So frustrating.
Look forward to your posts.

Let us not forget the home buyer/seller who is willingly going along with or suggesting the course of action you suggest. Or the home seller that says his basement only got wet once in the last twenty years during the last hurricane or because he forgot to clean his gutters or the yard just needs grading. The home buyer who “forgot” they went bankrupt last year. Silent seconds. On and on.

The last State mandated Ethics class I went to was filled with 300 Realtors seated elbow to elbow who listened to an instructor drone on for three hours (it did touch on fraud, btw) Education may help the honest stay honest but it won’t do anything for the fraudster.

Welcome, to AG! I love your style!

How about we change the tax credit so that people are required to pay it back with interest at say 6%, they can monotize it to use as down payment and we take part of the money paid back to hire the many out of work attorneys to work for the Justice Department (and the FBI) or the States Attorneys Generals and work on mortgage and real estate fraud.

Oh, I forgot one other thing from my article. Each agent must pay for the FBI CE course in order to fund it.

Can’t say I am not fiscally conservative with my fraud prevention.

I love everything you said….raising the bar, self education and a higher level of internal policing, etc. The problem is I have that 60 mins piece from a couple of weeks ago still in my head about Medicare fraud…and I wonder what branch of our government could actually enforce the rules? For every couch bag who I read about in my paper going to jail (2 this week) I still see horrid things happening every day. When I actually spent 3 hours with my state Attorney General’s office on a particluar real estate fraud case, the AG rep pointed to a 5 foot stack of fraud files and said “well that’s really a shame but it just doesn’t rise high enough on the pile to warrant time from us.” I’m not sure it’s totally an education issue….it’s more of a bad character and greed issue. Perhaps I’m just too cynical to think it can get better.

The fraud class I would suggest would be developed and actually taught by active, dark-suited, ear-piece wearing, gun toting, steely-eyed G men that can put the fear of the Justice Department into their brains.

This might not get rid of the bad guys, it might get rid of their thoughts.

Additionally, I am all for the barrier to entry being raised about 100,000 feet and the retesting of each and every agent ever 5 years to make sure they still have it.

F

Recently here in the Augusta area, slimeballs where putting liens on properties just because they presented a CMA to the owners. Company was called SDA just so you know and if they show up in YOUR neck of the woods. Folks would go to closing and the title search would reveal the lien. Seller’s choice? Pay the lien from the proceeds, or lose the deal and go after them. They eventually got busted, but even an attorney that handled the liens is still in business locally.

Agree with Matt here – annual training on the LATEST predatory practices would help us police ourselves from the inside.

Navy Chief, Navy Pride