Those with a paid-off home are only one signature away from losing it. This former attorney was convicted of a similar fraud, gets out of jail and does it again - but worse. Hat tip to daytrip for sending this in: Authorities have charged a West Hills woman with...
Glenn Kelman of Redfin has been deceiving the public since the day they started the company, and he gets away with it because we don't have a watchdog department or any enforcement of truth-in-advertising. We live in a society where anybody can say anything and never...
Nick at the WSJ has a good piece on the Tan Man - with one of Angelo's emails from three years prior to the Countrywide failure and fire-sale to BofA: An excerpt from an old article: Mister Mozilo, a mortgage industry maverick who co-founded Countrywide in 1969, and...
The diverting of money being wired into escrow accounts to close real estate transactions is a real problem, but the authorities are on it - they have recovered $350 million! Unfortunately, they also mention here that $3.7 billion in losses have been reported:...
Our San Diego MLS quietly removed our complaint button recently. I'm sure they had heavy volume, but they aren't the realtor police - nobody is. Hat tip to SM for sending this in: VANCOUVER – The province is hoping to make it easier for you to report suspected...
In San Diego, this applies to cash sales over $2,000,000 to LLCs. Wake up and smell the dirty money. That’s the message federal regulators are sending to the real estate industry in Miami and other high-priced housing markets. On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department...
An earlier quote was that 50% of high-end sales were believed to be done with laundered money. Below is the official quote from FinCEN - and they have extended their inquiry. Note: In the last 12 months, there have been 774 closed sales over $2,000,000 in San Diego...
It happened to us - hackers got into somebody's account. They posed as the escrow officer and tried to divert my buyers' down payment to the wrong bank account. Their timing was impeccable too. Six days before closing, an email was sent to the buyers that looked like...
From C.A.R. While we all are concerned about cybercrime and identity theft, it appears taking someone’s money the old-fashioned way has reappeared in a short sale scam in Southern California. The alleged scam appears to follow the same basic format. A short sale...
The district attorney went back a few years here. Hat tip to daytrip! https://www.noozhawk.com/article/santa_maria_men_charged_real_estate_fraud_case Two Santa Maria men have been charged with allegedly committing real estate fraud involving losses topping $500,000,...
