Stern Foreclosure Factory: $260 Million in 2009 Revenues

Here is today’s astonishing factoid: The Sun Sentinel paper in Florida publishes a series of  “At a glance” overviews of various Florida firms and people.

Today’s subject: The various RE related holdings of one David Stern — his law firm, his Virgin Island based legal processing firm — publicly traded! — and his Title company.

The numbers were astonishing:

“David Stern’s law firm handles 20 percent of Florida’s foreclosure cases. It does foreclosure work for most of the nation’s top mortgage servicers.

The firm is based in Plantation and has hundreds of employees, with additional offices in Puerto Rico, Miami and Kentucky.

Stern is also CEO of publicly traded DJSP Enterprises (Nasdaq: DJSP), registered in the British Virgin Islands but based in Plantation. The company operates as the non-legal arm of Stern’s law firm, which accounts for more than 90 percent of DJSP’s business. DJSP affiliates include DJS Processing, Professional Title & Abstract Co. of Florida, and Default Servicing LLC.

According to its SEC filings, DJSP and its affiliates had $260 million in gross revenues last year. DJSP handled 70,382 foreclosure cases in 2009.” (emphasis added)

The goal here was not to pursue prosecute foreclosures on behalf of a banking client; rather it was to crank out the assembly line factory to grab 100s of millions of dollars, legally or illegally, consequences be damned.

Vultures and undertakers serve important roles in the biology of all econ-systems.  But the vast wealth from his on-the-cheap, down and dirty foreclosure mill, currently under investigation for forged documents, and fraud, is giving vultures a bad name:

For Americans, the foreclosure crisis has wiped out fortunes, bringing destitution and homelessness. For Florida attorney David J. Stern, it has brought mansions, a Bugatti sports car and a luxury yacht.

Florida has the third-highest residential foreclosure rate in the U.S., and Stern, 50, has made a fortune off the bust. His foreclosure-processing business has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue preparing documents for the cases that his law firm brings on behalf of lenders seeking to reclaim homes from borrowers who can’t pay their mortgages.

Who wants to take the over/under as to whether this f%$ker will be spending some time in the graybar hotel within 5 years . . . ?

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Source:
At a glance: Law offices of David Stern
Diane C. Lade
Sun Sentinel, October 20, 2010
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-foreclosures-florida-bar-2-20101020,0,6678962.story

Data Sources: Securities and Exchange Commission, St. Petersburg Times, DJSPenterprises.com

Foreclosure Fortune Buys Bugatti, Yacht for Attorney
David McLaughlin
Bloomberg Oct. 19 2010
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ayoBI1pkh.AY