Mortgage Scammer Admits Running Home Equity Ripoffs To Perpetrate Ponzi Scheme

On Long Island, New York, ABC News reports:

• Peter Dawson was a mini-Bernie Madoff -- on the surface, a charming family man with a big house, on the make in working class neighborhoods of Long Island, N.Y. Now, he has been sentenced to state prison for at least five years for running an elaborate mortgage scam.

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• Dawson admitted he ran a Ponzi scheme: He convinced his clients to take equity out of their homes and invest it in his hedge fund. But that "hedge fund" didn't actually exist, he said, and he pocketed the money. When he had to, he paid off old investors with new investors' money. During the housing boom, Dawson took advantage of desperate homeowners, eager-to-lend banks and lax regulations to steal millions.

For more, see Exclusive: Confessions of a Mortgage Scammer (Mini-Madoff Admits Crime But Blames Banks and Brokers for Not 'Stopping the Madness').