Mortgage Graveyard Litigation
Several lawsuits involving failed or acquired mortgage firms have seen a good deal of activity lately. Issues involved include privacy, credit and deceit.
A class action has been certified by a federal judge in Kentucky against Countrywide Financial Corp. In addition, a proposed settlement with around 2.4 million class members has been preliminarily approved.
The case, originally filed in December 2008 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, was tied to the theft of private data on more than 2 million customers by Rene Leonard Rebollo Jr. -- a former Countrywide employee. Rebollo admitted in July 2008 to FBI agents that he had stolen and sold the data. Countrywide, which was subsequently acquired by Bank of America Corp., notified the impacted borrowers between August 2008 and November 2008.
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Federal Agencies Issue Model Privacy Form
Federal regulators today published a model privacy disclosure for use by financial institutions.
No. 100 Fails
Bank regulators just seized a small Florida bank -- marking the 100th federally insured bank to fail this year. A Florida mortgage company closed and left its files in the dumpster. The tally for mortgage-related failures also reached a new milestone.
FTC Busts Broker for Dumping Files
The Federal Trade Commission has busted a Las Vegas mortgage broker for allegedly discarding hundreds of loan files with personal financial documents and private credit records in a public dumpster.
Countrywide Sued Over Stolen Leads
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Countrywide Financial Corp. and some of its affiliates over personal customer data that was stolen and sold by a former executive. More than 2 million customers could potentially join the case.
Lender Settles With FTC
The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with a Texas-based mortgage company over allegations the company enabled a home seller to regularly use its credit bureau access without establishing procedures to ensure private data was protected. A computer hacker eventually gained unauthorized access to dozens of credit reports and pulled hundreds more.
Illegal Mortgage Leads
For two years, an executive of a Countrywide Financial Corp. unit was successfully operating a mortgage leads business using data he stole from the company. He downloaded the records of 20,000 borrowers each week -- until he was caught.
LendingTree Faces Class Action Over Data Breach
LendingTree LLC, which recently disclosed that former employees helped a number of mortgage companies steal the personal information of loan prospects, is now facing a class-action lawsuit over the data breach.
Mortgage Leads Litigation
LendingTree filed a fraud lawsuit against several individuals and companies over stolen lead data.
Meltdown Stokes Privacy Violations
Two mortgage companies are facing government legal actions for failing to adequately secure the private information of former borrowers and applicants. The case of one of the companies, which shut down this summer, is likely to be repeated across the country given the scale of the mortgage meltdown. And if branch managers of local operations fail to secure files upon the closing of local offices -- officers and directors could be held criminally liable.
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