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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony@Pacific & TRUTHSEEKER Expose Crims & Scammers!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (4857)	11/13/2007 1:40:14 PM
From: ravenseye	Respond to of 5673

Miami condo at ground zero in U.S. mortgage fraud Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:57pm IST By Tom Brown MIAMI (Reuters) - At first glance, ... in.reuters.com ...America's subprime mortgage crisis is partly due to predatory, or aggressive, lenders, hard-sell tactics by mortgage brokers and an easing of underwriting standards in the $10 trillion home-loan industry. But fraud accounts for a sizable share of the bad bets on mortgages, according to many industry experts, and lenders may have been victimized as much as anyone else. "The lenders are holding the bag now, that's what we're finding out," said Glenn Theobald, head of a mortgage fraud task force formed in south Florida's Miami-Dade County in September. Mortgage scams involve a cartel of inside players -- colluding property appraisers, real-estate brokers and accountants willing to draw up fake income statements and tax returns -- who recruit people with good credit histories to serve as a decoy or "straw buyer" in a real-estate deal. The conspirators inflate the price of the property, to get the biggest loan possible, pay the sellers the original price and then pocket the excess loan money as "cash back" at the closing of the deal. The decoy buyer is paid off -- often with just $5,000 -- and the property is quickly abandoned to foreclosure, said Theobald, a senior official with the Miami-Dade Police Department.... page 2 in.reuters.com ...The dubious transactions all fit a pattern that Theobald said should trigger "bells and whistles" for law enforcement anywhere -- time and time again properties that failed to sell for months when listed at around $450,000 were pulled from the market and then suddenly sold for more than $800,000. Continued... page 3 in.reuters.com ..."I don't know where it's going to end up," Theobald said. "I don't know when the bottom is going to be."... ..."We're going to see a lot more of this fraud being exposed, especially as these units go into foreclosure," Thomas said....