A multi-million dollar fraud ring [subscription required] exposed in Atlanta may end up explaining more of the foreclosures than anyone imagined. Today's Wall Street Journal details the how the fraud ring got $6.8 million in mortgages from Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC).
The Journal story talks about a New Yorker who told the bank that he and his wife earned more than $50,000 month as top officers of a marketing firm and submitted statements showing he had $3 million in assets, according to the federal fraud indictment. In reality, he was actually a phone technician earning $105,000 per year with only $35,000 in assets and his wife was a homemaker with no outside income. They bought a mansion for $1.8 and it recently sold out of foreclosure for $1.1 million. The scheme was exposed by neighbors who saw multi-million dollar homes sell for sky-high prices and then sit empty. People involved in this Atlanta ring are facing criminal fraud charges.
The FBI told the Journal that the percentage of white-collar agents and analysts devoted to prosecuting mortgage fraud is 28%. That's four times the number working on those types of cases in 2003 when it was only 7%. Lenders must file Suspicious Activity Reports when they suspect fraud. The number of reports being filed is up by nearly 700% between 2000 and 2006. In 2003 there were 436 active mortgage fraud cases and in 2007 the case load is 1,210.
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