Counterfeiting, fraud and related crimes pose significant challenges to virtually every industry. Listed below are facts and figures that highlight specific challenges that face the real estate & mortgage sector.
- From July 5, 2005, until October 27, 2005, the FBI, HUD-OIG, USPS, and IRS, in coordination with the DOJ, indicted 156 mortgage fraud subjects. 81 arrests were made. 89 convictions were obtained, and 60 subjects were sentenced during this time frame. The combined loss to the industry by the subjects above is over $600 million.
- The FBI investigated nearly double the number of mortgage fraud cases in 2006 than it did three years earlier.
- Nationwide, mortgage fraud is estimated to have cost businesses nearly $48 billion and consumers about $5 billion in the past five years, according to a recent study by the Federal Trade Commission.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation calls deed fraud the fastest growing white-collar crime in America. An authorized signature and notary seal extracted from a County Website is all the 21st century criminal needs to take possession of a home.
- The FBI says 80 percent of all reported fraud losses involve collaboration or collusion by industry insiders.
- With some 22,000 reports of suspicious transactions in 2005, the FBI has identified mortgage and foreclosure fraud as a growing epidemic.