Canadian Funding Corp Innovations

Provided by Moishe Alexander, Canadian Funding Corp Innovations, July 28 – After the third major “sweep” of the mortgage industry in four years, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on Thursday that it had arrested over 400 real estate industry players since March, dozens of them over the last two days, for incidences of mortgage fraud that have contributed to the housing crisis.

Announcement of the arrests came at a Thursday afternoon Justice Department press conference conducted by Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Filip said the arrests took place in Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and suburban Maryland among other locations and those arrested included industry borrowers, loan originators, and real estate agents. 60 people were arrested on Wednesday alone with the round-up continuing.

The sweep, code named Operation Malicious Mortgage, was the third major action that the Department of Justice has headed up since 2004 against mortgage fraud and related crimes. The most recent activity has resulted in 144 mortgage fraud cases in which 406 defendants have been charged since March 1. Cases were brought in every region of the country and in more than 50 judicial districts. The FBI estimates that approximately $1 billion in losses resulted from the mortgage fraud schemes employed in these cases.

Mortgage fraud video provided by Moishe Alexander, Canadian Funding Corp Innovations

In general, mortgage fraud involves three distinct types of fraud; lending fraud, foreclosure rescue scams and mortgage-related bankruptcy schemes. Lending fraud frequently involves multiple loan transactions in which industry professionals construct mortgage transactions based on gross fraudulent misrepresentations about the borrower’s financial status, such as overstating the borrower’s income or assets, using false or fictitious employment records or inflating property values. Foreclosure rescue scams involve criminals who target legitimate homeowners in dire financial circumstances and fraudulently collect fees for foreclosure prevention services or obtain ownership interests in residential properties. Both of these fraudulent mortgage schemes may be furthered by filing bankruptcy petitions that automatically stay foreclosure.

In the case of the recent DOJ action, the most common type of mortgage fraud was misstatement of income or assets, followed by forged documents, inflated appraisals and misrepresentation of a buyer’s intent to occupy a property as a primary residence. Filip said, “The integrity and credibility of these markets depend upon fair dealing. While the law cannot dictate economic outcomes or protect individuals from bad investment decisions or unlucky greats, it does protect them from fraud.” He said that the investigation and prosecution of these crimes will continue.

In a separate action, an indictment was unsealed in the Eastern District of New York charging two Bear Stearns portfolio managers with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, and insider trading charges growing out of alleged misrepresentations to two Bear Stearns hedge funds that invested in securities tied to mortgage debt. The indictment alleges that the two marketed the funds as a low risk strategy. By March, 2007 they believed the funds were in grave condition and at risk of collapse but made misrepresentations about the amount of money other investors were withdrawing and about the extent of their personal investment in the funds. This was done, the indictment alleges, to stave off investor withdrawal. The funds did collapse last summer, resulting in losses to investors estimated at $1.4 billion.

Filip and Mueller credited a number of other federal agencies with assisting with the investigation including the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Postal Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The FBI says it has arrested about 300 real estate industry players since March — including dozens over the last two days — in its crackdown on incidents of mortgage fraud that have contributed to the country’s housing crisis. (We assume that the discrepancy in numbers arrested is attributable to police actions taken by other agencies.)

Moishe Alexander, Canadian Funding Corp Innovations, July 28 - A Kansas City area mortgage broker pleaded guilty today to fraudulently obtaining nearly $2.7 million in mortgage loans.

Matthew Tucker, 31, who moved to California and formerly lived in Lee’s Summit, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to terms of the plea agreement, Tucker engineered the scheme to obtain 45 loans involving 36 different properties by falsifying financial information provided to lenders.

Sentencing will be scheduled after a pre-sentence investigation is completed. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Buyers protest land scam video provided by Moishe Alexander and Canadian Funding Corp

Canadian Funding Corp, Moishe Alexander – July 28 – Barack Obama’s effort to reduce foreclosures by decreasing mortgage payments of borrowers before they fall behind is failing to help as expected. Some homeowners are being told they must be behind on their payments to receive help, which runs awry relative to the aim of the program. As well, delays are too long so that borrowers current on payments when asking for a loan variation are delinquent by the time they receive one. There is also much confusion regarding who is entitled for the program.

Barack Obama laid out his foreclosure-prevention plan in February. Part of the program provides incentives for mortgage-servicing businesses to reduce loan payments to reasonable levels. This is for people who are already in trouble and also for those who are at risk of falling behind. Over 200,000 borrowers that are delinquent or at risk of default have received trial adjustments — that is the first step. Obama administration officials said the adjustment program could help three to four million people.

Lisa Sitkin, staff attorney at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland, Calif., said she was very pleased when help for at-risk borrowers was declared. “It’s disturbing to see that it is several months later and it’s still not up and running at any scale that is meaningful,” said Lisa Sitkin. Mortgage-servicing companies said they were totally committed to the plan. Bank of America Corp. is starting to implement the Obama plan for all at-risk borrowers, a company spokeswoman said. Bank of America has been putting these borrowers on a plan that allows them to make a partial mortgage payment for several months and then be considered for a loan modification.

Borrowers are saying they are being told to stop making loan payments and seek a modification later. Alisha Gorder of Bridgeport, Conn., was referred to Auriton Solutions, an approved housing counselor, after she called a mortgage industry hotline because she wasn’t getting anywhere with her mortgage company. Ms. Gorder has been struggling to make ends meet because sales have slid at her children’s boutique and her husband, Christoph, who runs disaster-relief programs for the nonprofit AmeriCares, had to take a 21% cut in compensation.

Wells Fargo & Co. didn’t begin offering some at-risk borrowers loan modifications under the Obama plan until early June. One issue was that mortgage companies were waiting for final federal guidelines on key issues such as how to determine whether a loan modification is preferable to a foreclosure, said Mary Coffin, head of loan servicing for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

“Stop paying on the mortgage since you don’t have the resources to cover all your expenses,” an Auriton employee said in a letter to Ms. Gorder in mid-July. The letter advised Ms. Gorder to focus on basic living expenses and to follow up with the lender after she had increased her income. Ms. Gorder said she was stunned. “To be told I should do something to put my family in this risky position doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I had a lot of faith in the system. For me, it’s really shocking and jarring to see that the system doesn’t work.”

President Tiff Worley called the missive “poorly worded.” But he added that it “correctly recognizes that this person has an upside-down budget situation and is still shorting things to her family every month.” Employees at mortgage-servicing companies often tell borrowers they can’t be helped if they are current on their loans, said Michael van Zalingen, director of homeownership services for the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago.

Other borrowers complained of long waits for help. Suzanne DeNick of New Jersey said J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. told her it would take four to six weeks for her modification request to be assigned to an analyst and another 90 to 120 days before she received a decision. The company also asked her to resend her application, further delaying the process.

A J.P. Morgan spokesman acknowledged “that the process took more than our typical time frame,” but added that “it took some time for us to receive a completed and signed paperwork package from the borrower.” Once paperwork is complete, it typically takes 30 to 60 days to determine whether a modification is possible, she said.

There is much confusion regarding who is eligible. A spokeswoman from Bank of America said, “Given widespread public mis-expectations, a significant percentage of borrowers seeking Home Affordable modifications under the imminent-default provisions will not qualify.”