re: #511 Afrocity

What is this Glenn Beck is talking about?
Fingerprinting us in Chicago if we want to buy a home?

I don’t agree with it, but the following snipit is from my local paper and shows what they are trying to prevent:

The jailhouse buddies combined their distinct talents to operate the complex scheme that threw nearly 20 properties into foreclosure.

Lytle recruited and “essentially mentored Mr. Valadez in this fraudulent enterprise,” Valadez’s lawyer, Robert C. Howard III, told Adelman last July when his client was awaiting sentencing.

“Valadez found the straw buyers, often using his connections in the Mexican-American community in the Delavan-Lake Geneva area,” Howard wrote to the judge.

Each transaction followed the same general pattern. Lytle created phony paperwork, and straw buyers were employed to take out mortgages that they never intended to pay. In some cases, fictitious names or stolen identities were used.

One of the last illicit deals took place in May 2005, when Lytle and Valadez teamed with the owner of a modest Delavan home at 62 E. Walworth Ave., according to records filed by prosecutors. The plan: Suck the equity out of the home and split the profits.

Using a stolen ID and an unidentified straw buyer, Lytle fabricated an application for a $140,000 subprime loan, most of which went to the homeowner. The homeowner, in turn, gave $27,176 back to Lytle, who shared some of the cash with Valadez, court records show.

Since there was no real buyer, the loan quickly went into default, property taxes went unpaid, and the home deteriorated and was razed. All that remains is a piece of vacant land worth less than $6,000.

And the person whose identity was stolen? He’s out more than $1,000 in lawyer’s fees, trying to undo the damage to his name.