Mortgage Fraud Makes it Way to the Islands

In our local news there has been a series of stories about a mortgage broker team who were committing mortgage fraud. They were also trying to trick people out of their homes.

The wife mortgage broker’s wife set up a fake escrow company and used shill buyers to supposedly help folks refinance their homes. They told people they were temporarily putting the deeds in the names of the shill buyers to make the refinance work and the cash they got out would be held in escrow to help make the mortgage payments. They later tried to evict the duped owners. One of the owners turned them in and the prosecutors shut them down. Legal action has been taken to keep the one owner in their home, but the deed is still in the name of the shill buyer.

The public needs to have their guards up. Those of us who are truly professionals need to be extra protective of our clients and be on the lookout for scam artists. Folks who are in a distressed situation are particularly vulnerable to folks like this.