Tip for Title Insurers

The tip for title insurers is to stop insuring title for Oakland County real estate that has a sheriff deed signed between April 1, 2009-December 31, 2012. Why? Because Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard rigged a contract to go to some of his friends who also happened to be deputies at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. This violated Michigan law regarding employee conflict of interest and federal law regarding conspiracy and perjury before a federal judge. The evidence was part of an Oakland County Circuit Court case, New Jerusalem Deliverance Church v. Evangelical Christian Credit Union, case number 11-119411-CH, Judge Daniel Patrick O’Brien presiding. The case is currently on appeal, COA case number 309571.

In summary, New Jerusalem is arguing that the sheriff deed foreclosing upon its Pontiac church building is invalid because the sheriff deed was signed by a special deputy who was not properly appointed by the sheriff.

• The special deputy who signed their sheriff deed was Thomas Rabette, an attorney. Prior to 2009, Rabette served as a marine special deputy.

• In early January 2009, Rabette was the attorney who filed the articles of incorporation for American Process Service, Inc., (APS). John Roehrig was the incorporator, but Rabette’s wife, Judith Boaks, a CPA, was the registered agent for APS.

• Later in January 2009, the contract for civil processing for the sheriff’s office went up for bid. The new company, APS, won the bid.

• Sheriff Bouchard and the chairman of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners in April 2009, Bill Bullard, signed the contract. Usually, for a chairperson to sign a contract on behalf of the entire group of elected officials, the group must vote on the contract. New Jerusalem argued that Michigan’s conflict of interest laws required that the elected officials approve the contract via a 2/3 vote recorded in the minutes of a noticed public meeting. Nowhere in the 2009 minutes of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners is recorded a vote on the civil process servicing contract.

• In 2010, APS submitted an annual report that lists Rabette as the registered agent. In addition to John Roehrig, the annual report also lists Rabette and another Oakland County Sheriff’s Office deputy, Roger St. Jean, as officers of APS.

• Thomas Rabette, his wife Judith Boaks, Roger St. Jean and his wife Linda, and John Roehrig each contributed the statutory maximum to Bouchard’s failed gubernatorial campaign. New Jerusalem argued that these campaign contributions served as pay-to-play for Bouchard rigging the civil process service contract to APS. In total, APS officers contributed $17,000 to Mike Bouchard’s 2010 campaign to become the governor of Michigan.

• New Jerusalem therefore argued before Judge O’Brien and on appeal that, not only did Bouchard and Bullard misappropriate millions in taxpayers’ funds, but that the sheriff deed is invalid because Oakland County’s civil process servicing contract with APS is null and void. By implication, all the Oakland County foreclosure sales since 2009 are invalid if APS employees conducted the sheriff sale.

• New Jerusalem accused Thomas Rabette of committing perjury before federal judge Robert H. Cleland in an affidavit submitted in New Jerusalem’s predecessor federal case, case #10-cv-12566. In Rabette’s affidavit, he said that he was never contemporaneously employed by both the sheriff’s office and American Process Service. Rabette’s affidavit contradicts Bouchard’s April 1, 2009 appointments in which Rabette was appointed both a reserve special deputy employed by the sheriff’s office and a civil process service special deputy employed by American Process Service.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect title insurers to deny insurance coverage for an entire county’s foreclosed properties without proof of the cloud in the chain of titles. Moreover, if title insurers incur any losses due to clouds on title from invalid sheriff deeds, title insurers would need evidence to recover their losses from Rabette’s bond and insurance. 

For a copy of the evidence that is or has been before the courts, title insurers can use the case numbers provided above in order to download the documents from the courts.  Be advised that the courts charge for copies of their documents.  The most complete set of evidence could be found in the Oakland County Circuit Court case.  The link to its website is http://www.oakgov.com/clerkrod/pages/courtexplorer.aspx .  However, Oakland County charges $1.00 per page for court documents.  There are over 300 pages of documents, thus title insurers could pay more than $300 to Oakland County for copies of the documents.  Alternatively, New Jerusalem’s attorney, Arthur C. Kirkland Jr., can provide a digital copy from his work product for $200.  To purchase a copy, please click on the button below.

Title Insurers’ Ebook of Bouchard’s Corruption

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.

A Tribute to Human Rights Activists

Some people may be wondering why a blog about preventing foreclosure would take time out to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and other human rights activists. Because, when homeowners ask lawyers and paralegals to defend their property rights, they are appealing to the human rights activist in these legal professionals. Many legal professionals accept cases for no money or at low retainers (compared to the amount of work involved). The clients might not even know the tribulations and retaliation these unsung legal professionals suffer as “punishment” for their good deeds. It takes a day like Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday for all of us to thank these modern day civil/human rights activists who continue carrying King’s torch.

The day Americans set aside to honor this martyr continues to be relevant, even though Americans have a black President. As I recall one Gospel musical artist saying in a song, “It ain’t over.” The it, which ain’t over, is the violation of civil rights/ human rights.

African-Americans are still the targets of a great deal of racial discrimination, but I will say that what has changed, (or was always true but is now more readily apparent), is that American has gone from a racist to a class-segregated society. What this means is that even whites experience discrimination based upon their perceived class, as illustrated by the insult “poor white trash”. Notice that the trash is poor. Shouldn’t “trashiness” be based upon behavior, not a person’s socioeconomic status? After all, I have seen plenty of trashy behavior exhibited by rich white people. I won’t name names, but think of some of the movie stars who have gone to jail, or rehab, or both.

I want to commend and give a “shout out” to those movie stars, like Don Cheadle and George Clooney, who use their celebrity and socioeconomic status to bring public awareness to the ongoing battle of human rights in wartorn Africa. Some cynics question their motives, as if George Clooney is a CIA-operative with a movie star cover, but I have a different perspective: Because I believe blacks are the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I (and others) have been tracking the parts of Africa where Israelites went into exile after the Northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians and the Southern kingdom by the Babylonians and Greco-Romans. The blacks of South Sudan, like the blacks of eastern Nigeria, are now called “Christian”, but their so-called Christianity is really a coverup or code word for their ancient ties to Israel. I appreciate Clooney, Cheadle, Brad Pitt, and everyone else, regardless of race, helping my fellow Israelites.

I am less than a week younger than Martin Luther King Junior’s youngest son, Dexter. We were both only seven years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Dr. King said in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech the following:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Dexter, Bernice, Yolanda, and Martin Luther King III.

I hope we are now living in the nation where, at least some of the time, people can be judged by the content of their character. Who are the torchbearers of Martin Luther King’s legacy today? One way of answering that question is by weighing who values life.

I know of a white reporter in Detroit, Diane Bukowski, who has relentless reported about police killings of Detroit’s black citizens, and a black prosecutor, Kym Worthy, who refuses to prosecute the police officers for murder. This prosecutor then prosecuted Diane, as a felon, for photographing and reporting on Michigan State Police killing two black Detroiters, one of whom was returning from the polls after voting. The deaths and the reporter’s arrest occurred on the same day that America voted in its first black President. See http://freedianebukowski.org .

James Willingham, a 42 year old father killed by MSP as America voted for its first black President.

Diane Bukowski being arrested for reporting on the Willingham killing by Michigan State Police. Photo courtesy of the Michigan Citizen

I know of a white father, Attorney Barry King (no relation to Martin Luther King, at least not one that we know of), who has tirelessly worked to uncover evidence about the Oakland County Child Killer, his son’s rapist/killer. (A nickname for the Oakland County Child Killer is the Babysitter.) The Michigan State Police had covered up the evidence for 33 years because the accused killer, Christopher Busch, was the son of Harold Lee Busch, General Motors’ executive financial director for the U.S. and Europe. Here again, the class struggle illustrates that even a middle class white attorney’s son gets no respect compared to the convicted pedophile son of a high-ranking, upper class GM executive. Sadly, Barry King got a taste of what blacks still go through, being treated like our children’s lives don’t matter. Mind you, I’m not relating history from a generation ago. Barry King just received the evidence regarding his son’s 1977 death a month ago, in December, 2010.

Mark Stebbins, Kristine Mihelich, Jill Robinson and Timothy King.

These are just a few of the injustices occurring in Michigan. A friend of mine, in Toronto (Canada), asked, in disbelief, if Michigan is really so corrupt. I replied, “Not only Michigan.”

Be encouraged, all activists. Even though martyrdom still takes place in America and throughout the rest of the world, there is a God. He still judges. One blogger even dared to say the following:

The worst part of this story is that the last child to be murdered, King’s son Timothy, age 11, didn’t have to die. Christopher Busch was in custody and released after (my guess) passing a lie detector test. I hope you all know that people can pass them, even when people are lying. I wonder what the former Oakland County Prosecutor (at the time of these murders), L. Brooks Patterson, will be thinking this morning when he reads the latest news about “The Babysitter.” Will Patterson wonder if his own son died young because he couldn’t prevent the death of Timothy King?

Quoted from http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com .