"Lay Up Not for Yourselves Treasures upon Earth . . . Where Thieves Break Through and Steal"

Growing up in South Florida, the mantra always was to buy the most expensive house you could afford, leverage it with the biggest mortgage you could get, and then, when you could afford a larger house, sell the old one and finance the acquisition of a new one. (A corollary was that the house you can barely afford should be purchased in a neighborhood where that particular house would be the least expensive.) This was a sure-fire way to build wealth.

To that formula, now add a government policy of easy money, mortgage fraud, and a conspiracy involving policemen, one of whom coached at Dade Christian School, an FBI agent, and a couple of real estate lawyers, one of whom is a prominent Republican fundraiser. Now what what do you get? A federal indictment. (Not to mention a real estate bubble, lately burst.)

I would like to point out that this all happened in Broward, but this happens in Miami-Dade of course. Send them all not to jail, but bury them all under the jail.