Fraud Lawyer Central Florida

Casey Anthony jury deliberations resume in Fla.

(AP)  ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A jury in central Florida resumed deliberations Tuesday in the murder trial of Casey Anthony, beginning Day 2 deciding the 25-year-old's fate.

The jury of seven women and five men is in the jury room after spending about a minute in the courtroom Tuesday morning before Judge Belvin Perry dismissed them to continue dissecting the case.

They were first sent into the deliberation room just after noon Monday. They did not return a verdict by the time the judge released them for the evening just after 6 p.m.

Prosecutors argued Monday morning that Anthony killed her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in June 2008 because the toddler interrupted her carefree partying and love life. The jury received the more than 400 pieces of evidence in the jury room that have been presented by both sides in the case since the trial began in late May.

The only piece of evidence jurors won't receive is a can containing an air sample from the trunk of Anthony's car. The state argued during its case that the smell of human decomposition was present in trunk. But Perry ruled last week the jurors won't be able sniff it and will have to rely on conflicting witness testimony about what the smell might have been.

Jurors will be brought into open court should they request to view any of the video evidence, a court official said. Equipment for video viewing is not available in the deliberation room. The jury has the ability to send questions to Judge Perry via the court deputies, but had yet to do so.

In their rebuttal closing argument, the prosecution said the defense's assertion that Caylee's death was an accident made no sense.

Anthony's attorneys say the girl drowned in the family's pool. They have said Anthony panicked and that her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a homicide by placing duct tape over the child's mouth and dumping the body in some nearby woods. George Anthony has denied that.

Prosecutor Jeff Ashton told the jurors no one makes an innocent accident look like murder.

"That's absurd. Nothing has been presented to you to make that any less absurd," Ashton said. He also spent significant time reminding jurors about forensic evidence that he said links Anthony to her daughter's death, including the smell and chemical signature of decomposition in her car.

Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder and six other charges.

Eleven People Arrested on Mortgage Fraud Charges in North Florida ...

Police arrested eleven people alleging they were involved in mortgage fraud in various counties in North and Central Florida, including Flagler and Volusia Counties. The police are alleging that the individuals devised a scheme that involved straw buyers, realtors, appraisers and mortgage brokers. The group is alleged to have artificially inflated prices of homes with false appraisals and increased the amount of the loan by requesting additional funds for renovations that were never intended or executed. The excess money would be paid to the straw buyers and split among the people involved in the scheme. According to police, the buyers in these schemes never intend to live in or renovate the houses and the property is normally foreclosed upon not long after the closing. This particular mortgage fraud scheme reportedly involved 23 homes and $9 million.

Mortgage fraud cases have increased dramatically over the last few years after the housing crisis hit. During the housing bubble, banks were loaning large sums of money to anyone and everyone who filled out a mortgage application. Once housing values quit going up, banks realized they had a lot of bad loans on their books, and the mortgage crisis began to snowball. This is the exact kind of environment that prompts the government to go into reactive mode and initiate investigations into possible mortgage fraud. When everyone was making money (the banks were closing loans and the builders were selling houses), everyone was was happy, and mortgage fraud did not seem to be a problem. When everyone started losing money (loans were not getting paid and foreclosures skyrocketed), no one was happy, and the mortgage fraud investigations began in force. In the current environment, the various law enforcement agencies are focusing on any sort of irregularities in the mortgage loan process.

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