South Florida fraud fighters offer national model

South Florida, where mortgage loan abuses and dubious financing deals earned Broward County’s largest city the sobriquet “Fort Frauderdale,” is now among the leaders in cleaning up the bubble’s bust. The economic-crimes division of the Miami-Dade Police Department served as a model for the National Mortgage Fraud Task Force within the U.S. Justice Department, part of a federal reform package called the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act. The laws give prosecutors and regulators new approaches to fight mortgage fraud and predatory lending. Glenn Theobald, the police department’s chief counsel, said that until 2007, mortgage fraud wasn’t even defined by state law.