Odds and ends
Add comment March 3rd, 2008
Working on some banking data Sunday night and I noticed something I failed to report in 2007 — the amount of money deposited at area banks declined last year.
It wasn’t a huge drop, falling from $7.98 billion as of June 30, 2006, to $7.8 billion on June 30, 2007. Still, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. it was the first time since 1996 that the amount of money deposited in Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago county banks declined from the year before.
What does this mean? I’m not entirely sure, but if you look at bank deposits for the decade, it appears as if a lot of people benefitted from the high flying housing market of 2003 through 2006.
In 2002, there was $6.24 billion sitting in local banks. That amount increased by 9.7 percent in 2003, 1.5 percent in 2004, 6.8 percent in 2005 and then 7.6 percent in 2006. A lot of families were able to sock some money away and it appears as if they had to give some of it back in 2007. Still, in an economy where consumer debt and family expenses continue to rise faster than wages, any give back is painful.
Rhonda Torossian
Remember her? She was the Rockford loan officer sentenced to federal prison for her part in a five-person mortgage scam ring from 2001 to 2003. The group admitted to falsifying Social Security numbers and creating fraudulent employment verifications, bank checks and credit letters so families could receive mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Authority.
Torossian was sentenced in late December to 20 months in federal prison and fined nearly $500,000 for her role. A Realtor in the scheme also received a 20-month sentence while three accomplices received probation and were ordered to pay restitution.
I was going through some public records tonight and she popped up twice.
* In January, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation yanked her loan origination license for “not informing the Department of a financially related conviction.”
* And in February, Torossian filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, meaning the taxpayers who footed the bill for the more than 20 foreclosures out of 32 FHA loans Torossian fraudently secured are unlikely to get any of it back.
