Identity theft prevention

One of the fastest growing crimes in America is Identity Theft. The term identity theft refers to any fraud when somebody's personal information is stolen and used without his/her knowledge to commit crimes or frauds.

Day by day the number of identity theft cases are increasing and you will be surprised by the statistics shown below:

There are certain ways to prevent ID theft. The video below will help you understand it in a better way.

GM bankruptcy: Largest ever in U.S. manufacturing history

An icon of the American industry, General Motors, formally filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The world's largest automaker was under tremendous debt that totaled around $173 billion and $82.29 billion in assets, for which GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to keep it afloat.

This bankruptcy filing was the fourth largest in U.S. history and the largest ever for an industrial company.

According to President Obama, this bankruptcy filing will help GM to move toward profitability. He said that he is "confident" about the viability and achievability of the plan, and the automaker will emerge from it. The U.S. government is holding about a 60% stake in the century old company, which is quite a gamble by the administration.

The chairman of GM, Kent Kresa said in a written statement that this would be a new beginning for the General Motors and he is absolutely confident that GM will bounce back to operate successfully around the world.

The largest automaker is now planning to close around 14 plants amongst their 47 plants. This would again affect in increasing number of jobless people.

The key question is now whether the fallen icon will get back on its feet and can GM regain the title of being the largest automaker of the world.

99 years in Prison for Mortgage Fraud

Recently, a woman from North Texas was sentenced to 99 years in prison for being involved in a mortgage fraud scheme. Yes you read it right! 99 years in jail. One can rather say life imprisonment. Kandace Yancy Marriott, a 52 year old lady of Gun Barrel City, was found guilty of framing a complicated mortgage fraud that cost taxpayers more than $3 million.

Kandace Yancy Marriott

A Navarro County jury found this Mom guilty of forging signatures of home-owners, supporting loan applications with false documents and incorrectly completing loan applications. Together with Kandance Marriott, her husband Darrell L. Marriott, their daughter Kally Marriot and Kandance's sister, Karen Hayes, were also involved in this major criminal activity. All of the defendants are facing different charges for related criminal conduct.

According to the prosecutor, such fraud scheme was orchestrated at their own company, One Way Home and Land. They targeted mainly low-income people whose loans were guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Due to this reason, the mortgage lenders did not face much financial losses but the tax payers and HUD had to cover up the costs.

The additional number of years in this tough sentence was a consequence of multiple criminal offenses committed by her. Nearly a century in prison, is it too harsh?

On the brighter side, at least from now onwards, one will fear before framing any mortgage fraud scheme, and hopefully this would further reduce the number of occurrences of fraud cases.