Investigators:  Melissa Rorie and Sally S. Simpson

Description:  Adopting a criminogenic tier approach that assesses organizational actors, firms and the mortgage industry to pinpoint the structural characteristics of mortgage fraud, we assess how actor/firm relationships at multiple levels within the mortgage industry created pressures or motivations for crime.  This kind of analysis can identify the key structural relationships among players in the mortgage market, up and down the hierarchy and within levels; it can accommodate the role of economic, political, and cultural environments in which the actors operated; and isolate the particular pressures, constraints, and opportunities that both coerced and facilitated fraudulent activity at all levels of the industry.  Using this approach, we derive five testable hypotheses and discuss the potential for quantitative research while highlighting current data limitations.  Specifically, we call for the collection of data (or easing access to data) that will facilitate scholarly research on fraud in the mortgage industry. 

Presentation:  Law & Society Annual Meeting, 2012

Publications:  Sally S. Simpson, “Making Sense of White Collar Crime:  Theory and Research.”  The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 8: 481-502, 2011.