OCCUPY A. HOWARD MATZ: Federal Judge Covers for Criminal Banks?

Jose L. Pineda v. GMAC Mortgage. We've seen too many cases like it. A big bank makes an illegal foreclosure on a home. In this case, the homeowner sues -- and wins, thanks to Judge A. Howard Matz. Score one for the 99%. Or perhaps not. It’s the casual handling of the bank's crimes that caused a stir, sparking an online petition for the impeachment of Matz, who was appointed to the Central District of California by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

In delivering justice for the little guy, Matz characterized GMAC's illegal claim to the home as "misrepresentations that may have been inadvertent and unintentional and short of fraud, but [are] extremely aggravating." Stop. Right. There. Misrepresentations = lies to steal a house. That’s a serious crime. The judge is clearly saying that evidence leads him to believe that GMAC has committed a crime. However, if GMAC walks away from this one, His Honor will forget the matter, and even be willing to consider the crime “inadvertent.” As if ignorance of the law could somehow free GMAC from prosecution. Well, it did.    

Matz actually threatened to blow the whistle on the cover-up. He bluntly told GMAC’s attorney, “If this case doesn’t settle and settle quickly, I am prepared to…take this case as a paradigm for a much larger problem, a much larger financial, regulatory and litigation problem that can stem -- that has stemmed from the way these loans were issued, packaged, [and] securitized…Now, you tell your clients that unless this case can be disposed of, this case is going to be something that’s going to go far beyond this case.”

Lawyer Charles Lincoln writes that Matz obviously “possessed full information regarding the truth of the illegality of the foreclosure epidemic as a crime against the American people. Can the judge actually be doing anything other than threatening GMAC with ‘telling the truth’ about misrepresentation in non-judicial mortgage foreclosure proceedings? What does this tell us about Judge A. Howard Matz’s versions of reality and truth?”