Brooklyn Ron

Website Names 'Brooklynites of the Year': Isaac and Robert Toussie

Why, you ask, would this popular website -- known through Brooklyn and, indeed, the world, as a progressive site that promotes justice and kindness toward fellow humans -- choose the Toussies as Brooklynites of the Year?

Well, the case of the Toussies -- perhaps more than any other revealed act of fraud and immorality in the past year -- exposed the connection between politicians and the mortgage brokers and realtors who got the country into its current huge financial mess. 

Brooklyn-based Isaac Toussie [photo, left] had been convicted in a scheme to get mortgages for unqualified homebuyers, and is also accused of defrauding minority home purchasers who ended up with shoddy, crumbling houses.

When President Bush pardoned Isaac Toussie last week, it was revealed that Toussie's father, Robert Toussie [photo, right], had donated more than $28,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Bush withdrew the pardon after the embarrassing stories surfaced about the donation. (See Daily News story.)

These mortgages schemes perpetrated by Isaac Toussie and others -- worse in so many ways than what Bernard Madoff did when he ripped off investors of billions in a Ponzi scheme -- were the acts of economic violence that finally shook the foundation of the American and later the world economy.

We hopefully will all remember the Toussies and their connection to President Bush, the wild free marketer who, given free reign, would have allowed cowboy entrepreneurs like that Toussiess to do what they wanted to whom they wanted.

Hopefully also, things are changing now and the hammer will continue to come down on those who did so much wrong to so many people.

Crusading Lawyer Declares: Worst Predatory Lender of '90s Has Resurfaced

Josh Zinner [photo], the hard-charging lawyer who's been going after predatory lenders, has made a startling find.

Delta Funding Corporation -- which became infamous through the '90s and beyond for tricking elderly, minority homeowners into mortgages they could not afford -- has been born again, this time as First Reliance Capital.

Delta declared bankruptcy a year ago and stopped making court-ordered payments to victims of its past abusive lending practices.

Zinner told BrooklynRon:

“It is unconscionable that the same principals who got rich through Delta Funding’s past fraudulent, abusive, and discriminatory lending practices should be allowed to reconstitute as an FHA lender after filing bankruptcy.”

Zinner worries that unless New York State and/or other regulators step in, First Reliance Capital may rekindle the practices and spirit of its predecessor company, the Long Island-based Delta Funding.

Zinner began his career as Director of the Foreclosure Prevention Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services (SBLS), the first of its kind in New York City to use litigation, outreach and education in a virtual war against predatory lending.

Zinner is now co-director of NEDAP, the Neighborhod Economic Development Advocacy Project.

Zinner says that Delta was, and First Reliance is now, led by Hugh Miller. The Miller family, though hit with legal actions by New York State and other states, denies that its practices were dishonest and predatory.

The author of this BrooklynRon site, in past years, interviewed many Brooklynites and Queens residents who were victims of Delta, having lost their homes after being tricked into loans they could not afford.

This site has previously called on local prosectors to treat predatory lending as a serious crime that inflects great harm on many New Yorkers, especially the elderly. (read by clicking here.)

Recently Channel 9 in New York did an excellent piece on the apparently resuscitated Delta and on Zinner's call for economic justice. (See it on the TV station's website.)

Re Eliot Spitzer: Let Us Now Praise Infamous Men

So now it's finally decided that Eliot Spitzer will not be prosecuted for his fling with a prostitute.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

But the former governor's demise brings to mind the glory that was once his and cannot be forgotten.

Spitzer, back when he was state Attorney General, stood up, virtually alone, to Wall Street and to the predatory lenders that were victimizing vulnerable homeowners in the state and driving them into foreclosure.

If there's any current or former official who should be praised for recognizing and taking action against the greedy bandits of Wall Street, it is Eliot Spitzer.

Character flaw, character schmaw. We know that Spitzer had hubris galore, that he was like a spoiled prince given reign too soon over the kingdom of York.

But to mix a metaphor, let's give credit where credit is due. He saw what others did not. He took action when others did not.

We should remember also that the feds clamped down on Sptizer pretty quickly, assuring he would go no further in his pursuit of Wall St. malfeasors and financial abusers of elderly homeowners.

And the clamper in chief, who would be George W. Bush, continued to allow Wall St. to run roughshod over the territory; as Spitzer fell low, Wall St. chortled gleefully and openly at his demise.

The rest, as they say, is history, a sad history of a nation made to suffer from Wall St.'s unchecked offenses.

Here's a modest proposal, bellowed to Barack Obama, that surely will fly as high as a recently-born, innocent bird:

Let's make Eliot Spitzer Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as we hold the stones and put personal shortcomings in proper perspective.

[Note: the above is a Getty image and can be viewed on a Business Week website.]