- Class action suit filed against JPMorgan for alleged illegal demand of payment from junior mortgage holders who’s senior mortgages had been foreclosed. The class claims that JPMorgan’s demands violated several California laws.
- PHH Corp. urges the DC Circuit to vacate the CFPB’s penalty for $109 million for mortgage kickback scheme, claiming that the CFPB oversteps its constitutional authority.
- Second Circuit dismisses IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG suit against Standard’s & Poor’s for costing IKB almost $574 million by positively rating an investment vehicle that collapsed.
Tag Archives: penalty
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- The CFPB increased PHH Corp.’s penalty to $109 million from $6.4 million on appeal, while upholding an administrative judge’s ruling that the firm was involved in a mortgage insurance kickback scheme.
- A class of PHH borrowers have been granted cert to the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that PHH Corp. violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.
- NY Court of Appeals bars mortgage-backed securities suit for $330 million against Deutsche Bank AG due to a six-year statute of limitations that started when the contract was signed.
- Nomura Holdings Inc. is appealing $806 million verdict in suit brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for selling bad mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- The Securities and Exchange Commission brought suit against a New York broker for $4.1 million for allegedly selling unregistered securities through several entities.
Reiss on Big BoA FIRREA Penalty
Bloomberg BNA quoted me in FIRREA-Fueled Penalty Against BofA Signals More Risk for Large Institutions (behind a paywall). It reads in part,
A federal judge in New York ordered Bank of America to pay $1.26 billion in civil penalties to the U.S. government in connection with a Countrywide lending program, setting up a likely appeal in one of the most closely watched cases in the financial services arena (United States v. Bank of Am. Corp., S.D.N.Y., No. 12-cv-01422, 7/30/14).
The ruling by Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which also said former Countrywide official Rebecca Mairone must pay $1 million in installments, followed an October jury verdict that found Bank of America liable for Countrywide’s sale of bad loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some of which were securitized.
Countrywide sold those loans under its “High-Speed Swim Lane” program—an initiative aimed at speeding the loan approval process and one launched before Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008.
Rakoff called the nine-month HSSL program “from start to finish the vehicle for a brazen fraud,” and imposed a $1,267,491,770 penalty on Bank of America.
The amount was less than the $2.1 billion sought by the government, but well above what Bank of America argued was appropriate, which was $1.1 million at the most .
“We believe that this figure simply bears no relation to a limited Countrywide program that lasted several months and ended before Bank of America’s acquisition of the company,” Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Grayson told Bloomberg BNA July 30. “We are reviewing the ruling and assessing our appellate options,” he said.
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According to Rakoff, Firrea could have allowed a penalty in this case that would have equaled the value of the loan transaction itself, which totaled $2.96 billion.
Rakoff, citing the discretion granted to judges in such cases, reduced the penalty to $1.267 billion, saying not all of the loans were flawed.
Brooklyn Law School Professor David Reiss called Rakoff’s ruling significant and a new turn in an important area of case law for businesses.
“We’re beginning to see a jurisprudence of Firrea penalties and a penalty regime that is very pro-government,” Reiss told Bloomberg BNA. “This shows that the penalty can be as high as the nominal amount of the transaction. It’s good guidance in the sense that it helps businesses know the outer boundaries of their risk, but it’s a generous view of deterrence,” he said.
