“I’ve got a dead body! I’ve got a dead body!” Jennifer Ford-Smith cried out one day at work.
Her colleagues probably thought she had lost it. But Ford-Smith was used to people not quite getting her passion for sniffing out crime.
The dead body — found inside a home bought with a mortgage through the lending company she worked for — meant that the police would get involved with her investigation into the defaulted payments.
As a fraud examiner for a mortgage company, she investigates loans gone awry to see what went wrong (and maybe even get some of the money back) and trains staff to sniff out scams at the application stage.
Ford-Smith’s crime sense started young: She adored math puzzles and mystery books and was able to tell if someone was lying. After studying international relations, she signed on with a temp agency that sent her to a bank’s mortgage division to review applications.
She found one or two frauds a day. She flagged everything from faked government assessments to lies about income. Her colleagues in the same department didn’t find nearly so many questionable applications.
“You’re good at this,” her boss said. Just two weeks later, the bank hired her permanently and moved her to the bank’s audit department where she reviewed mortgage documents and did investigations. A few years later, a newly launched mortgage company hired her to start a fraud and audit department.
“When a mortgage company is new to the market, the word gets out amongst the criminal set, and they often try to attack it right at the beginning, when the controls are weak,” says Ford-Smith.
She keeps on top of fraud trends — which she shares with staff at her company — by reading and talking to others in the industry, including the police.
Her biggest investigation surrounded the home in Montreal where the dead body was found. A biker gang was involved, as was cocaine, seeds for a grow op, human trafficking and other crimes. Ford-Smith spent months in an office with a lawyer combing through documents to figure out what went on. The fraud ended up totalling $3 million and is currently before the courts.
Ford-Smith, now 27, recently moved to another job, setting up yet another fraud and audit department at a new lender. About eighteen months ago, she completed her certification through the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Texas. She’s now working on certification through the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists of Miami.
