Mortgage fraud continues to be one of the fastest growing white-collar crimes in the United States, with preliminary federal figures indicating a near-thousand-fold increase in the last decade. According to preliminary findings from FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, suspicious activity reports related to mortgage fraud filed by banks and thrifts totaled 25,931 in 2005, an increase of about 41 percent from the previous year. Mortgage-related SAR reports numbered just 4,696 back in 2001. …