Friday, September 11, 2009

The Mortgage Fraud Task Force's "Dirty Little Secret" and our riddle from yesterday.

So I'm trolling the Internet for more information on Miami Dade County's Mortgage Fraud Task Force and I come upon this little gem of an article in the Daily Business Review archives. In the article the writer quotes an anonymous Assistant State Attorney who says:
"the “dirty little secret” about fraud investigations is that many investigators don’t know how to examine loan files"
DAMN! In my humble opinion it seems really arrogant for an ASA to come forward ANONYMOUSLY and make such a statement, even though it might be true. I wonder if the anonymous state attorney was referring to our friend Detective Baluja? The fact of the matter is that through our research we've found the training that is provided to the task force detectives is laughable, unfortunately, real estate transactions are fairly complex and can not be learned after a week of training. I will suggest this though in defense of the fine men and women at the MDPD; the state attorneys office's understanding of Real Estate transactions isn't much greater than that of the PD, again making that anonymous statement even more annoying. Take that kind of arrogant and condescending statement into consideration, next time you guys get thrown under the bus, at least now you know whose driving it!

Further along in the article an anonymous attorney says the following regarding the Task Force:
"The task force members, he said, either don’t show up at meetings or are overly self-congratulatory."
BINGO! I love that "overly self-congratulatory" part! As in those fancy press conferences, perp walks, flow charts with the bad guys, 7 figure fraud accusations, etc, all in the name of grabbing media attention. Over the next few weeks, we'll go back and find those flow charts and see how those cases ended up, surely after all the media hoopla the players involved must have gotten some serious time, right? Ask yourself, why does this task force need all the media attention? How often is it that you see the PD out in the spotlight announcing its achievements? We mentioned the story of the lawyer who stole millions from his clients, yet there's no mention of it by the PD or the media, you would have to imagine though if that story had ANYTHING to do with mortgage fraud it would more than likely be ALL OVER THE PLACE! Think about what all the exposure could achieve for the task force, the answer should be pretty easy to figure out especially now where local governments budgets are in such bad shape.

How did you guys do on our riddle from yesterday? We'll discuss the answer next week. With that I'm signing off till Monday, I need to get away for a couple of days! Unfortunately due to budgetary constraints I can't afford to stay in some five star hotel, so I'll have to settle for...

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