From CNN:

With the housing market in turmoil and lending standards tougher than ever, you'd think that the kind of unscrupulous activity that helped plunge the industry into crisis would be a thing of the past.

You'd be wrong. Mortgage fraud is still soaring, according to a new report from the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), a division of ChoicePoint.

The study found that the number of fraudulent loans issued during the first three months of 2008 skyrocketed 42% compared with the same period in 2007.

The big jump was a surprise even to MARI. "We were stunned," said spokeswoman Jennifer Butts. "It shows that some folks [in the industry] are desperate."