Mortgage Fraud
Law Offices of David J. Stern
ProVest
PTA
Action Date: January 4, 2012
Location: FT. Lauderdale, FL
In the lawsuit filed by DJSP Enterprises against David J. Stern and the Law Offices of David J. Stern, there are also allegations involving ProVest, the process server used by Stern and most of the other major foreclosure mills hired by Lender Processing Services in over 20 states.
The allegations regarding ProVest are found in paragraphs 36-38:
36. Prior to the Transaction, the Seller Defendants also knowingly and systematically inflated their process of service costs to the Court. Specifically, Seller Defendants engineered a fraudulent scheme whereby they directed their process servicing work to a process servicing company called ProVest. The Seller Defendants caused each file to generate four or five separate fees for service of process regardless of whether service of process on multiple defendants was necessary or appropriate and regardless of whether service of process for multiple defendants could be achieved at the same address.
37. In exchange for receiving these inflated service of process fees, ProVest, in turn, routinely referred back to PTA servicing requests for “skip tracing” to locate defendants for whom ProVest purportedly did not have accurate street address information to effect service of process. ProVest “hired” and paid fees to PTA for “skip tracing” services despite the fact that ProVest had the ability and resources to perform “skip tracing” itself and routinely did so itself.
38. The Seller Defendants’ arrangement with ProVest amounted to a kickback scheme. DS Law padded and inflated its process servicing costs which were billed to its clients and added to the court costs assessed to foreclosure defendants. In exchange for feeding this work to ProVest, PTA earned manufactured “skip tracing” fees which inflated PTA’s revenues and profits and which represented another way in which the Seller Defendants artificially inflated the revenues of the Target Business prior to the Transaction.
And there is more....
Stern pocketed some $60 million from that deal. The investors got the company and all its documents, internal procedures and everything you would need in order to find out what really happened within the Stern document mill.
A little after 8 AM EST today, a filing went up on the SEC’s Edgar database. It’s a Complaint in lawsuit, dated yesterday.
The lawsuit is by the investors suing Stern for lying to them about the activities of the document mill and misleading them into believing they were buying a legitimate business instead of a criminal enterprise. Unlike a regular plaintiff or an Attorney General who is dependent on obtaining documents and information FROM the target of their ire via discovery of subpoena or search warrant, these plaintiffs apparently have all the info they need already in hand, because they bought the company.
FDL
DjspComplaint
djsp8k
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