The authorities have rounded up hundreds of people across the nation as the Obama administration moved to improve oversight of the housing market after the collapse of the real estate sector a couple of years ago.

Reports said federal officials have made 485 arrests and charged 1,215 people involve in mortgage fraud cases over the last three and a half months. The authorities also recovered more than $147 million and secured 336 individual convictions during the same period.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller said the authorities are still pursuing more than 3,000 mortgage fraud cases. He stressed that the government will do everything it can to apprehend the individuals responsible for the crash of the housing market, which resulted in $2.3 billion in profit losses and the country’s worsening foreclosure problem.

“We have still a number of ongoing investigations. I can assure you that where we have allegations of fraud in larger institutions, we are continuing the investigations that we’ve started over the last several years,” Mueller said, adding that mortgage fraud is a risk to the country’s economic stability.

Meanwhile, federal officials said the city of Las Vegas was a hotbed of mortgage fraud activities, especially during the housing boom. Nevada’s district attorney Daniel Bogden said about 123 defendants have been charged, convicted or sentenced since March 1. The Silver State lost about $250 million in profits, he added.

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