#198 Planet Money: Toxie's Dark Past

Recently we learned from a group of reporters at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that one of the mortgages in Toxie, our toxic asset, was part of a real-estate scheme being investigated by the FBI. It's a scheme that allegedly involves $200 million in fraudulent loans.

So we traveled to Florida to find out how the scheme worked. The reporters there told us it all centered around a man named Craig Adams, who was flipping houses back and forth among a circle of friends and business associates. The people in the circle would buy homes for higher and higher prices, taking out larger and larger loans from the bank and then divide that money amongst themselves.