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SARs Citing Commercial Real Estate Fraud on the Rise, Says FinCEN
printThe number of bank regulatory reports of suspected cases of commercial real estate fraud rose nearly threefold between 2007 and last year, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday. The findings, published by the department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), stems from 554 randomly sampled suspicious activity reports (SARs) that pointed to potential mortgage or commercial loan-related fraud, the bureau said. Of the sampled SARs, approximately 75 percent involved possible commercial real estate scams. The sampled reports most commonly cited false documentation, misappropriated funds and bank insider collusion, FinCEN said. Overall, nearly 50 percent of the related reports filed during the...
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