Mortgage fraud question

On Oct 21, 8:02 am, Stan <stanle...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> In applying for a loan, Joe lists Mike as his employer.

If that's not true, it's a lie.  And it's a lie that's being told with intent to misrepresent a material fact in reliance on which Joe wants his prospective lender to change its position to its detriment, by giving Joe a loan.

That's called "fraud."

>  When Mike is
> called, he echoes the information that Joe had asked him to
> "confirm" (e.g., salary, length of employment, job duties).

So Mike is also a co-conspirator in the attempt to defraud the lender.

>  As a
> result Joe gets the loan, and is soon in default.  So, any crime?

Yes, loan or mortgage fraud.  He's trying to get a loan he doesn't qualify for, and which therefore hides from the lender risks Joe and Mike know about but which the lender doesn't, to get the lender to act against its own best interests.

Frex, a big hunk of the fracas over "subprime" mortgages is due to organized schemes to defraud lenders by borrowers who claimed nonexistent assets/jobs/resources, or who offered grossly inflated appraisals of the property put up as collateral, often with the full collusion of crooked brokers.  Atlanta, frex, had a very active fraud ring that got lots of money for its members by getting multiple loans on the same few decrepit houses in a drug-ridden neighborhood, even going so far as to move around furniture from house to house and spiffing them up to create a "Potemkin village" look, to fool lenders' representatives when they came out to check.

>  any
> potential civil liability?

Yep.   You bet.   Uh-huh.   Big time.

Anything else you want to know?

--
This posting is for discussion purposes, not professional advice.
Anything you post on this Newsgroup is public information.
I am not your lawyer, and you are not my client in any specific legal matter.
For confidential professional advice, consult your own lawyer in a private communication.

Mike Jacobs
LAW OFFICE OF W. MICHAEL JACOBS
10440 Little Patuxent Pkwy #300
Columbia, MD 21044
(tel) 410-740-5685      (fax) 410-740-4300