Posted on 04/06/2008 5:37:20 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
District Attorney Scott Storey of Jefferson County, Colorado is one busy lawman. The local housing market is chock full of mortgage fraud varmints. One particularly pesky ring, operating for roughly 5 years, recruited hundreds of illegal immigrants to act as “straw buyers,” the lowest players in the mortgage fraud game. Ringmasters were mortgage brokers, realtors, and loan officers in local banks. Straw buyers were supplied with stolen identities, including drivers licenses, social security cards, and income tax returns. Some were given green cards of legal immigrants. What couldn’t be stolen was forged.
False docs in hand, straw buyers obtained mortgage loans they had no intention of paying. Some 300 single family homes in Jefferson County and the adjoining Denver area are known to have been involved. In 191 transactions every single qualifying document was fake. So far, 38% of the mortgage loans have gone into foreclosure. Millions of dollars have been lost.
Tuff luck for lenders? Not as much as you’d think. The mortgages were insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), a sub agency of the U.S. Department Of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Taxpayers picked up the bad. Expect them to pick up more. D.A. Scott Storey believes thousands of other properties were obtained by the same ring and that similar frauds are widespread in the Denver area. And in an August 24th Denver Post article, “FHA program key in surge of foreclosures,” a government source estimated that “20,000 illegal immigrants hold FHA mortgages in metro Denver alone.”
(Excerpt) Read more at homelandstupidity.us ...
Some people warned about this years ago, as the date of this article indicates.
Thanks to AmericanInTokyo for bringing this to FR’s attention.
There are some Freepers who claimed to be in the real estate/mortgage industry AND were pro-illegal alien. After seeing this article, it makes a little more sense now.
This should be being investigated by the US Attorney with all of the weight, resources and power associated therewith and cannot believe that a major RICO case is not in the making here, if anyone had the gonads to pursue same.
Hey, that’s pretty good and honest for a local yokel! Cheers for DA Storey and his courage!
Agreed! But they might be busy with other pressing matters in the same general area.
Very true. I wonder how much publicity this has gotten in Colorado.
While the crimes involved obviously rise to RICO level...there’s nothing to be gained “getting to the bottom” of it. This is just one case among probably hundreds across the country, and the process of finding the perps will be one of finding only a scant few with any assets for restitution. So it’s simply a meaningless exercise. Just wrap ‘em all up with all the other housing boondoggles, foreclosures, fiascos of every description and money center bank bailouts, tack a few trillion onto the national debt, and send the bill to the US taxpayer.
Let's see if I can follow your "logic." Certain FReepers are in mortgage business. Said Freepers express moderation in the "discussions" on FR about immigration; that makes him "pro-illegal alien," and now that the "truth" is out, it follows that said FReepers were (by inference, as you don't quite have the stones to come out and say it) somehow benefiting from the scam; perhaps were involved in it; certainly must have been in favor of it.
No true conservative has a mind that he allows to make him look so foolish.
This isn't a logical proposition: it's a baseless cowardly accusation.
That does raise questions, that’s for sure.
Ping!
“....there’s nothing to be gained “getting to the bottom” of it.”
EXCUSE ME!!! Explain yourself.....or, after all, its “just sex”...is that what you’re trying to say....
I hold the lenders, the fannie mae/freddie macs and the geniuses on Wall Street responsible for the size of this crisis (greed gone wild).
But mostly, on a visceral and up-close and personal level, I hold the scum-bag mortgage brokers in every community in America responsible for shoveling this sh*t uphill.
Bunch of former used-car salesmen who realized that rather than making a couple hundred bucks scamming some dumbass in the dealership, they could use exactly the same lies, deceit, fraud and greed and make $15M or more a pop—with absolutely NO recourse or responsibility.
And these mortgage broker creeps are still wearing their $2500 suits, living in nice homes, driving their 700 series BMW sedans, working out at the local singles-scene health club... still living off the money they stole from people stupid enough to be taken in by the carnival barking and scamming. And just as often, there were endless borrowers just as dishonest as the mortgage brokers. Trying to get in on the gravy train. Hate ‘em.
You can imagine from this post that I have ZERO sympathy for the borrowers, the mortgage brokers, the banks that took the loans, the quasi-federal agencies that bought the loans, the Harvard MBA’s on the street that packaged the garbage for sale, and the moron investors who bought and sold this sh*t.
They all deserve to lose every cent they earned, every asset they bought with their ill-gotten gains, and their freedom as well.
No major presidential candidate has the guts nor balls to tell it like it is, to tell it like you have told it, Husker9977. Yes, there is a lot of anger out there. People wont call a spade a spade, though, the higher you get up the ladder into rarified, politically correct air.
Bearish types have been warning about this for at least 7 years, including on this forum.
Meant to add that some of those “early warners” have been banned due to being labeled as “trolls’ (in fact, they were not too negative — they were spot on). People just don’t want to hear the truth if it consists of bad news.
Scott Storey Indicts Three in Mortgage Scheme
, July 11, 2005
http://www.cairco.org/articles/art2005jul11.html
http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/da/da_T99_R142.htm
Your right friend. That's the upshot. We will end paying for it regardless.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.