Enabling "Buy & Bail" Scams, Breaking Into Foreclosed Homes All In A Day's Work For Las Vegas Real Estate Agents??? Everybody's Doing It, Says One

In Las Vegas, Nevada, the Las Vegas Sun reports:

• A Las Vegas real estate agent who landed a prominent role in a Time magazine cover story is being scrutinized by state licensing officials because of her comments, has left her employer and is lying low. The story by Joel Stein in the Aug. 24 issue, “Less Vegas,” is a high-spirited and high-altitude view of the troubles facing Las Vegas, which he calls both “our most American city” and “an entire city of John Dillingers.”

• In the story, Brooke Boemio — “a bouncy, sweet, recently remarried 31-year-old mom” — is cast as one of the Dillingers. She helps Stein break into a foreclosed home and brags about helping clients who are underwater on their mortgages buy a second house on the cheap and stop making payments on their first mortgages, pressuring the bank into selling the houses for a loss.

• Everybody’s doing it, she says in the story. In fact, she said, she did it herself. Since the story appeared, Boemio and her employer have, in the words of Coldwell Banker Wardley Real Estate President Jeff Sommers, “parted ways.”

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• The buy-and-bail tactics described in the story, he said, are serious allegations and “really just in direct opposition to everything in our policies.” [...] When the story was published, it referenced a video on Time’s Web site titled “Breaking and Entering,” of Stein and Boemio entering an unoccupied home on the west side of town. Since then, the video has been removed from the Web site for what Time spokeswoman Betsy Burton described as “some sensitivity with various issues.”

For more, see Unflattering Time magazine story puts agent in hot water (Since bragging to magazine about unethical practices she’s off job, under scrutiny).

For the Time magazine article, see Less Vegas: The Casino Town Bets on a Comeback (the description of the above referenced scams begins on page 2 of the story).

For more on "Buy & Bail" real estate scams, see:

• The Wall Street Journal: Some Buy a New Home to Bail on the Old (Fannie Plans Rules To Avoid Practice Described as Fraud),
• ABC News: In Foreclosure? Buy a Second Home ('Buy and Bail' Is the Answer Some People Have Found to Threat of Losing Home),
• Las Vegas Review Journal: Buying & Bailing: Walking away from 'underwater' mortgage has pitfalls. BuyAndBail