The Justice Department is Not doing it's Job

Mortgage fraud up

Reports of possible mortgage fraud grew in the second quarter,
with financial institutions filing 29,558 mortgage loan fraud
suspicious activity reports, the Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network said Wednesday. That is up from 15,727 in the same
quarter of 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, suspicious
mortgage activity reports grew to 25,485 complaints. The surge
in SARs are coming as mortgage lenders sift through the paperwork
in past mortgages. Mortgage servicers remain under heavy scrutiny
following robo-signing allegations and continue to sift through
documents in order to make sure all ducks are in a row. Many of
the reported instances come from defaults, including borrowers
who wrongly presented information about their finances. The
FinCEN network, which works in tandem with the Treasury, said the
surge in activity is also tied to increasing mortgage repurchase
demands and other special filings. SARs are especially surging on
transactions that involve several financial institutions. FinCen
found that 81% of the suspicious activity was related to
circumstances that occurred before 2008. Sixty-three% involved
activities that occurred four or more years ago. "We’re
continuing to see a large number of SARs filed on activity that
occurred more than two years ago, an indication that financial
institutions are uncovering fraud as they sift through defaulted
mortgages," said FinCEN Director James Freis, Jr. "But we also
continue to see indications of ongoing mortgage fraud
activities," he added. "FinCEN’s report released today raises
awareness of the common scams that homeowners and lenders may
encounter when arranging or modifying home financing."