A day after federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae fired the prominent law firm of Ben-Ezra & Katz, a Miami judge found the firm's founding partner, Marc Ben-Ezra, in contempt of court for filing "sham" foreclosure documents and "wasting the court's time."
On Thursday, Fannie Mae cited document "execution issues" as the reason it terminated the law firm.
Ben-Ezra & Katz becomes the second south Florida law firm making a mass exodus from the foreclosure business.
The Plantation law firm of David J. Stern began dumping thousands of its Fannie Mae cases late last year after evidence of robo-signing and other faulty documents became known.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maxine Cohen Lando expressed her displeasure Friday in a case that involved a property in Homestead with a $265,134 foreclosure judgment issued in July.
Lando said the so-called original note and original mortgage were filed months after the bank said those documents were lost.
"That in itself is a fraud upon the court," Lando wrote in an order to show cause as to why she should not hold Ben-Ezra & Katz attorneys in contempt.
But, she added, the action "pales in comparison" to the fact that the mortgage and note are to a different property in Lehigh Acres, and that the documents are improperly signed and notarized. Lando said her verbal contempt finding on Friday would be followed by a written order.
Although Marc Ben-Ezra, 44, was not the direct attorney handling the case, the homeowner's attorney Maria Mussari said the judge ordered the owner or head of the firm to appear. Ben-Ezra has no disciplinary history with the Florida Bar.
The judge dismissed the foreclosure case and banned the lender from re-filing it.
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