Mortgage Fraud

See: Mortgage.

It was pretty shocking when our Aunt Maude was led away in handcuffs this morning after being arrested for mortgage fraud. It turns out that the only reason she got that awesome new house she’s been living in is because she falsified a bunch of documents to get approved for the big loan amount she needed. Since she’s been able to make the monthly payments, Aunt Maude didn’t really understand what the big deal was, but here’s the big deal: it’s fraud, Maude, and fraud is illegal.

“Mortgage fraud” involves profiting illegally from some aspect of the mortgage business, whether we’re a buyer like Aunt Maude, a lender like Aunt Maude’s bank, or anyone in between. And if we’re found guilty of mortgage fraud, we could be looking at ginormous fines and up to 30 years in jail.

So what exactly constitutes mortgage fraud? Basically...any lies we tell, any information we falsify, or any bribes we pay in the name of garnering illegal mortgage-related profits will qualify us for the slammer. Or at least some heavy fines. Like...maybe we fib about our income (like Aunt Maude) to get a loan, or maybe we say we own some assets that we don’t really own. Or maybe we bribe some folks to say the house we already own is worth way more than it is so we can get approved for a refi. Maybe we buy a house and say we’re going to rent it out (hello, tax benefits), but instead of renting it, we live in it with all of our cats. Maybe we charge some poor unsuspecting folks a ton of money to help them avoid getting their houses foreclosed on…but then we take the money and run away to Mexico and let their houses foreclose anyway.

Whatever it is, if it involves a mortgage and we’re lying or being otherwise shady about it, it just might be considered mortgage fraud.