"Bankruptcy For Profit" And Other Mortgage Fraud

Con men are always attracted to a financial mania and the housing bubble is no exception. There are signs that oversight is lacking. For example, here is a case of a 24 year old taking the lender for a cool million. "Hess falsely entered information during the processing of mortgage applications. (She) called the scheme "bankruptcy for profit" and told the anonymous tipster that she was receiving money from mortgage brokers to approve loans."

And in The Republican, a pastor had another scheme. "The practice typically involves buying depressed properties; paying off appraisers to inflate their values; recruiting poor, first-time buyers; drafting phony financial documents to obtain mortgages; and collecting big profits."

The Sun Sentinel reports a broker, "Executed a scheme to defraud elderly and deceased victims by gaining control of their properties by conveying the properties to themselves or nominees."

Think that mortgage staffer has your back covered? The Columbia Tribune found that isn't always the case. "Gloria Curtis said Duncan recently hired her to do telemarketing. She received no training on processing loans before she was assigned a calling list (and) was promised $2 for every Social Security number she obtained from a client over the phone. But Curtis said she lost her job because she hadn't gotten any numbers in her first two days."