Friday, December 13, 2013

Bank Fraud with Richard Kuniansky


Bank fraud is a federal criminal offense that involves any scheme to obtain money, assets or other property that is owned or in the control of a financial institution by fraudulent means. Defrauding any institution insured by the federal government is an offense which is taken very seriously.

One of the most common frauds against financial institution involves loan or mortgage applications. During the last decade many representatives of bank and mortgage companies are reported to have surreptitiously encouraged individuals and businesses to misrepresent their income or other information on mortgage applications: if these borrowers don't make their payments the bank's financial departments will look for misrepresentations and if they find anything they will often turn the case over to the feds for prosecution. In essence, the banks and mortgage lenders are trying to use the government  to collect on bad loans they encouraged people to take in the first place.

Bank fraud is also sometimes perpetrated an employee; this constitutes embezzlement, in which a person entrusted with funds or bank property appropriates it for his or her own use or benefit. For example, a bank employee may borrow funds during a personal emergency and then attempt to replace the missing funds undetected, a move that seldom works.

If you have been accused of bank fraud, your defense depends largely on pre-trial research, the defense strategies employed by your attorney and the motivations of the prosecution. While banks may be eager to press charges in these cases, they are generally more interested in recovering the missing funds. In many cases it may be possible to reach a financial settlement that can minimize or avoid entirely prison time. 

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