2009 Mortgage Fraud Report “Year in Review”

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/mortgage-fraud-2009/

Scope Note

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the breadth and depth of mortgage fraud crimes perpetrated against the United States and its citizens during

2009. This report updates the 2008 Mortgage Fraud Report and addresses current mortgage fraud projections, issues, and the identification of mortgage fraud “hot

spots.” The objective of this study is to provide FBI program managers with relevant data to better understand the threat, identify trends, allocate resources,

and prioritize investigations. The report was requested by the Financial Crimes Section, Criminal Investigative Division (CID), and prepared by the Financial

Crimes Intelligence Unit (FCIU), Directorate of Intelligence (DI).

This report is based on FBI, state and local law enforcement, mortgage industry, and open-source reporting. Information was also provided by other government

agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Federal

National Mortgage Association, and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Industry reporting was obtained from the

LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), RealtyTrac, Inc., Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), and Interthinx®. Some industry reporting was acquired

through open sources.

While the FBI has high confidence in all of these sources, some inconsistencies relative to the cataloging of statistics by some organizations are noted. For

example, suspicious activity reports (SARs) are cataloged according to the year in which they are submitted and the information contained within them may

describe activity that occurred in previous months or years. The geographic specificity of industry reporting varies as some companies report at the zip code

level, and others by city, region, or state. Many of the statistics provided by the external sources, including FinCEN, FHA, and HUD-OIG, are captured by fiscal

year; however, this report focuses on the calendar year findings. While these discrepancies have minimal impact on the overall findings stated in this report, we

have noted specific instances in the text where they may affect conclusions.