"Saying that because WhatsApp can be misused the entire thing becomes assur is taking things a little too far"
As a criminal defense lawyer who has seen a fair share of criminal prosecutions both in and out of the frum community, I feel compelled to write in response to “Saying It Straight” (SIS) who wrote in to the Inbox seeking to educate readers about the real estate market.
In an effort to set the record straight, the letter writer may have led his readers off the “straight” path and into potential legal troubles. According to SIS, he recently closed on a number of properties that resulted in a liquidity problem. To satisfy his bank’s concerns, he “was forced to call a close relative to ask him to deposit [a huge sum of] money [which I didn’t have] in my account temporarily.”
While there may be more to the story, the process of parking assets in an account to inflate the borrower’s net worth in order to take out a loan could be very problematic, and likely would be considered a violation of the federal bank fraud statute.
Many may be surprised by this, since they “do it all the time” and “the bank officer suggested I do that” — neither of which are necessarily defenses (although the latter may make the bank officer complicit).
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