Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.
“It has the potential to be an epidemic,” Chris [...]

Investors in real-estate financier Mortgages Ltd. could start receiving their monthly dividend checks again as early as late September or early October, executives and attorneys for the company said Monday.
That was one of the pieces of news investors received at a meeting of Mortgages Ltd.’s creditors at the Sandra Day O’Connor Courthouse in downtown Phoenix.
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Federal and state regulators have opened investigations into the dealings of Mortgages Ltd., Arizona’s biggest private commercial real-estate lender, and the firm called Radical Bunny that lent it almost $200 million.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Securities Division of the Arizona Corporation Commission traditionally do not confirm or deny investigations. The Arizona Republic [...]