It might be possible for the appraiser to plead stupidity, and maybe they could avoid going to jail – I don’t know. But without a doubt, the appraiser should and I think will lose their license if they appraised a house for $600,000, with a fraudulent $600,000 sale price, when the property was actively listed at $500,000, or if there was a recent expired listing at $500,000.
There may not be an appraiser to go after, though. There have been cases in California where there were fraudulent appraisals done by identity theft – using another appraisers’ name and license number, which are both readily available to anyone.
