Word: loan
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...schemes that falsely promise to help desperate homeowners hang on to their houses and then take the money and run - has mushroomed. Now, the U.S. Attorney's office in the Middle District of Florida tells TIME, federal agents and prosecutors have embarked on a "surge" of mortgage and loan-modification fraud investigations that could result in more than 200 indictments this year in the Tampa region alone. "The idea is to do as many cases as we can at once," says Tampa U.S. Attorney Brian Albritton, "to clearly send a message that this is not going to be tolerated...
...charge in Tampa, "We're using resources that normally would be addressing other threats in order to surge this." Part of the strategy is to proceed in three "waves" that move "as high up the ladder" as possible, says Ibison: to collar not just the buyers who lied on loan applications, or brokers who ushered those shams along, but also the banks and lenders who looked the other way or actively participated in the scams (and often made a killing unloading toxic mortgages on Wall Street). That includes alleged top-level conspiracy "organizers" like Husani. "These kinds of crimes," Ibison...
...appallingly lax state oversight earlier in the decade allowed just about any crook to become a mortgage broker. Five people were busted in Miami on Thursday in a $4.5 million straw buyer scam. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum this month filed a civil lawsuit against a number of alleged loan-modification scam artists on behalf of scores if not hundreds of people, most of them facing foreclosure, who claim they paid upfront fees as high as $3,000 to have their mortgage terms improved so they could keep their homes. The suit alleges those services, which numerous non-profit organizations...
Many of the current negotiations trace back to the terms of the original government loans. As a condition of Chrysler's loan agreement, the UAW must accept a 50% reduction in payments to its retiree health care trust and match the Japanese transplants' hourly labor costs, says Chrysler spokeswoman Dianna Gutierrez. "The Canadian government has taken a similar position as it relates to the CAW," she notes...
Union representatives in the U.S., however, complain the current demands go beyond those spelled out in the December loan agreement. The union has already committed to eliminating productivity bonuses due this year and next, to changes in the way overtime pay is computed, and to the elimination of the traditional cost-of-living allowances as well as to cuts in the special supplemental unemployment benefits for employees with less than 20 years seniority. Sources close to the negotiations tell TIME that the union has not yet agreed to the changes in funding Chrysler's health-care trust, which was established...