US: Mortgage fraud results in jail
They can dress it up as much as they like but this offence was just an old-fashioned fraud that's coming back to haunt an entire industry.
Khalil S Arbid, 35, has been sentenced to 16 months in jail for a mortgage fraud.
His offence was simple: he bought a house in Vienna (just down the road from FinCEN's offices) and then provided a pile of fraudulent documents that raised a USD670,000 loan.
US property sales include a ridiculous number of parties. In this case, the money to pay off the previous mortgage was a "title company." He gave them false information and instead of paying off the loan, they sent the cheque to an address he gave them. He collected the cheque for USD376,000 and paid that money into his own account.
If you've nothing better to do tonight, see if you can design a better system than having four or five parties involved in what is essentially a simple process.
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