Secondary market investors are not feeling particularly good about investing in mortgages, according to speakers at a session at the Fraud Issues Conference in Las Vegas. Volumes are down but fraud is up. Add that to a generally depressed real estate market and a rise in institutional mortgage fraud and you’ve got a riskier than normal marketplace. Institutional fraud is fraud perpetrated against a lender and it can lead to very high losses. Hot spots now include air loans, mortgages on undeveloped land that a fraudster claims is developed, and double-sold notes, mortgages sold to more than one institution. Much of this fraud is related to builder bailouts. More to follow…