In a move that is sure to keep federal criminal defense attorneys in Atlanta and other places busy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently announced an increase in federal criminal mortgage fraud investigations. According to recent news reports, since last October, the FBI has transferred 75 agents working on other matters to the more than 2,000 open, federal mortgage fraud cases.
In total, there are approximately 254 FBI agents working on this task force, and as expected, this has resulted in an increase in the number of open federal mortgage fraud investigations. Indeed, based on figures provided to Congress by the FBI Director, the FBI has opened about 200 mortgage fraud investigations in the past five weeks.
As our firm noted back in 2007 on this earlier Georgia Federal Criminal Lawyer Blog post, “those of us that handle federal criminal cases have seen a surge in federal mortgage fraud prosecutions. And from what we have seen, we do not expect this surge to slow down anytime soon.”