Here Is A Big Part Of The Problem
by James Glaser
July 24, 2008

The Miami Herald is working on a three part series about what went wrong with the housing market in Florida, and the first two segments tell a big part of the problem. In seven years, over 10,000 people with criminal records started working in the mortgage industry in Florida.

All the following quotes are from the first two parts of the Herald's investigation. Now, you know Florida isn't the only place this kind of thing happened, and I'm sure there was fraud going on in facet of the industry. Of course you know that it is the American tax payer that is going to be left holding the bag. Which only proves, if you are going to commit a financial crime in America, make darn sure it is on such a scale that the government is afraid to let you suffer your losses. Then the tax payer will bail you out too.

Thousands with criminal records work unlicensed as loan originators
BY MATTHEW HAGGMAN, ROB BARRY and JACK DOLAN

• From 2000 to 2007, regulators allowed at least 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage profession. Of those, 4,065 cleared background checks after committing crimes that state law specifically requires regulators to screen, including fraud, bank robbery, racketeering and extortion.

• Regulators allowed at least 20 brokers to keep their licenses even after committing the one crime that seemed sure to get them banned from the industry: mortgage fraud.

Don Saxon, commissioner of the Office of Financial Regulation, said he didn't know why his staff issued licenses to bank robbers and racketeers, but would look into the cases cited by The Miami Herald.

Even large lenders hired loan originators with criminal backgrounds. The Miami Herald found that in at least 30 companies with 50 or more employees, more than one in five originators had a criminal record.

5,306 people with criminal histories became loan originators—a rate of nearly two a day. Worse, those include 2,201 who had committed financial crimes, such as fraud, money laundering and grand theft.

Free JavaScripts provided
by The JavaScript Source