WASHINGTON — Mortgage fraud continues to be of critical concern for both financial institutions and consumers, so BITS, a division of the Financial Services Roundtable, has developed Mortgage Fraud Prevention: An Education and Awareness Toolkit for Consumers to help financial institutions educate consumers about mortgage fraud and protect themselves against the most common schemes.

The toolkit includes details about a variety of mortgage fraud schemes, including foreclosure bailouts, dos and don'ts consumers should consider when getting a mortgage and resources that consumers can refer to for more information. “Financial institutions may take as much of the information contained in the toolkit as they would like, and incorporate it into the materials and programs they already are using to educate consumers about mortgage fraud,” said Diane Ness, Fifth Third Bancorp, who led this effort under the BITS mortgage fraud reduction project group. CUNA is also a member of BITS.

The BITS toolkit is available at (www.bits.org), or for more information about the toolkit or the BITS mortgage fraud reduction project, call Keosha Burns at 202-589-2427 or email [email protected].