Civil and criminal mortgage fraud case activity eased during November from October -- although activity jumped from a year earlier, according to the FraudBlogger Index published and maintained by http://www.mortgagedaily.com/.

The FraudBlogger Index was 800 last month, edging down from 810 in October. The index soared, however, from 530 during November 2006.

The dollar volume of active mortgage fraud cases tracked last month was $0.4 billion, compared to $0.3 billion in October and $0.1 billion in November 2006.

  State Rankings and Index Level:

            November                 October                  November
              2007                     2007                     2006
  1. Florida &              1. New York         110    1. Florida         70
     Missouri               2. Missouri         100    2. Texas           60
     (each)           80    3. Illinois          90    3. Colorado &
  2. New York         70    4. Georgia           80       Indiana &
  3. California &           5. Florida &                  South
     New Jersey                Minnesota                  Carolina
    (each)            60       (each)            60       (each)          50

  National:          800    National:           810    National:         530
  $ amount: $359,288,000    $ amount:  $336,294,100    $ amount: $98,177,000

A minimum of $100,000 was used for all cases tracked, including when no amount was available. The national total index is an aggregate of all state data.

The biggest case tracked involved Minnesota homebuilder Parish Marketing and Development Corp.

Owner Michael Parish and his wife plead guilty to using straw buyers on 200 new homes. There were approximately $50 million in losses.

In September, former U.S. Bank officer Ramiz Yousef Saadeh plead guilty to providing fake deposit verifications in the scam -- which used proceeds from subsequent transactions to make payments on prior deals.

Complete mortgage fraud activity is comprehensively chronicled at: http://www.fraudblogger.com/

In depth mortgage industry fraud issues are reported at: http://www.mortgagedaily.com/MortgageFraud.asp?spcode=pr

About the FraudBlogger Index

The index reflects active criminal and civil mortgage fraud cases tracked by FraudBlogger.com -- a comprehensive journal of mortgage fraud reports, crimes and civil litigation. Cases involving larger dollar amounts were given greater weight. No fraud activity tracked during a given month would result in an index of zero. Monthly data may include some overlap but still provide a valuable perspective of the level of mortgage fraud activity.

About MortgageDaily.com

Founded in 1998, MortgageDaily.com is a dominant mortgage industry news source. Around one million mortgage business news pages are viewed monthly at MortgageDaily.com and its affiliate publications.

Source: MortgageDaily.com