By William K. Black
(Cross posted and Benzinga.com)
Introduction
This is the third column in my series discussing why the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have failed to investigate and prosecute successfully the largest and most destructive financial fraud epidemic in history. The series uses the FBI’s 2010 Mortgage Fraud report to tease out how the FBI and DOJ suffered such a defeat.
The MBA conned the FBI into a “partnership” with the trade association of the “perps.” In my prior column I showed the first product of the partnership – a poster warning customers not to defraud banks but ignoring banks defrauding customers. This column discusses the more consequential and damaging product of the FBI/MBA partnership. The MBA presented a definition of “mortgage fraud” under which the bank is always the innocent victim and never a perpetrator. Because the FBI and DOJ did not draw on the banking regulators’ expertise due to the death of criminal referrals by the agencies the FBI fell for the MBA con.
