Mortgage crimes
USA Today reported last week that federal mortgage fraud convictions in fiscal year 2007 more than doubled over the previous year.
Law enforcement authorities say the housing market’s crash will also lead to an increase in a different type of crime crooks preying on those in jeopardy of foreclosure with offers that are too good to be true.
Are we ever going to wake up and figure out that this kind of stuff is preventable and that we already have a system in place where there are people who are paid to protect us from this crap?
It is good that federal investigators are pursuing fraud cases and homeowners, obviously, have to be cautious. But the bigger issue is that this type of crime has flourished because government wasn’t doing enough to prevent it.
Sharon Ormsby, the FBI’s financial crimes chief, said the flood of cases is a result of “the perfect storm of lending fraud.”
She said the record housing market and its subsequent bust were caused by low interest rates, skyrocketing housing values and loose lending standards.
Law enforcement’s action against mortgage fraud is good, but it is only one part of cleaning up the problem. There should be more oversight and a stronger regulatory process to begin with to prevent the types of problems law enforcement is now dealing with.
That is never going to happen until we hold our representatives accountable and demand that they do their jobs.
They get away with it because we let them.
