From the Seattle Times:
A Seattle grand jury has indicted seven people, including owners of two Bellevue mortgage loan companies and an escrow company, in a 40-count indictment alleging conspiracy to commit mortgage, bank and wire fraud totaling more than $47 million.
The indictments allege the seven conspired to fraudulently purchase dozens of Seattle and Eastside homes at inflated prices. The charges allege they would obtain loans using “straw buyers” — people who had no intention of living in the home but allowed their identities and credit to be used for a fee — and sometimes using unwitting applicants convinced they could make a buck by buying a home and then immediately reselling it.“The defendants … caused the loan application for the straw buyers and otherwise unqualified buyers to be prepared based upon fraudulent representations related to gross income, employment status, assets and liabilities, and whether the property would be used as a primary residence,” the indictment says.
The indictment alleges they would “divert a significant portion of the loan proceeds from escrow accounts for their personal benefits.”
….Meantime, the state Department of Financial Services last year began an action to deny Vladislav Baydovskiy a license as a loan originator because he had lied about regulatory actions taken against Kobay in California in 2005, where his license was revoked for fraud.”
I’m hoping the National Mortgage Licensing Registry will help us all keep better track of the fraudsters and keep them out of the mortgage lending industry.
Maybe they should do a charater background check on those people who have moved around in the mortgage industry…before they give them a license to go out and hurt potential clients. Maybe we would have less fraud happening. This potencially would help the industry to gain the trust back of its consumers. Glad that we do have honest people in the industry helping consumers, instead of thinking with their own wallets.
Keeping a list of fraudsters through the NMLR will be helpful, kind of like the DNA data base that was invented. When you have several individuals working together to make money, it would be very hard to detect I’m sure!
Obviously these guys thought they would be smarter than the others that tried before them. I guess they do not read the news paper. I think all criminals think that they will do it differently then the other person and will not get caught.
It would be nice to track their trials to see what other types of evidence comes out. I think ING is also responsible, if they kept making the same type of loans, did they not do their own due diligence??? I think if you are consistently getting high yield spread premiums and the property is changing hands in six months or less and the new buyer is going through the same people, sounds a little fishy. Most clients have separate listing and selling agents. It is rare to have a listing and selling agent on so many transactions.
This reminds me of the 1930’s where you could cross state lines and escape the pursuing police due to juristictional regulations. Perhaps as the NMLS grows this will remove this concern since you’ll have a national database to review the data from.
This case was disturbing because of the amount of money it cost the bank and the builders. Where I get confused is where I have to determine if the approach could have changed the behaviour that lead to this.
To tell you the truth I don’t think their is any way to keep all of the fraudsters out the business but NMLR is a start. I just hope being the best I can be at my job will make a difference, it starts with one person. I am still suprised how many crooked people are out there. I believe in KARMA, it appears a lot of people don’t.
I wonder which one of the 7 pointed the finger at the 1 who they said was the leader of the pack, all 7 are dump, but I beleive greed is the biggest factor, they probably went from driving a modest auto to an H2 or other high end cars, and lived in very expensive homes, Why the sudden change to the fast lane, as it is said if “you don’t plan you can plan on failing and they did, what a shame? But they deserve what they got?
Well the NMLS is a great start to require adequate knoledge and background checks. The system may not be perfect but better than what we’ve had. Straw buyers we an industy plague a few yrs back, and unfortunately made a lot of people money. I wish the banks would go after them in a civil suit. Granted these characters would file BK, but it’d be a start.