Real Estate Scams build gang empire

The Chicago Tribune reports on part two of real estate scams:

From his second-story office in a grimy South Side commercial building, crime lord Marvel Thompson kept watch over his turf.

The reputed king of the Black Disciples street gang relied on beatings, murder and mayhem to control drug-selling corners across the South Side, prosecutors allege.

To lock in territory, the 36-year-old Robeson High School dropout also deployed a more sophisticated weapon: mortgage fraud.

Over the course of a decade, Thompson used straw buyers, sham sales and phony identities to secure more than $1 million in mortgage loans that went unpaid, records and interviews show.

The Black Disciples' expert use of mortgage fraud signals a menacing development. Once confined to a relatively small group of swindlers, mortgage fraud has morphed into a method of supporting ongoing criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing, smuggling and prostitution, records and interviews show.

Thompson acquired vacant lots, single-family homes and hulking apartment buildings that wrapped around corners where his gang dealt crack and heroin. Gang functionaries lived in some buildings and used others to store drugs and weapons and to stage operations, the Tribune found.

Thompson and a circle of criminal associates used the property to sop up lucrative bank loans. And they collected hundreds of thousands of dollars more from U.S. government Section 8 checks that are supposed to go to landlords to subsidize the rents of poor families.

Where would real estate prices be without the federal government artificially propping them up? In this case,as you can see,the federal government provides the leverage for gangs to own real estate.It's amazing isn't it?