--- title: Justice inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers--inspector general report description: The Justice Department touted wildly inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers from the financial crisis and overstated its commitment to combating mortgage fraud, an inspector general report finds canonical: https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/ author: Massimo Calabresi article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-14T22:57:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T06:46:58.954Z article:section: Politics og:title: Justice inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers--inspector general report og:description: The Justice Department touted wildly inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers from the financial crisis and overstated its commitment to combating mortgage fraud, an inspector general report finds og:url: https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25346200535e9703/69868587adae44b914541f6a/153839076.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Attorney General Holder And HUD Secretary Donovan Discuss The Distressed Homeowner Initative og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Justice inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers--inspector general report twitter:description: The Justice Department touted wildly inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers from the financial crisis and overstated its commitment to combating mortgage fraud, an inspector general report finds twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25346200535e9703/69868587adae44b914541f6a/153839076.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Justice's Lousy Mortgage Fraud Numbers > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Massimo Calabresi](https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Mar 14, 2014 10:57 PM UTC  Attorney General Eric Holder speaks about distressed homeowners during a news conference at the Justice Department, on Oct. 9, 2012 in Washington, DC. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks about distressed homeowners during a news conference at the Justice Department, on Oct. 9, 2012 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson—Getty Images  by [Massimo Calabresi](https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Mar 14, 2014 10:57 PM UTC On Oct. 12, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder [held](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/October/12-ag-1216.html) a press conference to highlight the results of the Distressed Homeowner Initiative of his Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The numbers were impressive. Holder [said](http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag-speech-1210091.html) that the initiative had resulted in 530 criminal defendants being charged, including 172 executives, which in turn had resulted in 285 criminal indictments or informations being filed in federal courts in the previous year. Total losses for the 73,000 affected homeowners: $1 billion. They were also completely wrong. According to a DOJ Inspector General [audit](http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2014/a1412.pdf) \[pdf\] of the department’s mortgage fraud efforts, released Thursday, Justice officials immediately started back-pedaling on the numbers when contacted by the IG’s office after the press conference. Some of the cases cited had nothing to do with distressed homeowner-related fraud. Others came well before the previous year. It took DOJ until August 9, 2013 to finally figure out what the real numbers were. According to the IG report: --- > “” --- The IG’s office [found](http://www.mainjustice.com//2014/03/13/mortgage-fraud-a-low-priority-despite-public-statements-ig-says/) no evidence of a political motive–it traced the bad numbers to the FBI. Instead, the IG found a systemic failure to accurately track mortgage fraud numbers at the FBI, the fraud task force and at the Justice department generally. In a statement released Thursday, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley accused the department of “cooking the numbers about the cases it pursued” and said the bad numbers look “like an attempt by the Justice Department to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.” The Justice department leadership accepted the recommendations of the IG aimed at fixing the bad mortgage data collection and reporting. But the department disputed separate conclusions the IG drew about the department’s commitment to fighting mortgage fraud, which the IG said was not “prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements.” Said Justice spokesperson Ellen Canale in a statement released Thursday, “Even in a time of constrained budget resources, the department has dedicated significant manpower and funding to combating mortgage fraud.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/"},"headline":"Justice's Lousy Mortgage Fraud Numbers","datePublished":"2014-03-14T22:57:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T06:46:58.954Z","description":"The Justice Department touted wildly inflated anti-mortgage fraud numbers from the financial crisis and overstated its commitment to combating mortgage fraud, an inspector general report finds","url":"https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/","keywords":["fraud","Eric Holder","Department of Justice","mortgage"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25346200535e9703/69868587adae44b914541f6a/153839076.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Massimo Calabresi","jobTitle":"Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief.","url":"https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25346200535e9703/69868587adae44b914541f6a/153839076.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Attorney General Holder And HUD Secretary Donovan Discuss The Distressed Homeowner Initative","caption":"Attorney General Holder And HUD Secretary Donovan Discuss The Distressed Homeowner Initative","creditText":"Mark Wilson—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/25438/justices-false-mortgage-fraud-numbers/","name":"Justice's Lousy Mortgage Fraud Numbers"}}]}] ```