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Well, You Can't Deny They Love Their Work

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 26, 2008

Perhaps the best way to understand how it could be possible for more than 10,000 people with criminal records to win state approval to work in the mortgage business is to think of Florida as historically sort of the Al-Qaida of real estate.

After all, ever since Ponce de Leon conned a bunch of unsuspecting Conquistadors that they could stay young forever simply by drinking the 16th-century version of Zephyrhills water, one cheesy huckster after another has used the allure of Florida to separate countless rubes from their money.

And since the state has become one giant strip mall from Pensacola to Key West, interrupted by real estate developments with cozy names like Pit Viper Palms, or Tea Pot Dome Estates, or You're Toast Terrace, somehow it only seems fitting the paperwork to get started on the fiduciary pillaging would be handled by experts in their field - thieves, goons and thugs.

The Miami Herald reported the other day the state Office of Financial Regulation had approved some 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage business between 2000 and 2007.

Slightly Flawed

Indeed many of these slightly flawed employees went on to commit more than $85 million in mortgage fraud.

Well, who says experience isn't valued anymore?

Among those given a ticket to connive by the Office of Financial Regulation were people who had been convicted of bank robbery, racketeering, fraud and (for the sake of a bit of flair) even murder.

You can't deny these folks haven't been dedicated employees, deftly managing to vault Florida to the very top of the nation in reported mortgage fraud cases last year, according to the FBI.

Alas, party-poopers like state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink regarded the Herald story with about as much of a sense of humor as an Ingmar Bergman film festival.

Sink, who oversees the Office of Financial Fun, Fun, Fun, has called for the resignation of the agency's director Don Saxon, who has reacted to all the brouhaha with a kind of "Whaaaat?" attitude.

Groucho Glasses

Saxon, who could be forgiven if he went about his business in Tallahassee wearing fake Groucho Marx glasses and a mustache, argued that while sure his office conducts background checks on mortgage business applicants, the law does not permit him to deny an application because of a criminal conviction.

"Only certain types of convictions may be considered," Saxon insisted.

"It's just common sense that you don't give a bank robber your personal information," the CFO, now in a fetal position, said.

Sink does have a point. After all, if other criminals such as pedophiles and other sorts of sex offenders can be legally barred from places like schools, playgrounds and the like, doesn't it only make sense someone who has been convicted of bank robbery, or racketeering, or any form of financial crime should be banned from working in fields like mortgage brokering?

And oh, yeah, the murder thing should be included, as well.

But this is Florida after all, where mortgage fraud isn't so much a crime as much as it's the official state sport.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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