Independent mortgage lenders and brokers still struggle to comply with anti-money laundering rules six years after the U.S. Treasury Department mandated them to do so under the Bank Secrecy Act, say sources. In 2012, the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, finalized a rule requiring unregulated financial firms “who accept a residential mortgage loan application or that offer or negotiate terms of a residential mortgage loan” to adopt AML programs and report suspicious activity. Most residential mortgage lenders and originators, or RMLOs, take AML seriously but focus more on complying with rules federal regulators seem to have prioritized for...
Online fraudsters are increasingly posing as employees of title insurance firms and other parties in U.S. real estate transactions to misdirect payments to accounts they control, say sources.