$1.7 million will help fight mortgage fraud in Nevada
A federal grant will help a state agency fight mortgage fraud in Nevada.
The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs division has given Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto's office a $1.7 million grant to expand services addressing mortgage fraud and vacant-property crimes.
With the grant, the attorney general's office will add four investigators and two prosecutors to its mortgage-fraud unit. Current staffing levels include three investigators and three prosecutors.
Masto said in a statement that Nevada's standing as the No. 1 state for foreclosures has "made us a ripe target for mortgage-fraud scammers."
The attorney general's office has fielded consumer complaints against more than 200 companies. The businesses average 50 complaints each, and some have hundreds of complaints against them.
The Nevada Legislature in 2007 enacted
a statute that created the crime of mortgage fraud. That's the law the attorney general's office is using to determine legal violations.
The mortgage-fraud unit has criminal-litigation files open against 18 loan-modification companies in Clark County. Another 51 cases are at various stages of civil prosecution. In addition to mortgage fraud, the unit is bringing the cases on grounds including forgery, embezzlement, false advertising, money laundering and racketeering, among other crimes.
In the last year, the unit has presented 14 large-scale mortgage-fraud and loan-modification cases to the grand jury, each involving hundreds of victims and thousands of pages of evidence. The unit has also obtained indictments totaling 128 felonies against 20 mortgage-fraud defendants. Its work has resulted in seven felony convictions, four gross-misdemeanor convictions and one misdemeanor conviction. Prosecutions have brought restitution orders totaling nearly $310,000.
Another 10 cases against 12 defendants are awaiting jury trials.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been looking into local housing scams through its Operation Stolen Dreams. Through June, the unit had charged, convicted or sentenced 123 defendants accused of engaging in hundreds of fraudulent sales in which they used other people's names to buy falsely appraised homes at inflated prices and then cash out the equity. The gross total loss in those cases came to nearly
$250 million, investigators said.
The number of local defendants comprised more than 10 percent of the nationwide total of 1,215 defendants through June. Defendants included loan officers, real estate agents, loan processors, mortgage brokers, appraisers and homebuilders.
Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at
jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.
