Las Vegas real estate scam goes bust

As Las Vegas’s housing supply exploded, so did
competition among lawyers and contractors to
represent new homeowner associations in
construction-defect lawsuits. It was in this
environment that a shadowy
outfit cooked up a brazen scheme.

Before the market crashed and home prices tumbled, before federal investigators showed up and hauled away the community records, before her property managers pled guilty for conspiring to rig neighborhood elections, and before her real estate lawyer allegedly tried to commit suicide by overdosing on drugs and setting fire to her home, Wanda Murray thought that buying a condominium in Las Vegas was a pretty good idea. 

At first glance, Murray doesn’t look much like the type of person who would arrive in Las Vegas only to get tangled up in and eventually help unravel a complex criminal conspiracy. At 65, she stares out at the world through thick glasses. She is legally blind. Her eyes never quite seem to focus on any one thing. On a recent Friday morning, she sits at her dining room table wearing a zip-up leopard-print sweatshirt and recounts how she helped to foil a group of lawyers and contractors running amok in Sin City. “They didn’t think there would be four old ladies who wouldn’t put up with their stuff,” says Murray. “They really pissed me off.”   READ MORE

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Real-estate market again ripe for fraud

by Moe Bedard on December 19, 2011 in Scams

(Source: By Kenneth R. Harney, Boston Herald)

WASHINGTON — Could today’s seductive conditions in the housing market — severely marked-down prices, record low interest rates and hundreds of thousands of foreclosures waiting to be resold — be breeding new generations of the very practices that led to the crash?

In an ironic twist, there are signs that the wreckage left over from the housing bust may be reigniting dubious real-estate schemes and fraud. According to researchers:
–Property flippers are back in action in places like South Florida and Las Vegas, where condo prices crashed but are now seeing appreciation again in some areas.

–So-called “floppers” are defrauding banks by hijacking short sales at prices below what legitimate purchasers are willing to pay. In these schemes, realty agents obtain fraudulent appraisals to persuade banks to sell houses at below-market prices to investor groups. The investors then flip the houses at fair market prices to ordinary homebuyers and split the quick profits. –Creative “credit enhancement” companies are “renting” investors the bank-account balances they need to demonstrate to lenders that they have the financial wherewithal to qualify for a mortgage. The accounts are for real, but they don’t belong to the loan applicants who claim them. READ MORE