Suspicious Transactions Under Investigation By Colorado State Regulators

In Colorado Springs, Colorado, The Gazette reports:

• Belinda Gardner thought it was too good to be true when a mortgage broker offered to pay her $20,000 if she would buy a new house on Fossil Butte Drive in northeast Colorado Springs and promise to live in it, even though she had no intention of moving. But $20,000 was too much money to pass up, so Gardner, who works as a hospital customer service representative, went along while the broker - she says she doesn't remember his name - arranged financing for the $379,900 house.

• Her younger sister, Katina Scott, also realized it was probably too sweet a deal when the same broker convinced her to buy the new house next door for $396,900.

• Turns out, both deals were too good to be true. Gardner's house is headed to foreclosure and Scott already has lost her house. Both would simply be statistics in the national mortgage meltdown except for the keen eye of Pete Preston, executive director of Mortgage Solutions of Colorado. His company processed Scott's loan in April and when her paperwork later landed on his desk in a routine audit, Preston recognized something was wrong and started digging.

For more, see State probes Fossil Butte Drive mortgage-fraud allegations.