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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.