Marcy Kaptur: “I would like to engage in a colloquy with Chairman Wolf. There has been a dramatic increase in financial and mortgage…”

“I would like to engage in a colloquy with Chairman Wolf. There has been a dramatic increase in financial and mortgage fraud as a result of the recent economic crisis, and additional resources are needed to protect the American people and exact justice for them. The FBI is tasked with upholding and enforcing the criminal laws of the United States, but it has limited resources in the areas of financial and mortgage fraud. {time} 1850 In fiscal year 2011, the FBI had approximately 3,000 pending mortgage fraud investigations compared with roughly just 700 investigations in fiscal year 2005. Also, in fiscal 2011, the FBI had more than 2,500 corporate and security fraud investigations, representing a 50 percent increase since fiscal year 2008. Nearly 70 percent of the pending investigations involve losses exceeding $1 million. And according to the Department of Justice, the average return on investment for one corporate fraud agent was approximately $54 million over the past 3 years. That's an incredible return on investment. While I support hiring even more agents than the President does, the committee was only able to provide $6.61 million, less than half the request. During the Appropriations Committee markup, the chairman indicated he would be open to finding the necessary funds the President requested to protect the American people from financial and mortgage fraud, but the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation prevented him from doing so.…”