Eviction By Any Means Necessary, Including By Invalid Sheriff Deeds

We tell children all the time that one person can make a difference, both for good and for bad.

A person who could be making the difference for bad is Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard. He wanted to be Governor of Michigan. Nothing illegal about that. However, another thing we tell children is that the end doesn’t always justify the means, especially if the means by which you raise campaign finances is through kickbacks from pay-to-play schemes.

The case of New Jerusalem Deliverance Church was published recently. (See link: http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=7043)

Robert Joyce, Bishop of New Jerusalem Deliverance Church, the 'private attorney general'

An example of one woman making a difference for good is Diane Bukowski. The Voice of Detroit is an independent newspaper that is truly “unbossed and unbought”. In this newspaper, Diane Bukowski published the exclusive scoop that gives hope to everyone who has gone through foreclosure in Oakland County since 2009. She told property owners that the sheriff deed in their foreclosure might be invalid, if the auctioneer who conducted the sheriff sale had a conflict of interest. The New Jerusalem case highlights the potential conflict of interest of Attorney Thomas Rabette.

If the RICO allegations in New Jerusalem’s proposed amended complaint are true, then two people can make a difference, those two people being Thomas Rabette and Sheriff Mike Bouchard. If Rabette was employed with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office when Sheriff Bouchard steered a no-bid contract to a company that Rabette represented as an attorney, and Rabette worked for that company while he was still working for the Sheriff’s Office, then Rabette had a conflict of interest. Michigan law makes it a crime for anyone, including sheriff’s, to have a conflict of interest, so if it was unlawful for Bouchard to authorize Rabette to sign sheriff deeds, then the sheriff deeds Rabette signed are invalid. But the plot thickens: What if Rabette, the company’s other officers, and their wives then all made the statutory maximum political campaign contributions to Bouchard’s bid to become Michigan’s Governor in 2010? Was the contract steering a pay-to-play scheme?

According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Annual Report for 2010, (see link: http://www.oakgov.com/sheriff/assets/docs/OCSO_annualreport2010.pdf there were 8818 foreclosures in 2009 and 9727 in 2010. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, of the more than 18,000 foreclosures in Oakland County in 2009-2010, Thomas Rabette was the auctioneer for only 10%, or 1800 sheriff sales. According to City-Data, the median value of homes and condos in Oakland County was $186,800. (See link: http://www.city-data.com/county/Oakland_County-MI.html) If Thomas Rabette unlawfully signed the sheriff deeds for 1800 Oakland County properties valued at an average of $186,800 each, then he alone has caused more than $336 million in sheriff deeds to have clouded title. Because federal RICO laws permit civil litigants to sue for triple damages, then the economic impact of Bouchard and Rabette’s alleged pay-to-play scheme potentially exposes Oakland County to more than a billion dollars in liability! If Rabette signed more than 10% of the Oakland County sheriff deeds executed since 2009, then the economic impact of his alleged corruption increases exponentially.

Given Michigan’s fragile economy, the media outlets who are bossed and bought would not want to publicize that millions, if not billions, of dollars in Oakland County titles to banks are clouded due to Bouchard’s corruption. Only Voice of Detroit wants to tell property owners that their rights are being violated!

This is the problem. A big problem! What is the solution? It’s easy to do as federal Judge Robert Cleland seems to have done, to simply turn a blind eye to Sheriff Bouchard’s corruption, and allow people who can’t afford their mortgage to be evicted by any means necessary, including by means of invalid sheriff deeds. The end doesn’t justify the means, particularly if the means require us to compromise our standards of government integrity. You’d think the banks, just as much, (if not more than foreclosed homeowners), would want to put a stop to Bouchard if he is guilty of what New Jerusalem accuses him of. Then, the banks’ sheriff deeds wouldn’t have clouded title. Honest government isn’t a privilege. It’s everyone’s right!

Ultimately, turning a blind eye to corruption costs everyone so much more than $336 million. Even people who don’t live in Oakland County suffer if that county is bankrupted and blighted by unpunished, corrupt politicians. We all pay the price of evil triumphing because good people do nothing. It would be wise of Oakland County to investigate Bouchard and Rabette.