Mortgage Fraud Reaching Emergency Levels

Mar 27th, 2009 @ 4:14 PM by Alden Smith

One of my favorite tools for posting to the blog is the alerts I get from Google and Reuters.  Once or twice a day I get an e-mail digest that gives me all the latest headlines in the mortgage market.

Here is what I’ve been seeing.

“Seven indicted in states biggest mortgage fraud scheme”

“Florida mortgage fraud crisis called state of emergency”

“Former nightclub owner pleads guilty to defrauding banks on mortgage loans”

The list goes on.

It seems everyone is getting into the mortgage fraud game.  From reading these articles listed here, you get the feeling that people are either very gullible or very stupid.

We have to take into consideration the fact that whenever a crisis looms, the roaches come out of the woodwork.  I have to think though, that in these days of instant communication, 24 hour news channels and fraud warnings that it has to be very hard to pull the wool over an unsuspecting public’s eyes.

I have to think that these so-called entrepreneurs are setting up phone lines, buying a nice soup for their front man, and going into business.  Surely, they target older people and those with little education.  How they get the list of people to work on is beyond me.  I’m sure they have a plan.

This sort of thing is why I have always been in behavior of regulation.  To my way of thinking if a person wants to do business in any state or locality, they should have to present their business plan to local governments, and apply for licensing.  It can’t be that hard to determine whether somebody is on the up and up.

The same thing should be happening with Wall Street banks.  Some of the information I research on a regular basis frightens me.  How we, as members of one of the strongest democracies on earth, can allow these things to happen is something that never fails to amaze me.  Everywhere you turn, you see some new outrage against the folks on Main Street.  I fail to believe that all of this is oversight on the part of the federal government. This week we saw that some folks in the Fed were aware of the edgy bonus issue.  Yet we also find out that the Secretary of Treasury didn’t have a clue until sometime later on.  How this can happen to me seems criminal.

Although things are being painted as a bit more rosy, until something is done to control and manage the people that handle the taxpayer’s money we will see this happening on a regular basis.  I have great confidence in the Obama administration.  But I am also smart enough to know that nothing can be accomplished without complete cooperation in the government.  And in all of my years, I’ve never seen this happen.