Posted by Charles_CA on 7/29/05 11:36am
Msg #55641
Mortgage fraud up? How can that be.
This just came across my desk from Realtor.com
Mortgage Fraud Spikes With the Boom
(July 29, 2005) -- Mortgage fraud has grown faster than ever during the housing boom and is now a multibillion-dollar problem for the industry. Mortgage-related "suspicious activity reports" more than doubled from 2003 to 2004, according to the FBI.
A new report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute indicates that Atlanta; Dallas; Denver; Orlando, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Scranton, Pa.; Columbus, Ohio; Houston; Salt Lake City; and Louisville, Ky., were the top cities for mortgage fraud last year.
Mortgage fraud often involves a number of misrepresentations—the most common of which is falsification of applications by individual borrowers (56 percent of all cases), fake or incorrect tax and financial documents (33 percent), bogus employment verifications (12 percent), and fabricated or intentionally inflated appraisals (10 percent).
Investigators have noticed that fraud often involves stated-income and no income, no verification mortgages; property-flipping scams; or unscrupulous loan officers who help borrowers falsify their income.
Source: Newsday (07/29/05); Harney, Kenneth
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