AGAIN it is Sen Elizabeth Warren D MA, joined by Rep Elijah Cummings D MD and Rep Maxine D Waters, challenging the Obama administration and AG Eric Holder on the FBI deliberately NOT prosecuting the bank-financial cabal for the mortgage fraud that brought us the great recession we are still in. One of my senators, Tim Kaine D VA, serves on the Senate Banking Committee, but again, he is silent on this travesty of justice. My other senator, Mark Warner D VA is up for reelection this year. One has to wonder how much he is receiving from the bank-financial cabal in campaign contributions to remain silent on this issue. Democrats are concerned about loosing control of the US Senate and have given up plans for taking back the House this year. They should be supporting prosecution of mortgage fraud to achieve justice for the American people, but if they are able to bring the banks and their executives involved with mortgage fraud up on charges and vigorously prosecuted it may help with the 2014 congressional elections. From Daily Kos......
We have long suspected this, but now we have proof: according to the Justice Department’s own audit, the FBI has placed mortgage fraud as its LOWEST priority in criminal investigations.
The report also found that much of the data collected on mortgage fraud prosecutions was not accurate.
More than five years after Wall Street crashed our economy, the banksters continue to get a slap on the wrist—while families lose their homes.
Meteor Blades
Working for us. Again
One glaring example of inaccurate reporting was cited by the OIG. Specifically, it says, the Justice Department inflated the number of criminal defendants by five-fold during an October 2012 highly publicized press conference. The event was held to tout the success of the Distressed Homeowners Initiative, a mortgage fraud program involving the Justice Department and the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. It took a year for the Justice Department to correct the mistake.It's not exactly the first time anyone has called into question the lack of criminal prosecutions of mortgage fraud, but this is the highest-placed source of such an accusation so far. A DOJ spokeswoman implied the OIG report was misleading and said prosecutions for mortgage fraud had doubled under the Obama administration and convictions had risen by 100 percent. The DOJ itself has called mortgage fraud investigations a high priority, and the FBI was allocated $196 million to investigate such activities from 2009 through 2011. But the OIG report found that in the FBI offices it checked in the giant real estate markets of Los Angeles, Miami and New York City, mortgage fraud was a low priority or none at all. Read more about the OIG report below the fold.
The OIG report stated:
DOJ and its components have repeatedly stated publicly that mortgage fraudWarren is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Cummings is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight panel, and Waters is the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. This isn't the first time they have collaborated in such matters. In their letter to Holder, the three concluded:
is a high priority and during this audit we found some examples of DOJ-led efforts
that supported those claims. Two such examples are the Criminal Division’s
leadership of its mortgage fraud working group and the FBI and USAOs’
participation on more than 90 local task forces and working groups. However, we
also determined during this audit that DOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage
fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements.
For most Americans, a home purchase is the single largest investment they will ever make and the single largest source of intergenerational wealth transfer. According to CoreLogic, 4.9 million Americans have now lost their homes to foreclosure since the beginning of the financial crisis. The number of Americans who have been the victims of mortgage fraud is unknown and the Inspector General's report indicates that the Department's own data are unreliable indicators of the extent of the Department's efforts to identify and prosecute those responsible for illegal lending schemes. The report calls into question the Department's commitment to investigate and prosecute crimes such as predatory lending, loan modification scams, and abusive mortgage servicing practices. For that reason, we would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you to review the Inspector General's findings and discuss the steps the Department is taking to protect consumers from fraudulent mortgage lending practices.Even a lowball calculation of mortgage fraud among those 4.9 million foreclosures, not to mention fraud that didn't result in foreclosure, has to put the number of illegal doings around mortgages in the tens of thousands. Good to see Warren and her two partners in the matter trying to get to the bottom of this. If only we had a couple of hundred making the same push.
No comments:
Post a Comment