The impact of mortgage fraud on the United States financial and economic system during the past twenty years has been severe and enduring. Nothing illustrates this fact better than the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Scholars and policymakers are convinced that the explosion in so-called liar’s loans, which were securitized and sold to investors, played a key role in either causing or exacerbating the housing bubble and financial meltdown that led to the Great Recession. Unfortunately, efforts to understand and address the problem of mortgage fraud are undermined by fundamental confusion regarding the nature of mortgage fraud as a federal criminal offense. Some of this confusion is due to the fact that there is no single federal mortgage fraud statute. Thus, almost every legal actor relies on the FBI’s definition of mortgage fraud. Surprisingly, however, the influential FBI definition is plainly inconsistent in key respects with elements of the federal criminal statutes most often used to punish mortgage fraud. We should be concerned that the FBI, which investigates mortgage fraud, cannot get the basic definition of the crime of mortgage fraud right—and that scholars and commentators uncritically accept and use that problematic definition. This Article provides scholars and lawmakers with an understanding of the meaning of mortgage fraud as a federal crime. In particular, it makes three practical contributions to public policy discourse regarding mortgage fraud. First, this Article distinguishes mortgage origination fraud from securities fraud involving mortgage-backed securities and other financial crimes related to the housing market. Second, this Article urges care in the use of the term “fraud.” Not every misstatement in a mortgage application is fraud. Scholars who write about fraudulent mortgage loans must acknowledge that loan documents cannot have mens rea and that not all mortgage application falsehoods warrant the imposition of criminal liability. Most importantly, this Article demonstrates why scholars and policymakers should take great care before using the FBI’s deeply flawed definition of mortgage fraud.

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抵押贷款欺诈的概念与联邦犯罪

过去二十年来，抵押贷款欺诈对美国金融和经济体系的影响是严重而持久的。没有什么比 2007-2008 年的金融危机更能说明这一事实了。学者和政策制定者相信，所谓的骗子贷款（被证券化并出售给投资者）的爆炸式增长，在导致或加剧导致大萧条的房地产泡沫和金融崩溃方面发挥了关键作用。不幸的是，了解和解决抵押贷款欺诈问题的努力被关于抵押贷款欺诈作为联邦刑事犯罪性质的根本混淆所破坏。这种混乱的部分原因是没有单一的联邦抵押贷款欺诈法规。因此，几乎每个法律行为者都依赖 FBI 对抵押贷款欺诈的定义。出奇，然而，有影响力的 FBI 定义在关键方面与最常用于惩罚抵押贷款欺诈的联邦刑事法规的要素明显不一致。我们应该担心的是，调查抵押贷款欺诈的联邦调查局无法获得抵押贷款欺诈罪的基本定义权——学者和评论家不加批判地接受和使用这个有问题的定义。本文为学者和立法者提供了对抵押贷款欺诈作为联邦犯罪的含义的理解。特别是，它对有关抵押贷款欺诈的公共政策论述做出了三个实际贡献。首先，本条将抵押贷款发起欺诈与涉及抵押支持证券的证券欺诈和其他与住房市场相关的金融犯罪区分开来。第二，本条敦促谨慎使用“欺诈”一词。并非抵押贷款申请中的所有错误陈述都是欺诈。撰写有关欺诈性抵押贷款的学者必须承认，贷款文件不能具有犯罪意图，并且并非所有抵押申请虚假都需要追究刑事责任。最重要的是，这篇文章展示了为什么学者和政策制定者在使用联邦调查局对抵押贷款欺诈的严重缺陷定义之前应该非常小心。