Posted by The Stupid Stopas: Adrienne Federico and Mark Stopa are Hands Down THE DUMBEST Crime Duo in American History
Who are the Stupid Stopas aka the Stopa Federico crime family? Well, for that, we must start at the beginning.
Let’s start with Adrienne Federico. Federico is a radical militant feminist or as Rush Limbaugh used to affectionately call them, feminazi. She’s so radical, she absolutely refused to change her name to “Stopa” when she married sociopathic, disbarred attorney Mark Stopa.
However, despite both of them being Catholic, they turned their back on the Mother Church.
They were married by a budget $75 mobile notary. The hush and rush shotgun wedding was done in August 2002. Her former friends say she was pregnant and her parents didn’t approve of Stopa. Unfortunately, she later had to abort the baby boy because of health issues.
Stopa was totally fine with Adrienne keeping her maiden name as he had plans to make her his “patsy”.
Stopa knew it would be very dangerous for him to directly steal the homes of his own clients. He could get disbarred. He knew Adrienne was not under the thumb of the Florida Bar. Therefore, he could use her to implement all of his scams. Stopa came up with the idea of creating shell companies in his wife’s maiden name. As a result, he created ABPAYMAR LLC and designated Adrienne as the managing member.
Under this LLC, the dumbest crime family duo in American History began their criminal career.
The Stupid Stopas: Mark Stopa Throws Adrienne Under the Bus
Stopa knew he could just use his wife as a patsy. If Abpaymar LLC ever got investigated, he could blame everything on her.
This is exactly what he did when the Florida Bar came knocking. In a 2018 bar deposition, Stopa threw his wife Adrienne under the bus multiple times. He blamed her for EVERYTHING.
Public records with the state of Florida indicate Stopa is now the current managing member of Abpaymar LLC. However, under oath he said he had “nothing to do with Abpaymar LLC.”
He stated Abpaymar was “just a client”.
However, despite the overwhelming evidence of his involvement, Stopa maintained that Abpaymar LLC was an arm’s length company owned by his wife. He also tried to convince Florida Bar investigators that he had no knowledge of what she used it for.
Naturally, Florida Bar investigators didn’t believe his bullshit.
Abpaymar committed a lot of crimes under the leadership of Mark Stopa and Adrienne Federico. The crimes were so horrific that the Florida Bar made a criminal referral to the FDLE to investigate.
The Statewide Prosecutor and FDLE opened an investigation and raided Stopa’s law office seizing everything including computers and phone records. They also seized client files client files and boxes of illicit cash skimmed from illegally obtained rents on his client’s homes.
The Stupid Stopas: The FDLE’s Ongoing 5-Year Criminal Investigation of Stopa and Federico
Mark Stopa maintains in court filings that his wife is just an innocent “stay at home mom.”
Stopa also tries to maintain he was just an honest attorney who was “winning too much.”
Therefore, the big bad banks fabricated a story to destroy them both. Stopa still maintains he and his wife have done nothing wrong. He also claims that they are not under any criminal investigation.
Yet, Stopa and Federico shelled out six figures to hire elite criminal defense attorney Todd Foster to defend them in the FDLE investigation. So, if there is no ongoing criminal investigation, why is Todd Foster still on the payroll?
The Stupid Stopas: Stopa Vs. The Truth
The TRUTH is the the Florida AG, FDLE and various Federal Authorities have been investigating Mark Stopa and Adrienne Federico for the last five years. These agencies are documenting every crime and every scam. In addition, they are also documenting every rent check received and cashed on a stolen client home.
Stopa claims the Florida AG can’t convict him because his crimes are past the statute of limitations. However, this where the crime duo is so very stupid.
They don’t realize that by collecting and cashing illicit rents from stolen client homes, they are automatically extending the statute of limitations on their original crimes.
There is a reason law enforcement has not acted yet. It is because they are just mystified at how DUMB both Stopa and Federico are. They are the crime duo gift that keeps on giving.
Authorities are just sitting back and documenting the crimes. They are letting America’s dumbest crime family duo dig themselves deeper into a hole.
The Stupid Stopas: The Original Equity Skimming Cash-For-Deed Scam
In the early years of their criminal career, Stopa and Federico were committing small-ball money crimes. Stopa would rip off clients by overbilling on legal fees. He would retain settlements and then negotiate cash-for-keys of only a couple of thousand dollars.
Soon, the two wannabe Bonnie & Clydes graduated into stealing the homes of his clients.
Stopa bragged about it in his very own words. In the recording, he admits he took advantage of his foreclosure clients because they were too stupid to know what was going on.
Eventually they got tired of paying him to defend their foreclosure. So he would tell them he had an “investor” who would give them cash for the deed. However, what he omitted to tell them is the “investor” was his wife Adrienne Federico operating under the Abpaymar LLC shell company.
Stopa Had No Problem Lying To His Clients And The Courts
Stopa deceived his clients into believing they would be relieved of the foreclosure if they sold the home. He would typically tell them that the “investor” offered $3,000 to $5,000 for the deed. They would then agree to take the money thinking it would end the foreclosure. However, Stopa would then present them with a bill for legal fees that exceeded the offered amount. He would then offered to settle the bill in full if they let him retain the funds from the deed purchase.
His clients were so happy thinking he was relieving them of the debt out of the kindness of his heart. However, the truth was he was stealing their house to rent it out. His plan was to skim the rent equity while destroying their credit for years into the future.
This was the scam and it is exactly how Mark Stopa paid nothing to acquire tens of millions of dollars in real estate from his own clients. He stole hundreds of homes from his own clients using this equity skimming cash-for-deed scam. This scam was detailed in Dossier 1.0 compiled by a former client and sent to every Judge and Law enforcement official in the State of Florida. It was Dossier 1.0 that ultimately got Stopa disbarred.
Stopa losing his law license didn’t stop him and Federico. The Stopa Federico crime family reign of terror was just getting warmed up.
Stopa Federico Crime Family Doubles Down with New “Winfault Judgment” Scams
When most criminals see the “heat” coming, they quietly cash out their illicit gains and move out of the country to a jurisdiction that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.
But not Mark and Adrienne. As America’s DUMBEST CRIME FAMILY DUO, they doubled down on their crimes. Despite the FDLE raid and ongoing investigation, they doubled down and started an entirely new “Winfault Judgment” fraud on the court scam.
As we documented in the article about Stopa crime boss Lee Segal being taken down, after Stopa was disbarred he took a job as a paralegal with the now defunct Segal and Schuh Law Group. It was here that Adrienne and Mark recruited a cabal of corrupt attorneys to expand their crime family to the next level.
The gist of Stopa’s “Winfault Judgment” scam is filing frivolous frauds on the court to trick judges into signing money judgments. In other words, manipulating the court system to steal.
How the Quiet Title “Winfault Judgment” Scam Worked
In the later years leading up to his disbarment, the stupid Stopas ran a “Winfault” Quiet Title scam where he defrauded federally insured mortgage lenders and stole tens of millions of dollars through frivolous Quiet Title frauds on the court. Stopa would scour his foreclosure client list and find lender fact patterns he liked. He would then make up a story and purchase the deed from his own client using Adrienne as the proxy patsy under Abpaymar LLC.
The Stupid Stopas would then file a frivolous and deceptively styled Quiet Title action against a mortgage lender and then collude with corrupt process servers to improperly serve the lender in order to win by default aka “WINFAULT”. When the lender did not answer the summons, Stopa had them defaulted and tricked Judges into signing the prepared order quieting the title and extinguishing the valid mortgage lien from the property.
Stopa manipulated the courts to steal tens of millions of dollars with this scam. The $2 Million dollar free & clear home he currently lives in at 7351 Sawgrass Point Drive now titled in the name of Adrienne Federico to get homestead protection is the result of a Quiet Title scam involving Jayne Carusso and multiple frauds on the court.
After the Bartram ruling eliminated the statute of limitations on accelerated mortgage debt in 2016, Stopa’s grand Quiet Title scam strategy came to an end. So he attempted to retool the scam by suing mortgage lenders for fraud.
How the Mortgage Lender Fraud “Winfault Judgment” Scam Worked
Stopa recruited Lee Segal to start suing mortgage lenders like Deutsche Bank for fraud. Together, they colluded with an army of process servers to improperly “serve” the lender. This was done to ensure the lender had no knowledge of the lawsuit and would never answer.
In this way, Stopa would once again WIN BY DEFAULT. Stopa used Segal as a proxy patsy. Stopa knew he would eventually get caught so he setup Segal to take the fall. The Florida Bar ultimately took Segal down for running yet another Abpaymar scam for Mark Stopa and Adrienne Federico. This time in Pasco County (see Pasco County Case # 20CA-1437).
Segal sued Deutsch Bank on behalf of Abpaymar in June 2020 and had Deutsche Bank (improperly) “served” and received a default on August 11, 2020. Segal filed a motion for summary judgment on August 12, 2020. He was seeking the entry of a default judgment in the amount of $511,500. Fortunately the Judge sensed a scam and denied the motion and referred the matter over to the Florida Bar. Segal shit down his leg and dismissed the entire action the same day. Had he been successful, it would have been a $500k payday for Stopa and Federico.
Stopa and Federico ran this scam for years stealing over $30 million in default “winfault judgments” from Deutsche Bank alone.
Here is a press release issued by Deutsche Bank about the “Egregious Scam” perpetrated by Mark Stopa and Lee Segal:
Deutsche Bank Seeks Sanctions For Atty’s ‘Egregious’ Scam – Law360
But they didn’t stop there. They created another new scam to steal from the foreclosure courts.
How the Stupid Stopas Ran Their Foreclosure Surplus Fraud Scheme
Over the years Mark Stopa and Adrienne Federico assembled a massive portfolio of stolen homes. They were stealing so many homes and committing so many crimes, Stopa and Federico looked to other out of state jurisdictions to create LLC entities to hide their identity. Stopa’s favorite jurisdictions were New Mexico and Wyoming where he created hundreds of shell companies to hide his crimes.
Segal & Schuh Let Stopa Commit Unlicensed Practice Of Law In Their Office
After he was disbarred, Stopa hired Lee Segal, Jill Schuh and Chris Hixson with now defunct Segal & Schuh Law Group to defend the foreclosures on his client’s homes so he could continue to skim the rents. But after several years of court tricks, eventually the Judges got tired of the games and entered foreclosure Judgments for the mortgage lenders.
Realizing he was finally going to lose the rental cash cow, Stopa and Federico dreamed up a new “foreclosure surplus” scam as a last ditch effort to monetize the property and steal surplus funds from auction bidders before they lost the home.
Over the last several months alone, Stopa and Federico stole over $2 million dollars running their foreclosure surplus scam fraud on the court.
The scam worked like this…
When the senior mortgage lender was getting close to foreclosure, Stopa would fabricate a phony “equitable lien” debt and sue himself for $25-$30,000. He picked a relatively small dollar amount to file the case in county court where he could trick clueless (Stopa’s own words) county court judges into signing a foreclosure judgment.
Stopa would engage two of the corrupt crime family attorneys to represent both sides of the lawsuit for him. Together they would collude together in a scheme to defraud the court by filing the bogus complaint. Both sides would quickly stipulate to a foreclosure judgment (aka WIN BY DEFAULT) to get their case to foreclosure sale before the senior lender foreclosed and Stopa lost the home.
The Stupid Stopas Duped Auction Bidders
Because the underlying mortgage was in the name of his former client from several years earlier, most inexperienced auction bidders failed to find the senior mortgage lien in the chain of title. They falsely believed the home was free & clear and the only lien on the property was the bogus Stopa-Federico crime family equitable lien judgment. Naturally, amateur and inexperienced investors thought this was a great deal. As a result, competing bids drove up the sale price into the six-figure range.
Florida law allows the property owner to collect any overbid surplus above the judgment amount. In this case, Mark Stopa and Adrienne Federico would not only collect the fabricated equitable lien judgment amount, but they would also collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in overbid surplus funds.
In the end, the innocent auction bidders like Christopher Dennison and senior citizens Russell Layton and Jessy Joseph got stuck with a negative equity property being foreclosed by a senior mortgage lender while Stopa and Federico pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Unbelievable isn’t it? What a scam. Why rob a bank when you can just manipulate and deceive the county clerk and clueless judges to do the stealing for you.
What’s next for America’s Dumbest Crime Duo?
I think we all know how this ends.
The next act is coming soon… very soon.
Also, Check Out More Stories About The Endeavors of the Stupid Stopas:
The Mark Stopa Investigations Are Being Watched By Anonymous
Sharon Stopa Once Had A Restraining Order Issued Against Her
Mark Stopa Appears To Have Debilitating Mental Health Issues
Was The Stopa Law Firm A House Of Sexual Depravity?
Judge Michael Andrews Masculinity Questioned By Mark Stopa
Fraudster Mark Stopa Admits To Being Under a RICO Investigation
Stopa Consigliere Lee Segal Taken Down
Is Gary Stopa Selling His Little Red Corvette to Pay Legal Bills?
Judge Anthony Rondolino Colluded With Disbarred Attorney Mark Stopa
Is Adrienne Federico is Eating Herself to Death Due to Stress?
The Mark Stopa Disbarment: The Truth Vs. Mark Stopa
Is Gary Stopa the Real Ruler of the Stopa Crime Family?
Is Otis Elevator Salesman Kyle Stopa Part of the Stopa Crime Family?
Did Missing Steven Cozzi Know The Dirty Secrets Of Mark Stopa?
The SS Mark Stopa Is Sinking Fast!
How Florida Grinch Mark Stopa Stole a $2.1 Million Christmas
Whistleblowers Bust The Stopa-Federico Crime Family AGAIN!
Mobster Mom Adrienne Federico Busted In Another Scam
Scumbag Mark Stopa Busted Stealing From Elderly Clients
Mark Stopa Scam Alert: The Christopher Dennison Story
Ethical Misfit Mark Stopa Called Out By Legal Website
Let’s also take a moment of silence to remember the Mark Stopa Victims who lost millions to his scam over the last several months:
Over $60 Million STOLEN by Mark Stopa and the Federico Crime Family
PROOF MARK STOPA OWNS AND CONTROLS ALL PLAINTIFF AND DEFENDANT ENTITIES
DOWNLOAD STOPA CRIME DOSSIER 2.0
DOWNLOAD STOPA CRIME DOSSIER 1.0
This is just a small sample of victims. The Stopa-Federico Crime Family also has dozens of shell companies running the same scam in multiple counties throughout the State of Florida.
Are You A Victim Of One Of The Stopa-Federico Crime Family Real Estate Or Foreclosure Surplus Scams?
Are you a former Mark Stopa client who lost their home?
