The
Florida Bar has fielded nearly 1,400 complaints against attorneys relating to
the housing crisis, an unprecedented amount that has buried investigators and
forced the group to rethink how it will handle widespread grievances in the
future.
Beginning
in the fall of 2010, as foreclosures receded because of robo-signing
revelations, a wave of consumer complaints alleging attorney misconduct began
to hit the Bar.
The
complaint categories - mortgage fraud, foreclosure fraud, loan modification
misconduct - didn't even exist three years ago, said Ken Marvin, director of
lawyer regulation for the Florida Bar.
His
first recorded loan modification complaint was in November 2010. Today, 793
cases have been opened.
"They
just started coming in and the numbers were incredible," Marvin said.
"We never even had a loan modification category or mortgage fraud or
foreclosure fraud, and we had to create all of this because we wanted to track
these reliably."
The
Bar hired an additional attorney to specifically process foreclosure and
mortgage complaints, which make up about 17 percent of all open Bar cases.
"The
most important thing is to get it right," Marvin said.
As
of late March, 208 of the 1,394 housing-related cases have resulted in some
kind of disciplinary action against an attorney, which can range from a public
reprimand to disbarment.
But while foreclosure
fraud may be the most high-profile type of case following the collapse of the
Law Offices of David J. Stern last year, no punitive actions have been taken so
far against an attorney in that category. Of 377 foreclosure fraud cases
opened, 234 are still pending.
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