Mortgage Broker Arrested in Madrid
A “cowboy” mortgage broker has been arrested in Madrid in connection to a mortgage fraud affecting South American immigrants. The Judge in Court of First Instance 42 of Madrid accuses him of setting up a scheme to assist immigrants in qualifying for mortgage loans that would not be available to them in normal circumstances. The fraud consisted on a scheme whereby groups of immigrants would “pool” their income-supporting documentation to buy several properties on a same day, thus avoid detection by banks’ risk-assessment analysts who, on knowing that each buyer was guaranteeing several loans on other properties, would have rejected those applications outright. Unfortunately, the net collapsed once a borrower was not able to meet the repayments.
El Pais considers this as a major step forward among the few criminal complaints filed in relation to practices that were common in the boom days.
The 10 families that have lodged the complaint argue that Enrique Caño, the broker, abused borrowers’ trust and their limited financial knowledge to involve them in high-risk transactions.
It was the second most read article on the most read Spanish online newspaper in the world: 
Antonio Flores of Lawbird interviews Julia Hilling (88) and Peter Cosgrove (78), two Rothschild and Hamilton’s victims.
