Top Ten Scams of the Decade #4
Number Four: Mortage Refinancing
The noughties was the decade in which the economy imploded (or exploded, I’m not an economist and this technical terms confuse me).
As best as I can tell, a bunch of people bought houses they couldn’t afford using money they borrowed from banks who didn’t have the money to give. The people lost their houses, the banks lost their money and everything went tits up. (stop me if I’m going too fast.)
This is where the con artists came in, picking over the bones of the economy. Dodgy characters began offering people to remortgage their homes. Victims, desperate to save their homes signed anything shoved in front of them and ended up losing everything.
Now, as the economy is slowly improving, new morgage scams are being discovered all the time. A Sydney couple have been arrested this month for stealing identities of homeowners to get fake mortgages. $150 million is believed to have been swindled.
Tomorrow: Identity Theft