On March 17, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it had submitted a Final Rule entitled Restoring HUD’s Discriminatory Effects Standard. The Rule reinstates HUD’s 2013 discriminatory effects rule and repeals its 2020 rule governing Fair Housing Act (FHA) disparate impact claims. Some of the…
On June 22, 2022, the USAO for the Eastern District of Washington announced that it had reached a settlement with a California-based mortgage lender for fraudulent originations of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) backed loans. The investigation began as a qui tam action filed under seal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern…
On June 2, 2022, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced it reached a settlement agreement with a non-bank residential mortgage lender to resolve allegations of race-based lending discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq. The settlement arose from a complaint filed with a fair…
On March 19, 2021, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it approved a settlement with a national mortgage lender concerning allegations that the mortgage lender discriminated against a consumer in violation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) when it denied the consumer’s mortgage loan application. The consumer filed a complaint with HUD…
On March 8, 2021, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it had approved a conciliation agreement between a national mortgage lender and an African-American woman (the Complainant), resolving allegations that the mortgage lender provided an inaccurate appraisal of the Complainant’s home due to her race in violation of the Fair…
On October 22, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had reached a settlement with a San Diego-based national mortgage lender, resolving allegations that the company had originated and underwrote mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) without following program…
On April 29, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it settled allegations that an Illinois-based mortgage lender violated the False Claims Act (FCA), the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), and Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act (PFCRA) by falsely certifying that it complied with Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance…
On March 31, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had entered into a $2.47 million settlement agreement with a national reverse mortgage lender in order to resolve allegations that the bank’s predecessor entity had failed to meet the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) criteria in originating and…
On February 13, 2019, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California announced an agreement with a California-based mortgage company to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act (FCA). The U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges that between April 2007 and June 2009, the mortgage company underwrote and originated 16 loans…
On December 8, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had settled allegations that a Louisiana-based mortgage lender violated the False Claims Act (FCA) through its underwriting of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgage loans. In the lawsuit, which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the…
On September 28, 2017, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO), along with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and HUD’s Office of the Inspector General (HUD-OIG), announced that they had reached a settlement with a national mortgage lender over alleged…
On September 14, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued an opinion and order against two former mortgage companies and their former president and CEO. The order, which followed a previous jury verdict against the company, awarded the Government nearly $280 million in treble damages under the False Claims Act (FCA), approximately $13 million…
In the second quarter of 2017, Consumer Enforcement Watch tracked 40 enforcement actions taken against consumer financial service providers. This represents a marginal decrease from the 46 enforcement actions taken against consumer financial service providers that we tracked last quarter, and from the 46 enforcement actions tracked in the second…
On July 20, 2017, acting United States Attorney Stephen Muldrow announced a civil settlement with the owner of a Florida condominium complex over fraudulent reverse mortgage transactions. Defendant had been accused of violating the False Claims Act (“FCA”) and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (“FIRREA”). The Federal…
On July 11, 2017, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that its Mortgagee Review Board had suspended a national mortgage lender from originating and underwriting new mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). HUD’s Departmental Enforcement Center also banned the lender’s owner from doing business with the federal…
On July 3, 2017, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the HUD Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG), the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced that they had reached a settlement with a national mortgage lender, resolving…
On May 16, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it had reached a settlement with a company engaged in reverse mortgage servicing, in connection with the company’s participation in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD”) Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (“HECM”) program, which offers senior citizens reverse mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration…
On May 10, 2017, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a settlement with a California credit union concerning allegations that the credit union denied loan approval to a married couple because one spouse was on maternity leave, in violation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). HUD alleged that the couple applied for a…
On April 19, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it had entered an agreement with a group of California mortgage lenders to resolve allegations that they discriminated against a mortgage applicant. That consumer had filed a complaint with HUD in October 2016, alleging that the lenders failed to prequalify…
On March 10, 2017, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) announced that it reached a settlement with an Illinois bank resolving allegations that the bank engaged in illegal “redlining” of minority neighborhoods in the Rockford, Illinois metropolitan area. HUD initiated its investigation after the Hope Fair Housing Alliance (“Hope”)…