Obama Administration Accused of Lying About Mortgage Fraud Crackdown Data

“When U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced at an October 9 press conference that a year-long crackdown on mortgage fraud had resulted in “285 federal criminal indictments and informations against 530 defendants for allegedly victimizing more than 73,000 American homeowners—and inflicting losses in excess of $1 billion” he padded the numbers by including cases initiated before the initiative began. At least one case dated back to the George W. Bush administration. His quote has since been removed from the Justice Department web site.

The Obama administration’s “Distressed Homeowner Initiative” ran from October 1, 2011, to September 30, 2012, and was led by the FBI after agents took notice of a spike in fraud directed against homeowners who were at risk of foreclosure. The unavailability of a complete list of the cases makes it impossible to determine how many of them predated the initiative.”