Salon.com > settlement

Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

The absolute least Americans can hope for from a major government settlement with a large industry over well-documented crimes is that the industry wouldn’t, after signing the settlement, just continue to commit the same crimes day after day. After all, following the tobacco industry settlement, cigarette makers did manage to stop advertising to teenagers that their product had no medical side effects.

But new evidence reveals the nation’s largest banks have apparently continued to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes, even after inking a series of settlements over the same abuses. And the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.

O’Keefe partner pays $50K to fired ACORN worker

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:49:00 +0000

Republican activist Hannah Giles agreed to pay $50,000 to former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera as a part of a legal settlement struck last summer in response to an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against her and her former partner James O'Keefe, Vera's attorney Eugene Iredale has confirmed to the BRAD BLOG.

Last week, in a scoop by the website Wonkette, it was disclosed that O'Keefe, a federal criminal, agreed to pay $100,000 in his own legal settlement with the same former ACORN employee, after heading up the scheme to secretly videotape him in violation of California's Invasion of Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code Â§ 632).

To serve and protect … banks?

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:30:00 +0000

Wrapping themselves in the American flag is a popular pastime among our nation's prominent institutions. But is it secretly possible for them to commit crimes against active duty members, and pay no price?

Imagine that you’re serving at a forward operating base in Afghanistan. You’ve been in country nine months, coping with hazardous and punishing conditions, trying to survive and return to your family. Then you get a call from your spouse that they’re about to be evicted from the family home. The sense of anxiety is acute, and so is the feeling of helplessness – you’re thousands of miles away, focused on your mission, and you’re wracked with regret and guilt, unable to protect your family from the tragedy and shame of foreclosure.

This has happened at least 700 times to service members on missions overseas since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis in 2008. And it’s actually illegal; it violates the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a statute that carries criminal penalties. The nation’s biggest banks have admitted to the conduct before Congress and in regulatory filings, and they only recently acknowledged that they illegally foreclosed on 10 times as many service members as they previously claimed. Any serious effort to hold banks accountable for routine abuse of homeowners should include prosecutions of this execrable behavior. But the government rolled out settlements years before the true depth of these violations ever began to come to light.

Major settlements better for banks than homeowners

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:56:00 +0000

Two major settlements between 10 big banks and the government Monday totaling over $20 billion aimed to clear up allegations of widespread malpractice relating to the mortgage crisis. But what at first looks like great news for the 4 million Americans forced into foreclosure between 2009 and 2010, may be a greater boon to banks than burned homeowners.

In one settlement, Bank of America agreed to pay $10 billion to mortgage guarantor Fannie Mae to settle claims that Bank of America sold Fannie Mae bad loans for 10 years. As part of the agreement, Bank of America will also buy back $6.75 billion of bad mortgage loans. All of this settlement money will go directly to the U.S. Treasury (neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac is permitted to keep profits). But as the Guardian's Heidi Moore pointed out, "the deal between Bank of America and Fannie Mae contains no mechanism by which the money would reach the homeowners who signed bad loans."