I wanted to start responding to the comments and questions you left yesterday:
Reader Erik had a couple of questions about who might be prosecuted based on the situation we laid out in the story.
We are not aware of any charges brought against anyone associated with this story. We do know, however, that few of the people involved have either contacted the Alameda County D.A.’s Office or the F.B.I. Neither agency would confirm the existence of an investigation. We’ll keep you posted, of course, if anything changes.
The second part of Erik‘s question is about the impact of the story:
Did you shut the scam down? Are the regulators going to take greater action? Did you uncover an example of a bigger problem (and thus warned folks about renting their ID’s)?
Since we just posted part two yesterday, I think it’s a bit early to tell the impact of our investigation. But fret not — I’m sure we’ll tell you about any ripples caused by our stories. In the meantime, here’s a snippet from part two about an action by a Congressional committee that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
(Rep. Darrell) Issa’s office did, however, respond to (appraiser Todd) Lackner’s complaint when recently informed of it by voiceofsandiego.org. Last week, an investigator from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee contacted Lackner, who agreed to supply information about the McConville transactions.
“We’re absolutely looking forward to reviewing them and to taking the next steps in the investigation,” (Issa spokesman Frederick) Hill said.
I’ll tackle Eskimo‘s request for a peek behind the story in a following post.