Mortgage Fraud
The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada defines a straw buyer as "an individual who pretends to be a legitimate buyer for a property but in reality is in collusion with another criminally inclined individual to further a mortgage scam. The straw buyer often uses fake or stolen identification to prevent being traced." In May 2010 the Bank of Montreal sued hundreds of persons, including Federal Conservative MP Devinder Shory, for allegedly being involved in a mortgage fraud in which the bank lost $30 million. The Bank claims that "straw buyers" were recruited by fraudsters. In exchange for a cash payment the "straw buyers" would allow their names to be used on mortgage applications to obtain real estate properties in the Calgary area. A detailed case study of the complex United States v. Quintero-Lopez case spans activity over 3 1/2 years (Bell, 2010).
Read more about this topic: Straw Purchase
Famous quotes containing the words mortgage and/or fraud:
“We are playing with fire when we skip the years of three, four, and five to hurry children into being age six.... Every child has a right to his fifth year of life, his fourth year, his third year. He has a right to live each year with joy and self-fulfillment. No one should ever claim the power to make a child mortgage his today for the sake of tomorrow.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“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)