California attorney Michael T. Pines has been quite busy. He’s been helping people break into their foreclosed homes–using a locksmith or, if necessary, by smashing a window.
But what Mr. Pines, 58 years old, considers a mission, the law labels trespassing.
Mr. Pines was arrested Wednesday as he helped Rene Zepeda, 72, break back into his foreclosed home in Newport Beach, Calif. Mr. Pines said he was charged with trespassing and vandalism; he thinks the bail was $20,000. (See a photo slideshow of the event.)
“Some of the great people in this county, the world, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, had to get arrested,” he tells Developments. “I just felt that I had to stand up for my clients.”
Mr. Pines, whose bio includes more than two decades as a lawyer and a real-estate investor and, he claims, mortgage fraud victim, says that his 70 or so clients all deserve their homes back. If they have to break in, so be it. If someone else has purchased it, that doesn’t matter. His method is an extreme answer to the questions surrounding the current crisis involving mortgage paperwork and foreclosures: Who owns the loan and who actually has the right to foreclose?
“I’m trying to teach homeowners what their rights are. In my opinion, they are the legal owners of the property. All of these foreclosures, all of these evictions are grossly unlawful,” he says. “All of the loans that are currently outstanding are grossly unlawful. Homeowners have a right to get their houses back because they were illegally stolen from them. I feel very confident in saying they have the legal right to do it.”
