Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

NOW IN PAPERBACK The "gripping" (New York Times) and "Hitchcockian"(Publishers Weekly) story of how a nurse, a car dealership worker, and a forensic expert took on the nation's largest banks

A Kirkus Reviews and The Week best book of the year, David Dayen's Chain of Title is a riveting work that recalls A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and Flash Boys, recounting how three ordinary Floridians-a car dealership worker, a cancer nurse, and an insurance fraud specialist-helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history, challenged the most powerful institutions in America, and-for a brief moment-brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.

Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Harnessing the power of the Internet, they revealed how the financial crisis and subsequent recession were fundamentally based upon a series of frauds that kicked millions out of their homes because of false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi noted: "Chain of Title is a sweeping work of investigative journalism that traces the arc of a criminally underreported story in America, the collapse of the rule of law in the home mortgage industry."

1122664859
Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

NOW IN PAPERBACK The "gripping" (New York Times) and "Hitchcockian"(Publishers Weekly) story of how a nurse, a car dealership worker, and a forensic expert took on the nation's largest banks

A Kirkus Reviews and The Week best book of the year, David Dayen's Chain of Title is a riveting work that recalls A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and Flash Boys, recounting how three ordinary Floridians-a car dealership worker, a cancer nurse, and an insurance fraud specialist-helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history, challenged the most powerful institutions in America, and-for a brief moment-brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.

Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Harnessing the power of the Internet, they revealed how the financial crisis and subsequent recession were fundamentally based upon a series of frauds that kicked millions out of their homes because of false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi noted: "Chain of Title is a sweeping work of investigative journalism that traces the arc of a criminally underreported story in America, the collapse of the rule of law in the home mortgage industry."

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Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

by David Dayen
Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud

by David Dayen

Paperback(First Trade Paper Edition)

$23.00 
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Overview

NOW IN PAPERBACK The "gripping" (New York Times) and "Hitchcockian"(Publishers Weekly) story of how a nurse, a car dealership worker, and a forensic expert took on the nation's largest banks

A Kirkus Reviews and The Week best book of the year, David Dayen's Chain of Title is a riveting work that recalls A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and Flash Boys, recounting how three ordinary Floridians-a car dealership worker, a cancer nurse, and an insurance fraud specialist-helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history, challenged the most powerful institutions in America, and-for a brief moment-brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.

Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Harnessing the power of the Internet, they revealed how the financial crisis and subsequent recession were fundamentally based upon a series of frauds that kicked millions out of their homes because of false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi noted: "Chain of Title is a sweeping work of investigative journalism that traces the arc of a criminally underreported story in America, the collapse of the rule of law in the home mortgage industry."


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781620973509
Publisher: New Press, The
Publication date: 12/19/2017
Edition description: First Trade Paper Edition
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

David Dayen is a contributing writer to Salon and The Intercept and a weekly columnist for the New Republic and the Fiscal Times. Other outlets that publish his work include Vice, The Nation, the American Prospect, Naked Capitalism, and In These Times. He lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 A Knock at the Door 1

2 The Dark Side of the American Dream 16

3 Securitization FAIL; or, Cirilo Codrington and the Panama Doc Shop 35

4 The Originator 51

5 The Community 63

6 Mr. Anonymous 79

7 When Michael Met Lisa 93

8 Happy Hours 103

9 The Network 113

10 The Specialist 130

11 Black Deeds 145

12 The Revolution Will Be Blogged 155

13 The Ninth Floor 168

14 The Rally in Tally 180

15 By Any Means Necessary 191

16 Downfall 206

17 The Big Time 222

18 We Will Put People in Jail 236

19 Wriggling off the Hook 250

20 The Final Whitewash 264

21 Lisa's Last Stand 281

Epilogue 294

Acknowledgments 313

Notes 317

Index 375

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