WTF is this about?

It's been an interesting ride over the last few years in the RE market here in South Florida, from legit transactions, flips, scams to the infamous straw buyers who sold their credit for some pocket money all with a dash of mortgage fraud to keep things spicy. Now that the party's over and Wall Street has had it's way with its mortgage backed securities, the public is in an uproar and it's time for law enforcement to start making some headlines by bringing the bad guys to justice. Down here in sunny Miami, our brave mayor Carlos Alvarez and his right hand man, Glenn Theobald put together a Mortgage Fraud Task Force that through their investigations and subsequent arrests with strategically planned press releases went on with much fanfare to become a model for a nationwide federal task force!

YES! A victory for the residents of Miami Dade county!! Finally, we can hold our heads up and be proud of the MDPD's Economic Crimes Bureau and its Mortgage Fraud Task Force! Right? A bad ass group of cops with experience and hellacious investigatory skills that can bring down the elusive fraudsters that helped create our housing bubble and the havoc that has befallen our economy. Right? RIGHT?

It all sounds great on the surface, cops doing real police work, bringing the bad guys to justice and saving the day. Super, that is until the day I read an article in the Herald that just didn't seem right, great headline about a mortgage fraud case, but somehow the story didn't make sense, so I decided to take a closer look. What I found turned my stomach. Over the next few months, I'll tell a story of a Mortgage Fraud investigation and a prosecution that is so screwed up that it will confound anyone with even a modicum of common sense.

Stay tuned...