According to an article in the Star-Telegram, the Obama administration plans a major crackdown on scams targeting homeowners facing foreclosure.
The article said:
As part of the new enforcement effort, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will provide an advisory to financial institutions to help them spot and report questionable loan-modification schemes.
“What today’s announcement means for American homeowners is this: We will shut down fraudulent companies more quickly than before. We will target companies that otherwise would have gone unnoticed under the radar. And we will increase our knowledge of how these companies operate, enhancing our efforts to identify and prosecute every individual involved in a mortgage rescue scam,” he said.
This is definitely good news for homeowners facing foreclosure. Up until now, the prosecution of foreclosure scammers has mostly been left for state authorities to handle. Now with the muscle of the federal government working to stop foreclosure scams, homeowners who succumb to these foreclosure scams will have some type of recourse.
But despite these efforts the foreclosure scam problem has been getting worse as the economy has worsened. According to the FBI, the number of mortgage fraud cases have increase more than 400 percent since 2004 as the number of foreclosures have increased.