One Hundred Twenty Three (123) individuals have been charged, convicted or sentenced since March 1 (according to the Las Vegas Review Journal) from the FBI's Operation Stolen Dreams.
Names or details have not been released. It is being insinuated that the fraud is from straw buyer activity and many of the 123 targeted from the probe are real estate related professionals. I am wondering if any activity is from short sale fraud and what I call "flip flops".
There are some comments annoying me on LVRJ's website. This is the reason why I don't like commenting on LVRJ's website nor do I allow anonymous comments on my website. Some times it is hard to convince people who do not know what they are talking about that they are dead wrong.
Here are some of them and my answers to them (scroll to bottom of article):
Commenter 1: Even today, Realtors are encouraging people to buy new homes and walk on thier old homes. They call it a strategic default and consider it harmless
Commenter 2: I hope they are going after the realtors that are assisting people in buying a new home while walking away from their old. Then after that the FBI needs to investigate the banks that start the Foreclosure process, a person walks away as they have no hope in keeping it, and the bank leaves it in the homeowners name until they have a buyer which at that time they foreclose then sell it. This way the bank does not owe Republic Services, HOA's and others for unpaid fees.
I would love to know who is lending to these people. First off, if someone was so honest about this activity, I would not participate. If I did participate, I don't know who is lending to these people. Underwriting guidelines are tough (and have been to mitigate risk.) Some people still pretend they are the first to come up with "well my spouse isn't on the loan so we will let the home foreclose and they can buy one." WRONG WRONG WRONG. Underwriters want to pull spouse's credit now too.
As for unpaid fees, I don't know if they are talking about private trustee sale purchasers. If the bank has to buy back their own property (REO), they are responsible for back taxes, HOAs, liens and other fees.
Sorry but it just annoys me to no end when people say things that are not likely to happen and make it sound like it is happening all the time. It could happen, I guess, but lenders have made it pretty tough to go around this - and these guidelines have been in effect for I would say a solid 2+ years now.
I guess my point of the story was to address the points above and say I am chomping at the bit to hear whom and to what degree the individuals were charged.
I really hate the insinuation that realtors are encouraging people to walk away from their homes and buy new ones. Some realtors may in fact be doing this, but do they have to make it sound like we are ALL doing this? There is always a bad apple in the bunch regardless of profession.
Good article, people are always looking for something for nothing. Why not just build a great business. By the way thanks for your comment on my blog, You can make a video like that one on google it is part of their sharing the success program.
Interesting article. I too would be interested in knowing all the juicy details. Don't ya just love a good scandal - LOL...
Hi Renee . . . great post. If any Realtor knowingly assists in fraud, that's one thing. If they have NO CLUE, that's another. And I agree, it's easy to toss out "they" and "them" but I'm sure only a handful of bad apples are spoiling the whole bunch. I've had my fair share of buyers who I WALKED AWAY FROM because of the weirdness in their purchase plans.
Renee
Unreal, what lengths people go to; I so know what you mean about trying to convince people they are wrong until we turn blue.
Renee, it seems that those who squeak the loudest are the most uninformed.
Hi Renee, Some people with an ax to grind can and do make insinuations. It certainly is not because information is not out there to give people guidance in the correct ways to proceed. Sadly, people remember what they hear and read even when untrue.
I'm glad to hear they are charging people. There was just a story today about the first fraudulent borrowers and lenders that are being charged here in Southern California. I intend to follow up on the story and blog about it here too Renee. Keep up the good work!
Hi Renee - Here's a partial list from 8NewsNow. I took a quick glance and don't really recognize anyone. As to the RJ comments, I try to ignore them. My guess is they're actually read (and believed) by very few.
Renee, this is just the beginning of several related scams we see in Florida. Thanks for the link. Fry 'em!
"South Florida has consistently led the nation in the number of mortgage fraud prosecutions." quoted from the FBI Operation Stolen Dreams, Miami office press release. This related to activity from 2007 to the present.
Renee,
It's kind of expected that our housing collapse would attract plenty of scammers to try to take advantage of the situation. One of these days they'll probably release the names and yank their respective licenses.