Owning a house can be a pain if you have to take out a mortgage. Mortgaging introduces a new creditor into a homeowner’s life. This can be aggravating, given that debt is already a normal part of most, if not every American’s life. Everyone wants another new creditor as bad as everyone wants unnecessary surgery. A turbulent housing market combined with the mainstreaming of debt has led authorities to pay particular attention to the information that debtors offer on their mortgage applications.
When someone goes to the bank and asks to take out a mortgage on his or her house, the bank asks questions about the potential client’s basic financial situation. Family size, average income, employment status, the value of one’s house, assets, liabilities, amount of debt, and credit standing are all areas of interest to banks. Banks use the answers to these questions to measure the eligibility, credibility, and worthiness of their potential clients. Accusations of fraud usually involve one of the following scenarios: failure to disclose liability ( which distorts one’s debt-to-income ratio ), overstatement of one’s income ( which typically leads to defaults by clients who are not as wealthy as they reported they were ), falsification of one’s employment status ( often in the form of claiming self-employment by a fictional company ), overstatement or understatement the value of one’s house, and finally, plain old identity fraud. Banks have their radars in the “on” position for these sorts of behaviors, and particularly monitor those respective terms.
Most Americans are honest and want to do the right thing. The government or a bank might accuse a person of fraud when they have not in fact intentionally defrauded an organization, but perhaps did not give entirely adequate information on a mortgage application. In a case of mortgage fraud, there must be intent by a person to defraud, the person must give false information, the person must know that he or she is falsely giving said information, he or she must intend that the bank rely on his or her representations of information, and he or she must be causing economic damages to the bank through his or her actions. If any of the elements are lacking, a case for mortgage fraud may not lie.
Dealing with creditors is bad enough already without having to deal with fraud allegations. If you have been accused of mortgage fraud or of otherwise acting deceitful in a transaction with a bank, you must seek legal counsel immediately. Our Orlando lawyers at The Umansky Law Firm specialize in defending persons scrutinized for having given certain representations to banks regarding their basic financial situations. We will defend you if you have been accused of mortgage fraud. Call The Umansky Law Firm at 407-228-3838 or click the “contact us” button at the bottom of this page.
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