On March 16, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), and Acting Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) announced that the government settled a False Claims Act lawsuit against a New York-based…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it reached an agreement with a regional bank over a disparate treatment fair housing claim. HUD alleged that the bank engaged in racially discriminatory redlining by lending less in the majority-minority neighborhood of the East Side of Kansas City, Missouri….
On February 5, 2016, the Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 49 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia’s attorney general announced a $470 million settlement with a national bank to address alleged mortgage origination, servicing, and foreclosure abuses. …
On February 3, 2016, a national bank announced in its SEC filing that it has reached a $1.2 billion agreement in principle with the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, and…
On February 1, 2016, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a $1.9 million settlement with a Tennessee bank for alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). According to a complaint filed with HUD, the bank “denied loan applications submitted by African American and Hispanic borrowers…
On January 12, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it filed administrative charges against three California home loan modification assistance companies and their employees, alleging that they targeted Hispanic homeowners by charging thousands of dollars for services that were never provided or were ineffective. HUD’s…
On December 2, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a mortgage company settled claims that it violated the False Claims Act by originating and underwriting mortgage loans insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) by failing to comply with certain FHA requirements. The…
On December 1, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced a settlement agreement with a residential mortgage lender originating and underwriting loans insured by HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The settlement resolves allegations that, between January 2007…
On October 6, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced an $85 million settlement to resolve claims for civil fraud under the False Claims Act that a bank certified roughly 1,400 mortgage loans as eligible for FHA insurance, when the bank knew that the loans were in fact ineligible and failed…
On September 28, 2015, the acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announced the filing of a civil suit against several mortgage lenders and a consumer counseling and relief fund. The suit alleges that the lenders conspired with the counseling fund in an effort to hide their high default…
On September 24, 2015, the DOJ and HUD announced that the owner and employees of a regional mortgage company had been sentenced for their participation in a $64 million mortgage fraud scheme. According to the DOJ, the Defendants operated a regional mortgage company, which specialized in securing Federal Housing Administration…
On September 22, 2015, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced criminal indictments of several individuals relating to a mortgage fraud scheme. The defendants, who owned and operated a regional mortgage company, allegedly promised homeowners they qualified for a federal program known as the “Neighborhood Stabilization Plan.” As alleged in the…
*Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on our sister blog, Consumer Finance Enforcement Watch. Visit CFEW for more real-time reporting on the full range of public federal and state consumer finance enforcement activity.* For the second quarter of 2015, Consumer Finance Enforcement Watch tracked 56 enforcement actions taken against consumer finance providers,…
On September 4, 2015, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that a company engaged in reverse mortgage servicing agreed to pay $29.63 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (“FCA”) in connection with its participation in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD”) Home Equity Conversion Mortgage…
On September 3, a reverse mortgage servicing company settled alleged violations of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) regulations with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In July 2013, an individual brought a qui tam action in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida pursuant to the False Claims…
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently did a study which found that, while mortgage loan originations increased through the second quarter of 2015, the increase is only for borrowers with credit scores above 660). See Liberty Street Economics, “Just Released: Releveraging the Consumer Credit Panel with Two New Charts,” August…
On August 5, 2015, a bank revealed in an U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Justice (collectively, the “Government”) are currently investigating whether the bank complied with underwriting requirements on loans…
On July 14, 2015, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida announced that the owner of a Miami-area mortgage company, his business partner, and a senior mortgage underwriter each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution. As part of the owner’s plea, he will forfeit $8…
On June 18, the Federal Housing Administration provided lenders with a new Defect Taxonomy for Single Family Housing Loans, or Loan Quality Assessment Methodology. It has been working on the new taxonomy for almost a year, and the final product is very similar to what it presented for comment in September…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reached a settlement agreement with Associated Bank concerning allegations that the Bank violated Section 804(b) of the Fair Housing Act. According to the conciliation agreement, HUD alleged that the Bank disproportionately denied loan applications of African-American and Hispanic applicants, and under-served…