Doig blog: Craig Adams

Matt Doig, investigative reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, spoke to our Public Affairs Reporting class about many ways you can use databases for public records.  Doig also told the class some anecdotes of articles that were published in the Herald-Tribune. Craig Adams' story being one of them.

Craig Adams is a controversial real-estate broker in Sarasota.  Doig explained to us that Florida is the number one state for housing fraud according to FBI statistics.  Craig Adams is a major part of that housing fraud because of his questionable house-flipping schemes.

Adams allegedly used his friends, associates -and even his own mother's-names to buy property from him at an escalated price.  He then took the loan money and used it to buy other properties.

In May 2008, Adams turned himself into the FBI after a friend learned about his fraud and reported it to the Sarasota Police Department.  He and the FBI arranged a deal in which Adams pleads guilty to conspiracy in return for information of an ongoing mortgage fraud Ponzi scheme.  He is the number one FBI informant for housing fraud in Sarasota.

The court documents in this case are public records giving all information on transactions and how much money was involved in every scheme Adams committed.  According to a few different publications, Adams was responsible for over two million dollars in property value fraud and over thirty very pissed off people, including his mother.  The scheme was actually working until the market dropped.

The Herald-Tribune investigated over 19 million transactions in Florida real estate to determine how much of it actually stemmed from housing fraud.  More than 50,000 properties were flipped under suspicious circumstances from 2000 to 2008.  As a result, professional flippers made billions in profits.  Then, when the market crashed, they left the situation in the hands of the banks and American public.

Here is a link that furthers the investigation into the housing fraud network:
Flip Investigation