Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

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While the email exchange certainly didn’t help things, the feds could have easily uncovered this anyway by looking at the data given to the bank and comparing it to his actual income. It’s possible that they only discovered this because of the emails, but whether or not that happened isn’t clear.

My guess is that issuing subpoenas for loan application data of a given target is standard practice among federal prosecutors when looking to destroy or pressure someone in cases where there is little evidence of the crime that actually sparked the investigation. They fire a shotgun and watch to see which pellets hit. Income inflation is one of the most common types of fraud perpetrated by consumers - even innocently overstating one’s income by rounding up ($100k stated vs $95k actual) on an online credit card application can technically lead to felony charges like this. So it’s at least possible that they discovered the crime at issue here through subpoenaed loan documents, and the emails only provided additional evidence. Once you’re on the government’s shit list, it’s only a matter of time before they find something that you may not even know you did that is technically a crime.

I dunno, I think conflating adding a minor $3.5m to your income and rounding $95k up to $100k is silly. And lying about your income by $3.5m or so is not a minor detail, that's serious fraud substantiated by forged documents.

indeed the emails shows deliberate intent to commit fraud.

Not just common stupidity which seems to otherwise be the best and most effective defense for members of the current administration.

Just curious, it’s also fraud to understate your income, right?

So if you made $95k, but put $94k, that would also be a felony, right?

That would probably be prosecuted as perjury instead of fraud, but it’s a felony regardless. Fraud generally requires an element of actual or attempted pecuniary gain, and understating income would likely make that element difficult to prove. However, perjury covers any false statement made under penalty of perjury (which many credit applications are). It could be prosecuted as fraud if you attempted to use the understated income in order to avoid/minimize collection activity or negotiate a favorable write-down of a debt etc.

[deleted]

Yes, understating your income when reporting it to the IRS (for taxes) is fraud.

However the situations being discussed are credit/loan applications. Since understating your income in that application doesn't generally provide any material benefit, there would be no "element of actual or attempted pecuniary gain"

Credit applications and tax forms have the incentives in the opposite direction.

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