mortgage fraud

anyone know where to report mortgage fraud? I was surfing the clerk of court pages searching Sanctuary at Redfish and saw that there were eight consecutive saless from 3/4/08 through 5/01/08 at $1.1 to $1.2 million. Starting on Sept 10 through Jan 20th, all of those sales are now in the foreclosure process. It is pretty obvious those buyers had no intentions of ever making a payment and probably had a deal with the developers to pay full price get a 90% loan to value mortgage and pocket a small fee in return for tarnished credit. It is ridiculousness such as this that has gotten us into this mess we are in now. if you want to see the names of the buyers it is public record that can be accessed through the clerk of court page.

:idontno:...It was a GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!

BTW: What bank financed the loans??

FBI Field Offices, Mortgage Fraud
White Collar Crime Supervisor
Federal Bureau of Investigation - Jacksonville Field Office
7820 Arlington Expressway, Suite 200
Jacksonville, FL 32211-7499
Phone: (904) 721-1211

That FBI guy's phone should be ringing off the hook today.

I see a bunch of times where a sale goes through for an abherrant amount and always there is an inflated mortgage attached.

What lender would have a vested interest in seeing those condos sell at full price?? Duh!!! The lender on the hook for the construction loan---it takes the lender in on this to really grease the process. There's no additional risk to the lender and he gets his fee.
Actually I haven't checked the County records to see who is involved, but my bet it's the developer, lender, and some "friends" of the developer. Normally, the developer has an unwritten understanding to make everyone whole once these inflated comps are established and prior to any credit rating damage. This process is crazy rampant when it comes to undeveloped lots.
The most underhanded activity I see, is when an uninformed homeowner consults with a Realtor and the Realtor realizes that homeowner has no idea what their property is worth. The Realtor then has a third party "steal" the property from the homeowner--usually thru a short term option contract to avoid a recorded low-ball sales price or thru a "sales Contract" filled with backdoor exit contingencies and an assignability clause. The profits invariably end up with the Realtor thru various vehicles. Most Developers, myself included, know which Realtors do this stuff and will not deal with them because we know that whatever they are offering for sale is usually tainted and always overpriced.
I see this more commonly in raw land and timber, particularly when the owners are foreign or absentee.

it was actualy 3 different lenders; wachovia, wells fargo, and citibank that made the loans. Oddly enough, it is regions who financed the project and now those same units are listing at $400-500k as REOs and still not selling.

I think that if we all kept our eyes open and reported these folks when it was spotted that there would be alot less fraud going on.

There was a time that the shame of being a crook was enough to keep people in line, but now that morals have gone out the window; jail time is probably the only deterrent.

Shelley, thanks for the info. I will call in the tip today. See if anything becomes of it. I have heard that they are too busy to respond to every case.

anyone know where to report mortgage fraud? I was surfing the clerk of court pages searching Sanctuary at Redfish and saw that there were eight consecutive saless from 3/4/08 through 5/01/08 at $1.1 to $1.2 million. Starting on Sept 10 through Jan 20th, all of those sales are now in the foreclosure process. It is pretty obvious those buyers had no intentions of ever making a payment and probably had a deal with the developers to pay full price get a 90% loan to value mortgage and pocket a small fee in return for tarnished credit. It is ridiculousness such as this that has gotten us into this mess we are in now. if you want to see the names of the buyers it is public record that can be accessed through the clerk of court page.

Dominoes. This is very interesting. Can you tell me how how to search by a particular development? Any tips on using that site would be appreciated. This scenario surely seems suspect.

Dominoes. This is very interesting. Can you tell me how how to search by a particular development? Any tips on using that site would be appreciated. This scenario surely seems suspect.

Do an address search and only search by the street address, it will pull up all of the units at that address.

Dominoes. This is very interesting. Can you tell me how how to search by a particular development? Any tips on using that site would be appreciated. This scenario surely seems suspect.

Start here: Walton County Clerk of Courts
Click on "i accept the conditions"
Select "legal" on the left side of the menu
Change the date range from 01/01/2008 to 01/24/2009; you can search any date range but your will get alot of info to search through
Change "Begins" in the drop-down menu to "Contains"
Then type in the development you want to check out. In this case it was sanctuary at redfish.
There are alot of codes that tell you what each entry indicates
WD= warranty deed (this is the sale of the home/land) a price is in the row and this is the sales price
RM= residential mortgage (it gives the value)
Lis Pen = lis penends, which indicates foreclosure procedings
JUDG= judgement, this means a judgment has been issues and the property reverted back to the bank; it usually accompanies WD giving the deed back to the bank.

This is a great way to find sales that Realtors might exclude from the MLS to prevent potential buyers to not find a low comp sale.

I know I just made a few people mad, but it is public record.

Thank You!

Thanks for the info and the link.

It appears that they sold all the left over condos to the landscaping crew just before they packed up the truck and headed back home to LA.

Was anyone else selling that many $1.2 million condos that far from the beach in 2008?

Something smells fishy in Redfish.

I know I've shared this story last year, but it seems fitting...

We were hired to build a home for someone. They refinanced the vacant lot with a new mortgage that encompassed the lot loan, construction loan and an interest reserve so they didn't have to make payments for the first 6 months.

We completed construction, obtained the CO and submitted for our final 15% draw on the construction. The lender informed that the interest reserve ran out and the owner made no payments of their own. This put the mortgage in default, which forced the lender to hold our final payment.

We wound up paying the owner's mortgage current and paying for their homeowners insurance policy to bring the mortgage out of default. We received our final payment. The lender bundled and sold the dead beat mortgage which immediately went back into default.

It appears that they sold all the left over condos to the landscaping crew just before they packed up the truck and headed back home to LA.

Was anyone else selling that many $1.2 million condos that far from the beach in 2008?

Something smells fishy in Redfish.

Now that was funny.:clap:

Call that FBI guy - and in FL, the regulatory commission is Dept. of Financial Services - report it there and put the bad guys out of bidness!