Arizona Mortgage Fraud Feds Targeting Strippers In Crackdown Against Gutting Of Homes In Foreclosure

In Phoenix, Arizona, The Arizona Republic reports:

• The Northeast Valley's battered real-estate market is getting a federal bailout of sorts from an unusual source. FBI agents and local law-enforcement personnel have arrested five people in the past month for stripping their foreclosed homes of appliances, cabinets, countertops and plumbing fixtures. That includes cases in Fountain Hills, Anthem, Phoenix and Surprise of some of the more egregious violators who are taking everything they can out of homes, said Julie Halferty, a supervising special agent who oversees the FBI Mortgage Task Force.

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• To combat the theft, the task force is going after violators who have stripped multiple investment properties that they are losing to foreclosure, rather than homeowners who have lost their home, Halferty said. But the enforcement effort is also trying to discourage those thefts as well, she said.

For more, see Home strippers face arrest in crackdown.

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