I've just read the above Time magazine article about the state of the country's number one casino town. The author meets Brooke Boemio, "a bouncy, sweet, recently remarried 31-year-old mom whom I met years ago when I was on another assignment. Boemio is doing great during this recession. In fact, she's never had a job that paid as well: she made more than $100,000 last year. Even better, she's willing to show me how messed up the real estate scene is."
How messed up? Messed up enough for this:
Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.
Boemio even admits to doing it herself. And, before parting company with the journalist, shows him how to break into a random empty house... a scene which was, apparently, accompanied by a short piece of film (now removed). All-in-all... not, you'd think, a way of ingratiating yourself on your employers. And you'd think right. Boemio is now - according to reports - without a job.
What amazes me, though, is that somebody without the gumption to realise that advertising your breaking-and-entering and fraud skills in Time might get you into at least one kind of trouble still has enough gumption to defraud the US banking system.
No wonder we're all where we are..... Only in America....?
Yee-haw,
Mr Jackson.
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