Absolutely. Can't believe such obvious predatory fraud can go on for years with nobody going to jail. That's why the recent case in Los Angeles where several people beat up a couple of others they claimed had defrauded them in a loan mod scam resonated with a lot of people here. A little frontier justice would go a long ways toward eliminating the behavior.

It is amazing what people will believe. That old saying 'if it sounds too good to be true...' but people get sold a bill of goods every day by fast talkers and smooth talkers and even friends and trusted advisors, clergy, attorneys, etc.

Part of the problem was nobody could exactly figure out the crime. When the market was still appreciating and homes hadn't gone into foreclosure yet nobody had really been defrauded in a legal sense. t didn't pass the smell test but that's just not enough for authorities sometimes. Our attorney even gave a fraud update to our brokers one time and one of these slime bags was sitting right in the front row with his attorney recording the event to make sure he was not slandered. It's a crazy world.

Fortunately some states, Florida in particular, got aggressive on this early on to the point of even training locals law enforcement. I remember hearing cases where an agent would get a whiff of something fishy and invite a cop along. There were times they actually made arrests at the closing table and confiscated the money right there. That's the kind of 'frontier justice' that's needed. Letting this go on for years and years, enjoying their estates, their fancy cars, their big vacations only allows them to take advantage of even more people and encourages others to embark along the same path.

It may not have been as large as some other scams but our community is celebrating today.

More than enough blame to go around. The perpetrators, lenders, escrow appraisers, lRealtors, law enforcement and, yes, some of the 'innocent victims'. They knew damn well this was a fraud and a Ponzi but hoped that this time it was their ship that had come in. It never is. Shysters have been pedling snake oil since frontier days and there's always a line to buy.

By the way, there were many in the community who were trying to do the right thing and kept meeting obstacles. Among them was broker Steve Lamberson, who saw some of the first offers of this kind in his office and blew the whistle, attorney John Giardinelli, who coordinated the formation of our task force pro bono and eventually forced a meeting with the DA after years of being stonewalled, Chris Bagley of the Californian and Leslie Berkman of the Press Enterprise, who got in the loop early and pulished expose after expose trying to educate the public and provoke law enforcement, and Richard Ackerman, who represented many of the victims. While it's arguable how 'innocent' some of the victims were, this was a new wrinkle on an old scheme often foisted on them by friends they trusted. Their early website was a work of art tracking the perps daily travels, showing pictures of their big houses, their Ferrari's, their vacations and documenting page after page of questionable transactions. Yesterday their 'Most Wanted' was fianally charged.

Ultimately it was the SEC that brought them down for securities fraud, our DA and the US AG were very late to the table with their mortgage fraud charges. But - better late than never I guess.

Tere - it is just the tip of the iceberg for our region. We're hoping a couple of the other big copy-cats at least get honorable mention in the police log. As well as a few real estate agents and appraisers who climbed right up on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately because it takes soooo long to come to prosecution, the frauds have already morphed 2 or 3 or more times and manage to stay out in front of the cops. The ringleader of this group had been busted for running the same scam in 3 other states and just had his hands slapped - so he'd just take his act on the road like the snake-oil peddlers of old. He found more willing accomplices and a ton of victims in SoCal.

Even though this scheme had been cracked he remained in business on-line until very recently making pitches to separate suckers from their money. It may be a little harder to do from the inside and with bail set at $144 million, he may be inside for awhile.

Thomas - your are so right. When our DA finally consented to meet with us to discuss this, he basicaly said the same thing. It's not a sexy crime and it's not easily solved. You can catch a drug dealer or a car thief, make a case and get a conviction in short rder. These kinds of crimes - you have to get wind of it, then figure out if a crime is actually being committed, then understand the laws it broke and how to prosecute, then assemble the evidence from mounains of doicuments, mls info, escrow papers, etc. Then finally you can bring charges - very time consuming. I understand that but it's very frustrating when you're on the business side of it seeing it happen every day and not being able to do something.

These people got so blatant they were literally faxing in offers - sometimes 20 a day to offices with these inflated price offers of 600,000 for a 500,000 listing etc. As an agent you are obloigated ot present all offers to your clients, the client is getting the amount they asked for - who cares if some shady bastard is making off with an extra 100 grand? It was like a perfec storm of fraud and the authorities hands were tied.

Gene - yes, the people who are ultimately responsible for the housing debacle not only face no charges but are sanctimoniously in charge of parsing the blams to others and in charge of 'fixing' the problems. God help us.