My Chicago Rant

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How mortgage scams snare unsuspecting sellers

Don’t jump at a contract offer that involves a kickback of the overage to the buyer at closing. Chances are the buyer wants an inflated price on the property so he can take the additional money and run without every making the first payment.

Why should it matter? If a buyer buys your house for the full appraised value and he gets a mortgage for that amount, what difference does it make to me as the seller if I only sold it to him for less than the amount he mortgaged?

The sales price and the mortgage amount are two different things. ( Source : Mortgage 1

You won’t be on the hook if your “buyer” obtains a mortgage at an inflated appraisal. That’s between him and the lender.

But you could be charged with conspiracy or perhaps as an accessory to a crime if you knowingly sell a property at far more than it is worth and then hand the overage over to the “buyer” at closing or shortly thereafter. The authorities say any seller who does that has to be considered an accomplice because he had to know something is not right. Either that or the seller is a complete and utter nincompoop.

The buyer in this case may or may not obtain a mortgage on the property in question. Sometimes the bad guys are satisfied with the overage, but most often they must obtain a mortgage or they won’t have the money to buy the house. So they get a loan at the inflated price — using a faulty appraisal — pay you what you want and take the rest. Then, they either skedaddle without ever making a payment or they turn around and resell the place to an unsuspecting buyer and take off with even more cash in their pockets.

These guys are sneaky. The latest scheme is called “shotgunning” in which a property owner applies for several home equity loans with multiple lenders at the same time.

In one recent documented case, a would-be borrower applied with three different lenders over a 48-hour period. Because the lenders did not all report to the same credit bureau, none were aware the same owner had simultaneously applied elsewhere as well. Fortunately, the folks at the First American Title Insurance Co. noticed the attempted sham when they received multiple title orders on the same property and notified the lenders of the suspicious activity before they funded the loans.

This owner was not deterred, however. A few days later, the title company noticed two more orders on the same property with two new lenders and was able to alert them in time to avert a loss.

Lenders weren’t so lucky in dealing with a ring of con artists who managed to obtain 10 mortgages totaling more than $1 million on a Chicago area condominium with a market value of roughly $125,000, according to First American’s valuation model. The loan applications were made over a three-week period via lender Web sites and call centers, not in person. And because of the delay between the dates the loans were closed and the dates the liens were filed in the county courthouse, none of the lenders knew of the other liens when they were making their underwriting decisions.

Lenders take it on the chin in cases like these, but legitimate borrowers also pay a price because lenders recoup these costs in the form of higher loan rates and fees, just like retailers add the cost of shoplifting to the prices they charge everyone.

Borrowers have a lot more at stake in another form of shotgunning, this one involving multiple sales of the same house. In this case, the same “owner” — who may not be the rightful owner at all — “sells” the same property simultaneously to several unsuspecting buyers.

When each buyer uses a different lender and title company, this highly orchestrated scheme is “virtually impossible to detect,” says Jeffrey Taylor, managing director of Digital Risk in Dallas. Ultimately, of course, it’s the title companies that take it on the chin, but buyers also pay dearly in the form of massive litigation and lost opportunities.

Authorities believe the Chicago scheme is being repeated over and over again by an organized group of foreign criminals. They use the sham as an exit strategy when they decide to leave the United States and return to their homeland. After living here long enough to develop solid credentials and credit records, they buy the houses or condos using all cash obtained by illegal means. Then, after living in them free-and-clear for a couple of years, they apply for a bunch of loans based on the equity they have in their houses.

“It’s the ‘fraud of the year.’” says Paul Doman of First American’s Lenders Advantage Equity division. “They can pull in excess of a million dollars out of the home, enough so that they can live a good life back wherever they came from.”

The First American executive reports that the title business is trying to put a stop to this and other schemes by forming a consortium in which applications for title searches are run through each other’s systems. That way, multiple applications on the same property can be spotted in advance rather than after the fact.

Tom Cruse
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/how-mortgage-scams-snare-unsuspecting-sellers-94586.html

Street gangs are defined as a group of individuals, usually youth, banded together under a common identity for the purpose of carrying out persistent illegal activity. This activity may revolve around dealing narcotics, robbery, pimping, burglary, racketeering, extortion, vandalism, and the hostile defense of their turf from other gangs. The sorting and cataloging of gang members and the study of street gang culture is a whole branch of criminology all in itself.

The knowledge of street gang activity amongst the municipal police is often so intimate that they can read graffiti messages and know the street names and specialties of each member. Frequently they keep their ear cocked for activity within their neighborhood, and understand the significance of events in a light that makes little sense to those who don’t follow gang activities.

In North America, the primary cities which have significant gang activity are Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Detroit. However, any major city may play host to a gang.

Much research is done to study what conditions give rise to gangs. Most experts agree that the causes are a combination of impoverished neighborhoods, racial minorities, troubled homes, and youths who don’t fit in. Young men especially join street gangs to prove their machismo, give themselves a community sense of identity, defy authority within the “system”, and compensate for low self-esteem and feelings of being an outsider.

The associative signs of identity will vary in form but always be present. The gang members might wear clothing which matches in style, color, or detail, have the same tattoo, same hairstyle, or even a common piece of jewelry. Most gangs have a designated turf, which is their home area, or other places which they claim as their own, and also have an identifiable organization or hierarchy. Usually the leader will simply be the currently most senior member, and a pecking order chains down from there. It is also somewhat common for a gang to be based on a common idea of hatred for other ethnic groups or religions, or promotion of their own race or religion.

Some speculation has suggested that street gangs are also a natural byproduct of the inherent short-comings in any society. Particularly, gang members seem to crave structure. While they reject the rules of society they have their own tight, unbreakable code. While they disdain conforming to society, they will adhere to their own dress code. They have their own value system and honor code. Street gangs may simply be the underprivileged providing their own structure and order when they perceive chaos and disorganization elsewhere.

In dealing with a gang as a law enforcement professional, the best policy is to seek the mentoring of a peer who knows the gang’s history. Once in the presence of a familiar authority figure, a gang member may be more cooperative, as long as you aren’t asking them to rat out another member. It is because their allegiance is always stronger within their group than it ever will be to anyone else, a gang member’s word should never be trusted until you know all the facts surrounding a given case.

In some cases, gangs have become so strong that the influence of the police is effectively dulled. there are sections of divisions in Los Angeles, for instance, where police officers simply will not go unless it’s in force, with a whole convoy of squad cars going in at once. At this point, the line between a street gang and a terrorist organization grows very thin. A separate issue is the other varieties of gangs, such as prison gangs and biker gangs. Street gangs might become prison gangs when all the members are incarcerated at the same time, but mainly prison gangs form within prison by the association of previously unconnected individuals.

The Internet has given rise to a new, far more dangerous development, which is the formation of international street gangs. While it was previously a rare thing for gangs to have affiliations outside of their own few city blocks, today there are dozens of gangs with members in several cities and countries throughout the world. amongst others, they are tracked closely by the FBI. The parallel rise of international organized crime is no coincidence with this, and indeed connections between Internet crime and street crime with a common gang identity have been discovered.

It may be unsettling to think that what used to be a handful of rough boys in a neighborhood is now an international organization with it’s own web pages, but it’s an idea we all have to face. This kind of takes the zip out of all those “cyberpunk” novels we were reading back in the 1980′s when we were imagining what the new wired world would be like. It turns out the cyberpunk universe carries it’s own problems from the street punk universe… and isn’t nearly as much fun as we thought it would be.

Josh Stone
http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/law-enforcement-career-introduction-to-gangs-140503.html

Dr. Ignatius Piazza’s announcement a little over three days ago that Front Sight Firearms Training Facility would be offering free, comprehensive firearm training to designated School Safety Monitors from any and all schools across the nation caused not a small amount of stir. Not surprisingly, many teachers, administrators and parents were frightened by this notion. Many conservative thinkers (that’s small “c” conservative, not big “C” Conservative) are convinced that guns are evil; to them the very thought of putting them into schools is anathema.

But knowledge is the key to this problem, for through knowledge comes responsibility. With responsible gun control in capable hands, school shootings, murders and atrocities will come to a screeching halt. Dr. Ignatius Piazza, owner and founder of Front Sight Firearms Training Facility, the largest firearms training facility in America, is willing and eager to do whatever it takes to prevent further horrors in America. He is willing to train any designated school staff members in responsible, effective use of firearms, to prevent further atrocities on school grounds.

Dave Clark, a graduate of Front Sight’s training routine and a recently retired junior high school teacher of 25 years had this to say about Front Sight’s training program:

“Front Sight provides safe and responsible training to a level that exceeds law enforcement standards. Among the many lessons taught, I learned universally accepted rules in justifiable use of deadly force. More importantly, I learned when not to shoot and how to be more mentally prepared to see a lethal confrontation coming before it happens in order to avoid it. The firearms training is second to none and clearly gives the graduates the skill needed to save the lives of those in their charge if ever attacked. If my school district chose to adopt a policy of sending selected teachers to Front Sight for concealed handgun training, I would wholeheartedly support it and volunteer as a Safety Monitor. There is no reason for our children to continue to be victimized when free, professional training is available to stop school attacks.”

Retired law enforcement firearms instructor, Mike Waidelich from Bakersfield, California strongly supports the Front Sight concept of arming and training teachers.

“Nearly every tragedy on school grounds in the entire 30 years of my law enforcement career could have been prevented or the damage done considerably limited, by the presence of an armed and trained individual.”

In schools adopting Ignatius Piazza’s program, teachers will be trained to carry a concealed weapon, so potential attackers will not know which teachers are armed and which are not. As to the effectiveness of concealed weapons preventing crime, Piazza references John Lott, Jr., from the University of Chicago School of Law. Lott published Crime, Deterrence and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns in July 1996. Mr. Lott’s research of cross-sectional time-series data from all 3054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992 found that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deterred violent crime and appeared to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed handgun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly.

With such evidence and support, can we as voters do anything but support both Dr. Ignatius Piazza and our school districts in their decisions to send their Safety Monitors to his Front Sight institute to be trained for free? What school can afford to not send their teachers to this free training? Speak to your district officials, contact your administrators, inform them of the necessity of arming your school’s teachers – this is how we will handle America’s epidemic of atrocities.

Jayden Adams
http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-articles/take-it-from-the-experts-ignatius-piazza-139088.html

It is Front Sight Firearms Training Facility’s current mission to instruct teachers across the nation in concealed weapon use for free. Front Sight’s founder and owner, Dr. Ignatius Piazza, intends to get trained concealed weapons experts into all of America’s schools and thus prevent further disasters like Virginia Tech or Columbine. The response to this has been remarkably supportive.

“I can’t imagine anyone being opposed to the idea of putting concealed weapons experts into schools – what else would scare off these gunmen? Certainly not laws against them owning guns!” – R.H.

“How many times must we experience another Littleton, Colorado or Virginia Tech before we wake up, study the research and adopt policies which actually reduce crime and begin saving our children instead of leaving them helpless victims when the next psychiatric drug user snaps?” – I.P.

“First off, Front Sight is incredible, I would trust the competence of anyone coming out of that school with my life! Second, what a great idea for Piazza to give free training to school teachers. It’s one thing to care about school shootings – it’s another thing altogether to offer, for free, the best firearm training in the nation in order to make sure that they stop altogether.” – A.S.

The meager opposition to Piazza’s idea will come from those who think that guns are what cause murders, multiple homicides and murder-suicides. For whatever reason, legislators are convinced that preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms will prevent terrors like those witnessed at Columbine and Virginia Tech.

Not so! The answer lies in Front Sight and concealed weapons training for our teachers. What could be more intimidating to a potential gunman than knowledge that any attempt to draw a firearm on a classroom or schoolroom would result in immediate failure? Many legislators would argue that more laws against gun ownership are the keys to our problems. But, when discussing gun control, the unfortunate fact is that legislation only affects those who follow laws in the first place. Gunmen who shoot down their own peers and classmates are not going to consider the legal ramifications of owning a gun in addition to multiple homicide!

Laws do not prevent horrors like Virginia Tech and Columbine. What those students did was illegal – and making their actions more illegal wouldn’t have stopped them. Legislating guns away from law-abiding citizens is backwards and insane. What’s needed is training for those law-abiding citizens.

John Lott, Jr. from the University of Chicago School of Law published Crime, Deterrence and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns in July 1996. Lott’s research of cross-sectional time-series data from all 3054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992 found that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deterred violent crime and showed no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed handgun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly.

As if in direct, illogical opposition to this empirical data, laws exist in most states which prohibit the possession of firearms on school grounds even when the possessor is qualified and has a concealed weapons license. Dr. Piazza quickly points out that those laws did not prevent or stop the gun violence at numerous schools over the last tens years. He states, “The brazen attacks in school after school during the last decade indicate criminals have concluded that ‘Gun-Free-School-Zone’ actually means ‘Government Certified, Helpless and Unarmed Victim Zone.”

So take a stand against these illogical laws – support Dr. Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight Firearms Training Facility. Tell your school administrators that you expect their Safety Monitors to be sent to Front Sight for their free concealed weapons training. Front Sight and Dr. Piazza want America’s schools safe – so much so that he is willing to train School Safety Monitors for free – what objection could anyone raise to taking advantage of this opportunity?

Jayden Adams
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/front-sight-and-concealed-weapons-the-solution-139086.html

Rising public concern about drug use in the late 1980′s was called a drug “panic” or “scare”. This phenomenon has not been born over night but rather has been building up throughout the 1980s, and finally exploded in the late 1985 and early in 1986. The special public concern was targeted on cocaine, more specifically, crack, a cocaine derivative. Drug use in general became a crucial social problem of the decade. For a number of reasons which will be discussed later drug use, abuse, and exploitation became as apparent as never before. In this very decade the drug issue has occupied million’s of minds and emerged as a huge social problem. During those times the concept “tougher on crimes” became widely used in society for the reasons of drug frenzy in the country, the government intentions were to establish such harsh laws which would scare criminals and make them think twice before committing a crime, of using or selling drugs.

The reasons behind the craze over drug use were numerous and at times unobvious. Something began happening in first year of the decade of the 1980s, public tolerance of the use of illegal drug use declined, the belief that the use of drugs is harmful increased, convictions that possessing or selling illegal drugs should be decriminalized or legalized declined, even the use of the drugs declined. In 1980s America experienced enormous increase in public concern about drug use and abuse. In the middle of this decade crack or potent crystalline form of cocaine, was practically an unknown drug in the United States and by late 1985, it was broadly used in urban areas. The appearing suddenness of crack’s widespread use and the degree to which it has been used in some neighborhoods made the crack story popular among news reporters and gave the public the notion that a huge drug crisis has exploded overnight. In reality drugs mainly were used in certain neighborhoods in big cities such as NY, Los Angeles and Chicago. Thus, it was not simply the greater threat than new patterns of crack use posed but the unknown drug and the thorough news coverage which gave up rise to this problem and made a major social concern out of it.

Another episode that caused tougher sentencing predominantly associated with drug use was caused by the death of famous athletes. In June 1986, hardly a week apart, two popular young athletes died of a cocaine overdose. On June 19, University of Maryland basketball forward Len Bias, and on June 27, Cleveland Browns’ defensive back Don Rogers. One of the major reasons why Bias’ death was so much talked about is the proximity of Maryland to the Capitol where decisions on crime policies are taken. Country such as the United States, that praises sports figures would be treating the death of their athletes not only as a tragedy, but also will consider this death as a basic and common for the society as a whole. In the case of mid 80s that was a certain thing, which was generously discussed in all media channels creating more noise around it than it fairly should.

It is obvious that all spheres of social life are greatly affected by the politicians and often by their personal interests. The elections of 1986 probably should be regarded as a source of rising concern about the drug issue. Although we cannot claim that there is a straight relationship between public concern and attention by politicians to a given issue, it is clear that when politicians sense that public concern about and interest in a certain topic (drugs in our case) growing, they will most certainly exploit this issue in their interest. With the media talking about the issue and famous dying athletes, Congress once it started talking about it, realized that all the same things were heard from everywhere and the problem existed or at least was apparent to all. So, clearly when the government became involved in the issue and Nancy Regan began making speeches stressing the anti-drug theme with “Just say no” slogan society was even more stimulated and awaited some concrete moves from the senators.

The entire drug matter and other social problems such as firearms offences required some strict decisions being made on the subject of criminal responsibility for those crimes. The minimum mandatory sentences were to solve the problem of drug abuse and impose tougher punishment. Initially the federal government had forced mandatory minimum sentences with the Narcotic Control Act of 1956 but had turned away from such laws by 1970, when it found that the increased sentences had not resulted in the expected overall reduction in drug law violations. States on the other hand began implementing mandatory minimums on their own; such New York began the trend in 1973 when it passed the Rockefeller Drug Laws requiring 15-year prison sentences for possession or sales of small amounts of narcotics. Michigan followed in 1978 with the enactment of the “650 lifer law,” requiring life imprisonment for possession, sale or conspiracy to sell or possess 650 grams (about 1.25 pounds) of cocaine or heroin. By year 1983, 49 of the 50 states had passed some mandatory minimum provisions, usually adding them little by little, instead of major changes. The federal government started reforming its sentencing stipulations in the 1980s in the light pf problems described above, primarily by setting up a system of sentencing guidelines trying to create more uniformity in the sentences given out by judges. Afterwards it intended to impose mandatory minimums, mostly for drug-related offenses.

The United States Sentencing Commission, established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, created a system of guidelines designed to limit judges’ discretion in sentencing and to create more uniformity and proportionality in the sentences. Another Drug Abuse Act was passed by the Congress in 1986 in response to criticism of indeterminate, or undefined, sentencing and also about concerns on the perceived link between moderate penalties for drug offenders and increases in violent crime and drug abuse. Under the law, drug linchpins received sentences of at least ten years for a first offense and twenty years for a second. Mid-level dealers and managers face five and ten years for first and second offenses, respectively. In 1988 Congress extended mandatory minimums to reach conspirators in the drug deals as well as principals, thus ensuring that minimum penalties would apply with equal force to secondary players found guilty of conspiracy.

Obviously those drug related acts passed by the government were the answer to the ever rising concerns of the society in the decade of 1980’s. Although drugs were always a big problem, the situation began to look out of control because of various factors and to calm down the hysterical mood, those strict and as seemed at that time “just” laws were ratified. The history showed however that there was almost no effect brought by the mandatory minimums and adopted sentences, except of confusing laws which are judging everybody under same conditions.

Jeff Stats
http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/mandatory-minimum-sentences-115294.html