Saturday, May 5, 2012

Economy so bad that scam artists suffer, says Justice Dept. official

How bad is the post-bubble economy?
The economy is so bad that even con artists are giving up on real-estate scams, Tom Perez, a top Justice Department official, told an audience of progressives on Friday.
“Equity stripping is largely a thing of the past because there’s no equity to strip,” said Perez.
“Equity stripping” is a scam where con-artists persuade confused or ill-prepared people to sign home-loan contracts that transfer the property rights. Victims — often old or ill-educated — are left without their homes, but with much new debt.
Instead of equity stripping, the con artists are moving to new areas, Perez said. “Unscrupulous lenders are moving from [one legal] subject matter to [another] subject matter,” he told a May 4 meeting at the Center for American Progress.
Perez, a veteran civil rights lawyer, has changed his focus.
He and his deputies are filing lawsuits against mortgage sector firms for treating minority borrowers differently from white borrowers.

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