The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a highly detailed report of consumer complaints received by the oversight agency regarding the lifecycle of various financial transactions, including mortgage loans. The report breaks down complaints by category, geography, and racial and other demographics and describes interesting variances between the nature of complaints among races, ethnicity, and various…

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A Long Island man, Brent Kaufman, pleaded guilty this week to stealing $4.7 million in mortgage refinancing proceeds that were meant to pay off the existing mortgages of his clients. Kaufman was an unlicensed mortgage broker and assisted clients in Queens and Long Island with refinancing their mortgages. Instead of using the lender proceeds, which…

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The U.S. Secret Service issued an advisory warning of a significant increase in wire transfer fraud involving efforts to substitute fraudulent mortgage payoffs and thereby divert proceeds for criminal gain. The government agency reported that criminals send fictitious or altered mortgage payoff statements to title companies, attorneys and others acting as a closing or settlement…

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