Mortgage con artists

This piece from CNN/Money on mortgage fraud is a MUST READ!

A lot of ordinary, well meaning folks are being taken to the cleaners by sweet talking con men. The government is trying to crack down, but their results are not very good so far.

Your best defense is knowledge.
Understand the con and render the artist impotent.

"Since the housing market started to soar in 2001, mortgage fraud has become the fastest-growing white-collar crime, according to the FBI. Last year crooks skimmed at least $1 billion from the $3 trillion U.S. mortgage market.

Now that the market is slowing, fraud is only rising. As business dries up, there's increasing pressure on lenders, brokers, title companies and appraisers to be profitable. That means loan and title documents aren't scrutinized as carefully as they might be, and courts - many of them so low-tech they resemble Mayberry - can't keep up with the volume of paper.

Then there's the mad rush to sell, particularly by people who paid high prices for homes and suddenly can't afford the mortgages.

It's like a tasting menu for con artists and grifters, so tempting that in some cities drug dealers have turned to mortgage fraud, plaguing lower-income neighborhoods with crooked mortgages rather than crystal meth."

This slideshow gives a summary of some of the common cons, including the "Rent to Steal", "Straw man swindle" and the "Million dollar dump".

Foul Fish Report

I subscribe to a couple of financial news mailing list. Everyday my inbox gets filled with the day’s happenings in the world of finance. Unfortunately I am too busy to read these stories everyday and I end up dragging the emails to a “save for later” folder. Today I thought it would be interesting to go through my “save for later” folder of financial news and dig out all the negative stories. I call this inaugural list of wrong doings, “The Foul Fish Report”, in keeping with the Pennyjar little fish vs. BIG fish theme.

Sept. 13 HP CEO Patricia Dunn resigns.
Her efforts to catch boardroom leakers last year led the Palo Alto, Calif., company to hire a contractor that scrutinized the private phone records of H-P's own directors and nine journalists.

Sept. 22 Dead guy gets stock
Cablevision Systems Corp. awarded options to a vice chairman after his 1999 death but backdated them, making it appear the grant was awarded when he still was alive

Sept. 27 Health insurance premiums rise 7.7%
The WSJ reports The average family premium rose 7.7% in 2006. That compared with a 3.8% rise in wages and inflation of around 3.5%.

Oct. 4 Intel investigation.
WSJ reports European Union investigators believe they have enough evidence to pursue formal antitrust charges against Intel Corp., a critical step in their five-year probe of the computer-chip maker, according to two people with knowledge of the case.

Oct. 4 Down on Dunn
HP Chairperson Patricia Dunn was named in felony complaints in California Wednesday along with four others related to a mole hunt undertaken at Hewlett-Packard while she was chairwoman of the computer maker

Oct. 4 401(k) fees too high
St. Louis attorney sued seven big employers-- Bechtel Group, Caterpillar, Exelon, General Dynamics, International Paper, Northrop Grumman and United Technologies--for allegedly allowing their employees' 401(k) plans to be hit with too-high fees, in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

Oct. 10 Tip of the Iceberg
The Department of Justice has begun an inquiry into potentially anticompetitive behavior among some of the world's leading private-equity funds (WSJ)

Oct. 15 Hey you caught me!
United Health CEO William McGuire plans to retire in the wake of a probe of the company's past stock-options grants. At the end of last year, Dr. McGuire's cache of unexercised options was valued at $1.78 billion. “Hey let me steal $1.78 billion and I would take the punishment of having to retire.” The beat goes on and on with this story. Here is latest list of 120 companies under scrutiny for past stock-option grants

Oct. 20 No bonuses for Costco execs
President and Chief Executive Jim Sinegal and Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti won't receive bonuses this year.

Oct. 24 Guilty
David Kreinberg pleaded guilty to securities-fraud charges in federal court in New York. The former finance chief of Comverse Technology is the first person to plead guilty in the stock-options backdating scandal.

Oct. 24 Yikes! What happened to FORD?
Ford Motor Co.'s $5.8 billion third-quarter preliminary net loss

Oct. 26 Mutual-fund kickbacks
The SEC has launched a probe of 27 mutual-fund companies that the agency says have accepted kickbacks totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

Oct. 26 Slick OIL.
Exxon's profit rose to $10.49 billion in the third quarter, the second-highest quarterly profit ever for a publicly traded U.S. company.