1012
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
1012 points (98.2% liked)
News
23361 readers
3210 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'm still confused on this one. So he claimed his real estate was worth more than it actually was to try to get better loan terms, the bank never bothered to look at the property at all (normally they have someone assess assets like that or other things that don't have a clear fixed value), they gave him the loan, he repaid it and both he and the bank were both happy with the result? Who was defrauded, then?
I barely grasp it too but I believe what you stated is half of the issue. The other half is that he claimed to the irs that the same building was worth significantly less in order to pay less taxes. Ergo he lied to both the bank and the government.
Also I'm not actually sure if he finished paying the bank, even if he had a perfect payment record so far if he decided to stop paying and they had to sell the building they wouldn't necessarily get all of the loan money back because the building isn't worth what they loaned him based on his false claims, assuming I explained it in a way that makes sense.
The fraud is the act, whether or not it was successful. It’s not just a crime when he fails, the bank doesn’t have the assets they were promised, and the government has to bail them out.
The more confusing thing is that the bank just took his word for it. When I got my mortgage refinanced in 2021 they didn't simply ask me what I thought my house was worth. They made me pay for someone to come look at it and take pictures of it.
The crime was against the state of New York who has an interest in people believing New York has a free and fair financial market and that fraud is not tolerated.
The bank WAS also harmed. They were taking a bigger risk than they were being paid for. They would have asked for MORE interest if he'd been honest.
Yes, and that's illegal whether anyone was actually hurt or not. Because it could potentially cause a lot of harm to both the banks and the government that would have to step in if the banks can't cover the potential losses. That then gets passed on to the tax payers. And it's not like he just did it once and said he was sorry. He did it repeatedly for decades, and shows no indication that he intends to stop doing it in the future unless someone holds him accountable.
We don't give people speeding tickets because we think they ran over a pedestrian 5 miles back. We do it to try and get them to stop before that happens.