You would think mortgage fraudsters (fraud news) would be on the run. For one thing, bankers and mortgage companies have tightened up. And prosecutors have made such fraud a huge priority.

A recent report from the FBI found that suspicious activity reports (SARs) related to mortgage fraud rose 5 percent in 2009 to around 67,200, up from 63,700 the year before, according to Reuters. The number of SARs for the first three months of 2010 hit nearly 38,000.

Unfortunately, if anything, the real estate crisis has given the fraud artists a lot of grist for their fraud mills--foreclosures, short sales, modified loans and the like. Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California--among the hardest hit by the crisis--remain fraud hot spots.

While experts and regulators tend to focus on really massive fraud cases that draw headlines, no one doubts there has been an explosion in petty fraud as well. There's a lot of scamming with HUD sheets and mortgage docs still at the individual agent/broker level. In these small potato cases, there is virtually no chance that anyone will get caught.

For more:
- here's the Reuters article

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