By Commissioner Thomas E. Hampton

For the fourth year in a row, the District of Columbia has declared its own Financial Fraud Awareness Week, from August 10 to August 17, 2008.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty kicked off this important week by issuing a proclamation declaring the District’s Financial Fraud Awareness Week and the city’s commitment to fighting financial fraud. As part of our unified efforts, and as a precursor to FAW, DISB worked with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) PSA 606 in its Neighborhood Watch Crime Prevention and Safety Seminar on August 2 at the Hillcrest Community Civic Association meeting in Ward 7. More than 60 residents attended the event to learn about financial fraud, identity theft, auto theft, crime prevention and more.

At the beginning of the year, DISB laid out some of its objectives; and reducing insurance, securities and banking fraud through prevention, detection and enforcement was high on its list of priorities. To do this, we partnered with organizations such as the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the Coalition against Insurance Fraud, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Financial Crimes and Fraud Unit at the MPD. We anticipated that this interagency coordination will increase our enforcement cases by 20 percent during 2008.

So far, we have seen a boost in our investigative caseload, especially in the area of mortgage-related fraud where we have seen a significant increase due to the problems being experienced by consumers having difficulty meeting their mortgage payments. Desperate homeowners, looking for some type of financial relief, are victimized by foreclosure-rescue schemes and mortgage-related schemes. So, we have been working to help break this trend.

Even further, President George Bush recently signed into law the Housing and Recovery Act of 2008, which requires all lenders, whether working for a bank or a mortgage broker, to be licensed and subject to a background check, as well as continuing education and prequalification. The hope is that this more rigorous prerequisite will ease some of the problems we had seen with brokers giving loans to borrowers who could not repay them. This mortgage loan fraud is not just a District problem; it has certainly hit all facets of the economy throughout the country.

Further, DISB will continue to work with the Council of the District of Columbia, especially Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), chair of the Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs, in creating legislation that will protect District consumers. With new safeguards in place, we continue to provide District residents with the tools they need to protect their assets. Throughout this year and the next, we will continue addressing various financial issues to ensure greater awareness and protection of District consumers.

Commissioner Thomas E. Hampton is the head of the DC Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking.