Because of the sub-prime lending crisis and the 2008 Presidential Election, Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud has somewhat moved to the front of the mind. Unfortunately, very little continues to be done at an industry level to ensure that insiders and those who work alongside them are educated and trained in Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud detection and prevention.

In an article that is slated to appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Washington Post, nationally-syndicated Real Estate columnist Kenneth R. Harney writes that despite all the doom and gloom coverage from the media, “mortgage money is plentiful” and “the majority of mortgage products remain relatively unaffected by troubles in the subprime segment.” He also goes on to say:

“…FICO credit-score standards generally are higher than a year ago, stated-income mortgages with no verifications are hard to find and major investors are on the prowl for anything hinting at fraud.“

As much as I beat the drum for more funding at the state and Federal levels for Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud enforcement and education, things are getting better on some levels, but not all. Here on the ground, far away from Wall Street and the major investors Harney alludes to… here in the real world–in the Realtors’ office and at the closing table–education and enforcement are nowhere to be found.

Classic example

Earlier this week, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida filed conspiracy charges against a licensed mortgage broker, a title attorney, and a former Wachovia Bank loan officer for their role in a $42,000,000 mortgage fraud scam. Richard Crowder, II, Gary Mills, and Karen Sullivan each now face up to thirty years in federal prison, restitution (which, mind you, they’ll never be able to pay in full), and fines of up to $1,000,000.

Crowder is a licensed mortgage broker and the former owner of America’s Best Mortgage Services, located in Coconut Creek, Florida. Mills is a licensed title attorney and the owner of Four Star Title, located in Deerfield Beach, Florida. And Sullivan is a former loan officer for Wachovia Bank.

As a part of their scam, Crowder identified residential properties, including luxury condominiums on Miami’s South Beach, which were available for purchase. He then recruited buyers for the properties by representing to them that he could obtain 100 percent financing. After locating the buyers, Crowder applied for equity lines of credit on their behalf with Wachovia Bank. To get Wachovia to issue the equity lines of credit, Crowder and Mills prepared fraudulent HUD-1 settlement forms that falsely stated that the buyers already owned the properties. The fraudulent HUD-1s were then given to Sullivan, who used them to facilitate the issuance of equity lines of credit from Wachovia.

Simultaneously, or sometimes soon after obtaining the equity lines of credit from Wachovia, Crowder applied for first mortgages on the properties. Not surprising, his applications overstated the buyers’ assets and income, and included false verification of deposit forms prepared by Sullivan. To further induce the lenders to issue loans, Mills prepared documents falsely representing that the buyers were using their own money for the down payments and closing costs. In fact, if you have not figured it out by now, the buyers were using funds from the fraudulently obtained Wachovia equity lines credit or funds provided by Crowder.

What’s going on here?

An attorney, a bank loan officer, and the owner of a mortgage company, all conspiring to rip off nearly $42,000,000, and no one did anything about it until a U.S. Attorney (who received some help from the FBI) stepped in and put a stop to it? What a shame. For years now, Real Estate Fraud Forensics experts have called for funding to support efforts to raise awareness among consumers and industry insiders alike, but all we ever seem to receive are press releases detailing indictments, arrests and a few successful prosecutions.

As I recently shared with an industry colleague, sadly, our federal government appears to believe that only way to stop Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud is through lengthy and time consuming investigations, forced entries, indictments, and convictions. Very little if anything is being done to educate Real Estate industry insiders and to make them truly aware of the significant harm and short-sightedness associated with fraud.

Fifty-six year-old James Stovall of Roswell, Georgia, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal district court to charges of conspiracy to commit bank, mail and wire fraud, bank loan application fraud, money laundering, and wire fraud in connection with a series of Real Estate fraud schemes valued at more than $20,000,000.00.

According to the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case (David Nahmias) and the information presented in court, Stovall is a real estate attorney who participated in a mortgage fraud scheme involving property flips orchestrated by one of his clients, Reti Relocation Services, Inc. From April 2000 to June 2001, Reti flipped some 50 properties in the metro-Atlanta area (more specifically, in the Brookstone subdivision of Acworth, the Windward and Seven Oaks subdivisions in Alpharetta, and the Towne Lake subdivisions in Woodstock).

Reti would acquire properties and on the same day resell them to straw borrowers who were paid for participating in the transactions. Reti paid recruiters for locating straw borrowers, loan officers for preparing and submitting false loan applications and false qualifying documents, and appraisers for preparing fraudulent appraisals with inflated values that were submitted to lenders.

Stovall closed nearly all of the same day fraudulent flips and, in doing so, failed to advise his clients, the lenders, of those flips, prepared false HUD-1 settlement statements that were submitted to the lenders, and moved the proceeds of the scheme through his escrow account and into off-shore bank accounts. The scheme also involved the submission of false qualifying information and documents through the mail and the wire transfer of scheme proceeds. In the overall scheme, financial institutions and lenders were fraudulently induced to make loans totaling over $20 million.

Stovall pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank, mail, and wire fraud, bank loan application fraud, and money laundering, and one count of wire fraud. Upon sentencing, he could receive five years in prison and a fine of up to $1,500,000.00.

Just two weeks after Texas’ Attorney General convened the Texas Residential Mortgage Fraud Task Force–a strategic partnership intended to improve collaboration among residential mortgage regulators and law enforcement officials–some progress has been made. Last Friday, Attorney General Greg Abbott charged Foreclosure Assistance Solutions, LLC (a Clearwater, Florida-based company) with operating an unlawful foreclosure rescue scam that targeted struggling Texas homeowners, and seized of $13,000,000.00 worth of the company’s assets.

As a result, the 408th District Court in Texas issued a temporary restraining order and froze assets belonging to three businessmen who organized the scheme. According to court documents, the defendants fraudulently advertised that they could save homeowners from imminent foreclosures.

Defendants named in the petition:

• Foreclosure Assistance Solutions, LLC of Florida
• Herb Zerden, co-owner of Foreclosure Assistance Solutions
• Adolfo Quintero, co-owner of Foreclosure Assistance Solutions
• J.W.W. Services, Inc. of California
• John Woodruff, owner of J.W.W. Services

According to the State of Texas, the defendants mailed cards and letters to homeowners whose mortgage payments were delinquent and thus facing foreclosure. Their correspondence with homeowners promised established relationships with mortgage companies and banks nationwide. As a result, they claimed, Foreclosure Assistance Solutions could stop the foreclosure process.

Homeowners who contacted Foreclosure Assistance Solutions were urged to sign a $1,200 contract immediately. Under the contract, Foreclosure Assistance Solutions strictly prohibited homeowners from contacting their lenders. After homeowners paid the fee, they rarely heard from the company’s representatives again. When homeowners repeatedly called the company for answers, they were ignored. As a result, many homeowners still lost their homes to foreclosure.

Last Friday’s action prohibits the defendants from making false representations to homeowners. Specifically, Foreclosure Assistance Solutions is prohibited from claiming that a home is at risk without providing proof of that risk. The court also ordered the defendants to stop assisting homeowners without describing the alleged assistance.

The Office of the Attorney General’s petition states that Foreclosure Assistance Solutions deposited over $13 million in Bank of America accounts between 2005 and 2006. Most of those funds came from homeowners who faced foreclosure. That account and others are subject to last Friday’s asset freeze.

The Attorney General is now seeking court-ordered restitution for homeowners who were harmed by the defendants’ acts, as well as civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Additionally, the Attorney General is requesting up to $5,000 per violation for the defendants’ failure to register the business as one that conducts telephone solicitations.

As I mentioned at the outset of this post, the State of Texas is engaged in a variety of efforts involving residential mortgages. Last week, Attorney General Abbott launched the Texas Residential Mortgage Fraud Task Force, a partnership that involves key state regulatory agencies. The task force, established by Texas House Bill 716, is required “to take a proactive stance towards tracking and prosecuting mortgage fraud and the perpetrators of mortgage fraud statewide.”

Earlier this year, the state secured $21 million in restitution for Texas homeowners who were harmed by lending giant Ameriquest Mortgage Co. That case resolved allegations that the company and its affiliates did not clearly disclose certain terms to homeowners, including unpredictable adjustable rates.

Homeowners who believe they have been harmed by Foreclosure Assistance Solutions, LLC, or similar fraudulent businesses in Texas may call the Office of the Attorney General’s toll-free complaint line at (800) 252-8011.

Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times today ran a story entitled “Brokers to Westside elite accused of fraud,” in which staff writers Annette Haddad and Diane Wedner reported the previous day’s indictment of two “high-profile Beverly Hills real estate agents and two licensed appraisers” on multiple charges of conspiracy, bank fraud and loan fraud (another term for mortgage fraud). The quartet stand accused of conspiring to dupe lenders out “more than $40 million in fraudulent loans for homes in some of Southern California’s most expensive neighborhoods.”

Named in the indictment are Joseph Babajian and Kyle Grasso, agents with Prudential California Realty, and appraisers Lila Rizk of Trabuco Canyon and Scott Robinson of Dana Point. Babajian and Grasso were also charged with money laundering.

Although those charged are certainly innocent until proven guilty, this case draws attention to the growing problem of real estate fraud and mortgage fraud and the threat that fraud poses to the real estate industry and homeowners, as well. As I explain in my most recent book, co-author of the recent book Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud: Preserving the American Dream of Homeownership:

Most people consider mortgage fraud to be a victimless crime, but that is far from the truth. The way this type of mortgage fraud typically works is that the buyer obtains an inflated appraisal making the home appear to be worth more than it really is, so the lender will loan them more money. At closing, the buyer gets the extra money back. Some people think that there is nothing wrong with this practice. After all, the buyer must make payments on a larger mortgage, the agent receives a bigger commission, and housing values in the area tend to rise. On the surface and in the short term, it appears that everybody wins.

As my co-author Rachel Dollar and I go on to explain, however, this sort of logic simply rationalizes the very real crime of mortgage fraud. Artificially inflated appraisals and mortgage fraud eventually result in inflated housing prices, higher loan default rates, increasing rates of foreclosures, higher property taxes, and the erosion of neighborhoods.

Cash back at closing schemes, like those described in the L.A. Times story, are designed to intentionally fool a lender into approving a loan that’s higher than what they would normally have approved if they had all the facts. As I have pointed here on FlippingFrenzy.com before, every 1003 (Uniform Residential Loan Application) has a statement you have to sign claiming that the information on the form is correct to the best of your knowledge. If you sign a form that contains false information, you are guilty of committing a felony, regardless of what you decide to use that money for.

We should all be committed to getting the word out about real estate and mortgage fraud, so consumers as well as industry insiders (who happen to be involved in more than 80 percent of the cases involving mortgage fraud) will have no question of what is right and what is wrong. We ned to provide consumers and professionals with the information and tools they need to spot the signs of fraud, stop it in its tracks, and report it to the proper authorities. Only by creating a army of fraud busters can we hope to turn the tide and preserve the American Dream of Homeownership.

A former Los Angeles-based real estate developer charged with running a $50 million mortgage fraud scheme arrived in the United States yesterday afternoon to face criminal charges. Charles Fitzgerald was arrested and deported by authorities in the Independent State of Samoa, a Pacific island nation where he fled to in June 2003 after he was sued for fraud by Lehman Brothers Bank.

Samoan law enforcement officials, responding to a request from the United States, arrested the 46-year-old Fitzgerald in the Samoan capital of Apia on Monday. Fitzgerald was deported by Samoa because his United States passport had been revoked after the criminal charges were filed, which in turn subjected him to immediate deportation under Samoan law.

Fitzgerald arrived at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday afternoon, and was immediately transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. He is expected to make a court appearance in U.S. District Court this afternoon, where he’ll answer to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and loan fraud, four counts of bank fraud, one count of loan fraud, five counts of money laundering, and one count of obstruction of justice. In addition to Fitzgerald, the following people were previously charged with working alongside the former real estate developer to defraud Lehman Brothers Bank:

• Mark Abrams, 45, of Long Beach, CA
• Nicole LaViolette, 37, of Palm Springs, CA
• Jamieson Matykowski, 33, of Laguna Niguel, CA
• Timothy Holland, 35, of Santa Ana, CA

Abrams previously pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and loan fraud, bank fraud, making a false statement on a tax return and obstruction of justice. LaViolette, Matykowski and Holland previously pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and loan fraud, as well as wire fraud. All four are scheduled to be sentenced next year by United States District Judge Dean D. Pregerson.

Fitzgerald and the others were involved in a wide-ranging and sophisticated conspiracy to defraud federally insured mortgage lenders out of tens of millions of dollars. As part of the scam, they obtained inflated mortgage loans on homes in some of California’s most exclusive neighborhoods, including Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Malibu, Carmel, Mill Valley, Pebble Beach and La Jolla. According to the recently unsealed charges, the conspiracy was spearheaded by Fitzgerald and Abrams.

In the charges filed against the others, in late-1999/early-2000, Fitzgerald went into business with Abrams in a mortgage brokering company called Desert Pacific Financial, Inc. (DPF). The company sent mortgage loan applications to lenders for review and funding, and received commissions from those lenders when the loans closed. In late 2001, Fitzgerald and Abrams renamed the company Beverly Hills Estates Funding, Inc. (BHEF).

LaViolette was a loan processor at DPF/BHEF, and Matykowski was a property scout who helped locate homes for potential purchase. Fitzgerald and Abrams also had several in-house escrow companies, in which Holland was the escrow officer.

Fitzgerald and Abrams, working with Matykowski and real estate agents, located homes for sale. According to court documents, they primarily looked for homes with purchase prices they could inflate, which generally meant they used homes with good views in expensive neighborhoods throughout California. As part of the scheme, Fitzgerald and Abrams purchased homes at their real market values. For example, the case against Abrams details the purchase of a home in Bel Air, which Fitzgerald and Abrams bought for $735,000 in the name of “Matykowski or his assignee,” even though they were at all times in actual control of the home.

Fitzgerald, Abrams and their associates then recruited straw borrowers to obtain inflated loans on the properties. The straw borrowers, some of whom received payments, allowed Fitzgerald and Abrams to use their names and credit to obtain mortgages as part of a property flipping process. After obtaining inflated appraisals and other false documents that were submitted with loan applications, Fitzgerald and Abrams obtained mortgages in the names of the straw borrowers for double or triple the actual values of the homes. For example, when they flipped the Bel Air property, they sold the residence to the straw borrower for $2,370,000. Abrams’ charges allege that a bogus loan application package went to Lehman Brothers Bank seeking a loan of $1,422,000, nearly double the true $735,000 purchase price, and that Lehman Brothers Bank unwittingly funded a loan of more than $1.4 million on the property, almost all of which ended up in one of the in-house escrow companies controlled by Fitzgerald and Abrams.

The victim lenders, having been deceived by the false documentation supplied by Fitzgerald, Abrams, and others, unwittingly funded the inflated loans. According to Abrams’ charges, Lehman Brothers Bank alone was deceived into funding about 80 such inflated loans from March 2000 through March 2003. These 80 loans were more than $50 million over the true prices of the homes. Fitzgerald and Abrams received millions of dollars of these excess loan proceeds, and their associates received kickbacks, inflated appraisal fees, and large commissions.

Lehman Brothers Bank sued Fitzgerald, Abrams and others in federal court in Los Angeles in 2003 and obtained a receivership, temporary restraining orders, and preliminary injunctions against them. If he is convicted of the 12 counts in the criminal complaint, Fitzgerald faces a possible sentence of 265 years in federal prison.

Federal authorities unsealed a 47-count indictment last week against eleven individuals for their participation in a complex mortgage fraud scheme involving more than 30 properties bought and sold in Broward County, Florida. In all, the acts committed by six men and five women resulted in the issuance of approximately $10,000,000.00 in fraudulent mortgage loans.

Charged in the indictment were Yvette Scott Patterson, 40, formerly of Lauderhill and now in Jamaica; Delroy Patterson, 45, formerly of Lauderhill and now also in Jamaica; Christine Brown, 30, of Fort Lauderdale, FL; Megan McGuire, 40, of Miramar, FL; Roosevelt Dozier, 39, of Hollywood, FL; Ishmael Grant, 59, of Lauderhill, FL; Mavis Grant, 62, also of Lauderhill, FL; Adewui Majaro, 42, of North Miami, FL; Mark Reid, 36, of Miramar, FL; Audrey Lynch, 36, of Fort Lauderdale, FL; and Fitzgerald Puddie, 32, of Hollywood, FL and Toronto, Canada. All 11 defendants have been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity fraud, as well as several substantive counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity fraud. Defendant Yvette Scott Patterson was individually charged with making a false statement in a passport application in July 2003.

According to court documents, the defendants engaged in a scheme to enrich themselves by obtaining mortgages from lenders using straw purchasers and through the submission of false documentation, including false loan applications, employment verification forms, salary statements, and bank account statements reflecting inaccurate high account balances. The defendants also allegedly used and caused others to use false or stolen Florida’s driver’s licenses, identification cards, and social security numbers as their personal identification at closings, in order to purchase property in the names of individuals whose identification documents had been previously stolen.

Also according to the indictment, Patterson masterminded the scheme, and used her mortgage business, Khadmilroy, Inc., located in Broward County, to execute it. The indictment lists 17 properties, all in Broward County, purchased with loans obtained through fraudulent applications and supporting documentation in the names of straw purchasers or in the names of people whose identification documents, including social security numbers and driver’s licenses, had been previously stolen. Over the period of the conspiracy, Patterson is said to have received approximately $300,000 in loan closing fees, mortgage broker fees, and yield premiums in connection with the fraudulently procured mortgages.

The eleven fraudsters were well organized and dedicated to getting rich at the expense of others. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of many law enforcement agencies, this is one real estate fraud ring that now appears to be out of business.

If convicted, the 11 defendants face a maximum term of imprisonment of up to five years on the conspiracy count, up to twenty years’ on each of the mail and wire fraud counts, from two to fifteen years’ on the aggravated identity fraud counts, and up to ten years on the false passport count. The investigation was named Operation Whose House, because, as a result of the defendants’ fraud, public property records did not accurately reflect the true ownership of the properties bought and sold by the 11 scammers.

Just one day after his partner in crime was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison, U.S. Secret Service Agents and Nashville, Tennessee police arrested Matthew B. Cox–the most notorious mortgage fraud scam artist ever to roam the planet. According to Flipping Frenzy’s good friend, St. Petersburg Times staff writer, Jeff Testerman, Cox was arrested after a 60-year-old Nashville babysitter read about him in the Times and tipped off U.S. Secret Service agents. According to the Associated Press, federal prosecutors in Atlanta, Georgia will handle Cox’s case.

In the world of real estate and mortgage fraud forensics, no one person’s name sends a chill up the back of a spine more so than Matthew Cox, also known as Maxwell Price, David Richard Freeman, Gerald Scott Cugno, Michael Shawn Shanahan, Gary Lee Sullivan, Michael John Eckert, Michael White, Kevin White, David White, James Redd.

For anyone new to this blog or to the world of real estate fraud forensics, Cox’s name and face have appeared on the U.S. Secret Service’s Most Wanted Fugitive list since around 2004. Cox and Hauck used stolen identities to obtain drivers licenses, purchase vehicles, lease mail drops, rent apartments and open bank accounts to receive reale estate-related scheme proceeds throughout the states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.

FlippingFremzy.com will have more on this developing story next week. In the meantime, we’d like to send a note of appreciation and support to the citizen (Patsy Taylor) who lead authorities to Cox, as well as to both the federal and local authorities in Nashville, for a job well done!

Jeff Testerman of the St. Petersburg Times just posted an amazingly detailed article on the events leading up the capture of Matthew Cox:

Sitter’s fears set arrest in motion

By JEFF TESTERMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published November 17, 2006

Matthew B. Cox., a former Tampa mortgage broker who rose to the top of the most-wanted list by purportedly masterminding a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme, was captured Thursday by federal agents at a home he shared with his girlfriend in Nashville.

Eluding capture for almost three years after being pursued by state and federal probation officers, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, Cox was turned in by the efforts of Patsy Taylor, a 60-year-old retiree and occasional babysitter.

Now Cox faces a 42-count fraud indictment in Atlanta that could put him behind bars for 400 years, as well as felony charges stemming from fleeing Tampa while on probation and additional fraud charges likely to arise from a federal investigation into fraudulent mortgage loans in the Tampa Heights area.

Taylor, the wife of a Baptist minister, mother of five and one-time owner of a medical transcription business, said she smelled something fishy about Cox, investigated him and then turned him in.

A half-dozen Secret Service agents captured Cox without incident Thursday morning.

“There was a certain deceit I saw in his eyes,” Taylor said Thursday. “I didn’t trust the things he said.”

Taylor met Cox a few months ago as he masqueraded as Joseph Carter, co-owner of a renovation firm called the Nashville Restoration Project, who offered a sweet deal to Taylor’s daughter on a remodeled home. Later, Taylor shared babysitting duties caring for the 4-year-old son of Carter’s girlfriend.

Nothing about Carter felt right, Taylor said.

“He said he could give my daughter this remodeled place for $150,000, and I knew it was a $250,000 place,” Taylor said. “He was supposed to have made all these sales but hadn’t really sold anything.”

Taylor said she wondered why Carter didn’t go out much, and why he had outfitted his restored bungalow home with sophisticated security cameras.

She began to investigate.

After learning Carter was from Florida, she used her computer to look through the archives of the state’s newspapers.

Taylor said a story published in the St. Petersburg Times this year caught her attention. It was about a couple from Tampa named Matthew Cox, 37, and Rebecca Hauck on the run from the law.

Focusing on a reference in the story to the most-wanted list circulated by the Secret Service, Taylor went to the agency’s Web site. There, at the top of the list was a mug shot of the man her instincts had told her was trouble.

“It scared me to death,” said Taylor. “It was Joseph Carter.”

Taylor read the Secret Service warning about Cox being armed and dangerous. She worried about her safety, and of the safety of the 4-year-old boy she had cared for as a babysitter. If she was going to take a chance on turning him in, she said, she figured, she ought to ask about a reward.

Last Friday, Taylor e-mailed the Times reporter who had chronicled Cox’s history since 2003 and asked if there was a reward. “I think I have some really good information that would catch him today,” she wrote.

The Times checked with the Secret Service. No reward. The newspaper next called Paula Hutchinson, attorney for Hauck, who had been captured in March, pleaded guilty to reduced charges and agreed to testify against Cox.

The catch was that Hauck would be able to testify and earn a reduced sentence only if Cox could be found.

Hutchinson said Hauck’s family would offer a private reward. The Times relayed the information to Taylor, along with Hutchinson’s phone number.

After the two women talked, the lawyer said she was sure Taylor had found Cox. The physical description, the dog named Pinky that Cox took when he left Hauck, the home restoration business, his affinity for Starbucks coffee and Infiniti autos – all were signs that Taylor had located the man at the top of the most wanted list.

Hutchinson put Taylor in touch with Secret Service agents.

Hours after Hauck was sentenced in Atlanta Wednesday to 70 months in prison for her part in a string of mortgage frauds, the Secret Service was monitoring the home of “Joseph Carter” and his girlfriend, Amanda Gardner, at 79 Donelson St. in Nashville

Taylor said an agent called her 10 times Wednesday night, troubled that no one seemed to be home at the Donelson address. Did Taylor have other addresses or phone numbers? Taylor said she did not.

What neither agents nor Taylor knew was that a home invasion at the Donelson Street address on Monday had sent Carter, Gardner and her son into hiding at a motel.

A report from the Nashville Police Department says that two masked men broke into the home, brandished guns and made off with $6,000 in cash, two Cartier watches, a Rolex watch, a 9mm handgun and the couple’s silver Infiniti.

“I was scared to death,” Gardner said Thursday. Her boyfriend “said he was afraid someone was after him, and we checked into a motel under another name.”

But by Thursday morning, Carter was back at the Donelson Street home. After Gardner left the home to take her son to school, agents swooped in.

Gardner returned to find the agents standing over her boyfriend, who confessed that he was Matthew Cox, she said.

Taylor said she gathered the courage to contact federal agents after reading in the Times “about young mothers going to jail while Cox was still doing criminal things.”

“I didn’t want this to happen again,” she said. “I always taught my children, if you do right, you are right.”

“Her motives didn’t seem to be mercenary,” Hutchinson said of Taylor. “She had concerns about her own safety and she was determined to stop the predator of young mothers.”

With the capture of Cox, Hauck now becomes eligible for a reduction in her sentence as she fulfills a promise to assist the U.S. government make its case against the man she says was her accomplice.

No one but Hauck can offer the details of the forgery, identity theft, bank fraud and money laundering prosecutors say the couple undertook for nearly two years in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and the Carolinas.

But with Cox still on the loose when Hauck was sentenced to prison Wednesday, she wondered if she’d have a chance to testify.

“The whole thing has been a bad dream for her,” said Hutchinson. “Now, she can wake up.”

Thank you, Jeff, for keeping all of us safe and in the loop!

A California man who was once a finalist for the naming rights to the San Francisco 49ers’ football stadium, and who donated large amounts of money to California State University, was indicted late last week by a Federal grand jury on 122 charges of fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud homeowners of millions of dollars in cash.

According to an indictment sought by the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, 32-year-old Tony Daniloo of Turlock, CA, embezzled large amounts of money from real estate clients in the East Bay and the central California valley, some of which he used to secure the naming rights on an athletic arena at California State University at Stanislaus. From 2000 to 2002, Daniloo managed the Dublin branch office of Residential Credit Corporation, a mortgage brokerage company based in Westminster, CA. In 2003, he co-founded DreamLife Financial, which maintained headquarters in Modesto and as many as seven branch offices, and served as President and CEO of DreamLife Financial until it closed in December 2004.

The indictment alleges that Daniloo’s clients at both Residential Credit Corporation and DreamLife sought to refinance their properties in order to convert the equity in their properties for their cash needs. Instead, according to the charges, Daniloo altered escrow documents to cause large amounts of cash intended for his clients to be deposited into his own personal bank accounts.

In total, according to the indictment and a search warrant affidavit for a search executed by federal agents in December 2004, Daniloo defrauded homeowners of approximately $7 million in cash that the victim homeowners had intended be used for their own cash needs.

The indictment alleges that Daniloo laundered his criminal proceeds by making numerous “lulling payments” to victim homeowners, as well as spending massive amounts of stolen money to garner publicity for DreamLife. For example, according to the indictment, Mr. Daniloo made a $1 million pledge to the athletic department at California State University at Stanislaus, in exchange for the university renaming its athletic arena “DreamLife Arena.” And in 2004, DreamLife was a finalist for naming rights of the San Francisco 49ers’ football stadium at Candlestick Point.

In addition to the federal charges filed last week, Daniloo faces local charges in Alameda County, CA. Daniloo was arrested by federal agents on June 29, 2006, pursuant to a federal complaint and arrest warrant, and made his initial appearance in federal court the same day. He remains in federal custody at North County Jail in Oakland, CA. The indictment charges Daniloo with 41 counts of wire fraud, four counts of mail fraud, and 77 counts of money laundering. The maximum statutory penalty for each of these counts is 20 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, and restitution.

Yesterday, on AboutRalph.com, I blogged about how Donald Trump’s organization is bidding to bring a casino to Philadelphia, and about how I feel that this would be a disastrous move. Now, one day later, word comes that 10 Philadelphians have been arrested and charged in a massive mortgage fraud scam that involved nearly 200 separate properties.

From the Philadelphia Daily News:

the grand jury charged that Mahn Huu Doan, 38, of S. 72nd St., and an associate had made up bogus bank records, W-2 forms and pay stubs to get government-backed mortgage loans.

Most of the mortgages came from a company owned by Vincent Sirolli, 64, of West Deptford, N.J. Sirolli and three employees allegedly processed the bogus loan applications and got Doan the money he needed to buy the homes.

The feds said an appraiser inflated the value of the homes and two settlement agents prepared bogus paperwork to conceal the fraud.

Click here for the complete story.

Back in September of 2005, 63-year-old Edward Garnett and 70-year-old Shirley Akey were arrested and charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit fraud, three counts each of loan application fraud, two counts each of mail fraud, three counts each of wire fraud, and three counts each of money laundering, all in connection with a scam which netted the pair nearly $6,000,000 in fraudulently obtained mortgage loans. Now comes word from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida that Garnett and Akey were sentenced late last week to serve time in jail and pay millions of dollars in restitution.

According to the U.S. Attorney in charge of the case, in order to obtain mortgages, Garnett submitted loan applications containing false financial information (such as overstated income, overvalued assets, false employment information, and false tax information) in his name and in the names of ‘nominee’ purchasers. Garnett and Akey then arranged for the nominees to become signatories on Akey’s bank accounts; that way, they would appear to have assets sufficient to qualify for the loans for which they were applying. Long story short, Garnett pocketed more than $1.4 million, much of which he shared with his longtime buddy, Shirley Akey. For her part, Akey concealed the money for Garnett and laundered it through her own personal bank accounts.

What a pair, huh?

Garnett, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in mid-September of last year, was sentenced to serve sixty (60) months’ in jail, followed by three years’ of supervised release, which was the statutory maximum sentence. In addition, he was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,004,403.22. Shirley Akey lucked out, somewhat. As a result of cooperating with government investigators, she was sentenced to serve just one year in prison followed by three years of supervised release, and restitution in the amount of $1,004,403.22.

According to the Associated Press and Mobile, Alabama’s Press-Register newspaper, the FBI has arrested four people and accused them of swindling Regions Bank out of $1 million in a mortgage-related con.

FBI Special Agent Craig Dahle tells the Press-Register that federal officers and investigators from the Alabama attorney general’s office arrested Darlene Hill, Joycelyn Easter, Kathy Frye, and Antonio Harrison without incident on Tuesday at each of their respective homes. All four have already pleaded innocent before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Mobile.

The indictment that lead to the arrests charges each of the suspects with four counts of wire fraud and four counts of loan fraud. The Press-Register also reports prosecutors are seeking to force the forfeiture of property purchased with the loans, along with money located in a number of different bank accounts.

According to the AP, all four are accused of using the names of “unwitting participants” in order to obtain mortgages from Regions Bank. The foursome submitted fraudulent information in order to secure the loans and then used part of the money to purchase at least three properties in Mobile. To obtain the mortgages, Hill, Easter, Frye, and Harrison submitted a loan packet for straw buyers that misrepresented borrower’s income and assets, according to the indictment.

The value of the loans made by Regions, according to the indictment, totals $996,000, but the FBI says the actual amount could be much higher.

2006-04-27 04:40 When we think of real estate and mortgage fraud, we’re usually talking about the impact it has on homeowners. Well, I found an interesting announcement this morning on a Buffalo, NY, community-based blog called WNY Media Network, that in a round-about sort of way speaks to real estate fraud’s impact on renters too.

According to Buffalo housing activist Michele Johnson, Robert Palano–who New York State’s Attorney General once called a “maggot at the bottom of the housing market“–will be arraigned later today on unannounced charges. From the Around The Network section of the WNY Media Network blog:

Imagine you live on a small street in the city and within weeks 5 houses on your little street go into foreclosure, What effect do you think it would have on you? Now imagine you were renting a house, living there for years paying your rent on time and you get a knock on your door telling you that you have 30 days to vacate the premises.

This happened over 60 times in our city recently and all at the hands of 1 person. That 1 gentleman who owned over 100 rental properties in Buffalo, Most of them had been re mortgaged the year prior and it seems that several million dollars were made.

The mortgages were not paid and the houses went into foreclosure, Right around this time he left his Clarence NY home and moved to Florida and by some accounts may have been dabbling in real estate there too.

This gentlemen named Robert Palano paid a heavy fine perhaps 10 years ago I believe for mortgage fraud also. He also was found guilty of defrauding the Section 8 program of over $70,000 so history repeats itself….Perhaps as he’s arraigned this morning in front of The honorable Penny Wolfgang he will think about all the lives he has thrown into tailspins but I doubt it.

According to a January 2005 blog entry on Rachel Dollar’s MortgageFraudBlog.com, Palano indeed does have a questionable history when it comes to real estate deals. Dollar reports that Palano was fined $250K in 2002 in connection with allegations that he was running a scam cheating low-income homebuyers. He also received a federal sentence of five months in prison and a $125,000 fine in the early-1990s in connection with charges that he defrauded a home loan program.

If in fact today’s arraignment means that Buffalo renters and homeowners can finally put Palano out of business once and for all, then that’s a good thing. Buffalo has had a terrible time with real estate-related fraud. From Palano’s scams to the city’s Anti-flipping Taskforce’s attempts to get eBay to remove real estate listings on its site that are clearly nothing more than flipping schemes, Buffalo deserves a break. Here’s hoping today’s arraignment is just the start Buffalo needs to eradicate real estate fraud and the likes of Robert Palano!

2006-04-26 07:30 New York State’s Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, announced yesterday afternoon that his office has charged eight people with lying on mortgage applications–for homes in Brooklyn, Queens, and Suffolk counties, New York–in a fraud scheme he says is valued at more than $200 million.

The eight people–named in an indictment that was unsealed yesterday in Kings County Supreme Court as the “Sandella Group”–apparently paid dozens of people to pose as homebuyers, faked their financial disclosures, and submitted inflated sale prices to lenders. The indictment states that the group failed to repay loans, pocketing upwards of $100,000 or more on EACH deal.

According to court-related documents obtained by FlippingFrenzy.com, the Sandella Group has been in operation since at least 2001, principally in Brooklyn, Queens and Suffolk County. Forty-three year-old defendant Louis Sandella is named as the Group’s leader; he was assisted by his brother, Michael Sandella, Danielle Moss Fontanez, and five others, including two real estate attorneys–defendants Gary S. Shaw and Ida D’Angelo.

The charges included in the indictment are: Criminal Enterprise, a class B Felony; Grand Larceny in the First and Second Degrees, a class B and C felony, respectively; Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, a class E felony; and Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a Class E felony. If convicted of the top count, each of the eight case face sentences of up to 25 years in prison.

According to Spitzer’s office, a typical example of a Sandella Group scheme can be found in the January, 2004 sale of a house in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Although the true purchase price of the Flatbush property was $310,000, the Sandella Group falsely told the bank that the purchase price was $450,000, and applied to the bank for a loan in that amount. Sandella gave the bank false information about the financial condition of a straw buyer that it recruited as a front man in the transaction, and submitted a forged appraisal report. The group then pocketed the bulk of the inflated amount, and allowed the loan to go into default.

“The scams carried out by these defendants not only harmed targeted individuals and lending institutions, but had the potential to undermine the housing market in neighborhoods where they practiced their scheme,” Spitzer said in a written statement.

According to an article in the North Country Gazette, a New York police detective has been arrested and charged with among other things, acting as a straw buyer in real estate transactions. Forty-seven year old Leroy Nelson, of Floral Park, NY, is charged with two counts of offering a false instrument for filing, a class E felony; scheming to defraud, a class E felony; and two counts of filing a false tax return, a class A misdemeanor. From the North Country Gazette:

Prosecutors said that beginning in 2001, Nelson participated in a scheme with two other individuals, one of whom owed the NYS Department of Taxation over $200,000 in taxes. In order to help the tax delinquent “hide” property from the NYS tax authorities, Mr. Nelson became the “straw” buyer and owner of a house located at 237 Miller Avenue, Freeport, where the tax delinquent lived and is believed to still be living. Nelson thus became the titled owner of the property. Nelson lived there for a mere six months before moving out. At the same time, in 2003, despite the fact that title to the Freeport house was in his name, Nelson filed for bankruptcy in the Eastern District of New York, stating that he owned no real property, thereby making a false statement to the bankruptcy court.

Click here for the rest of the North Country Gazette’s article.

Detective Nelson’s arrest comes on the heels of another trusted official’s arrest for real estate-related fraud. As I reported on the 10th of March, an Assistant District Attorney in Pennsylvania was fired last month after a title insurance company filed a lawsuit alleging that he forged closing documents bearing the title company’s name on real estate transactions.

At this rate, I’m almost expecting a governor or member of Congress to be the next public official to be charged with real estate fraud!

2006-04-04 11:45
Jeff Testerman over at The St. Petersburg Times wrote an excellent article about Rebecca Hauck’s arrest and the continuing search for Matthew B. Cox. From Testerman’s article, titled Bonnie and Clyde with a new twist:

Hauck, 34, a former legal secretary who left behind a young son to join Cox, was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service last week in Houston. She awaits transfer to Atlanta for arraignment on a 42-count federal indictment that could subject her to more than 400 years in prison on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and use of stolen identities. …

… In Atlanta, U.S. government prosecutors hope Hauck will provide clues to Cox’s whereabouts. “Sentencing provisions provide for the possibility of leniency for cooperation,” said Gale McKenzie, an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta. “We would still very much like to know where Mr. Cox is.” …

… In Atlanta, Cox and Hauck established headquarters and adopted new identities for a new round of fraudulent loans, the indictments say. Cox stole the identity of Gerald Scott Cugno, a Tampa mortgage broker who had worked with Cox for several years. Hauck took the name of Michielle V. Joseph, a former in-law, before becoming Grace E. Hudson, who checked in to an Atlanta plastic surgery center for a $12,000 facelift to change her appearance, authorities said. …

… Officials were keeping mum this week about whether Cox and Hauck were still working together when she was arrested in Houston.

No one has covered the Matthew Cox and Rebecca Hauck story like Jeff Testerman of The St. Petersburg Times His in-depth investigative reporting has helped countless people, including real estate industry insiders like myself, stay on top of the situation. Click here for Jeff’s entire article.

Chalk one up for the good guys. Rachel Dollar over at MortgageFraudBlog.com reports that the better half of real estate fraud’s very own ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ team has been captured. According to Rachel:

Rebecca Hauck, the alleged co-conspirator of Matthew Cox, was arrested by federal authorities in Texas last week. Cox remains a fugitive. In connection with her arrest, Georgia authorities unsealed a 42 count indictment charging Cox and Hauck with conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, bank fraud, frauds and swindles, transportation of stolen property, money laundering and fraud with identification documents.

Cox and Hauck are alleged to have perpetrated a mortgage fraud scheme in Tampa, Florida in 2003. Cox and Hauck disappeared and showed up in Atlanta, Georgia where they are alleged to have again engaged in a mortgage fraud scheme and disappeared before being caught. Last year, Cox was almost caught in South Carolina but managed to elude authorities and disappear after obtaining over $1M in mortgage loans from his South Carolina operations. Prior to embarking on the alleged mortgage fraud spree, Cox is rumored to have written a 317 page novel entitled The Associates which details the fraud scheme in which he is alleged to have later engaged.

Click here for the rest of Rachel’s write-up.

In the meantime, if you see the fella pictured below, call your local law enforcement officials immediately. His name is Matthew Cox, and his known aliases include Maxwell Price, David R. Freeman, Gerald Scott Cugno, Michael S Shanahan, Michael J. Eckert, Gary L. Sullivan and David White.

If you spend as much time as I do researching, investigating, and reporting fraudulent real estate and mortgage transactions, you too might be a little nonchalant with respect to the two items I’m about to blog about. If, however, you’re new to the world of real estate and mortgage fraud detection, and you were wondering just how bad the problem has become, these two items should certainly knock your socks off:

BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH REAL ESTATE FRAUD: A business school professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business was arrested last week for running a real estate fraud scheme that authorities say bilked $1,500,000 from investors, many of whom were the professor’s own students. You heard me correctly… someone entrusted with teaching graduate-level students a course called “Applications of Real Estate Finance to Problems of Development” was actually committing real estate fraud himself. According to the FBI, 36-year-old Barry Landreth was arrested last Friday (March 24th) on charges related to operating a scheme in which investors were defrauded when Landreth lured them with claims of large returns on real estate investments. According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, Landreth operated Webster Realty Investors and fraudulently represented to victims that he was in a position to invest in the development of real estate projects. Specifically, Landreth fraudulently represented that he was developing commercial properties in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Chicago, Illinois. In some instances, Landreth represented that the projects would return 190 percent of their initial investment within 30 to 45 days. The FBI also alleges that neither Landreth nor Webster Realty had any financial interest in the commercial properties represented. The FBI says Landreth obtained millions of dollars in investor funds based on his fraudulent representations, In short, Landreth operated what is commonly referred to as a Ponzi scheme, whereby early investors were paid with the investments of later investors in order to create the illusion of actual development deals and profitability. The complaint alleges that neither Landreth nor Webster Realty generated any profits or returns on the purported real estate development projects.

PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO ASSOCIATION OF MORTGAGE BROKERS EMPLOYS A FELON CONVICTED OF REAL ESTATE FRAUD: According to an article in yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch, Michael L. Matalka, president of the Ohio Association of Mortgage Brokers, is lobbying to change Ohio’s laws regarding the licensing of appraisers and mortgage brokers. While Matalka supports efforts to prohibit the appraisal of real estate for a mortgage loan without state certification or licensure, and also supports a national criminal background check on all applicants for a real estate appraiser certificate or license, a mortgage broker certificate of registration, or a loan officer license, oddly enough, one of Matalka’s own employees–at a company he runs called Manhattin Mortgage Group–is a convicted felon. The Columbus Dispatch’s Geoff Dutton reports that Manhattan Mortgage Group’s controller–Angela R. Robinson–pleaded guilty in 2002 to a federal felony charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud for her central role in a property-flipping and kickback scheme in Columbus, duping banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Click here for Geoff Dutton’s article.

I meant to blog about this earlier in the week but something else took precedent. I read a news story the other day about a California woman who was arrested this week for providing false information to lenders about the employment status of loan applicants. According to CBS News 5 in San Jose, 32-year-old Melissa Duran-Casaus is in custody on $20,000 bail.

Prosecutors tell News 5 that Duran-Casaus worked for a local insurance broker and would give false information to lenders about the employment status of loan applicants who were claiming to work at the brokerage (none of the applicants ever worked at the brokerage, according to court documents obtained by the television station). According to Rachel Dollar over at MortgageFraudBlog.com, court documents also allege that Duran-Casaus was working in cooperation with a local REALTOR®. Apparently, the REALTOR® would coach Duran-Casaus on what to tell lenders when they called to verify employment and annual earnings data which they had received from the Realtor’s affiliated loan applicants.

Wow; I mean, WOW!! This young woman now sits in a jail cell because she falsified employment verification information. Let that be a wake-up call to EVERYONE! Even if you think you’re just ‘helping out a friend’ by providing false or trumped-up info about their employment status, you are breaking the law.

Appropriately, Duran-Casaus is now charged with conspiracy and grand theft, and she faces a possible sentence of more than seven years in prison if convicted of all charges. That’s a tall price to pay for answering a phone and saying “Yes, so-and-so works here and they earn X number of dollars per month” to a lender attempting to verify employment!

The headline for today’s post is not a misprint. Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, a story like this one comes out and knocks you off your feet. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a Fayette County (PA) Assistant District Attorney was fired earlier this week after a title insurance company filed a lawsuit alleging he that the ADA forged closing documents bearing the title company’s name on real estate transactions through the ADA’s private law office. From today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

First American Title Insurance Co. filed the complaint Monday against Mark F. Morrison and Deborah DeFranks Morrison in Fayette County Common Pleas Court. In one instance, First American alleges Morrison and his wife, who is a secretary at his law office in Hopwood, South Union Township, were unable to account for money received from a mortgage company to pay off a mortgage for a client’s Hopwood residence at the time of the Aug. 17 closing. In lieu of satisfying the outstanding mortgage to Vanderbilt Mortgage, Morrison’s law office continued paying the monthly amount due, the lawsuit claims. As of Feb. 7, the outstanding mortgage was $46,615, according to the lawsuit…

During an interview with the Tribune-Review on Tuesday night, Morrison denied that he or his wife forged any documents and said the mortgage has been paid off. “I feel in the end, it’s going to be shown that I haven’t done anything wrong,” Morrison said. “The main point is the money was always there. There’s no money missing.”

Morrison has practiced law in Fayette County for more than two decades, serving as a defense attorney, solicitor for county departments and, most recently, as a prosecutor. District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon hired Morrison in August to fill a new position, administrative assistant district attorney, which the county salary board set at $34,963 annually…

Vernon said yesterday that Morrison had been very helpful in prosecuting some high-profile criminal defendants. However, some of the allegations could constitute criminal charges, leaving her with no alternative but to fire Morrison, she said. “I terminated him to avoid the appearance of impropriety in this office,” Vernon said. “I felt that I had no recourse.” If any criminal allegations were to arise, Vernon said she would refer the matter to the state Attorney General’s Office.

In its lawsuit, First American says it believes Morrison and DeFranks Morrison forged documents in the form of closing protection letters, title commitment letters and title insurance policies. In turn, those documents were issued to buyers and lenders in real estate transactions in which the defendants supplied the closing services, according to attorney Stacey F. Vernallis, of Pittsburgh.

Click here for the rest of the article.

For me, there are two ways I can approach this one. On the one hand, I can sound the alarm that even the prosecutors are dirty. That, of course, is not true, so I’m not even going to go there. On the other hand, I can hope and pray that this is all a big misunderstanding and that Morrison won’t be found guilty of misappropriation of funds and/or conspiracy to commit fraud.

The last thing we need right now in the fight against real estate and mortgage fraud is a case involving someone who is supposed to be prosecuting the bad guys. I mean really, can you image what an uphill battle we’d have on our hands if state officials were in on the action? It’s too difficult to even conceive, so I’m going with the ‘other hand.’ Let’s all hope this one is just a big misunderstanding!

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.
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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.

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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.