A showdown over who runs the office that licenses mortgage brokers could occur as early as next week. Calls for the resignation of Don Saxon are growing over reports that felons have been licensed despite their convictions. The state’s Chief Financial Officer says she isn’t getting the answers she needs.

Deep within this state office building, regulators decide who gets a mortgage license and who doesn’t. Since this decade began, over four thousand former felons were licensed, while an investigation found just 28 people were denied because of their criminal past.

Florida CFO Alex Sink is calling for an immediate end to licensing any felons. She’s asking but not getting answers on how those felons could have gotten a license.

“Cocaine dealers and bank robbers and fraudsters have been permitted to apply for mortgage broker licenses and get them, and then proceed to go out and defraud more people.”

Sink is also calling for the resignation of the key regulator, saying she has lost confidence in leadership. The nationwide community organization ACORN is also calling for a change.

“Minorities are seen as targets for a lot of these people that seek to game the system on both sides, both lending and the borrowers side, and what they did was criminal.”

Trouble for a lot of people begins here in the phone book because one of every ten of these outfits could be a fraud artist.

Phone books list dozens of companies known as mortgage originators. They are unlicensed people that help prepare loan paperwork. Lawmakers have refused to license the originators before, but the call for more regulation is going out again.

When Sink, the Governor and two other Cabinet members meet next Tuesday, it will take three out of the four votes to stop the licensing of felons and three votes to fire the licensing official.