Florida Man Gets 8 Years for Phony Inspections

[hausdok]

Dean Counce of Spring Hill, Florida had a pretty sweet deal going. His company - American Mortgage Field Services - was being paid by lenders to regularly inspect and report on the condition of foreclosed properties in the state of Florida. According to an article in the Tampa Bay Times Online, by 2009 Counce was sending as many as 100,000 inspection reports a month to Bank of America and was being paid about $6.50 for each.

According to Bank of America, they paid Counce's company $23.5 million over five years. The problem - about 60% of those reports were fabricated. Counce was sentenced on February 20th to 97 months in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $12.8 million in restitution.

To read more, click here.

[Richard Moore]

I'm not making excuses for the guy, but $6.50 per "inspection"?!? At that rate BofA got quite close to what they were paying for.

[Eric B]

How about a story about badly written reports?

[Marc]

I'm surprised BoA hasn't been implicated by the feds. $6.50 per report? How low would it have to be before common sense would finally suggest to BoA that something was wrong? 25 cents?

Marc

[Tom Raymond]

Someone from BofA should be sharing his cell. The Banks learned nothing from the housing crash.

I was invited to refinance by my mortgage holder under HARP. The good faith estimate of closing costs stated the title company (owned by the lender) would perform the appraisal for somewhere between $225 and $2250, plus title work, and title insurance. Just shy of $4000 in fees. The pitch man was actually shocked when I wouldn't sign.

[Erby]

They're not Home Inspections, they're occupancy inspections. Takes about five minutes max.

I used to do them for about $15.00 out of town and $7.00 in town. I could, in town, do 30 or so in a couple of hours. Was better than going hungry.

Most of them were one picture and a minute of data input and drive on. Only had to get out of the car if they weren't occupied. Then it's just a quick walk around to make sure the home was secure.

Totally different than this thing we do.

[Nolan Kienitz]

I've had BofA and WF reps call me over the past year or so wanting FHA Finals (92051 forms) for many new home construction and repair projects.

They would not pay over $50.00 for the report. I had to send the caller a lo-dose Bayer aspirin to help arrest their cardiac arrest when I provided my minimum fee for those ... close to $400.

Goes without saying I didn't do any for them.

From what I've heard of late things are not getting any better in many sectors. Much more CYA paperwork being generated.

[Jim Baird]

No wonder the financial biz has such a low esteem in the public eye these days.

[Mike Reid]

What this idiot did was wrong and he deserves the jail time he got, no question about it!!! On a seperate note, after what BOA and other lenders did to our industry and the country in general why are people still doing business with them?