Dozens charged in $40 million mortgage-fraud scheme

Originaly by LUIS ANDRES HENAO: 41 people were involved in a $40 million mortgage-fraud scheme, the acting U.S. attorney said.

Forty-one people have been charged with taking part in a $40 million mortgage-fraud scheme, federal authorities said Tuesday in Miami.

Acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman said the fraud involved a network of fake purchasers, crooked mortgage brokers and cooperative bank employees who arranged for inflated mortgages.

In mortgage-fraud scams typical during the boom, a team of mortgage professionals — often including attorneys, mortgage brokers and appraisers — would pay stand-in buyers to use their identities to get mortgages for the purchase of inflated properties. They would often never make payments on the loans and the homes would soon enter foreclosure.

At a news conference, Sloman said the 41 people — all but one are from South Florida — were the most recent in an investigation of mortgage fraud that began in September 2007 with a multiagency task force, including the U.S. Secret Service, the Postal Inspection Service, FBI, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and state and local police agencies.

“The success of the Federal-State Mortgage Fraud Strike Force and our mortgage fraud crackdown is evident in the staggering number of prosecutions we have brought to date,” Sloman said. “Mortgage fraud investigations will continue to be one of our top priorities.”

Others involved in the scam included title agents and attorneys, Sloman said.

“As we can see from this case mortgage fraud reaches every aspect of the mortgage industry,” Sloman said.

Since the task force’s creation, a total of 218 people in Florida have been charged with participating in mortgage-fraud schemes resulting in nearly $300 million in bogus mortgage loans. The FBI is investigating 2,100 cases nationwide, according to Sloman — who said that number was five times the number being probed last year