October 25, 2007 (LPAC)--In the urgent case of 800 families in Pennsylvania's Reading/Lancaster area who were victims of fraud by mortgage brokers and are now threatened with foreclosure, County Judge Jeffrey Sprecher had issued an order protecting the households from all foreclosure-related actions. Judge Sprecher on Oct. 17 had designated the local Leesport Bank and Trust to receive reasonable monthly payments in escrow, the same payments they had been making before their mortgage loans suddenly ballooned due to fraud. The judge's actions, in a local context, tracked basic principles of the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, proposed by economist Lyndon LaRouche as national Congressional action to stop the foreclosure crisis.

On Oct. 24, Federal Judge James Giles of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania took the mass mortgage fraud/foreclosure case away from the county court, according to Lancaster Online, on the motion of 21 of the largest banks and mortgage lenders in the world, who are defendants in the families' class-action suit. James vacated Judge Sprecher's protective order; ordered the plaintiff's lawyers to negotiate a new payment rate with the big banks' lawyers, which will increase the families' monthly mortgage payments significantly; ordered they not be foreclosed if they made these higher payments timely.

"This judge backed 'Enron-type' actions which had been taken against these victims of mortgage fraud," LaRouche commented.

LaRouche's Homeowners and Bank Protection Act principles have gotten the backing of 45 Pennsylvania state legislators, and should have a legislative hearing next month. The sponsor of that resolution, Rep. Harold James of Philadelphia, was to have held a press conference Oct. 24 in the state capital Harrisburg with the families from Lancaster County, when they were summoned to Judge Giles Federal courtroom instead. The families' class-action suit against the big mortgage banks will now be decided in that courtroom.