One common charge is that by lying on mortgage applications, Serin violated state and federal fraud laws. Serin uses the term "my mortgage fraud." He also admits: "I overstated my income, misrepresented owner occupancy intent and concealed the cash-back from the lenders."
That frank admission has led to calls to "Send Casey Serin To Prison"--a petition to the FBI has appeared--as well as a similar call targeting his wife.
"Casey and Galina Serin's story isn't one of 'Young couple tries to make it in the cold, cruel world,'" one critic wrote. "These two are f****g Bonnie and Clyde. What they're doing is bank robbery, without the gun."
Stephen Kodak, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said he could not comment on any individual case. "Yes, it is a crime," he said. "It's a crime to misrepresent your salary. It's a crime to misrepresent whether or not you're going to live in the house."
In March, the FBI announced a crackdown on mortgage scammers and said it has more than 1,000 current investigations. But Kodak said the FBI tends to focus on financial insiders and not people who lie on loans: "We go after, normally, the fraud for profit, because even though it doesn't make up the majority of the numbers out there, it certainly makes up the largest financial losses."
Marital drama, debt addiction
One wildcard in the Casey Serin saga is his wife, Galina, who met him through church social groups and married him when she was 20 years old. Both are Baptists and Slavic immigrants (Galina immigrated to the U.S. in 1990, and her husband in 1994) and are part of Sacramento's growing Russian-speaking population.
In a conversation at her sister's townhouse Thursday, where the young couple rents two rooms for about $600 a month, Galina said she was becoming frustrated with her husband's spending and had met with her pastor that afternoon for counseling. But according to her own religious views, Galina said, "there are only two reasons for a divorce: adultery and physical abuse."
Running up $170,000 in unsecured debt, in other words, does not qualify--nor does lying about his plans regarding a recent vacation in Lake Tahoe, Calif., nor buying a $600 video camera on credit to document life experiences for his blog.
For his part, Serin confirms that his wife hates his blog. "Many times she's like: I want you to shut it down and go quietly into the night," he said.
The so-called haters have similar sore points, including that Serin refuses to get a job and instead pays for living expenses by simply borrowing more money. He defends himself by insisting that he's making far more valuable connections through his blog.
One example he gave is that he learned, through his blog, of a $1.5 billion Las Vegas casino for sale. If he can find a buyer, Serin says, he'd get a 1 percent commission ($15 million) for his trouble. "Doesn't that make more sense than a W-2 job?" he said.
Serin also recently paid $16,000 to Arizona's Nouveau Riche University, a kind of real-estate seminar company that includes classes with names like Fix & Flip and Creative Financing. Its marketing literature says that Nouveau Riche "hand delivers properties on a silver platter."
Nouveau Riche, which is not accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (the regional group recognized by the U.S. Department of Education), claims not to be a multilevel marketing scheme. It has some elements of one, however. Serin said he has found two people to pay $18,000 to Nouveau Riche, and if he finds any more, he'll get a $9,000 commission for each one, as well as additional commissions if the people he recruited then sign up additional customers.
In an e-mail message over the weekend, Serin added: "The 16K gives me two years of quality (real estate investment) education--gives you college credits--access to cash-flow properties around the nation, local community of investors, etc."
Not all these details have appeared on his blog yet, but Serin seems to enjoy spacing them out in a way that will vex his readers the most. "What happens is I feed off of it," he said. "I know the buttons to press to get those guys going. After awhile, you learn what topics you can mention if you want to get extra comments on your post."
Serin already does that by stressing his penchant for afternoon naps that take place precisely when his readers are reading his blog in their cubicles and silently fuming. He claims to have bought more than $4,000 in penny stocks last month, which have since slid in value. And he delights in posting about his excursions to a nearby Jamba Juice, which became notorious when he bought a $4.90 drink there with an ATM card but was charged an extra $33 overdraft fee because his bank account was empty.
During a visit to the same Jamba Juice on Thursday, Serin asked the cashier whether any jobs were available. But, thinking of how much time he spends every day working on his blog, he added: "Can I keep my laptop back there while I'm at work?"
He left without taking an application.
CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report
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