Mortgage Fraud Investigations Could Slow
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) has stated in a report by the Charleston Post that cuts in funding will reduce the number of investigations for mortgage fraud, gang related crime, and violent crime. The director of SLED has stated that many investigations are going to be dropped as more and more positions at SLED are cut. SLED provides chemical analysis for most of the police departments in South Carolina.
The purposed reductions in mortgage fraud investigations will not truly affect the number of indictments that are going to occur across the county. Most mortgage fraud investigations are done by federal agencies such as the Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Secret Service could get involved depending on the funding resources used in the fraud. The FBI has dedicated over 150 agents to mortgage fraud investigations in the past year. These investigations will cover cases based on straw buyers, broker fraud, application fraud, appraisal fraud and any type of information that was used to get the loan for the property. The cut in funding for SLED will not affect mortgage fraud investigations on the federal level.
Defending a mortgage fraud indictment is not simple and should not be done by an attorney new to the federal justice system. The exposure of substantial prison time must be controlled as much as possible from the time there is any inclination that one might be facing a mortgage fraud indictment. Understanding how the United States Sentencing Guidelines will affect the case and the extreme importance of speaking to a federal defense lawyer cannot be understated.
Mortgage fraud defense is a type of case our Charleston Defense Lawyers are very suited to handle. We have a great understanding of mortgage fraud defense and the time needed to properly defend this type of indictment.
