Expert Q&As | Real Life Fraud
Stories | News
Gary Ford |
Ken Fraser
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| Is Real Estate related fraud a significant problem in the west? |
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| Real Estate ie. mortgage fraud has been a significant issue for a
number of years in the west. More recently, the emphasis has shifted from what
is called "fraud for shelter" to more cases of "fraud for profit" and even more
recently cases involving real estate fraud to facilitate other criminal
activities such as obtaining properties for use as grow-ops and meth labs. etc. |
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What are the most common occurrences of real estate related fraud? |
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| As I've indicated above real estate or mortgage fraud for profit are
the cases that we are seeing the most of ie. "property flipping." Ficom does
not, for the most part, investigate cases of individual fraud involving false
applications to obtain a mortgage by a borrower, unless we can show that the
mortgage broker or realtor involved in the transaction was involved and either
counselled the client to make the false application, knew that the information
being passed on to the financial institution was false or was actually involved
in creating the false application. |
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| Do you have any advise on how consumers can protect themselves? |
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| Because we (Ficom) don't deal as much with
borrowers/purchasers as we do with brokers/realtors and the "victims" in most
of our investigations are the financial institutions it is difficult to give
advise on how consumers can protect themselves. There are a number of agencies
that deal with identity theft and how to protect oneself from this type of
fraud. |
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| One thing I can say though is that individuals should
ensure that they obtain independent legal advise whenever they are entering
into a real estate or mortgage transaction. Ficom through the Registrar of
Mortgage Brokers will hold a registered mortgage broker accountable if a client
and specifically, an elderly client hasn't been given independent legal advise. |
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