At least one Colorado public trustee is considering a switch to a computer system linked to the state’s most prolific foreclosure lawyer because he refuses to use those of his competitors.
Though Park County already has a software program that adequately handles all its foreclosure cases, the program comes from mTech Services, a company based near Seattle that competes directly with one connected to Denver lawyer Lawrence Castle.
Castle’s law firm, Castle Stawiarski, for years has refused to file its foreclosure cases electronically unless the specific county is using a computer system run by Government Technology Systems, a company in which he holds an interest.
Park County Public Trustee Michelle Miller, who doubles as the county’s treasurer, said she’ll likely give up on the mTech foreclosure- tracking system she uses now just to avoid the needless labor required to convert hundreds of e-mails that Castle’s law firm sends when filing foreclosures there.
“Ninety percent of our foreclosures are from Castle, and we have to transfer them all over (to the computer system) by hand,” Miller said. “That just makes too much room for error, and my staffing is so short, it would just make it easier to switch to his way.”
Trustees say they can’t mandate how attorneys file foreclosure cases.
Miller said she would not give the switch any consideration if Castle hadn’t been responsible for the bulk of the county’s foreclosures.
“If he didn’t have the most business, I just wouldn’t go that way,” she said.
Castle has refused to comment.
Like Park County, the story is the same in other Colorado counties where mTech is in use, according to interviews. Castle Stawiarski will not use mTech’s system — known as MDS — even though the software is free to any attorney who wants it.
Denver’s public-trustee office is testing the GTS system in consideration of a switch from MDS, chief deputy trustee Sindee Wagner said. The city’s contract with MDS ends in September.
Though Castle filed half of Denver’s 5,053 foreclosure cases last year, he refuses to provide them via the MDS system, sending them by e-mail instead.
Clerks then convert all the information by hand for use in the MDS system, Wagner said.
“It makes for a lot more work for us, that’s true,” Wagner said.
However, Wagner said her review of GTS has nothing to do with Castle’s filing choices and that she’s just exploring options.
While Castle’s law firm won’t file any cases via the mTech system, his biggest legal competitor — Aronowitz and Mechlenburg — is happy to use mTech, trustees say. Robert Aronowitz and his daughter, Stacey Aronowitz, won’t use the GTS system.
Instead, his office often sends foreclosure cases in paper format to counties that use GTS, creating a nightmare of conversion paperwork for trustee offices there.
Aronowitz has no financial interest in mTech, company president Aleta Lavandier said.
The two firms account for roughly 80 percent of the state’s foreclosure filings, according to estimates by several trustees.
“It really is kind of ridiculous, but there’s nothing we can do to force either of them to use a specific system, even if it’s our preferred one,” said Nick Gradisar, Pueblo County public trustee, whose office prefers mTech.
Robert Aronowitz did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment.
GTS is paid $45 for every foreclosure case that’s filed, while mTech’s fee varies from $10 to $35, charges that are passed on to the costs of foreclosure. Those costs are paid by either the foreclosing bank or the homeowner trying to stop the process.
The fee gets charged whether a law firm uses the software to file its foreclosure or not. And with record foreclosure filings the past few years, the software contract to run the foreclosure process is worth millions of dollars in revenue.
GTS runs the foreclosure systems in eight of the state’s 12 largest counties, where the bulk of Colorado’s foreclosure cases are filed.
The Denver Post has detailed how Castle and GTS maintain a close relationship with the county public trustees in Colorado, with both donating tens of thousands of dollars to a nonprofit association benefiting the trustees.
The trustees, 10 of whom are appointed by the governor, are to be impartial overseers of the foreclosure process, siding with neither borrowers nor lenders.
Trustees began giving no-bid contracts to GTS shortly after Castle’s donations to the trustee association began, though the officials say there is no connection.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com
