Yves Smith’s Plea For Votes For Lisa Epstein Puts A Serious Bite Into Her Credibility

I’m a Palm Beach County resident. I refuse to take voting advice from Yves Smith. I’m voting for Sharon Bock for Clerk of the Courts. Why? For the simple fact I like experienced public servants. Besides, she has done nothing to warrant being removed from office.

Lisa Epstein from Foreclosure Hamlet fame is not qualified for the position. There are serious questions about her. Questions that no one has bothered to ask. Namely, her connection with convicted mortgage fraudster Carol Asbury.

When I originally sat down to write this article a few weeks ago, it was going to be about how Lisa Epstein’s campaign reminded me when Homer Simpson gets into a fight with his local garbage men. As a result, he decides to run for Sanitation Commissioner.  I was going to compare the Epstein campaign to Homer Simpson’s campaign. Let’s face it, Lisa Epstein is a joke.

“I came to fight city hall. I want to shake things up, Patterson. Stir up some controversy, rattle a few cages. You’ll never silence me. I’m the last angry man.  A crusader for the little guy!”  -Homer Simpson

Yves Smith Supports Wackadoodle Activist Lisa Epstein

All Epstein is about is firing up the idiot malcontents who come to her site. They go to Foreclosure Hamlet looking for free legal help from other pro-se litigants who feed them Trotskyist conspiracy theories. She and her contributors believe that everyone is entitled to a free house. They also believe that the American banking system must be destroyed. Yet, they have idea or plan of what to replace it with.

Epstein also has the people convinced that they can play Do-It-Yourself Lawyer when it comes to foreclosure defense.

This is one of the reasons Florida is in the mess it’s in.  You have a bunch of wannabe Che Guevaras running around arguing asinine conspiracy theories and legal arguments.

Epstein Plays On People’s Paranoia 

Epstein openly encourages her subscribers to use fictitious names on Foreclosure Hamlet. Why? She promotes some wacky conspiracy theory that “banks are watching you.”

The reality is, Epstein is encouraging people to use the anonymity of the internet to commit libel. I had to contact Lisa Epstein several times. I had to threaten with legal action to remove posts that claimed I was ripped off little old ladies during my broker days. She also tried to claim that my old MFI-Mod Squad website was taking kickbacks from illegally operated loan modification companies.

None of which was true. The source of the claim was a mentally disturbed woman in California. The woman had a rap sheet the length of someone’s arm and had been in and out of mental institutions. 

Susan Webber AKA Yves Smith Writes Gushing Love Letter To Wackadoodle Lisa Epstein

On August 10, 2012, Susan Webber aka Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism wrote a gushing endorsement of Lisa Epstein. Smith even quoted misinformation Epstein has been promoting about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Apparently, Yves Smith also has a problem verifying her information. She also didn’t bother to verify Epstein’s claims before writing her piece.

In Yves Smith’s endorsement of Epstein it appears that she did a vetting of Lisa Epstein. I can understand that Smith may have some type of personal relationship Epstein but it’s unprofessional to cross that line.

I know because I have friends in politics and I juggle with that decision every election cycle. At the end of the day, I have to think about who I endorse very carefully. I have friends I will not endorse for one reason or another.

The simple fact is Lisa Epstein is not qualified to be clerk.  She is an unemployed oncology nurse with no background in the law, mortgage finance or even public administration.

Epstein Has Delusions Of Wanting To Play Super Hero

It’s also apparent that Epstein has no idea what the job entails. She wants to turn the Clerk’s office into a taxpayer funded CSI-Miami type mortgage fraud enforcement bureau.

It will be tasked with hunting down suspected mortgage fraudsters. She thinks the position will let her run the clerk’s office like she is some type of delusional Simon Wiesenthal of mortgage fraud.  

She doesn’t understand that hunting down fraudsters is the job for law enforcement not the Clerk of the Court.

The Palm Beach Post, a newspaper refused to endorse her. They called her, “well-intentioned but misguided”  

If Epstein Is Unemployed, What Is she Doing For Money?

If Lisa Epstein is an unemployed for nearly three years, what is she doing for money? She still has to put food on the table for her and her kid. Yet, she still has to pay the association fees for her posh Palm Beach condo and put gas in her car. So who’s paying for it?

I first became aware of Lisa Epstein when she emailed me asking for a donation in March of 2010:

Lisa
Epstein
ForeclosureHamlet@gmail.com
561-512-0972
Evening
Hello.  I am seeking a grant or other philanthropic funding for my work combating illegal foreclosures.  Here is a link to a little taste of my work thus far  http://ning.it/7mwtyd

Thank you for your time,
Lisa Epstein
ForeclosureHamlet.org

The link takes you to a landing page on Foreclosure Hamlet. Epstein details what the funds are going to be used for. She also openly admits she has no experience in mortgage lending or mortgage fraud investigating:

“What I do not have is credentials, contacts, money, or education in the areas of law, business, or economics; all of which would help provide a foundation for my work. I am working at warp speed to educate myself and to obtain valuable contacts. The formal credentials will have to wait.”

Lisa Who?

After receiving this email, I called several contact and associates who work at various non-profit housing agencies in both Broward and Palm Beach Counties. No one had ever heard of her. So I checked with the Florida Department of Agriculture Division of Consumer Services who regulates not-for-profit organizations. They had no record of Foreclosure Hamlet being registered.  I then checked the WHOIS database, a database that allows you to research who owns a domain and found it was registered with Domains By Proxy. Hmmmm….

I figured Lisa Epstein was just one of the many pissed off Florida homeowners. They usually want to stick it her lender. They also try to get attention by using the “last angry woman” shtick.  Besides, who would be that stupid to commit fraud by soliciting donations for an unlicensed organization.

Several weeks later, I discovered Epstein was a Neil Garfield groupie. She had been extremely tight with Garfield protege, Carol Asbury. Asbury as many of you may know is now sitting in federal prison. She pleaded guilty to operating a mortgage fraud scheme.

Epstein Starts Smear Campaign Against People Who Won’t Give Her Money

About a month after I received the email, Lisa Epstein and her contributors began posting negative and false information about people who refused to give her money. Of course, this included me and a friendly competitor of mine in California.

I called Epstein to see if we could work this out and was basically told me if I wanted the comments to be removed then I had to give her money to help her fund Foreclosure Hamlet.

Naturally, I refused. I told her point blank that I would not give her extortion money. I also informed her Foreclosure Hamlet did not have a 501(c)3 registration with the IRS.  The libelous comments continued for about two more months until my attorney contacted her and convinced her it was in her best interest to take them down.

As of the writing of this article, Foreclosure Hamlet is still not registered as a corporate entity. Nor is it registered as a Not-For-Profit with the IRS.

What Did Epstein Do With The Money She Raised?

Lisa Epstein by her own admission is unemployed. She also states she has been unemployed for nearly three years. It also appears that she is operating an unlicensed non-profit.  

My question is, where did startup funds for Foreclosure Hamlet come from? Who paid for the buses that drove protesters to two different “Rally In Tally” events that she promoted with 4closurefraud.org? What happened to the money that she and Michael Redman collected from protesters for bus fare?

Last spring, she began doing a radio show with Carol Asbury and Redman. This was paid air time. So who paid for the air time? Where did the money come from? Did it come from the money Asbury’s illegal mortgage fraud scheme? Did it come from subscribers of Foreclosure Hamlet?

These questions then lead to more questions. For example, if the money came from Asbury, what kind of financial relationship did Epstein have with convicted fraudster Asbury? If the money came from subscribers and donors to Foreclosure Hamlet, then where’s the accounting?

These are not “gotcha” questions. They are legitimate questions that as a candidate Epstein needs to answer.

After all, in 2010, Epstein along with Asbury accused Palm Beach Circuit Judges of being biased against homeowners. Why? Their 401ks are tied to the performance of Mortgage Backed Securities.  Both Asbury and Epstein accused them of benefiting from lenders illegally taking people’s homes.

Has Yves Smith Lost All Sense Of Reality?

Now it’s time for Yves Smith’s candidate Lisa Epstein to answer the question, where’s your money coming from?

You would think that a woman like Yves Smith, who spent 25 years working in banking, would ask Lisa Epstein a basic question like how she supports herself? 

I find it ironic that a woman like Yves Smith who wrote such a great book titled, ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism now approves of this kind of behavior.

Foreclosure Defense Landscape Changes Every Six Months

The landscape of the foreclosure defense industry has changed dramatically since I started MFI-Miami in 2008.  

In 2008, there were 10 attorneys in Florida doing foreclosure defense. Now there are over 700.  

From those 700 maybe 25 know what they’re doing.  The rest are just carpetbaggers hoping to salvage their legal careers by sapping a few extra dollars out of desperate homeowners.  

You also have pissed off homeowners with no training in mortgage or finance claiming to be experts in mortgage lending. Why? Because Neil Garfield told they were after attending one his 5-hour courses.

Many of these people are using the title, “advocate” to lure people in the door and then charging them to write a report based on conspiracy theories or legal nonsense they picked up off Foreclosure Hamlet or give homeowners what are essentially pages copied from Neil Garfield’s 600 page binder he hands out at his seminars.

The foreclosure activist movement is fake. I was created by people who wanted to profit from the economic crisis. It was originally created as a marketing tool for Carol Asbury and Neil Garfield.  Because of people like Asbury and Garfield, Lisa Epstein does have a sizable internet following.  

Is Smith is hoping to capitalize on this? Logically, this would be the only answer. After all, more traffic means more ad revenue. The only other answer is Yves Smith’s judgment is impaired.