Report: Mortgage Company VP Tutored Brokers On The Art Of Fraud; $550M+ In Florida Loans Originated; More Than 1 In 3 Ended In Foreclosure

The Miami Herald reports:

• Orson Benn, once a vice president at the nation's largest subprime lender, spent three years during the height of the housing boom tutoring Florida mortgage brokers in the art of fraud. From his office in New York, he taught them how to doctor credit reports, coached them to inflate income on loan applications, and helped them invent phantom jobs for borrowers.

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• The Miami Herald found that Benn's network approved more than $550 million in home loans from Tampa to West Palm Beach to Miami, according to an analysis of court records. In Miami-Dade County alone, Benn's office approved more than $349 million in loans on 1,913 homes -- more than one in three have since fallen into foreclosure, the analysis shows.

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• With so many of Benn's loans now in foreclosure, Miami-Dade County is littered with still more empty homes. Squatters inhabit some; crack dens occupy others. At least one has been stripped to the ground, leaving only the foundation.

Benn has recently begun an 18-year prison sentence.

For more, see Exec had mortgage racket down to an art (Orson Benn has gone to prison for falsifying applications, but a former associate in Homestead still sells mortgages).