The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested 406 persons which have been indicted on charges of fraudulent mortgage. This comes as part of the Operation Malicious Mortgage which was started in March.

The move is intended to reassure people that the Department of Justice is working hard to protect them, especially now, when there is a crisis on the housing and mortgage markets, which tempts certain people to take advantage of it and use the situation to try and cheat others.

The indictments have been made over the following crimes: lending fraud, foreclosure rescue frauds and mortgage related bankruptcy schemes.

This week, two of the executives of Bear Stern have been arrested, making them the first two executives to have been indicted during this operation. The FBI is planning on making more arrests of executives of different companies, but there hasn’t been made public any information on which one will be the next target.

The number of mortgage-related crimes has seen a steep increase over the last three years. If in 2005 there were a little over 700 such frauds that have been found by the FBI, the number almost doubled in 2008, when there were reported about 1400 cases.

The 406 arrests that were made are all related to 144 cases of fraud, which have been evaluated at about $1 billion.

According to the New York Times, Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip said that even if the law “cannot dictate economic outcomes” or tell people how to safely invest their money, it can and “does protect them from fraud.”