INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND VETERANS ADMINISTRATION FRAUDS Prepared by: Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice December 1987 This paper addresses the growing problem of fraud and abuse within the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) single family mortgage insurance programs and the Veterans Administration's (VA) home loan guaranty program. In an effort to assist in the prosecution of such matters, it provides background information with respect to the home loan programs and outlines the necessary procedures and requirements for participation. Further, this paper provides a prosecutor with the common types of schemes utilized by most such offenders and suggests certain investigative and prosecutive techniques for effective case management and trial preparation. 2.0 BACKGROUND HUD, VA and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have recently joined together in a limited number of jurisdictions and created task forces to investigate fraud and abuse in the home loan insurance/guaranty programs. Because investigations have revealed this problem to be escalating throughout the country, the Economic Crime Council, an internal Department of Justice advisory group, has taken the problem under special consideration. 2.1 Overview and Purpose The purpose of the VA home loan guaranty program and the HUD single family mortgage insurance programs is to facilitate the extension of mortgage credit on favorable terms by private lenders to eligible veterans and non |