Compliance

The Federal Reserve published for public comment a proposed rule amending Regulation Z (Truth in Lending) to implement amendments made by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

A Minneapolis federal jury recently convicted a man who was part of a conspiracy to swindle mortgage lenders out of more than $43 million.

U.S. Bancorp Chief Executive Richard Davis should be happy that his company will escape having to pay a hefty fine for sloppy servicing practices, a fate that likely awaits the nation's top five mortgage servicers.

State regulators this week fined Mortgage Access Corp., an affiliate of realty giant Weichert, $3 million for using unlicensed mortgage originators. The settlement covers 10 states.

The varieties of mortgage fraud never cease to amaze.At a session at the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference in Austin, attendees heard that mortgage fraud can now be combined with legal fraud.

In the first part of May, a prominent Realtor, her son and daughter-in-law pleaded guilty to an expanding mortgage fraud that enabled them to buy expensive vacation homes at Alabama’s Gulf Shores using “straw borrowers” to qualify for credit union loans. Lenders victimized by the scheme were First Tennessee Bank, U.S. Bank and First Choice Funding.

As mortgage fraud becomes a more prevalent issue throughout the country, Credit Plus Inc. has automated its fraud detection tools to help mortgage professionals verify loan application data to detect fraud incidences.

While not a huge fan of reality television, I recently paused to see some knucklehead being dropped from a helicopter into the jungle with just the clothes on his back and a few basic skills. His situation reminded me of the current state of the mortgage industry.

Two women recently pleaded guilty in Federal Court in the District of Minnesota to their roles in a mortgage fraud scheme that defrauded lenders approximately $4.2 million.

A securities regulator late this week fined two Wall Street firms with each then settling the matter which involved separate allegations that the companies misrepresented and improperly supervised certain subprime RMBS delinquency figures.

Origination software provider Ellie Mae released a package of new services and features this week to promote loan quality and efficiency in the loan file review process for investors and loan aggregators.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is creating a task force aimed at cracking down on mortgage fraud in the country's largest state, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

After Interthinx’s mortgage fraud risk report found that employment and income fraud increased by 30% in 2010, the provider of risk mitigation solutions has added new features to its FraudGuard tool.

The Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System filed a lawsuit against Paramount Limited LLC for committing a Ponzi scheme that defrauded millions of dollars from the system.

A New Jersey man who owned and operated two foreclosure rescue companies has pleaded guilty to his role in a mortgage fraud scheme in order to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

Homeowners can use a little known but increasingly popular provision of the bankruptcy code to eliminate second mortgages and avoid foreclosure. Statistics are hard to come by, but the provision has been used effectively on hundreds, if not thousands, of cases during the past two years.

Under the authority of the False Claims Act and other laws, the government is suing Deutsche Bank and its wholly owned subsidiary, MortgageIT, for years of reckless lending practices.

It is well documented that the discovery of fraud and abuse is far more frequently found through chance observation than through formal auditing and oversight, no matter how important those functions obviously are. However, our initial awareness that ethical or legal problems are occurring often has less to so with the actual observation of some type of error in judgment or indiscretion and more to do with some indistinct gut sense that things just don't feel right. Always trust that feeling.

A prominent realtor, her son and daughter-in-law pleaded guilty earlier this week to an expanding mortgage fraud that enabled them to buy expensive vacation homes at Alabama’s Gulf Shores using “straw borrowers” to qualify for credit union loans.

Once mortgage fraudsters find a chink in a lender's armor, they not only zero in on it, but they also pass it around to their fellow thieves, speakers at a conference in Las Vegas said.