Mortgage Fraud

According to Mike Maguire, there are three basic categories of burglars. The first category is the low-level burglars. This represents those who are of a younger age in the stage of adolescent and they are not always smart at planning their burglaries. This type of burglars are always faced with security problems rendering them unsuccessful. Since the low-level burglars do not get a lot of rewards from this level, they opt to move out of this crime style.

            The second category is the middle-range age, which comprises of those who might have committing crime at a low-level burglary. One of the distinct features here is that, there is regular abuse of drugs. These burglars get enough money from committing crime since they are equipped with security devices, however, they are unable to handle valuable items that are stolen.

            The last category of burglars is the high-level burglars who are believed to be the experts in crime and are found at the top of the pyramid. These burglars organize groups in which they work in. They usually have adequate information that enables them to take part in theft involving high monetary value, thus making them get a lot of money. This category gives so much problems to the authorities, in that they are not able to take them down easily due to absence of specified detail of crime.

Part B

            According to FBI, mortgage fraud involves three distinct activities which are discussed below.

            The first activity is the “Emerging Schemes”, which is a very wide type of illegal activities. Within this category, the FBI investigates major cases, which involve the loan origination schemes, which consists of 62% of the total.  Loan origination schemes involves people who instead of applying the loan to a primary place of residence from such schemes, they have criminal intent and they aim to make profit for themselves.

            The second activity is the ”house stealing”, which includes theft of the identity by the perpetrator where those committing the crime activity assume, through the theft of the personal information of the victim, for instance, the identity of the individuals who are targeted and his social security number.

            The third activity is the use of ”reverse mortgages” which is a valid kind of financial transaction that burglars abuse them for the purpose of crime. In this category, the elderly are often the victims. The owner of the home agrees to receive equity in the home, which is not supposed to be paid back, from the institution which lends it. After the death of elderly person, the lending institution takes ownership of the home. According to FBI, this category of mortgage fraud is the fast growing, and because the transaction involves the transfer of equity from lender to elderly consumer, there arises the issue of misunderstanding by the elderly, hence the lenders takes that to be an advantage, hence enabling them to divert equity from the home-owner to their own account.

Part C

            The first category is the Internal Cybercrimes, which are used as intrusive or hostile software and are malicious software. Examples are, Logic bombs and viruses. The second category is Internet and Telecommunications Crimes, which involves crimes that makes use of phone services to receive or to send materials which are illegal, as well as receiving monetary goods. Examples are, illegal eaves dropping and hacking. The third category is Support and Criminal Enterprises which are crimes that uses either computers or internet to support offending crimes. Examples are illegal gambling and loan sharking. The fourth category is Computer-Manipulation Crimes which involves crimes which gets monetary goods from unsuspicious people. Examples are phishing and embezzlement. The fifth category is Hardware, Software and Information Theft which involves the stealing of computer or some of its parts, computer program pirating and stealing of identity. Examples are hardware theft, software theft and identity theft.