Back to that real estate purchase contract addendum that we began discussing the other day.

Let's take another look...

From the beginning...

Seller: ___________ Esq. as Personal representative of the estate of ________________

Ok, here we're establishing that an attorney is representing the estate that owns the home that's in question, no problem.

Buyer and seller agree to increase sales price to $220,000.

Wait a minute, why are we increasing the price of the home?  Isn't this a clear cut case of "an attorney inflating the price of the property"?  Interesting.

Seller hereby agrees to contribute $10,500 toward buyer's closing costs.

Oh really?  The seller is going to contribute 4.7% of the purchase price to the buyer.

Seller will pay documentary stamps based on $175,000.  Buyer agrees to pay the balance of the documentary stamps for the seller.

Oh Ok!  Alarm bells going off yet?  Buyer is going to pay the doc stamps on the $45,000 difference?

Seller hereby agrees to payoff (sic) a private loan to _________ in the amount of $45,105.00.  

HUH?!  WTF is that about?

Realtors commission in based on 3% each of $175,000.00

Fantastic!  Is it just me or is this a clear example of an attorney artificially inflating the price of a home by $45,000?  Does anyone see any parallels between this transaction and the fraudulent transaction that Attorney David Rodriguez put together back in the Miami Dade Mortgage Fraud Task Forces case #1?  In both instances the attorneys were putting together deals with inflated sales prices, the only difference was that Mr. Rodriguez was concocting the deal with an undercover cop, in this instance the attorney not only engineered the deal but also put it on paper and signed off on it!  

The other difference between the two cases?  This attorney didn't get arrested.  More coming...