Record levels of mortgage fraud in 2008

Mortgage Assets Research Institute reports that incidents of mortgage fraud increased 26% between 2007 and 2008.  Rhode Island sees the most incident of fraud for it’s origination volume.  Florida is next followed by Georgia, Maryland, New York, Michigan, California, Missouri and Colorado.  Most prevalent type of fraud is application fraud at 61% but there plenty of other types as well including frauds related to appraisals or valuations, verifications of deposit, verifications of employment, escrow or closing costs, and credit reports.

I wonder how objective this Institute is?  I also wonder if there are cases of fraud that have been encouraged or overlooked by the lenders?  No statistics were available on that in this news release.

Tags: Linkedin, MARI, mortgage fraud, mortgage industry