|
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Beware of that over-friendly real estate agent or buttoned-down appraiser. They may be nothing more than scam artists.
As the housing market stays hot, more and more people are falling victim to mortgage fraud, according to a report in Wednesday's USA Today.
The newspaper said the FBI investigated 642 cases of mortgage fraud in the first half of 2005, compared to 534 in all of 2004. And the number of cases at the IRS doubled from 2001 to 2004. The report said 26 states have serious mortgage fraud problems.
"Criminals are opportunists," William Matthews of the Mortgage Asset Research Institute told the newspaper. "If you've got a booming market, they are going to get away with more fraud."
Most of the scams involve people in the industry or people posing as industry types, artificially inflating the value of homes and quickly reselling them, the article said.
The report cited a case in Atlanta where a fraud ring skimmed $20 million from inflated mortgages. The leader worked with people employed as real estate agents, mortgage brokers and loan processors and used fake identities, fraudulent documents and shell companies to buy houses and then resell them at inflated prices.
Another example involved a Kansas City group that purchased foreclosed homes at cheap prices, then artificially inflated their values using false appraisals.
The newspaper said mortgage fraud is hard to detect because 80 percent of the cases involve industry insiders.
________________
Home prices post record gains. For more, click here.
|
