Arizona continues to rank among the four states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis (along with California, Nevada and Florida). Along with the flood of foreclosures has come a surge in mortgage fraud. Unfortunately, homeowners unable to contact their lenders or frustrated by slow responses to their applications for loan modifications are increasingly turning to people claiming to be loan modification "experts" who charge up-front fees but do nothing helpful.

My Office has taken aggressive action to both prevent and prosecute housing ripoffs, and these efforts will be strengthened by the creation this week of a state-federal Task Force on Mortgage Enforcement. The task force includes nine other state Attorneys General and representatives of four federal agencies: U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Trade Commission.

The task force grew out of a meeting I attended in Washington, D.C., last month with several other AGs, top lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department and senior officials from Treasury and other federal agencies. We agreed that to combat mortgage "rescue" fraud and loan modification schemes most effectively, we needed to coordinate our efforts as closely as possible. The new task force aims to do precisely that.

Specific targets of this combined enforcement effort will include phony rescue schemes, fraudulent loan modification offers, equity skimming, straw purchases and unethical lending practices.

With countless homeowners searching for a way to avoid foreclosure, con artists have been able to persuade many people to pay high upfront fees in exchange for empty promises of help. My Office is working to put these unscrupulous operators out of business, and when criminal laws are broken, to put them behind bars. The new state-federal task force will bring additional firepower to these important efforts.

Terry Goddard