Mortgage Fraud

Mortgage fraud is a crime in which the intent is to materially misrepresent or omit information on a mortgage loan application to obtain a loan or to obtain a larger loan than would have been obtained had the lender or borrower known the truth.

In United States federal courts, mortgage fraud is prosecuted as wire fraud, bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, with penalties of up to thirty years imprisonment. As the incidence of mortgage fraud has risen over the past few years, states have also begun to enact their own penalties for mortgage fraud.

Mortgage fraud is not to be confused with predatory mortgage lending, which occurs when a consumer is misled or deceived by agents of the lender. However, predatory lending practices often co-exist with mortgage fraud.

Read more about Mortgage Fraud:  Types, Other Background, Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009

Famous quotes containing the words mortgage and/or fraud:

    Loosened from the minor’s tether;
    Free to mortgage or to sell,
    Wild as wind, and light as feather
    Bid the slaves of thrift farewell.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)