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Archive for the ‘mortgage fraud’ Category
Former Countrywide Home Appraiser Receives $14.5 Million Whistleblower Reward
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
A former home appraiser for Countrywide (“Countrywide”) Financial will receive a $14.5 million whistleblower reward in connection with a qui tam lawsuit that alleged Countrywide fraudulently inflated appraisals on government insured loans.
The Countrywide qui tam suit, filed by Mr. Kyle Lagow in 2009, was one of five whistleblower complaints that were settled as part of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement that state and federal officials reached with Bank of America and four other lenders this year. Mr. Lagow’s suit was settled for $75 million.
All five qui tam complaints were brought under the whistleblower provisions of the federal False Claims Act, which is a longstanding federal statute that authorizes a private citizen with knowledge of fraud being perpetrated on the federal government to bring a lawsuit on the government’s behalf. If the whistleblower’s suit is successful, the whistleblower may be entitled to up to 30% of the government’s monetary recovery. The False Claims Act also provides for certain protections for employees who are subjected to retaliation for reporting fraud.
Kenney & McCafferty lawyers are experienced in the area of mortgage fraud. If you have knowledge of mortgage fraud and would like to discuss the possibility of a whistleblower award, please contact our attorneys today. Kenney & McCafferty will consult with you about your case, including your ability to remain anonymous in filing for an award, without obligation. All communications with Kenney & McCafferty attorneys regarding your case are confidential and protected by the attorney-client privilege.
Tags: mortgage whistleblower, mortgage whistleblower award
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, corporate fraud, False Claims Act, government fraud, mortgage fraud, Recent News, retaliation, Whistleblower Protection | Comments Off
Justice Department Expands Efforts to Uncover Mortgage Fraud
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
On Thursday, May 24, 2012, the Justice Department’s Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) Working Group announced new resources in the ongoing efforts to investigate and uncover mortgage fraud and abuse that helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis. These efforts include the launch of a new whistleblower website to report fraudulent activities in the mortgage-backed securities market. The Working Group wants to hear from people “who worked in the RMBS market who acted responsibly but who also may have witnessed greed and misconduct that crossed the legal line and created havoc for investors, homeowners and our economy.” These market participants include loan originators, sponsors, underwriters, trustees, and others.
The RMBS working group was established by Attorney General Eric Holder in January and has been dedicated to initiating, organizing and advancing new and existing investigations by federal and state authorities into fraud and abuse in the RMBS market. The RMBS Working Group is a collaborative effort focused on investigating potential false or misleading statements, deception or other misconduct by market participants in the creation, packaging and sale of mortgage-backed securities.
While the Justice Department said the group’s efforts are law enforcement sensitive and, as a result, must remain confidential, generally it continues to: identify specific RMBS offerings for priority investigation through the use of various forensic tools including risk-based analytics; analyze pending private RMBS litigation throughout the country for evidentiary connections to existing law enforcement investigations; and convene operational meetings among investigators, attorneys, analysts and RMBS market experts and insiders.
Associate Attorney General Tony West said that “although the working group … [has] done a tremendous amount of investigative work already – including having issued more than 25 civil subpoenas – we know that hearing from insiders is particularly valuable.” Substantial financial rewards may be available to whistleblowers who provide specific information if that information leads to a monetary recovery by the government.
If you have knowledge of mortgage fraud and would like to discuss the possibility of a whistleblower award, please contact our whistleblower attorneys today. Kenney & McCafferty will consult with you about your case, including your ability to remain anonymous in filing for an award, without obligation. All communications with Kenney & McCafferty attorneys regarding your case are confidential and protected by attorney-client privilege.
Tags: bank fraud, bank whistleblower, False Claims Act, mortgage fraud, mortgage whistleblower, residential mortgage fraud, RMBS, RMBS website, RMBS working group, SEC investigation
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, False Claims Act, government fraud, mortgage fraud, Recent News, SEC Whistleblower Program | Comments Off
Mortgage Fraud And Whistleblowers
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
Last week the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a $202.3 million settlement with Deutsche Bank’s AG mortgage unit for reckless mortgage lending practices. This is the third major bank settlement related to mortgage fraud by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office in 2012, having announced a $158.3 million settlement with Citibank in February and a $132.8 million settlement with Flagstar Bank FSB in March.
Both the Citibank and Flagstar settlements were the result of whistleblower claims filed under the False Claims Act.
In February, the Brooklyn U. S. Attorney’s Office announced a $1 billion settlement with Bank of America related to improper mortgage practices. Part of that settlement included a settlement of two whistleblower actions that had been filed against Bank of America for mortgage fraud.
These cases highlight the importance of whistleblowers and the False Claims Act in continuing to combat financial improprieties at the banking institutions. It also suggests that more mortgage fraud cases brought by whistleblowers will be forthcoming given the success that both the Manhattan and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Offices have experienced working with whistleblowers in this arena.
If you have knowledge of Securities Fraud and would like to discuss the possibility of a whistleblower award under the SEC whistleblower program, please contact our whistleblower attorneys today. Kenney & McCafferty will consult with you about your case, including your ability to remain anonymous in filing for an award, without obligation. All communications with Kenney & McCafferty attorneys regarding your case are confidential and protected by attorney-client privilege.
Tags: bank fraud, bank whistleblower, doj investigations, False Claims Act, FHA fraud, HUD fraud, mortgage fraud, mortgage whistleblower, mortgage whistleblower award
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, corporate fraud, False Claims Act, FHA fraud, HUD fraud, mortgage fraud, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Another BofA Mortgage Whistleblower
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
Another whistleblower lawsuit with ties to the $1 Billion False Claims Act Bank of America settlement announced on February 9, 2012 by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has been unsealed. The suit charges the bank with fraud violations under the Home Affordable Modification Program (“HAMP”).
Gregory Mackler, a former contractor with the servicing outsourcerUrban Lending Solutions, filed the lawsuit in July. The lawsuit charges BofA with developing procedures that kept trainees like Mackler from researching or resolving any HAMP inquiries or complaints in order to avoid millions of dollars in losses while benefitting from the financial incentives of the program. The Treasury Department paid $1.8 billion in HAMP servicer incentives through December, according to the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
In February, a whistleblower complaint was unsealed from Kyle Lagow, a former employee in a Countrywide appraisal unit which detailed allegations of Countrywide’s “corrupt underwriting and appraisal process. Final settlement documents have yet to be filed in the BoA settlement, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office said was the largest ever False Claims Act payout related to mortgage fraud.
If you have knowledge of Corporate Fraud, including Mortgage Fraud, and would like to discuss the possibility of a whistleblower award under the False Claims Act, please contact our whistleblower attorneys today. Kenney & McCafferty will consult with you about your case, without obligation. All communications with Kenney & McCafferty attorneys regarding your case are confidential and protected by attorney-client privilege.
The Department of Justice has until March 16 to decide whether to intervene in the Mackler and Lagow cases.
Tags: bank whistleblower, False Claims Act, FERA, mortgage whistleblower, Qui Tam
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, corporate fraud, False Claims Act, FHA fraud, HUD fraud, mortgage fraud, Recent News | Comments Off
DOJ and SEC Mortgage Investigations Overlap
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
Reuters has reported that the eleven bank subpoenas issued in January by DOJ expand upon previous document requests by the SEC in its ongoing investigations into improprieties relating to the packaging of residential mortgage securities.
According to the Reuters report, people who have reviewed the subpoenas state that the civil subpoenas ask for documents related to every residential securities offering between 2006 and 2008, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.
The SEC investigation that has been ongoing appears to have been limited to private offerings and did not include Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac bonds. The DOJ subpoenas have also apparently broadened the time period beyond the initial period being investigated by the SEC.
The investigations by the DOJ and the SEC appear to be a part of an inter-agency task force the government has organized to coordinate parallel efforts on current and future investigations. In January, SEC enforcement director Robert Khuzami said that his agency had already reviewed 25 million pages of documents as part of ongoing investigations into residential mortgage-backed securities.
Three firms, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, and Wells Fargo & Co, have now disclosed that they have already received Wells notices from the SEC related to the SEC residential mortgage backed securities investigations. A Wells notice alerts putative defendants that the SEC is considering bringing charges and gives them a chance to rebut the allegations.
The Wells notice indicate that the SEC’s investigation against these three banks has matured to point that SEC charges should be forthcoming. However, the new round of broader DOJ subpoenas indicates that the government investigations will continue and possibly expand.
Tags: bank fraud, doj investigations, mortgage fraud, sec fraud, sec investigations
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, corporate fraud, FHA fraud, government fraud, mortgage fraud, SEC Whistleblower Program, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Mortgage Fraud: The New FCA Arena
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
This week the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) announced that it had settled another major mortgage fraud case against a lending institution. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Flagstar Bank FSB has agreed to pay $132.8 million in damages and penalties under the False Claims Act for improperly approving residential home mortgage loans for government insurance.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated, “[This] is another stark example of how certain lenders put profit ahead of responsibility by recklessly churning out mortgage loans without regard to the risk that those loans would default or the significant consequences for the individual homeowners who would inevitably default on their loans, the housing market, and in the aggregate, our nation’s economy.”
On February 15, 2012, Bharra announced that Citicorp Inc.’s Citimortgage unit had agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle claims tied to mortgage fraud related to the federal home-loan insurance program. That false claims action filed by a whistleblower alleged more than six years of misconduct in connection with the Federal Housing Administration Direct Endorsement Program.
Both these cases come on the heels of a $1 billion settlement with the government announced by the Bank of America that relates at least in part to a False Claims Act case filed by a whistleblower alleging mortgage fraud. That case was unsealed last Friday in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
These cases are part of an overarching investigations by the United States Attorney’s Offices for the Southern (Manhattan) and Eastern (Brooklyn) Districts of New York into the fraudulent banking practices that occurred over the past decade.
Mortgage fraud will continue to be a focus of these investigations because of the billions of dollars in losses suffered by HUD, FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a result of the rampant mortgage fraud that was orchestrated by national banks during that time. This is a target rich environment for the government with many potential whistleblowers who will no doubt continue to come forward exposing the environment that led to these frauds over the last decade.
Tags: bank fraud, bank whistleblower, False Claims Act, FHA fraud, HUD fraud, mortgage fraud
Posted in Bank Fraud, bank whistleblower, False Claims Act, FHA fraud, government fraud, HUD fraud, mortgage fraud | Comments Off
