Federal officials have started 151 criminal mortgage fraud cases since last October, according to a
New York Times story.

That number comes from a review by researchers at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, who looked at data from the Justice Department. The Justice Department only recently began tracking mortgage fraud, so the Syracuse researchers had no previous data to compare the current caseload with. So there’s no way to tell if the 151 criminal cases represents a big increase from previous years.

Half the cases are being run by the FBI, while the FDIC has undertaken about 25 percent of them.

Most of the federal cases are concentrated in certain areas of the country, including Florida, which accounts for a large chunk of the cases, California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Apparently the Pittsburgh area has produced the second highest amount of federal prosecutions, with 24 cases. Southern Florida has the most, with 69 federal prosecutions.

FBI investigators are also helping out with 1,400 other probes on the state and local level, which the FBI said is nearly double the number of cases they assisted with in 2005.

What do you think of federal investigators' efforts so far? Do you think federal officials should be doing the brunt of the investigating on mortgage fraud cases, or do you think local authorities should be handling prosecutions?

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