Foreclosure fees has local judge steaming mad

five area lawyers have their own date in court later on this month a Pasco County judge is demanding to know why in many cases law firms are serving families who are being foreclosed on over and over again with the same paperwork as chief investigator Alan Cohen revealed it may be all of us or paying the bill bill Lazar Oni is losing his Clearwater home to foreclosure and there is nothing funny about it except these summonses officially notifying him and his wife and their unknown spouses of the bank's intention to take their home how many wives do you have by the way just one the unknown spouse is truly unknown Lazaro Lee's lawyer says this is an example of the exasperating increasingly standard industry procedure that is costing you the taxpayer millions and millions of dollars these costs are costs that every taxpayer every homeowners paying because we are subsidizing these loans and the cost of this litigation the Tampa Bay's floor the default Law Group which is handling the foreclosure of the Lazaro NEAs home for Wells Fargo not only serve bill Lazaro knee and his wife Donella at forty five dollars a pop they also serve bills unknown spouse and Daniela's unknown spouse and another forty five dollars each and then they serve the couples for unknown tenants at forty dollars a pop did you and your wife have any children we had no children and several days after serving leather on these wife in this very living room a process server attempted to serve her again at several locations around Clearwater yes at forty five dollars a pop in the end there were a total of 12 charges for a home owned by two people total cost five hundred and fifteen dollars for a job the Lazaro knees lawyer says should have cost less than a hundred bucks no bill Lazar only situation is not a joke it is also not unique so much so that one local judge says she has had enough I'm just not gonna tolerate it Pasco County Circuit Court Judge Susan Gardner isn't overseeing the Lazzaro knees foreclosure but in 11 out of 12 cases she is reviewed she is disgu what appears to be inflated charges for process serving that's why I've put my foot down I've seen up to sixteen or eighteen hundred dollars for a single case she says when you multiply that by the volume that we've got we're not talking about a couple hundred dollars here and there what we're talking about a lot of money Gardner is ordering lawyers from several firms including Florida default law to appear before her next month with explanations in the statement to ABC Action News the firm's Managing Partner says his law practice has no financial stake in the process servers it uses and that the firm will submit a response to judge Gardner together with supporting documentation as for Bill Lazaro knee he is now going after the bank going after him his attorney trying to get the foreclosure case dismissed based on fraud when it comes to the multiple summons you called it fraud yes those are big words and frankly when you look at the specific facts of that case I cannot conceive of any explanation other than fraud Florida default law is also being investigated by the state attorney general's office as part of a broader probe into how some law firms are handling foreclosure cases if you have a story that needs to be investigated email us at investigations at ABC Action News com Alan Cohn ABC Action News

Channel: ABC Action News

Views: 1,765,771

Rating: 4.7035122 out of 5

Keywords: foreclosure, fees, local, news

Id: zM2r9zCtFxQ

Length: 3min 41sec (221 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2010