• $849 Billion in Fraudulent Securities Bought By the Fed: What Are They Going To Do About It?

    Guest post by Charles Seavey The Federal Reserve owns $849 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Total reserves are $2,872 billion, so mortgage-backed securities comprise 30% of reserves. (No wonder the dollar can’t bounce, even with Europe falling apart.) See: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/Current/ To […]

  • Auditor reveals how risky mortgages were allowed to go through

    NPR featured a story on Tracy Warren, an auditor at Watterson-Prime, a quality control contractor who reviewed subprime loans for investment banks before they were sold on Wall Street. (The biggest client of Watterson-Prime? Bear Stearns.) She has over 25 […]

  • Why Business Owners Should NEVER Hire Family Members

    Under no circumstances should a business ever hire family members of current employees. I don’t care how good the current employee is or how good the potential employee seems. No “wife of the CFO to help with the books.” No […]

  • Mortgage Fraud Moving up the Priority Ladder for Prosecutors

    Mortgage industry professionals are facing increased scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and New York, according to the Wall Street Journal. The FBI reports that 1,200 mortgage fraud cases are currently under investigation, compared with only 436 […]

  • Have You Been Taken by Mortgage Fraud?

    I read a great post on the Bankruptcy Law Network. Of course, their example is exactly like a situation someone recently brought to my attention. Jonathan Ginsberg writes the following: Here’s how one version of a classic mortgage fraud scheme […]

  • The Cost of Mortgage Fraud

    The mortgage industry lost over $1 billion dollars to mortgage fraud last year, with the dollar losses doubling between 2004 and 2005. Contributing to the fraud problem are deceptive sellers, overtaxed buyers, builders who need to unload inventory, dishonest loan […]