The mortgage industry is ripe for the sort of industry-specific whistleblower protection law that already covers sectors from Wall Street to nuclear power. In the meantime, mortgage professionals must be better-informed about the legal protections — and the financial rewards — that may be available when they blow the whistle on fraud.
This article by
TELG principal Adam Augustine Carter and TELG managing principal R. Scott Oswald was published by National Mortgage News on July 9, 2015. The full article is available at National Mortgage News.
Excerpted from:
Generic Whistleblower Laws Leave Mortgage Workers Underprotected
The patchwork of protections and rewards available to mortgage professionals who identify and disclose mortgage fraud is insufficient. Though an industry-specific whistleblower statute is unlikely to pass with the current Congress, one would fit nicely with the many others protecting employees from the nuclear industry to Wall Street.
In the meantime, additional protections should be extended to whistleblowers working as mortgage professionals. Those employees currently in the vanguard against mortgage fraud need to know how they are protected — and that they may be rewarded — in their disclosures.
The Employment Law Group advocates the passage of a whistleblower statute for mortgage professionals patterned on the more than 20 whistleblower statutes administered by the Department of Labor. Such a statute would protect employees, contractors and agents of any employer providing mortgage services from retaliation (in the form of discharge, demotion, suspension, threats, harassment, or post-employment retaliation, including blacklisting) for disclosing information relating to mortgage fraud or violations of the regulations governing mortgages.
Read more at National Mortgage News »
