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My question involves criminal law for the state of: Maryland
What is the statute of limitations for thia crime?
how and who do youbreport this crime to?
what are the penalties ? How likely is prosecution?
The money was ussd to get new credit cards and run them up too
I'm not seeing MD law on such fraud with regard to mortgages. It is however a civil fraud and can result in a lawsuit for probably twelve years after it was done.
It is a crime to commit fraud to get a loan or mortgage; the mortgage fraud cases that I'm finding from Maryland were prosecuted federally. You report crimes to a law enforcement agency. The chances of prosecution range from 0% to 100%, depending on the facts.
To expand on Mr. K's and my previous statements. There is a federal fraud law that's pretty broad. Since many of these loans have some aspect that exposes them to federal jurisdiction, that may rise the level of a federal felony. As I stated earlier, MD criminal fraud is pretty narrowly written and just making a false representation is not sufficient. There's a counterfeit document section to the statute, but it lists instruments specifically that it applies to and tax forms are not one of them.
However, I'll disagree with Mr. K. Reporting financial crimes to the police, especially in Maryland where there is no broad criminal fraud law, is likely to not go very far.
They could both be federal crimes under the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009:
https://www.mcguirewoods.com/Client-...ate-Fraud.aspx
Possibly something to report to the FBI.
For more information, Truthman, google is your friend.
I do not see how someone could get away with it at all. Mortgage companies verify income with employers. They do not just accept the W2. Therefore unless the employer was complicit in the fraud, the loan would have been denied when the income could not be verified.
Credit card companies are a different story of course.
Making fradulent representation on credit card applications is actually in the MD criminal law.
While reading through all the provisions of FERA2009 is a bit tedious (it just makes lots of tweaks to the existing law), I'm not seeing how anything in it applies here. As I stated, there's an existing general fraud law at federal level but getting anybody to investigate it based on a weak, third party allegation, is slim.
I'm haven't read the specific laws for Maryland but I'd think this could possibly fall under a forgery statute.
Forgery laws generally involve some form of official document or negotiable instrument, but we're counting angels on the head of a pin at this point. If the OP wants to report the matter to law enforcement, then the OP will find out what (if anything) the law enforcement agency is willing to do. Otherwise it's a non-issue. No report, no action.