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U.S. Criticized for Lack of Action on Mortgage Fraud
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: March 25th, 2014
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/u-s-overstates-effort...
Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Departments internal watchdog said on [March 13]. The report by the departments inspector general undercuts the presidents contentions that the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks and their executives. The inspector generals report ... shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at all. The F.B.I. received $196 million from the 2009 to 2011 fiscal years to investigate mortgage fraud, the report said, but the number of pending cases and agents investigating them dropped in 2011. Mortgage fraud was one of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse. Mortgage brokers and lenders falsified documents, sometimes to make mortgages look safer, other times to make the property look more valuable.
Note: For more on government collusion with the banking industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
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