This business is like an incurable virus, it comes around and it goes around.
bkmk
The massive mortgage fraud ended in disaster for which no one has been held responsible. Taxpayers got saddled with billions of dollars in bailout bills.
These subprime activities were not simply the mortgage market at work. They were fueled by avarice, greed, stupidity--all enabled by Congressmen and other groups which leave a trail at the door of then-Cong Joe Baca (D-Cali). The subprime mortgage bank fraud network was spearheaded by then-Cong Joe Baca (D-Calif 43rd), in his powerful position as chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Baca's district ranks No.5 among all US Congressional districts in percentage of home loans tailored to sub-prime borrowers.
Baca used tax resources, the legislative power of his office and his leadership position in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to calculatedly launch a housing initiative called "HOGAR"-- Spanish for home. Then-Cong Baca calculatedly hyped the fact that the national Latino homeownership rate was 47%, compared with 68% for the overall population.
HOGAR was coached to call the figure "alarming," and to say "a concerted effort was required to ensure that by the end of the decade Latinos will share equally in the American Dream of home ownership." HOGAR and then-Cong Baca conned the public, failing to note that most of the "dreamers" were illegals, citizens of Third World countries who had violated US borders.
Predictably, HOGAR colluded w/ co-conspirators which included:
(a) shaky mortgage companies that ran into big trouble;
(b) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both now under federal control after billions in taxpayer bailouts;
(c) Countrywide Financial Corp., sold to Bank of America Corp;
(d) Washington Mutual Inc., taken over by the US government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and,
(e) New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Corp, both now defunct, killed by defaulted subprime Latino mortgages.
HOGAR's ties to Countrywide and the subprime mortgage industry were substantial. Bribery and self-dealing were rampant: Companies that donated $150,000 to then-Cong Baca got the right to have their own research fellow who would conduct fraudulent studies, which were cunningly used by industry lobbyists to pump fraudulent lending. Bribery and extortion in the form of $100,000 annual donations to then-Cong Baca, for which HOGAR provided phony news releases from then-Cong Baca's Hispanic Caucus promoting a lender's commercial products to the Latino market,
The most shocking example of bribery well-substantitated by Hogar's literature..... HOGAR announced it worked with Freddie Mac on a self-serving two-year examination of Latino homeownership in 63 congressional districts. The "study" found Hispanic ownership on the rise thanks to "new flexible mortgage loan products" that the industry was adopting at the urging of Cong Baca's collusive coterie.
HOGAR conned lenders into even more lenient down-payment and underwriting standards. As the subprime debacle unfolded, HOGAR declined repeated requests for comment despite the economic havoc their activities precipitated. The fraudulent mortgage schemes demonstrated the criminal activities of border violators with multiple identities---perhaps violent, terrorist-connected foreigners---colluding and conspiring to defraud private companies and public entities. And mortgage racketeering enterprises which employed sub rosa finance and business practices to carry out deceptions and frauds.
The alleged ring of swindlers---a Congresman, individuals with multiple identities, banks, insurance companies, mortgage brokers--might be charged with cheating the US govt, taxpayers and bank share holders out of hundreds of millions of dollars via an elaborate web of mortgage and bank frauds. The mortgage "Dreamers" used multiple phony identities, fraudulent Social Security numbers (purchased from identity forgers) in order to obtain govt-subsidized benefits. L/E will find that individuals with multiple identities obtained fraudulent mortgages then flipped the houses at ever-higher prices to family member who then absconded to foreign countries, sticking banks (and taxpayers) with hundreds of millions in fraudulent mortgages.
BACKGROUND A Wall Street Journal investigative report related that, according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council examination of the borrowing spree, uncovered financial schemes by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, all colluding in fraduent schemes to increase homeownership among Latinos with forged documents which enabled massive fraud.
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Baca and the separatist tax-funded "Hispanic Congressional Caucus" has been close-mouthed about its role in financing, and, earmarking the blood-thirsty America-hating La Raza. Race-pimping "La Raza" was given tax dollars...... and Congressional earmarks...... to finance its so-called "mortgage activities." La Raza's "strategic partnerships” with Wachovia and Bank of America forced the falsification of mortgage-applications. The dumbing down of mortgage requirements and documentation standards caused taxpayers to be socked w/ billions of dollars in bailouts...and decimated the US economy.
La Raza aided and abetted risky federal and private-home loans to latinos over the last decathanks to the lending industry’s version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Plus----in addition to pocketing millions of federal tax dollars, La Raza also collected a $1 million Democratic earmark that funded “community-development” projects. Analysts report that much of it went to "mortgage counseling."
All of the official documents need to be scrutinized for fraud and falsification (a felony); as well, the Bank Secrecy Act needs to be mobilized to uncover the whereabouts of tax dollars and whether money laundering and tax-financed terrorism took place.