o’clock. Lisa brought a strategy document full of initiatives, from publishing a list of known robo-signers to working with other clerks to ensure accuracy of the land records. After insisting to the media that clerk of courts was merely a ministerial position without the capacity for activism, Sharon shifted course and vowed to turn her office into a crime-fighting unit. “You’ve brought this to our attention now,” she said to Lisa. “Lynn can write up an action plan. And you can be in charge of it, as long as you drop out.”
They were convincing Lisa of something she already wanted to do. All the stress of campaigning would go away. Maybe she and Sharon could even make progress. But one of Lisa’s key backers was an activist named Maria Cole, who sold her dental practice to get involved in politics full-time. Maria’s mother, whom Lisa only knew as Mama Cole, wouldn’t abide by Lisa’s wavering, telling her, “You cannot back out, you raised this money, you told people you were going to run.”
On deadline day, Lisa and Michael arrived at the county elections office, across from a shopping mall at the corner of Military Trail and Gun Club Road, a quintessentially Floridian destination. She entered the office with her paperwork and filing fee. Mark Alan Siegel accosted Lisa in the lobby, physically blocking her path to the filing window. It was 10:30 a.m.; the deadline was noon.
Siegel, normally a grandfatherly figure, berated Lisa for forty-five minutes, his tactics shifting from charm to intimidation, carrot to stick. “You don’t want to do this,” he warned. “You don’t know what political campaigns are like. We’re going to make sure you regret this. We’re going to tear you apart. In politics, anything goes, and you’re not up for it.”
“Please, Mr. Siegel, I’ve made my decision—”
“All those supporters who want you to run for office? They’re like spectators in the Colosseum and they’re going to applaud when you get thrown to the lions!”
Finally an employee of the supervisor’s office rescued Lisa, escorting her back to pay the filing fee. Lisa was amazed at how far Palm Beach County Democrats would go to snuff out challenges to their power. They didn’t call it “Corruption County” for nothing. After leaving the office Lisa gave a brief interview to awaiting news cameras—“our public land records have been defiled and unauthenticated with massive fraud by the banking industry”—and then, as a courtesy, called Sharon Bock to let her know she was running. Sharon was at the airport, about to leave for vacation. And she started screaming. The CBS affiliate captured the animated conversation on camera. In one ear, Lisa heard Sharon ranting; in the other, she could hear the news team whispering, “We believe she is talking to her opponent.” They tried to get Lisa’s “campaign representative”—Michael—to give a statement. He kept quiet.
Siegel told the Palm Beach Post that the primary would “damage Lisa Epstein as the voice of the dispossessed. Now she’s just another candidate for office.”
One sultry May morning, Lynn Szymoniak checked her bank account balance and noticed several extra zeroes. She called out to Zach and Molly, “You know that money I told you about? It’s here.”
Lynn had to pay her lawyers as well as taxes. The net result was $5.5 million. She was never in this to make money; banking on profiting from two years of researching fraudulent mortgage documents would have been the worst get-rich-quick scheme imaginable. But after not knowing whether she could pay the light bill, Lynn was happy to get some peace of mind. She took the family to Maui, a pause from the fight. When they got back, she told her kids that each of them could have a car, but only something sensible, “not something that ends in a vowel like Lamborghini.” Lynn bought a Buick.
Lynn began talking to Lisa and Michael about a nonprofit organization, something that would enable them to influence housing issues. Lynn could oversee it and Lisa and Michael could run it. Michael had no cash flow except for 4closureFraud Google ads, so he was all for it. But it never progressed past initial discussions.
The first money Lynn donated was a quiet tribute to her father, who’d shuttled between mental hospitals most of his adult life after serving in the Marine Corps. Angel Fire was a local organization that worked with disabled veterans, taking them hunting and fishing. She gave them $220,000. Plenty of people had ideas for the remainder. Because the National Mortgage Settlement immunized document fraud from prosecution, it unclogged the drain of foreclosure cases in many state courts. Foreclosure filings rose 85 percent in south Florida in March 2012 alone. And those desperate homeowners found Lynn. They used to ask for help; now they just asked for money. Lynn did quietly fund relocation expenses for a handful of homeowners. But people usually wanted more—a house, a car, a job. And because the entire world knew the contents of Lynn’s bank account, any attempt to say no would be met with rage. They called her selfish, ignorant, merciless, and crude. Lynn had a bleeding heart, but not enough resources to help everyone with a story.
A woman emailed Lynn one day asking for $50,000 for a documentary that would blow the lid off bank malfeasance and save democracy. Lynn declined, and the woman demanded to know how she was spending her money. Then she threatened to have her crew call Lynn every day, tying up her phone lines and making her life miserable. The accelerated evolution from contrition to anger was a feature of Lynn’s post-settlement correspondence.
Lynn’s biggest expenses involved putting to rest her everlasting legal battles. The condo was relatively easy: it sat dormant since David J. Stern dropped the case, so she just paid it off. But the house on Man O’ War Road was more of a challenge. In February, before the settlement news leaked, Lynn requested a payoff figure from Deutsche Bank, and attorney’s fees were $12,000. But a month later, after the press release, suddenly Akerman Senterfitt demanded $267,000. Lynn disputed the charges; she wanted the law firm sanctioned for tampering with the allonge, not granted a windfall. The Akerman lawyers argued that the complexities of the case required hundreds of man-hours. The retired judge at the hearing seemed bored until he looked at Lynn for a minute, finally exclaiming, “Oh, this is that 60 Minutes woman! No wonder they want a lot of money!”
After watching Lynn resist their extortion attempt, Akerman offered to drop the claim if Lynn included a non-disparagement provision. Mark Cullen told Lynn, “You can’t do that; you’re incapable of not opening your mouth!” Finally Akerman and Lynn agreed to an undisclosed settlement to pay off the mortgage. It was the 274th and final docket entry in the case of the home on Man O’ War Road. Four years after it began, it was all over.
The Democratic machine in Palm Beach County didn’t have to worry so much about Lisa Epstein’s clerk of courts challenge. They had incumbency, most of the money, most of the endorsements, and party stalwarts who did as they were told every election. Lisa had $25,000 in donations, a handful of volunteers, the energy to crisscross the county for multiple events every day, and Jenna, now five years old and a junior campaign manager. Lisa would take Jenna along to candidate meet-and-greet events, and Jenna would push her: “Go talk about foreclosure fraud Mama!” One night Lisa was trying to get her daughter into the bathtub. Jenna stood up, put her hands on her hips, and said, “If you make me take a bath, I’m going to vote for Sharon Bock!”
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nbsp; Through campaigning, Lisa enjoyed a behind-the-veil glance into the smallness of American politics. A man at the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce in a $3,000 suit yelled at her for thirty minutes that the foreclosure crisis was “all Barney Frank’s fault.” The local chapter of the National Organization for Women asked for Lisa’s position on parental notification for sixteen-year-olds wanting an abortion, and when she meekly mentioned that the clerk of courts had no jurisdiction over reproductive policy, the ladies shouted at her, too.
All the candidate meetings, debates, endorsement lunches, media appearances, door-to-door pleading, and retail campaigning only reached a sliver of the population. Most people had little interest in an end-of-the-ballot primary, except for the community of online foreclosure activists. Steve Dibert trashed Lisa as “a joke” who believes that “everyone is entitled to a free house and that the American banking system must be destroyed.” Even at Foreclosure Hamlet, where frustration at the lack of action against banks boiled over, members created a splinter site, accusing Lisa of taking too much credit and abandoning the cause. Lisa wondered where these people got the time to worry about her. It was the kind of down-and-dirty stuff Mark Alan Siegel warned her about, but it didn’t come from the Democratic Party; it came from her own community.
Late in the campaign, someone approached Lisa at a campaign event. “You should check out what’s happening in the evidence room,” the person said, and then quickly walked away. As clerk of courts, Sharon Bock ran the evidence room at the county courthouse. Lisa heard rumors about missing evidence, but nobody could confirm anything, so she never acted on it. A week after Election Day the Palm Beach Post, which had endorsed Sharon Bock, ran the story. Three clerks were under criminal investigation for stealing more than a thousand oxycodone pills from the evidence room and selling them on the black market. Bock knew about the case, having suspended the employees two months earlier. Michael accused the Post of sitting on the story.
Lisa got the news at her election night party, August 14, 2012, at Brogues Boomerang Bar in Lake Worth, an Irish pub owned by Australians. Sharon Bock won, 76 percent to 24 percent. But Lisa was proud to have received 27,003 votes from people from all over the county who heard her message. In a short speech Lisa thanked campaign staff and volunteers, everyone who helped and supported her. She could barely conceal her excitement that the race was ending.
A couple of days after Election Day, Lisa was on the phone about some foreclosure-related issue, and Jenna tugged at her shirt. “Why are you still talking about foreclosure fraud, Mama? Sharon Bock won!” Lisa had to admit that Jenna was right. She was exhausted, not just from campaigning but from living on three hours of sleep a night for years. She sacrificed everything—her job, her personal life, even motherhood—for this mission. It was time to pass the baton. She made the decision with serenity. She could answer that inner voice and finally say she was done.
As Lisa stepped away, Lynn sent in her check to Deutsche Bank, closing a chapter in her life, too. A year later, on July 22, 2013, Akerman Senterfitt finally executed an official release of mortgage lien, filing it with Sharon Bock at the office of the clerk of courts, Book 26197, Page 1091. Signing for Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee for the certificate holders of Soundview Home Loan Trust 2006-OPT2, was a vice president named Leticia Arias. Lynn smiled. Leticia Arias was a known robo-signer.
EPILOGUE
On the alphabet streets in Lake Worth, houses are dotted with black mold. Others have buckled roofs, interiors gutted by fire, or stripped wiring. Pests and critters move in as people move out. Half the homes have busted windows, and No Trespassing/No Traspasar signs in English and Spanish are ubiquitous. “Those are to keep the drug sales out,” says my tour guide, Lynn Szymoniak. “I’ve been stopped doing these tours. Cops have told me, ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ ”
Lynn runs this circuit for journalists, filmmakers, or anyone interested in battered monuments to the foreclosure crisis; sometimes she drives by herself. She checks on that yellow Deutsche Bank house, the site of all those protests; it’s still boarded up. Homes in this neighborhood went for $300,000 at the top of the bubble. Prices are now one-third of that, and some will never be sold again; Lake Worth recently got funds to bulldoze the worst of the worst. “You can find whole blocks gone here,” Lynn told me. “It’s like a flu spread and everybody had to leave.”
Back at the Intracoastal Waterway, we reach the thirteenth-floor offices of Lynn’s organization, the Housing Justice Foundation. The same high-rise houses the local headquarters for SunTrust, a regional bank that paid fines for robo-signing and servicing abuse in 2014, as well as local offices for the FBI. Lynn figures the FBI’s presence makes it secure from break-ins. She has a spectacular view of downtown Palm Beach, but it’s only twelve hundred square feet for four employees and all the files.
Lynn runs the foundation with her two sons, Zach and Mark Elliot, and Mark Elliot’s wife, Rachael. They call it a research and education nonprofit, dedicated to investigation and awareness of foreclosure fraud. Even after the settlements, there’s plenty to be aware of, because every day in America, families get thrown out of their homes based on false documents. And no regulator, politician, public prosecutor, or federal judge manages to care. They’ve collectively decided to pretend the ruination of a three-hundred-year-old property records system never happened. Like the Amazing Mystico and the block of flats, everyone believes in the Great Foreclosure Machine again.
Exhibit A: Brent Bentrim of Charleston, South Carolina, hit with foreclosure actions from multiple servicers since 2008, despite never missing a payment. Wachovia and then Wells Fargo repeatedly misapplied payments, illegally charged penalty-rate interest, force-placed insurance, and altered the principal balance. Wells Fargo filed a lost note affidavit, then found the “original” note, which showed a completely different bank as the lender, without a chain of title extending to Wells Fargo. Bentrim is still in court; the most recent docket item was March 2015, seven years from the initial filing.
Exhibit B: An email conversation accidentally filed in the case of Abby Lopez, Lisa Epstein’s former neighbor from Gazetta Way. In the email, LPS employee Nicolas Leonhard tells his supervisor that the plaintiff on the complaint, HSBC, doesn’t match the name in their loan system, Bank of America. Instead of stopping the foreclosure, the supervisor tells Leonhard to simply deed the house over to Bank of America after the foreclosure sale to HSBC. Problem solved. Lawyers for HSBC tried to have the email records purged, but failed.
Exhibit C: Phoenix Light v. JPMorgan Chase, a 2013 case where investors surveyed the transfer history for 274 loans in JPMAC 2006-WMC4 mortgage-backed trusts, finding that none of the mortgages and notes were conveyed properly before the closing date, making the trust not backed by mortgages (securitization FAIL) and liable for a 100 percent penalty for violating REMIC tax status. A 2012 case against Barclays Bank looked at three other securitizations, similarly discovering that 99 percent of the mortgages were either unassigned to the trusts or assigned improperly.
And so on.
Lynn was actually cited in the Phoenix Light case. At the Housing Justice Foundation, she showed me thousands of files in pull-out stacks, cross-referenced by bank and trust. More get added every day, projects documenting bankrupt mortgage trusts and abandoned homes and phony note endorsements. If someone were doomed to an eternity of meticulously accounting unpunished crimes, the work product would resemble the contents of this room.
I got to see the famous poster boards, and two pictures of Lynn, one with President Obama and the other with Vice President Biden. During the 2012 election, she got to meet both of them, thanks to her lawyer and Democratic power player Dick Harpootlian. “This is the woman who sues the banks,” Harpootlian said, introducing Lynn to Biden. Lynn mentioned Biden’s son Beau, the Delaware attorney general, and the vice president beamed, saying, “You know you’re a success when your children are better people than you are.” Beau Biden di
ed of brain cancer three years later.
Lynn paid her way into the Obama meeting, a small fund-raising lunch in Atlanta. The president, who told 60 Minutes eight months after Lynn’s appearance on that show that “some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn’t illegal,” greeted everyone in the room warmly. Lynn expressed her disappointments on the failure to prosecute. Obama, like all great politicians, said what Lynn wanted to hear, stressing the need for more principal reductions and an end to predatory mortgage practices. After the lunch, Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed thanked Lynn for asking her question, telling her about all his city’s foreclosure problems. Lynn thought, Well, why didn’t you say anything?
In addition to research, the Housing Justice Foundation issues grants to organizations focused on foreclosures, from the Florida First Amendment Foundation to Occupy Our Homes, which sprouted nearly a dozen chapters focused on eviction defense. In 2013, with help from Lisa and Michael, Lynn convened a nationwide Occupy Our Homes conference at the foundation offices, empowering them with detailed information about fraud. Through direct action, Occupy Our Homes saved and continues to save hundreds of homeowners from eviction. They never reached a scale to truly pressure the banks, but they haven’t relented.
Nearly every day, homeowners plead with Lynn for help, praising her like she was Mother Teresa. When she informs them there isn’t much she can do, they conclude she’s as bad as Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO. Enduring a daily barrage of inchoate rage exposed Lynn to the depths of human desperation, and she started blaming herself for snuffing out people’s hope, closing off avenues of escape. The vitriol would have dimmed her view of human nature if it wasn’t already pretty low.