I received this from a loan officer in Michigan. “Forget the Serenity Prayer! Grant me coffee to change the things I can, and wine to accept those that I cannot.” There are tens of thousands of loan originators around the United States, primarily changing things for the better for their clients but recently some of them were caught taking a fraudulent continuing education class. Unrelatedly, one (former) Ohio Mayor claimed that ice fishing can lead to prostitution. Attorney Brian Levy somehow brings it all together in his Mortgage Musings about the slippery slope and what might happen to those LOs when they return from their 90-day suspensions. Fraud, including kickbacks, unfortunately, is on its way higher according to off-the-record chats with LOs, sometimes making the headlines (for example, a Georgia real estate agent ran afoul of the Department of Justice in committing mortgage fraud). And a quick note before we jump into the commentary: yesterday I published news about a new wholesaler (Champions Funding LLC). Brokers should know that, despite social media reports, Champions will be accepting broker applications in the coming weeks and at this point is fully testing its customer service software. This Commentary will keep you updated on its business roll out. (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here and this week’s is brought to you by SimpleNexus, an nCino company and award-winning developer of mobile-first technology for the modern mortgage lender. Today listen to an interview with Greg Richardson, Chief Commercial officer at MAXEX, on secondary market trends and private label MBS demand.)