“Overpayment of documentary-stamp taxes was never contemplated in Florida statutes and is not illegal. There is no definitive evidence the investors — or their representatives — deliberately overpaid.”

Um, yea…

Follow up on Orange County | Clerk’s Office aims to stop bogus foreclosure sale prices.

~

Most bogus foreclosure auction prices in Orange tied to 6 investor groups

A small group of private investors has overpaid taxes on more than 100 Orange County real-estate purchases since January 2010, artificially inflating recorded sales prices to show the properties sold for $2.77 million more than the investors paid.

The pattern of overpayments — by companies with names such as AA Florida Home Buyers LLC and The Seven Secrets Group LLC — emerged in an Orlando Sentinel review of thousands of foreclosure-auction records kept by the Orange County Clerk of Courts.

The Sentinel analysis of foreclosure-auction sales in 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 found 101 examples of so-called “grossed up” sale prices.

Overpayments of documentary-stamp taxes after the foreclosure sales first came to light in mid-April when the paper became aware of 11 cases. The number of confirmed cases grew nearly tenfold with the review of records.

By overpaying the tax, investors increased the recorded sale prices for their purchases, disguising the eventual profits made when flipping many of the properties to new buyers.

Check out the rest here…

Although the doc stamp practice may not be not illegal, were there not other laws that were broken?

I wonder how the gains on these sales were reported to the IRS?

~

4closureFraud.org