Bankruptcy

Mortgage Fraud Cases Surge, Convictions Rise, FBI Reports

By J. Michael McBride

The FBI has been working with the Securities and Exchange Commission in investigating over 1,300 mortgage fraud cases and 19 corporate investigations. Some interesting statistics were released yesterday in an FBI report concerning fraud cases linked to the subprime lending crisis.

Year Cases Pursued Indictments Convictions Restitution Recovered

2007 1,204 321 206 $595.9 million $22 million

2006 818 263 204 $388.9 Million $1.4 million

Given today's housing market, it is a perfect opportunity for fraud. The most common types of cases are identity theft, misrepresentation of income or assets, forged documents, misrepresentation of occupancy, and inflated appraisals.

You can review the entire article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052203755_pf.html

JMM, PC, recently represented a trustee in a case involving allegations of a forged dead and inflated appraisal of real property. Our firm successfully recovered a significant amount to pay all the creditors in full with intestest.

Chandra

Full post as published by Texas Lawyer Blog on May 29, 2008 (boomark / email).