Brief Filed by LPS Employee Defense Attorney Argues
Conflict of Interest in Robo Signing Indictments

Brief Filed by Defense Attorney

A recent brief by Lender Processing Services (LPS) employee defense attorneys argue that “The reach of misconduct in this case by the Nevada Attorney General's Office (‘AG’) extended even further than previously known.” 

The brief is in response to an indictment over a year ago by the Nevada Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Mastro, of two employees of Lender Processing Services (LPS) for “a robo-signing scheme which resulted in the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent documents with the Clark County Recorder’s Office between 2005 and 2008”. The indictment against the two alleges that the defendants directed the fraudulent notarization and filing of NODs.

The new brief argues that Masto’s chief deputy attorney general, John Kelleher, the lead prosecutor in the case, had a personal conflict of interest. The brief noted that “[T]he lead prosecutor received a notice of default (“NOD”) identifying Trafford’s [one of the indicted employees] employer as the processor of foreclosure documents for the lead prosecutor’s personal residence…Two days later, the AG sent its chief investigator to the home of [LPS employee] Tracy Lawrence, where she was threatened with arrest if she did not assist in the AG’s attempt to make a case against Trafford.”

Lawrence tragically committed suicide shortly after the indictments.

The brief further noted that “Ten months after the NOD was filed for the lead prosecutor's home, Attorney General Cortez Masto revealed in an online report that the lead prosecutor had been removed due to a conflict of interest concerning his ‘personal foreclosure crisis.’ …However, the AG's office never disclosed this conflict to the Court, Trafford or his counsel.”

The charge of prosecutorial misconduct by the Nevada AG’s office in the case is in addition to the briefs’ argument that the two LPS employees indicted over ‘robo-signing’ was in error because the two simply did not commit forgery as defined by Nevada law.

In a story dated November 29th, The Nevada Journal noted that “according to a supplemental brief filed by the AG’s office November 26, Judge Carolyn Ellsworth, hearing the case for the 8th Judicial District on October 27, ‘expressed a concern about the wording of the indictment.  Specifically, the counts … which contain[ed] the term ‘forgery’ were of concern to the Court.  In particular, the Court found that there could be no forgery if the person whose signature was signed had given consent.’”
 
Read Nevada Journal Story

Read the Brief filed by defense attorney

Read UTA eNews story on Indictments