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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (128696)	6/13/2008 12:47:37 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

FBI Halts Some Cases to Investigate Mortgage Frauds (Update1) bloomberg.com June 12 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, confronting a surge in mortgage fraud, has ordered more than two dozen of its field offices to stop probing some financial crimes so agents can focus on the subprime crisis. Kenneth Kaiser, chief of the bureau's criminal investigative division, issued the directive late last week on a video conference call with the heads of 26 offices in areas where mortgage crime is rampant, said Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington. Carter said the shift was made after an analysis of how agents are spending their time. The FBI traditionally has moved investigators to address urgent needs, he said. About 150 agents were working on more than 1,300 mortgage cases before the change. ``If you're seeing a significant crime problem, you have to move resources,'' Carter said yesterday. ``We've got a big problem with mortgage fraud.'' The subprime loan crisis sparked a collapse in the credit markets and triggered almost $400 billion in losses and writedowns on Wall Street. It has also driven hundreds of thousands of families from their homes as foreclosures hit record numbers. At the FBI, white-collar fraud became less of a priority when President George W. Bush ordered the agency to concentrate on national security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Lawmakers have also criticized the Bush administration for reducing funding for crime fighting. `No Surprise' ``It comes as no surprise that law enforcement is spread too thin to cover all the bases,'' Senator Joseph Biden,