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National news reports are calling Florida “The Ponzi State” suggesting lending practices in the Sunshine State were the beginning of the nation’s problems. State regulators were lax and allowed convicted felons to become mortgage brokers, bilking banks out of millions. Today at the state Capitol, legislation was filed to give Florida’s Attorney General more authority to prosecute fraud in the lending industry. Attorney General Bill McCollum says right now there is little he can do.       

“This gives us enough and we believe that we will be able to go after folks and prosecute them in the future, that we never could have before. And we’ll be able to use the office’s civil side, with Scott Palmer and Trish Connors, to really dig into this and go after cases aggressively when we see them,” McCollum said.

The Office of Financial Regulation currently has authority to charge brokers with wrongdoing, but the agency has few staff to carry out the job.