Mortgage Fraud – Google and other search engines profiting from Mortgage Fraud ads

Google has a policy of prohibiting deceptive advertising, such as those placed by mortgage fraudsters, however one group says the giant search engine company doesn’t typically ban misleading ads from a questionable advertiser until after a company is sued by federal regulators. The nonprofit is calling for the company whose name has become a verb to be more proactive.

Consumer Watchdog has complained in a Feb. 8 letter to the Federal Trade Commission that Google and other search engines have not only been profiting by accepting deceptive advertising from fraudulent operators, but have also essentially been an accomplice in crime and should be made to stop “its harmful behavior.”

The issue at hand is that outfits that falsely promise unwary consumers that they can solve their mortgage and credit problems have cost individual consumers thousands of dollars, and sometimes even their homes, while Google allegedly has been raking in the bucks from these deceptive advertisers that pay thousands of dollars for prime advertising space on Google searches.

CW is attacking Google because it is a market leader and thus, its “laxity in preventing fraudulent advertising has created an environment in which other search engine companies can feel safe in adopting the same questionable practices,” the Washington D.C.-based consumer advocacy group states in a 37-page PDF report it released yesterday.

MORE >>>> http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/02/11/google-blamed-for-mortgage-fraud/

Mortgage Fraud – Real Estate Renting Scams

Real estate scams are prevalent today and are showing no signs of going away. A common form of these scams involves a con artist advertising a house as a rental when it is not. In fact, it’s a house that is actually for sale and being advertised on a legitimate real estate company’s website.

The con artist takes the picture from the website and puts it on his fraudulent website. He advertises on craigslist that the house is for rent, asking for first and last month’s rent. A web address is given to view the house. The prospective tenant checks out the house online and sends the deposit. Many times con artists ask their victims to wire the money.

Once the money is gone there is no getting it back. The con artist is probably in Canada and the website is gone. He’s moved on to his next victim.

Do your homework before sending any money to anyone you don’t know.

#1 check with your state assessor’s office to determine who owns the property.

#2 google the address and see if the property shows up on any real estate website for rent or for sale. If the property that was advertised for rent on craigslist shows up for sale on a real estate website, there is a serious problem. Contact the real estate company and apprise them of the situation.

#3 if possible, contact the neighbors of the property you are planning on renting. Ask them about the owner and status of the property. Is it for sale? Or rent? Or in foreclosure?

#4 Fourth, don’t wire money. Any time you are asked to wire money you should consider that a deal breaker.

#5 check with the bank that holds the mortgage to make sure it is not in foreclosure.

Mortgage Fraud – Better Choice Investments : Phoenix Police Lts

Phoenix police Lts. Mark Tallman and Lee Brent Shaw have been placed on administrative leave after settling a mortgage fraud lawsuit with the attorney general.

In the judgment, they agree to pay $458,000, much of which will go to 148 victims, who claim Tallman and Shaw defrauded them out of their homes and money.

For months, many of those victims came to CBS 5 News, claiming Tallman and Shaw had scammed them.

They were people already facing foreclosure when they were approached to hand over the deed to their homes to Better Choice Investments, a company owned by the officers.

Homeowners were told that as long as they kept paying the mortgage to Better Choice Investments, Tallman and Shaw would allow them to buy their homes back within a year.

But according to the attorney general, Shaw and Tallman would secretly refinance the homes, split the profits, and the original owners would never know from whom to get their homes back.

MORE >>>> http://www.kpho.com/news/26072483/detail.html

Mortgage Fraud Scheme – Clean Slate Financial Services

Shanita Lacy, age 34, of Chesapeake, Virginia, pleaded guilty today in Norfolk federal court to conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to fraudulently obtain home mortgages.

According to court documents, Lacy admitted that, during 2007 and 2008, she conspired with others to fraudulently obtain eight mortgage loans worth $1,549,170. Through her Virginia Beach business known as Clean Slate Financial Services, Lacy targeted homeowners in financial distress with false promises of credit repair and action to enable them to save their homes from foreclosure. Lacy then oversaw the sale of the homes at inflated prices to straw buyers, who Lacy helped to obtain mortgage loans based upon falsified income and down payment data. At or soon after the closings, Lacy liquidated and made off with thehomeowners’ equity. Soon thereafter, the straw buyers defaulted on the mortgage loans and the homes were foreclosed upon.

Mortgage Fraud – Fraud complaint filed against JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Irving H. Picard, the Trustee for the liquidation for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BLMIS”) today announced the filing of a complaint in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York against JPMorgan Chase & Co., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities Ltd. (collectively “JPMC”).

The complaint seeks to recover nearly $1 billion in fees and profits and an additional $5.4 billion in damages for JPMC’s decades-long role as BLMIS’s primary banker, aiding and abetting Madoff’s fraud. All recovered monies will be placed into the Customer Fund and distributed, pro rata, to Madoff customers with valid claims, the rightful owners of those monies.

The complaint states JPMC had clear, documented suspicions about the legitimacy of BLMIS’s operations. Instead of acting on that information, it simply continued to collect fees and profit from the fraud.

MORE >>>> http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/trustee-for-liquidation-of-bernard-l-madoff-investment-securities-charges-jpmorgan-chase-madoffs-primary-banker-with-enabling-massive-fraud-111203234.html

Mortgage Fraud – ‘Richmond Mortgage’ of Indiana

Kathy Puckett was a co-owner of Richmond Mortgage and served as its sole mortgage originator. Puckett’s job was to prepare loan documents including loan applications and other documents supporting buyers’ income and ability to pay. Between March 2006 and February 2008, Puckett submitted false information to the lenders including inflated bank account balances, false verifications of employment, false verifications of rent, misrepresenting one borrower’s name to reflect a better credit score, and false gift letters.

Ally wasn’t the only major lender that had a foreclosure process dependent on a few corporate bureaucrats.

Beth Ann Cottrell said, in a sworn deposition in May that she signed off on thousands of mortgage foreclosures a month for JPMorgan Chase even though she did not verify the accuracy of the information.

In one instance in Palm Beach, Fla., Cottrell signed off on 2 documents that stated conflicting amounts of mortgage, the court testimony states. Cottrell claimed that both were signed by the borrower at closing. But the homeowner recognized that her signature had been forged, her attorney Christopher Immel said. The attorney added that such forgeries are common among the cases he’s seen. JPMorgan Chase declined to comment.

In Georgia, an employee of a document processing company, Linda Green, for years claimed to be executives of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and dozens of other lenders while signing off on tens of thousands of mortgage foreclosure affidavits. In many cases, her signature appeared to be forged by different employees.

Green worked for a foreclosure document company owned by Lender Processing Services. The company is being investigated by a U.S. attorney in Florida for allegedly using improper documentation to speed foreclosures.

MORE >>>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/22/AR2010092206146.html

A Florida state court judge, in a rare ruling, said a major national bank perpetrated a “fraud” in a mortgage foreclosure lawsuit, raising questions about how the Wall Street banks are attempting to claim homes from borrowers in default.

The ruling, made last month in Pasco County, Fla., comes amid increased scrutiny of mortgage foreclosures by the prosecutors and judges in regions hurt by the recession. Judges have said in hearings they are increasingly concerned that banks are attempting to seize properties they don’t own.

The Florida case began in December 2007 when U.S. Bank N.A. sued a homeowner, Ernest E. Harpster, after he defaulted on a $190,000 loan he received in January of that year.

The Law Offices of David J. Stern, which represented the bank, prepared a document called an “assignment of mortgage” showing that the bank received ownership of the mortgage in December 2007. The document was dated December 2007.

But after investigating the matter, Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper ruled that the document couldn’t have been prepared until 2008. Thus, she ruled, the bank couldn’t prove it owned the mortgage at the time the suit was filed.

MORE >>>> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303491304575188943977777722.html?KEYWORDS=amir+efrati

Federal charges against a Framingham real estate lawyer Michael R. Anderson this week bring the number of people charged in an expanding mortgage fraud case to 4 that led to scores of abandoned and foreclosed properties in Dorchester and Roxbury.

Anderson, 41, was charged Wednesday in US District Court with 27 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering in the case involving Michael David Scott, a Mansfield developer who was indicted separately in August for allegedly working with associates to recruit “straw buyers’’ to purchase condominiums with fraudulently obtained documents.

Virginia real estate recruiter Jerrold Fowler and a former Bank of America Corp. manager, Arthur Samuels, also were charged in separate complaints in US District Court for their roles in what prosecutors say was a fraud scheme that drew buyers to purchase properties they weren’t planning to live in or even make mortgage payments to lenders.

MORE >>>> http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/09/10/real_estate_lawyer_charged_in_mortgage_fraud/

Is A Reverse Mortgage Right for You? These days, that hype is about reverse mortgages so check it out to make sure it is not fraud.

A good percentage of reverse mortgage products fall flat. But every once in a while, one will take hold in a way that even the experts didn’t see coming. It’s time to look under the hood, kick the tires and really get a sense of whether that particular mortgage product is for you before you buy into all the hype.

Designed for people 62 and over, these reverse mortgages enable you to have a bank buy back your home while you’re still living in it. It provides an income that you can opt to receive in a lump sum, a monthly payment or a line of credit that you draw upon when necessary.

Sounds kind of like winning the lottery, right? Not quite. You have to pay the money back (plus interest) when you vacate or sell the home, and there are fees involved. Still, these mortgages do have a place, and they’re rapidly finding it: According to a recent report by the AARP, while only about 1 percent of older homeowners have a reverse mortgage, there were 107,000 loans made in 2007 compared to only 6,600 in 2000.

Do your due diligence before you (or your parents) join the reverse-mortgage frenzy and perhaps get caught in a scam.