Mortgage fraud taking off

Another example of what happens after the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression: California had more reports of mortgage fraud on a per-capita basis than any state in the nation - Florida and Nevada came next. Also, according to the Treasury Department, six of the top 10 metro areas were in California. Nationwide, mortgage servicers filed nearly 30,000 suspicious activity reports involving loan fraud in the second quarter, compared with around 16,000 a year earlier. Most of the reports involved mortgages closed during the height of the real estate bubble. From press release (via the LAT):

The FinCEN report showed that misrepresenting income, occupancy, or debts and assets, followed by debt elimination scams and scams involving the fraudulent use of social security numbers, topped the types of suspicious activity reported by filers of MLF SARs. FinCEN examined a subset of quarterly filings that reported suspicious activity occurring within 90 days of filing, to better understand the latest trends in the reporting of suspected mortgage fraud.