In coast-to-coast raids, federal agents have rounded up and charged more than 400 real estate swindlers for shoving illegal mortgage schemes onto hapless homebuyers.

The alleged shady deals led to more than $1 billion in direct losses to the homebuyers, and played a role in the unprecedented collapse of the housing industry with a loss estimated at more than $2 trillion.

As part of Operation Malicious Mortgage, armed feds from several agencies – from the FBI to the US Postal Service Police and IRS – have swept in to cart their targets away in cuffs.

Many suspects were accused of defrauding homebuyers with lies, forged documents, rigged financials and gross violations of almost all federal lending practices.

The sweep began March 1 and peaked on Wednesday, sources said. There have been nearly 300 arrests to date and more are expected. A total of 60 were corralled on Wednesday alone, nabbed in the cities of Chicago, Miami and Houston, where frauds were rampant.

Some victims facing foreclosure even had their homes pulled out from under them by hustlers posing as credit counselors, who vanished with homeowners’ last remaining mortgage money and rights to their homes which they flipped to other hustlers.

The FBI has opened an estimated 1,300 fraud cases, including 19 financial institutions.