I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Ingham County Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel Jr. has referred a top attorney from Orlans Associates, one of Michigan’s largest mortgage foreclosure law firms, to law enforcement for a criminal investigation of allegations of robo-signing.
Hertel tells Michigan Messenger that he referred Marshall Isaacs and examples of his signatures filed at the Ingham County Register of Deeds to law enforcement because he believes Isaacs did not sign all the legal documents. Hertel declined to identify the law enforcement agencies involved, but did note that there were at least two interested in the Isaacs case.
The Isaacs allegation were first reported by Michigan Messenger earlier this month. Authorities in Massachusetts placed Isaacs on a list of likely or suspected robo-signers based on an independent analysis by a fraud investigator. At the time Messenger reported on the Massachusetts situation, Hertel said his office was taking the allegations against Isaacs “very seriously.”
Hertel made headlines earlier this year when he discovered allegedly fraudulent documents in foreclosures. Those documents were traced back to a robo-signing firm in Georgia that has since gone out of business. As a result of Hertel’s investigation Bill Schuette, Michigan Attorney General, as well as the FBI have announced investigations into mortgage foreclosure fraud schemes in the state. Schuette went so far as to issue investigative subpoenas against out of state processors earlier this year.
Robo-signing is when a bank, mortgage company or foreclosure company has multiple people sign documents with the name of the person who is supposed to sign those documents and then has them notarized as having been signed by that person. In the case of Orlans, the signer was supposed to be attorney Marshall Isaacs, but he has now been implicated in two states for having had others sign his name and notarize that he did so.
Orlans officials have denied wrong-doing on Isaacs’ behalf and claim that questionable signatures have been identified as being signed by Isaacs. However, the company refuses to allow Messenger to interview Isaacs saying, “We don’t subject our employees to that.”
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter