Flipping Frenzy.com is your source for news, information, and commentary on Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud. 
If you believe you have been a victim of real estate or mortgage fraud, start here! Select your state from the pulldown menu below:
A Brazen Example Of Attempted Real Estate Fraud
EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of the intense and often off-topic nature of many of the comments left for this blog entry, commenting for the particular blog entry has been turned off, and all unrelated comments have been deleted.
——————-
According to an article in last Friday’s online edition of Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cindy Eldridge says she could spend the rest of her days as an attorney (she’s 41-years-old by the way) prosecuting just mortgage-fraud cases. Wondering why? Well, take a gander at this and see if you don’t agree…
A man recently walked up to the customer service counter at a Register of Deeds office not too far from my office here in Michigan, and did what probably happens at that office two to five dozen times per day… presented a signed deed indicating that he was selling a property. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Well, that’s where this story takes an unlikely twist. The employee working the counter at the Register of Deeds office that day just happened to be owner of the house, and she wasn’t interested in selling.
That’s right… real estate and mortgage fraud has gotten so out of control that a crook tried to pass a phony deed right under the nose of the home’s owner, who just so happened to work at the Register of Deeds office. Think I’m making this up? Trust me, I couldn’t even if I tried. From this morning’s online edition of The Detroit News:
Rarely do victims of mortgage fraud come eye to eye with the person trying to steal the property from right beneath their feet. In one version of mortgage fraud, Casha Valentine did. A man walked up to the counter at the Wayne County Register of Deeds where Valentine works and presented a deed with Valentine’s forged signature saying she was selling her property. She was not.
“I was sitting there looking right at him. I could have grabbed him over the counter. I said to myself ‘Why is he doing this?’ I was shocked, but they do it every day,” said Valentine, 45, of Southfield. And thanks to the quick thinking of her co-workers who called police and stalled the con man, Valentine won’t be spending thousands of dollars trying to reclaim the home she rightfully owns. But hundreds of Metro Detroiters are not so lucky.
Click here for entire Detroit News article.
For years now I’ve been warning consumers–along with local, state, and Federal regulators and law enforcement officials–about the tactics bad guys use to commit real estate and mortgage fraud. Never in my wildest dreams though did I think a crook would be stupid enough to try something like this (and by “this” I don’t mean attempting to pass a phony deed… I mean attempt to pass a phony deed right in front of the rightful owner of the property). But don’t you see… this is just one more example of how easy it is for the scammers and fraudsters to get away with real estate fraud.
What does it say about the system if the only way this jerk got caught was because the person he tried to scam just so happened to work at the Register of Deeds office? I’ll tell you what it says… it says that real estate and mortgage-related fraud are as easy to commit today as taking candy away from my little brother was 40 years ago. It says that honest, hard-working homeowners don’t have a chance to protect themselves. And it cries out for a solution. When it gets this easy to steal a house, something is clearly wrong. It’s high time that homeowners, real estate professionals, law enforcement agencies, and politicians join forces to address this clear and present danger.
——————
EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of the intense and often off-topic nature of many of the comments left for this blog entry, commenting for the particular blog entry has been turned off, and all unrelated comments have been deleted.
A Ralph Roberts Site, Copyright 2005-2008 |
I am the secretary of a consumer org specializing in problems with home builders. Though the org started over 10 yrs ago, focusing on just bad builders, it has increasingly covered issues like mortgage fraud, etc. Some of the fraud is borderline and law enforcement looks the other way. More of the builder complaints we receive now have something often classified as “predatory” about the mortgage, particularly when the buyer uses the builder’s in-house or preferred lender. To read about such bold acts as this guy in the article isn’t surprising to me at all. It’s disgusting but not surprising anymore. I agree that law enforcement really needs to take off the blinders and do something. If it wasn’t so easy, mortgage fraud would not be proliferating.
Comment by CS — August 30, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
Wow, unbelievable! There sure are alot of crackpots out there!
Comment by u.r.stun — September 18, 2006 @ 7:46 pm