We live in a post-2008 world that is still awash with fears of rampant financial frauds throughout the financial world, including throughout the mortgage industry. This means that Annapolis, Maryland, prosecutors are looking to charges for bank and mortgage fraud.
What is it?
Essentially, fraud is any misrepresentation or deception, so mortgage fraud is any misrepresentation or deception in a mortgage transaction. This can be on the front end or the back end, and it can be on the customer side or the employee side. Specifically, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, mortgage fraud is any material misstatement, misrepresentation or omission relating to the property or potential mortgage that an underwriter or lender relies on to fund, purchase or insure a loan.
Customer side fraud
Customer side fraud is often called fraud for housing because it is customers that commit fraud to attain housing in Annapolis, Maryland. It is fraud committed to get or maintain home ownership. Accordingly, the fraud is committed by misstating assets or income on a loan application; lying to, manipulating or enticing an appraiser to manipulate a property’s value or, in some other way, manipulating the underwriter or lender to get funding.
Employee side fraud
Employee side fraud is insider fraud because they use their specialized knowledge, authority or their position to commit their fraud. This could be to commit their fraud against their Annapolis, Maryland, customers, like to steal equity or cash. Or, it could be against the lender by manipulating the loan application, appraisal or some other document to get the loan to fund when it should not actually fund.
Criminal defense
Mortgage fraud has the odd wrinkle of possibly being committed without being committed with the knowledge that a crime has been committed. For example, if someone is facing foreclosure, they may think that lying about their income is harmless if it is to save their home for their family. They may not realize they are committing mortgage fraud. But, they are, and Annapolis, Maryland, prosecutors take it very seriously.