SHUTTING THE DOOR ON DUE PROCESS: HOWARD GRABER AND REASONABLE DOUBT

(For more on this story and to help out, sign the petition found at “Don’t Convict Disabled Howard A. Graber, He Is A Victim Of Foreclosure Fraud!“)

Story by: Clinton Kirby
Published: January 24, 2014

In his upcoming trial this Monday, January 27, Howard A. Graber faces 170 years in prison for 10 counts of what the state of Georgia has called “mortgage fraud” and “forgery.” That is almost two centuries of imprisonment, more time than he’d get if he’d killed someone. But he didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t hurt anyone. He never lifted a hand against anyone. So if he is facing more jail time than a first-degree murderer, he must have done something awful, right, like worse than murder?

The answer to that question: hardly. Of course not. Hogwash.

What he did is try to save his home from foreclosure after losing a lucrative job as a Network and Sales Engineer, suffering a debilitating stroke, and trying to make it on just his disability income. He had sued M & T Bank to stop the foreclosure but to no avail, as detailed here:

“Lateef Bey, an associate who met the couple in homeowners and foreclosure protection meetings, said they’d filed a counter-affidavit* in Gwinnett State Court in the belief they’d been denied due process.

A copy of that document was taped to the Grabers’ front-door and sent to high-ranking sheriff’s department officials, Bey said. By forcefully entering the home, Bey feels deputies exceeded their authority and failed to abide by Georgia code.

‘I think that this is a very sad day. Tomorrow it could be your home,’ Bey said. ‘We live in a state of tyranny if we can’t get our rights enforced.’”

So in a typical display of police-state gross overreaction, a SWAT team was sent to evict the Grabers from their home in Duluth. What followed was an hours-long standoff between a locked and loaded SWAT team and a disabled man and his caregiver wife. Upon entering the Graber house, Graber’s wife Nova-Lee was tasered, according to news reports.

Unfortunately, this has become the new “normal”: breadwinner loses job, has health crisis, falls behind on mortgage, bank ultimately doesn’t do anything to help out the homeowner, the courts don’t either, so broke, frustrated, disabled, scared homeowner gets forcibly evicted by men with machine guns. OK, wait a second-maybe that very last part about the men with machine guns isn’t so typical. Most people in the Grabers’ situation just hang their heads and walk away in shame and the SWAT team never has to step one jackboot out of their armored vehicles.

But that’s what separates the Grabers from most people facing foreclosure and helps explain why the state of Georgia is coming after them like the hounds of hell: they fought back. And the individual who will stand up for himself or herself is the biggest threat the state faces. That can’t be allowed—examples must be made.

The documents tell the tale—or do they?

Now comes the part of the Grabers’ story where some people may be tempted to withdraw their sympathy and understanding. This is the part where the Grabers dared to do what the banks do all day long, every day—file documents of dubious legality in the county land records. These documents were filed in January 2010, almost 8 months before the Grabers’ run-in with the SWAT team, with the exception of amendments to two of the documents, which were filed in November 2010.

So what were these documents that the Grabers dared to file? Without getting too specific, the documents were styled as a satisfaction of the Grabers’ mortgage, reconveyance of the property to the Grabers, and so on. And these documents were signed by Graber himself as an agent of M & T Bank, the lender named in his promissory note.

At this point, one might well ask: why shouldn’t Graber be punished for filing such documents? After all, if all one has to do is take it upon oneself to file a satisfaction of mortgage which purports to be from one’s lender, what’s to stop everyone from doing that? The banks would never get their money back! Almost two centuries in jail is too good for Howard A. Graber!

The banks do it, no problem

Well, aside from the issues involving the fact that all banks create money out of thin air and that what we currently call “promissory notes” are really checks from borrowers to lenders rather than the other way around, there’s this small problem: the banks do this stuff all the time. Case in point—Lorraine Brown of DocX.

According to the New York Times, Brown “admitted to participating in the falsification of more than a million documents.” Yes, you read that right–she participated in the falsification of more than one million documents. And these documents were produced at the behest of banks that hired Brown and her company to produce admittedly false documents that were then filed in county land records all over the country and used as evidence in court cases.

In other words, Howard A. Graber only did what Lorraine Brown did. But he did it on a much, much, much smaller scale. And he only did it with documents pertaining to his own home. And, as will be discussed below, there is a legitimate argument that Graber’s documents are not false, thereby creating reasonable doubt in his case. So is Lorraine Brown going to jail for 170 years? Do we even have to ask? No, Lorraine Brown will not be serving 170 years for falsifying over one million documents—that was never even in the cards (from the same New York Times article):

“In the federal case, she could face a minimum of probation and a maximum of five years in prison. In the Missouri matter, she could receive a sentence of two to three years. But if she receives a federal sentence of probation or fewer than two years in prison, Mr. Koster said, she would be obligated to serve at least two years in Missouri.”

Well, as it turns out, she got the maximum sentence: 5 years in prison for the federal offenses and two 3-year sentences in Missouri that she will serve concurrently with the federal sentence. Not even close to 170 years.

What the hell? Or, why not 5 million years?

So what have we learned, then? What is our illegitimate corporate government trying to “teach” us in all this? Well, the lesson I take from it is this: if you’re gonna commit fraud on the land records, commit a really gigantic fraud because if/when you get caught, you’ll get 5 years at the most. It seems that if the goal of our corporate state were to offer equal protection of the laws, then Lorraine Brown would be facing a geologic era in prison: over 5 million years; 5 years for each falsified document. But no, she’s only getting 5 years while Howard Graber faces 170 years.

There is reasonable doubt that Howard Graber committed fraud

And for those who might have the sneaking suspicion that Howard Graber committed fraud by filing his various documents in the land records, I say: prove it. Is Howard Graber (or anyone else, for that matter) any more or less of an agent of M & T Bank Corp. than an employee of M & T Bank’s alleged servicer who would call themselves a “vice president” of MERS when doing an assignment from M & T at the time of foreclosure? I mean, in real terms, Graber is no more or less of an agent than that “vice president,” but Graber gets charged with crimes while the MERS/M & T “vice president” has nothing to worry about.

Furthermore, given the myriad known and admitted problems with securitization (for starters, see this,  this, and this) did M & T Bank actually have any interest at all in Howard Graber’s house? Did they or their agent or assignee or successor-in-interest actually hold Graber’s promissory note and/or have the right to enforce that promissory note? That’s a perfectly legitimate question, and one that should damn well be answered before Graber is thrown under the jail for 170 years. The only way that Howard Graber can be said to have committed “mortgage fraud” is if the documents he filed are actually false. And proving that Graber’s documents are in fact false is what the state of Georgia should have to do. That would be very interesting to see: can the state of Georgia prove, beyond a reasonable doubt (the standard in a criminal case), that M & T Bank—or any bank or investor—had a legitimate, properly-documented interest in Howard Graber’s house?

And the answer to that is: hell no, the state of Georgia can’t prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. No one can. Indeed, given that Lorraine Brown’s company DocX (you know, the one that admitted to putting over a million falsified documents into the public records) was located in Alpharetta–which is right next door to Graber’s town of Duluth–how can we know for sure that Graber’s chain of title wasn’t poisoned with fake documents produced by DocX? Are we to believe that DocX, a local Georgia company, never got called on to commit document fraud in places where they could send falsified documents over by bike messenger? Come on—that beggars belief. And by the way, as an aside, let us point out here that when Lorraine Brown admitted to falsifying over a million documents, that could mean (and almost certainly does mean) that 10 million documents were falsified. Or 20 million. Or many more. Notice that you never hear about the top end of the estimated range of falsified documents—just the bottom end.

It is the banks who are committing the fraud and desperate to steal

So in the end, we can easily see that it is the banks—and not homeowners like Howard Graber—who are desperate to steal homes and defraud the land records. Indeed, the banks know full well that fraud and falsified documents are the only way they can foreclose. There is no other explanation for why they would do it, and do it on a scale which is orders of magnitude greater than Howard A. Graber could ever think about doing. Not only that, this paper terrorism of the banks via DocX is openly admitted. Yet Howard A. Graber is the one who faces 170 years in jail because he knew about the bank fraud and tried to do something about it.

Would I have done what he did? No, I wouldn’t have. Would I recommend anyone else doing what he did with the land records? No, I certainly wouldn’t. At this point, I don’t think even Howard A. Graber would recommend doing what he did, and he shouldn’t have had to even contemplate doing it. But many others have done what Graber did. Some of them are facing adverse consequences like Graber (Barbara Bratton in California comes to mind), yet some of them are not.

And the point is, something has to be done. The banks are openly committing mortgage fraud and the courts are allowing it (with so few exceptions to that rule that it’s hardly worth mentioning). People are losing their homes and their livelihoods in this bank crime spree and the powers that be should be glad that all people are doing so far is trying to use paper (whether in the courts or in the land records—or both) to get their property back or keep it, because the alternative is very ugly for everyone involved. Howard A. Graber at least had the courage to do something about being ripped off and he obviously does not deserve 170 years behind bars.

Graber summed up his situation thusly: “The most important thing you have to recognize in all of this is how Georgia—a non-judicial state–has shut the doors on due process.” Frankly, he’s right, and the last part of that statement applies to the entire country–the doors to due process have indeed been shut, padlocked, welded together, boarded up, and then fitted with booby traps. But only for homeowners. The doors to due process for the banks are wide open. Hell, the doors to “due process” for the banks have been taken off their hinges and the doorframe widened to accommodate the biggest possible amounts of fraud and deception the banks want to bring in. Is everybody OK with that? Howard A. Graber wasn’t and isn’t. God help us.

(For more on this story and to help out, sign the petition found at “Don’t Convict Disabled Howard A. Graber, He Is A Victim Of Foreclosure Fraud!“)

*Excerpt from Georgia code:
“O.C.G.A. § 44-11-32 – If the party in possession submits a counter affidavit as provided in Code Section 44-11-30, the Sheriff shall not turn him out of possession but shall leave both parties in their respective positions. In such an event, the Sheriff shall return both affidavits to the office of the clerk of the superior court of the county in which the land is located for a trial of the issue before a jury in accordance with the laws of this State.“

How you can help:
Graber’s trial is this coming Monday, January 27, 2014.  Tell Judge Warren Davis to let disabled Howard A. Graber go!

Judge Warren Davis
Phone:(770) 822-8041
Fax:(770) 822-8535

Judicial Assistant
Bahar M. Graveran
Phone: (770) 822-8043
Fax: (770) 822-8535

Calendar Coordinator
Angela D Woodruff
Phone: (770) 822-8044
Fax: (770) 822-8535

Staff Attorney
Karen Bain
Phone: (770) 822-8045
Fax: (770) 822-8535

Court Reporter
Christine Clark
Phone: (770) 822-8675
Fax: (770) 822-8535