Local Victims of Alleged Mortgage Fraud
The number of Americans who are finding their homes in foreclosure, is rising at a staggering rate... up 24 percent between July and August of this year alone! Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky are all among the 25 states with the highest foreclosure rates.  And some of those families may be losing their homes as the result of mortgage fraud. There are two ways that mortgage fraud happens.

Advocacy Group Expands Consumer Mortgage Protection Services For All Homeowners Americas Watchdog, in partnership with it's National Mortgage Complaint Center has increased the services it offers to individual homeowners with problems and or prospective homeowners on the verge of financing a home. Sixty million American homeowners were either over- charged/cheated, or will be taken advantage of when they finance or refinance their home.

Mortgage Fraud Costs Homeowners Millions
In Houston, the craze is catching on with criminals. But investigators do not call it investing. They call it mortgage fraud. The KPRC Local 2 Troubleshooters uncovered a white-collar crime that is cheating Houston homeowners out of millions of dollars. Houston's building boom is good for the economy, bringing in riches for Realtors and happiness for new homeowners. But behind the bricks and lumber is a downside.

Deceptive loan practices banned
The state yesterday shut down seven mortgage brokers in Massachusetts and banned a variety of deceptive lending practices in what regulators called a sweeping crackdown on rogue brokers who steer customers in poor urban neighborhoods to loans they cannot afford.Acting two weeks after the Globe reported a range of abuses by several mortgage brokers in Lawrence, the Division of Banks announced that 50 examiners had since made surprise inspections of 90 brokerage firms in central and eastern Massachusetts.

Nightmare Mortgages
There was plenty more going on behind the scenes they didn't know about, either: that their broker was paid more to sell option ARMs than other mortgages; that their lender is allowed to claim the full monthly payment as revenue on its books even when borrowers choose to pay much less; that the loan's interest rates and up-front fees might not have been set by their bank but rather by a hedge fund; and that they'll soon be confronted with the choice of coughing up higher payments or coughing up their home.

Big profits oil the wheel of loan fraud

AG REILLY OBTAINS TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDERS AGAINST INDIVIDUALS, BUSINESSES INVOLVED IN MORTGAGE FRAUD AND FORECLOSURE RESCUE SCHEMES
Attorney General Tom Reilly has obtained three emergency orders to stop unfair and deceptive practices by individuals and businesses allegedly involved with mortgage fraud and foreclosure rescue schemes targeted at home owners.

Woman with fraud conviction hired by Better Business Bureau
A woman involved in a $1.4 million mortgage fraud scheme was hired by the Spokane Better Business Bureau while appealing her conviction and federal prison sentence...You've got to be kidding. Is this a joke?" said Assistant U.S. Attorney George Jacobs when told that Gibson was working for the bureau.

Mortgage fraud scheme gets Greenville lawyer a prison sentence
Last March, a Greenville lawyer admitted he sent false loan documents to residential mortgage lenders in the Upstate. Now Alex J. Newton has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.

Situation needs to be fixed
Authorities should make solving and preventing these crimes among their highest priorities