NEW YORK CITY-Reports of mortgage fraud, which the FBI estimates results in $4 to $6 billion in losses annually, decreased in 2010, according to a study from the LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute.

Once again Florida has the dubious distinction of the top slot on the Mortgage Asset Research Institute Fraud Index, with New York a close second. Despite the decrease in reported incidences, however, authors of the study caution that this doesn’t mean less fraud.

“Mortgage fraud has become more complex and harder to verify using traditional methods,” Denise James, LexisNexis Risk Solutions director of Real Estate Solutions and co-author of the report said in a release. “Mortgage businesses are quickly trying to implement new procedures to detect emerging frauds.”

New York City has been looking for new ways to prevent this type of fraud as well. Back in February, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and area district attorneys announced a new effort to detect this type of financial crime, mining existing city data to find “digital fingerprints” that might indicate something amiss. Homeowners can also now sign up for alerts to notify them when a transaction involving their property is posted. A spokesman for the mayor was unable to provide GlobeSt.com with an update on the program’s success prior to publication.

The LexisNexis study comes on the heels of a March 2011 study from the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which showed a 3% increase in Mortgage Fraud Suspicious Activity Report filings for the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. Overall, these reports rose to 70,472 in 2010.