All over Chicago, but especially in South Side communities like Washington Park and Woodlawn, people are coping with half-empty and sometimes completely vacant condo buildings. How did they get that way? Why did so many units go into foreclosure all at once? In some cases, the reason can be traced to mortgage fraud. But untangling that web of financial transactions and unearthing the reasons behind a building’s collapse are difficult and time-consuming.

Angela Maurello heads the Troubled Buildings Initiative of the non-profit Community Investment Corporation. They act as receivers for distressed condo buildings for the city of Chicago. The program originally began in 2003 to deal with apartment buildings that were repeatedly winding up in housing court. But then a few years ago, they started getting buildings that were condominiums, not apartments. Maurello, who used to be a bank executive, has turned into an amateur fraud detective. Here, she explains to WBEZ’s Ashley Gross the different kinds of mortgage fraud in condo buildings they’ve discovered.