Chapter 14
Doc Shop
It took about a week for Shelly to get her new division staffed, organized, and under way. It was a monumental job to go through the thousands of files, figure out what documents were missing, determine what each document would look like had it been generated properly at the time of the transaction, furnish the information to the CDR, or the “Doc Shop” as Shelly called it, and then review it for accuracy.
It was a stressful job, too, because there had to be 100 percent accuracy. Most of these documents would be introduced in court or in deposition and scrutinized very carefully by opposing counsel. Any error could lead to the document being discredited and a foreclosure being set aside or a proof of claim being denied. Further, such an error could raise a red flag and lead to a more extensive inquiry.
To complicate matters more, nobody in her division could know that the documents were being produced after the fact from a company not even affiliated with RMS. It had to look entirely legitimate, a division devoted to tracking down missing documents rather than producing documents that never existed. So nobody on Shelly’s staff knew Sanford Ross, Roger Stafford, or Juan Rubio.
Since Shelly was the only one who could interact with the Doc Shop, she spent long hours each day on the job. Unfortunately, even though her department was well organized, she had no control over the Doc Shop, which, as the volume grew, was taking longer and longer to produce its documents. On account of this she was getting a lot of complaints from the company’s attorneys who were getting bombarded with discovery requests in pending litigation or trying to clear titles on foreclosed properties.
When the situation got to a critical state Shelly asked for a meeting with Sanford Ross and his staff. She had to find out why the Doc Shop couldn’t keep up. At least that’s what she told him. Her real objective was to get a closer look at the operation to see how it worked in case she’d ever have to testify. Ross agreed to her request and invited her to come to their offices the following afternoon at three p.m. for a tour.
The next afternoon she drove up to CDR’s offices located in an office-warehouse district off Midway Road in Carrollton. CDR’s operation took a third of the office building, and there were about a dozen cars parked in front. For anyone driving by it looked like a typical document storage or shredding operation. Shelly parked her grey Honda Accord, walked in, and introduced herself to Melba, the receptionist. Melba said she was expected and that Mr. Ross would be out momentarily. She took a seat and began absently thumbing through a magazine. A few minutes later Sanford Ross appeared. She had only briefly met him before at RMS’s offices. At the time he seemed a pushy and bit arrogant. She wondered how best to handle him—she needed him to open up to her. He extended his hand, and she shook it warmly.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Shelly said.
“Yes, I’m glad you finally decided to come out and see our operation.”
“Well, I’ve had my hands full getting my department organized and under way. Can you believe the volume of business we’ve been sending your way?”
Ross nodded. “Lucius warned us he’d keep us busy, but you’re right, it’s been a bit more than I expected.”
“Right. That’s why I wanted to come out. You know, find out how you operate, so maybe we can coordinate our efforts a little bit better.”
“Okay. Follow me and I’ll give you the nickel tour.”
“Where are Juan and Roger today? I thought they were running the operation for you.”
“Juan is on vacation and Roger is sick, so I’m filling in today.”
Shelly doubted that was true, but she didn’t say anything. Apparently Ross didn’t trust Juan and Roger completely or he’d have let them give the tour. She followed him into a large room filled with computer workstations and high-volume printers. He walked into one of the cubicles where a young woman was working. She looked up when they walked in and surrounded her.
“Okay. This is Stephanie. She prepares the assignments. She has every format ever used by RMS or any of the former servicers. There is also a database that provides the names every employee of the servicers who would have been authorized to sign the assignments and randomly picks one to be listed as the authorized representative. The program is so good it knows when employees were on vacation or sick and makes sure their names don’t appear on any documents during that time period.”
“Wow. That’s impressive,” Shelly agreed.
“Stephanie, how many assignments do you do in a typical day?” Ross asked.
“Two hundred or so on a typical day,” she replied. “I have to manually input the data or it would go much faster.”
“Thanks.”
Ross led them over to one of the high-speed printers. “This printer can reproduce just about any document in black and white or color. Document forms can be scanned in and then made into master templates for mass production. We can duplicate state emblems, corporate logos, or letterheads, you name it.”
Shelly frowned. “You mean you create government documents?”
“Not for you guys, but we could do it if you needed it.”
Shelly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wondered if they did driver’s licenses and passports, too. She followed Ross as he took her into the next room. Here there were eight long worktables with dozens of men and women signing documents. Each had two stacks and would routinely pull a document from the first stack, sign it and put it on the second stack, and then repeat the process.
“Sergio. Who are you right now?” Ross asked.
Sergio smiled. “Russell Thompson, vice president of acquisitions for Trinidad Mortgage Company,” he replied.
Shelly looked at the document and saw where Sergio had signed in perfect script the name Russell Thompson. Shelly frowned.
“So, how do you get people to do this? Aren’t you worried they’ll go to the authorities and tell them what you are doing?”
“No. Most of these people are ex-cons, homeless people, or illegal immigrants. None of them want anything to do with the government. As long as we pay them promptly in cash they’ll do whatever we tell them.”
Shelly was shocked and found it difficult not to show it. This was blatant criminal activity and she was a party to it. Her stomach started to twist, and she felt nauseous. She decided it was time to leave. She looked at her watch and feigned alarm.
“Oh, look at the time. I’m going to be late for an employee interview. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go. Thanks for the tour. This has helped me understand the logistics of your operation. Do you expect to be expanding to keep up with the demand?”
“Yes, the lease on the space next to us is up soon, so we’ll be doubling our size in the next ninety days.”
“Great. That should help a lot. I’ll come back and take another look after the expansion.”
“Excellent. We’ll be looking forward to it,” Ross said.
Ross showed Shelly to the front door, and she forced a smile as she left. On the way back to the office she stopped by Starbucks, where her meeting wasn’t with a prospective employee, but rather a prearranged meeting with Rich and Matt. Rich had wanted Matt to meet Shelly since he would be handling the mortgage cases now that he had gotten his license back. They got a table in the back and sat with their backs to the front window.
“You won’t believe where I just came from,” Shelly said.
“Where?” Rich asked.
“The Doc Shop.”
“The what?” Matt asked.
“The offices of Consolidated Document Retrieval. I call it the Doc Shop. You know, since they produce documents to order.” She told them about her tour of the facility and how they could forge just about any kind of document.
“So, let me get this straight,” Matt said. “They have hundreds of people forging documents?”
“Yes, it’s mind boggling. I’ll admit.”
“But nobody at RMS knows about it except you and Lucius.”
&nb
sp; “Well, the lenders know about it. That’s part of Lucius’s sales pitch. He promises to create a paper trail so they can prove up their loans.”
“Do you have any contact with these lenders?”
“No. Not so far. Lucius does all his negotiations in noisy restaurants or strip clubs where he is sure nobody is listening.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No. His secretary did. She overheard him tell some clients that nowadays you couldn’t talk about anything sensitive except in your lawyer’s office or at a strip club where it’s too noisy for anyone to overhear you. But, who knows, they could just as well go to a bowling alley or mall parking lot, who knows?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure a restaurant’s a good idea. I just listened to a news report that a lot of restaurants have listening devices at each table. They say it’s so they can monitor the employees’ interaction with their customers, but can you imagine the things they overhear that have nothing to do with their employees.”
“That’s outrageous,” Shelly said. “There’s no privacy anymore.”
“So, is there any way to tell if a document is a forgery?” Matt asked.
Shelly thought for a moment. “Yes. The signatures won’t match the original officer’s signature. If you can get true samples of the officer’s signature and compare them, it should be obvious.”
Matt shook his head. “Nobody would ever think to do that unless they knew the document was a forgery.”
“Exactly,” Shelly agreed. “Nobody would ever dream there is such widespread fraud going on in the mortgage industry. And those who suspect it don’t care that much because it’s only done to correct sloppy business practices. The consumer owes the money so they are not really getting hurt.”
“Except people who buy property and then later find out they don’t really own it because of someone’s sloppy paperwork. Or, somebody invests in these securitized trusts and then their investment craters when it turns out the trust can’t prove it owns half of its inventory of notes,” Rich remarked.
“I may have one of those forged documents,” Matt said. “Could you check it out?”
“Sure, what do you have?”
“An assignment from Southern Atlantic Mortgage Company to RMS dated July 11, 2005. It was signed by Robin Stuart, executive VP.”
“Do you have a copy?” Shelly asked.
“Right,” Matt said, pulling out an envelope. “It’s in here.”
Shelly opened the envelope and examined the document. “No problem. I’ll find Mr. Stuart’s actual signature, compare it, and let you know.”
“Thanks.”
They continued to talk for another few minutes and then the meeting broke up. Shelly felt better after she had spilled her guts to Matt and Rich. It made her feel cleansed knowing that she was only getting her hands dirty so Lucius Jones and his kind could be brought down and the integrity of the mortgage industry could be restored. She didn’t know exactly how that would come about, but she trusted Matt and Rich to make it happen.
When she got back to the office it was nearly six thirty p.m. and the office was deserted. She went to her office to check her messages and emails before going home. She frequently got frantic messages from attorneys or customer service representatives that she had to deal with immediately and couldn’t wait until the following morning. As expected, there were a few brush fires she had to put out, and the next time she looked at the clock it was nearly eight thirty.
It was dark outside, and except for a few security lights the offices were dark. She turned off her light as she was leaving but noticed Lucius’s office was still lit up. She wondered if he was still working. She hadn’t heard him, but she’d been pretty focused on what she was doing, so he could still be working and she wouldn’t have realized it. The building manager had asked all the tenants to be sure all the lights were off when they left at night, so it was the rule that the last person to leave turned off all the lights.
Shelly detoured by Lucius’s office to see if he was there and, if not, to turn off his lights. As she stepped into his office she looked around but didn’t see him. When she started to turn off the lights she smelled a strange odor. She sniffed the air and then noticed an overturned wastepaper basket. She took a step toward it, wondering if Lucius had thrown away some food that was decaying. As she was leaning over and sniffing one more time, Lucius’s body came into view. Her eyes widened as she saw him lying in a pool of blood with a crystal-handled letter opener protruding from his neck. She screamed several times and almost fainted. Finally, when she started to regain her composure, she looked around frantically, wondering what to do. She knew nobody was around, so she took her cell phone out of her purse and called 911. Twelve minutes later there was a loud knock at the door.
“Dallas police! Open up.”
She rushed out of Lucius’s office, went to the front door, and opened it. Two detectives rushed in followed by a uniformed policeman.
“Where’s the body?” the first detective asked, thrusting his badge in front of Shelly’s face. It read: DETECTIVE GIL JENSON.
“Back here,” Shelly replied and led him to Lucius’s office.
Detective Jenson told her to stay put, and he went in and looked around. His partner followed him in and quickly scanned the room.
“Nobody in or out of this office until the crime scene unit arrives,” Jenson barked to the uniformed officer.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
Several more uniformed officers came through the front door along with a building security officer.
Shelly took a seat in Lucius’s secretary’s chair. She watched anxiously as the room quickly filled with more detectives, policemen, and crime scene personnel. Fear swept over her as she tried to fathom the ramifications of Lucius’s murder. She feared all the dark secrets that she had become involved in would now be exposed, and with Lucius gone, she’d take the fall for all his sinister activities. She wondered who had killed Lucius and why. Her mind raced trying to make sense of it. Should she get an attorney? Should she keep her mouth shut or talk openly to the police? If she clammed up they’d think she killed Lucius. She didn’t know what to do. Tears began streaming down her cheeks as she began to sob.
Unconscionable, A Rich Coleman Novel Vol 3 Page 15
