When President Obama announced Tuesday night that he was forming a task force to crack down on “mortgage fraud,” what he and many of his like-minded supporters had in mind are the robo-signing, document-falsifying, parrot-stealing large lenders and the keystone cops who work for them. Yet, the traditional understanding of “mortgage fraud” has a different emphasis, one we’ve been talking about since long before this crisis was a crisis. It’s typified by this sorry sad sack.
A former Hells Angels leader from Rohnert Park has been sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for his part in a home loan fraud scheme.
Raymond Foakes, 48, former president of the motorcycle club’s Sonoma chapter, pleaded guilty to fraud and money-laundering charges in October. He was among seven defendants charged in September with conspiring to defraud banks by falsifying loan applications for real estate in San Francisco and several North Bay communities.
Prosecutors said Foakes admitted making false statements on mortgage loan applications in 2006 and early 2007, in one instance falsely describing himself as the owner of a concrete company who made $24,000 a month. He claimed he intended to live in one of the properties but instead allowed it to be used for marijuana growing, prosecutors said.
That’s good, old American criminal behavior, the kind that the FBI’s website on mortgage fraud focuses on. The kind that hoses the bank, not the borrower. The kind that leaves not a wet eye in the house, because the average American won’t shed any salt water over a bank being bamboozled.
Nevertheless, for the “fair and balanced,” it’s important to realize that when it comes to “mortgage fraud,” banks are often the target, not the shooter. I’m confident that the new “task force” will take an all-encompassing, even-handed approach to “mortgage fraud” and will crack down on every bad actor who needs a whipping, even if that bad actor happens not to be a bank.
Of course, I was also confident that when the Broncos last played the Patriots, we’d all be Tebowing until the second coming. Instead, Denver supporters took a knee not in praise, but in pain. Thus, regarding the task force, I could be wrong.
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