South Florida: Land of Loan frauds and dumb people.

Business: Explain to me how its the dealer fault if you lie on your loan application? This is what South Florida is all about which is its never your fault.

No job and no salary was no problem for Pat Callahan when she agreed to buy a $36,000 Ford Expedition. Callahan, a Homestead retiree on Social Security, says the dealership persuaded her to lie on her credit application by claiming a nonexistent job. When the finance company phoned to verify the salary, an employee of the dealer answered and pretended to be her boss, she says in a lawsuit. Callahan got the loan, but lost the car. It was repossessed. Mortgage brokers aren't the only ones with a propensity to fib on credit applications. Staff in dealerships' finance departments, sometimes with the customer's wink-and-nod consent, have played the same game -- with similar results, according to various auto industry insiders. And unlike mortgage brokers, they are unregulated by the state, even though they have access to some of your most intimate financial secrets and can make a mess of your credit.

Only in South Florida you would find two idiots willing to say this about their behavior in the newspapers.

Luis Lopez ended up going to court, his credit smudged, after buying a 2002 Mercedes-Benz CL500 from Auto Trend in Hallandale Beach. According to his lawsuit, which went to arbitration, the finance company first approved, then rescinded the auto loan -- after discovering the finance application included a phony W-2 form that misspelled his employer's name and inflated his annual income by $125,000. The car was repossessed. In a deposition last year, the dealer denied his employees were involved in the fabrication. In the end, an arbitrator awarded Lopez $2,907 -- about a third of what he sought -- plus costs. Lopez remains upset. ''I don't understand if I won the case, why I am getting peanuts back?'' says the 29-year-old Pembroke Pines man. Auto Trend's phone number is no longer in service, and its lawyer could not be reached. ....As for Callahan, the Homestead retiree who couldn't handle the $713 monthly payments on the Expedition, she's suing the dealer, Armstrong Ford of Homestead, over the aggravation she says she endured. The dealer did not respond to calls from The Miami Herald. ''I feel like I was pressured into something I didn't want to do,'' Callahan says. Her suit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court seeks unspecified damages. The Expedition is gone. Today she drives a Hyundai that her daughter bought.

These two agreed to taking part in loan fraud and then have the balls to whine they are the victims. Welcome to South Florida.