Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 20

McClatchy's Tony Pugh has a profile of two of the folks who brought Foreclosuregate to light:  a pair of regular folks with blogs.  Lisa Epstein of Foreclosure Hamlet and Michael Redman of 4closureFraud have been fighting the good fight for a while now, and now the country is taking notice.

For Epstein, who often helped her patients navigate disputes with their health insurance companies, the role of advocate wasn't new — but the thrill of a courtroom victory was.

"It was like something struck inside me, like this is what I'm compelled to do. I can be a nurse for people caught in this foreclosure crisis," Epstein said. "I remember thinking, 'I'm not an attorney, and there are definite obstacles, but maybe there's a role for me.' And I ran back to the hospital like I had wings. I felt like this is my purpose."

Within a year, she and Redman — who didn't know each other at the time — would leave their respective jobs to pursue their passion for helping others and exposing injustice in the foreclosure industry.

After meeting late last year at a foreclosure fraud seminar, they teamed up to become two of the nation's most influential civilian beat cops for the beleaguered foreclosure industry.

Equal parts agitators, activists and advocates, Redman and Epstein have made their presence felt in Florida and nationally through their respective websites, 4closureFraud.org and foreclosurehamlet.org.

Under a sun-drenched sky last week, Redman proudly perused his Web log to see recent visits from the Internal Revenue Service, the Homeland Security Department, the Justice Department, Fannie Mae, the Housing and Urban Development Department and the CIA, among others. Someone from the executive office of the president took a recent look, too, he said.

Major banks also are peeping at Redman's frequent postings and snarky analysis of embarrassing documents that appear to show foreclosure industry fraud.

Last week, he posted a deposition from a clerk at one of four Florida law firms that the state attorney general is investigating on suspicions that they're using fabricated documents to evict thousands of homeowners. She told investigators that the firm's employees regularly signed affidavits without reading them and put incorrect dates on documents.

"This kind of stuff goes on all the time, and it's everywhere," Redman said.

Indeed it has.  Today we also learned that September was the first month foreclosure repossessions in the US topped the 100,000 mark.   That of course was before October became "all bets are off" territory with the disintegration of the housing market.

Here there be dragons, folks.  But it's good to know there are people out there committed to help us slay those dragons.