Major Atlanta mortgage fraud case finally resolved in federal court
It's not breaking news that there have been a lot of federal mortgage fraud prosecutions in Atlanta. One of the biggest cases is finally finishing up. Several of the last remaining defendants in the Phillip Hill case will be sentenced soon. We represented one of the appraisers in this case who agreed to cooperate with the government. His story was recently covered by Bloomberg News.
I discussed these cases in an earlier post on mortgage fraud in federal court. It's always been my opinion that the lenders share some responsibility for the fraud. Most "white collar" crimes (actually, most all crimes) are crimes of opportunity. When you have lenders throwing money around, it's not difficult to find people who will willingly take it. Especially people who are not worried about ever paying it back. It's only when the loans stopped performing that the lenders screamed "fraud!"
We have represented appraisers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, investors and even closing attorneys in mortgage fraud cases in Georgia and several other states. There were also some "strawbuyers" who we defended. Fortunately, we kept most of them from being prosecuted because the "strawbuyers" are often just as much the victims as the lenders. The "strawbuyers" usually end up holding the bag and stuck with ridiculous mortgages they could not afford. Their savings were lost, and their credit ratings ruined.
For a while, we were handling so many of these cases and related investigations that I thought mortgage fraud was going to consume our practice. But I think we've seen the high-water mark for these cases. I don't expect to see this much mortgage fraud in the future, now that money is tighter and the lenders are finally becoming a little more diligent.
