Las Vegas real estate, mortgage, appraisal blog

A recent Seattle Times article had interesting news for those hit hardest by the subprime bust. In a move reminiscent of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s savings-and-loan fiasco, the courts are finding themselves swamped with subprime cases being filed in federal courts. The FBI has released in the last month that they are investigating 14 companies for everything from accounting fraud to insider trading and a whole slew of other violations that could possibly result in criminal charges. The SEC has confirmed they have about three dozen investigations actively under way.

Since mortgages are no longer locally owned and serviced as they were several decades ago, but more often now sold to a secondary market, the risk has become much more widespread. Although most of these companies will not be repeating these actions there will likely be a long legal battle to follow. In suing big business there will be a lot of very close scrutiny as to practices that probably went under the radar before. Most of the cases are over violations of state securities laws that have now been discovered by regulators but some are even from those cities hit hardest by the foreclosures, including Cleveland and Baltimore.