Fraudulent property flipping ran rampant during this decade’s housing boom, with $10 billion in suspicious deals in Florida alone, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found.The deals — many of them inflated sales among friends, family and business associates — drove up property values and tax bills during the boom, fed bank bailouts and failures after the boom, and fueled the foreclosure wave that has gutted property values.Unscrupulous property flippers would buy houses or condos, then drive up the price in a few days or weeks by selling it to someone they knew. Buyers used the inflated price to get bank loans…
