Mortgage Fraud Cases Plaguing the Southwest Finally Settled
It is a fact that plagues of financial crime pop up for a reason. These are not rogue criminal geniuses, followed by slews and hordes of copycats - these are specific responses to loopholes in legislation that are identified and exploited by everyday people who decide that it's easier to make a buck by taking advantage of others, rather than doing an honest day's work: and maybe they're right.
This week, the U.S. District Courts in Texas and Nevada settled two major cases dealing with mortgage fraud. Since 2008, there has been a proliferation of mortgage fraud in the United States. In this case, it's the overwhelming amounts of foreclosures, resale's, restructured mortgages, mortgage backed securities, and missing paperwork from the mortgage crisis, that has the whole system so backed up that scammers are finding it easy to pray on those who are already struggling with keeping a roof over their heads.
In Dallas, Eugene Lockhart, Jr. used his notoriety as a former Dallas Cowboy to swindle $3 million out of mortgage lenders. In Nevada, Alex Soria was found guilty of using different schemes to dupe distressed homeowners and the Federal Government.
Soria was running two schemes: getting disability benefits from the Social Security Administration for twenty years (from 1990-2010) even though he had long since returned to work, and convincing distressed homeowners that he was a mortgage agent that could get them relief through federal programs. Lockhart, on the other hand, used straw buyers and falsified documents to inflate the price of single-family homes that he was buying, costing lenders millions.
Over the past three years, the Justice Department has researched over 10,000 cases of financial fraud, including almost 3,000 cases of mortgage fraud. They have charged over 15,000 defendants with crimes in these cases.
By: Javi Calderon
