Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he is reluctantly ending his month-long moratorium on mortgage foreclosure evictions.
Dart said he has no choice because Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez told him eviction orders signed by a judge must be enforced even if irregularities are found.
Dart stressed that most eviction cases he has studied seem to have serious errors.
"I'm not saying something has a typo in it," said Dart. "I'm saying that there's possibilities of perjury, possibilities of deceptive practices. There's possibilities of all sorts of fraud going on. We need to do the proper investigation, to make sure that people who are being put out of their homes are being given all their rights that they deserve, and are owed, before their largest possession is taken away from them."
Dart announced his office is investigating and asked Loyola University law students to check 2,200 pending evictions for irregularities. He said foreclosures were ordered on 43,000 properties in the county in 2010.
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