Another One Bites the Dust

The greatest mortgage scammer of all time (outside of the FNMA/FHLMC pseudo-governmental mortgage clearinghouses, which just might be guilty of fraud and mismanagement to the tune of almost a trillion dollars) has been nailed in Tennessee. Matthew Bevan Cox and his partner in crime (whome he met, believe it or not, on Match.com) Rebecca Hauck were turned in by a friend and now face jail time of over 400 years. I really don't think they'll be able to serve out their sentences.

He stalked his victims by using the MLS (multiple-listing service), the prime source of real-estate information, and a great source of the power of Realtors, many of whom would definitely not survive if the cartel were broken by non-agents. He looked for properties listed as being for sale with potential owner financing, then executed fraudulent satisfaction-of-lien documents at the county registrar, got "clean" title to the properties, then simultaneously executed three new mortgages on the property. This is really quite easy to do. He could walk away with roughly 3x the value of the house practically every time. Then the poor sucker he "bought" the house from originally gets foreclosed on and stuck with the new debts.

And now he's going to jail. About time.