Mortgage application fraud risk continued growing for the fifth consecutive month, and the recent California wildfires are partly to blame, according to First American Financial Corp.

A Wilmington Township, Pa., man accused of illegally purchasing properties he formerly owned through a tax sale has pleaded guilty to a felony charge of deceptive business practices.

A Flora Vista, N.M., man accused of five felony charges for forging a signature on real estate paperwork then ordering an employee to dispose of property from the victim's residence has agreed to a plea agreement.

Five Florida Keys men ripped off the federal government and received thousands of dollars in recovery money after Hurricane Irma struck last year, the Monroe County State Attorney's Office said.

Time and again, two former associates of President Trump deceived banks in connection with loan applications. Their wealth, proximity to power and willingness to tell big lies all appear to have helped them get away with brazen schemes.

Wire fraud is considered a consumer and title agent issue, but the millions of dollars it's diverting from home purchase transactions make it an issue mortgage lenders need to address, too.

There was an 8% year-over-year increase in mortgage loan application defect risk in California during October and that should rise further because of the wildfires that devastated the state, First American said.

Orlando real estate broker Geo Geovanni, 49, was found guilty in federal court of one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and three counts of bank fraud, the U.S. Attorney's office announced.

The Federal Savings Bank is trying to persuade a judge to look beyond its CEO's alleged complicity in a fraud perpetrated by President Trump's former campaign chair.

Two more real estate investors have admitted conspiring to rig bids at foreclosure auctions, bringing to nine the total who say they cheated at the public auctions held at South Mississippi courthouses.

Fintech adoption among real estate and title agents is accelerating, though their optimism on the housing market has tanked, according to First American Financial Corp.

The scheme's perpetrators were based in Irvine, Calif., the FTC said in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

Three people who fraudulently obtained $9.3 million in mortgage loans involving homes in Modesto, Patterson and Lathrop, Calif., have received multiyear federal prison sentences.

UBS Group sold tens of billions of dollars' worth of residential mortgage-backed securities by "knowingly and repeatedly" making false and fraudulent statements to investors about the loans backing those trusts, the U.S. Justice Department said in a civil suit filed Thursday.

A former instructor at the Purvis Real Estate Training Institute in Fort Worth, Texas. was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for running a Ponzi scheme that robbed investors of more than $1.2 million.

Growing home prices plus rising interest rates are putting a damper on mortgage lending, which pushes the market to seek out less qualified borrowers and increases the risk of fraud.

A Queens, N.Y., man who helped defraud mortgage lending units at Bank of America, Chase Bank and AmTrust is now facing 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

There was a 1.3% uptick in mortgage application defects in September from the previous month, with states affected by Hurricane Florence showing preliminary spikes in activity following the storm, according to First American.

Larger mortgage companies are paying less than other creditors when fraud occurs, but the expense is still detracting enough from their revenue to cause concern.

Industry downsizing resulted in an increase in critical defects found in closed mortgages as loan packaging errors continued to rise during the first quarter, according to Aces Risk Management.