Tuesday, March 15, 2011

BofA's Force-Placed Insurance Unit Hid Foreclosure Information, Say E-Mails Released By Hacker Group

The New York Times reports:

  • A hacker organization known as Anonymous released a series of e-mails on Monday provided by a former Bank of America employee who claims they show how a division of the bank sought to hide information on foreclosures.

  • The bank unit, Balboa Insurance, was acquired by Bank of America when it bought the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial in 2008. Balboa deals in so-called force-placed insurance coverage on mortgages. The e-mail messages concern the removal of information linking loans to other documentation.

***

  • The e-mails dating from November 2010 concern correspondence among Balboa employees in which they discuss taking steps to alter the record about certain documents “that went out in error.” The documents were related to loans by GMAC, a Bank of America client, according to the e-mails.

***

  • A member of Anonymous told DealBook on Monday that the purpose of his Web site was to bring attention to the wrongdoing of banks. “The way the system is, it’s made to cheat the average person,” he said.

For more, see Bank of America Unit Tried to Hide Foreclosure Information, Hackers Say.

Go here for the Balboa e-mails.

See also Zerohedge.com: Hacker Collective Anonymous To Release Documents Proving Bank Of America Committed Fraud This Monday.

Thanks to Mike Dillon at GetDShirtz.com for the heads-up on the story.

According to Dillon, he attempted to bring the loan servicer racket revolving around force-placed insurance and kickbacks to the attention of 45+ Senators and Congresspeople almost two years ago through a GAO Review request of the FTC in connection with the USA v. Fairbanks litigation. No one was interested. Exhibit T (see page 2), Exhibit U, and Exhibit V may be of interest. They will show that HUD-OIG and, therefore, the FTC, US Attorney General's Office, etc. knew about force placed insurance, alleged kickbacks, etc. at least as far back as 2003. And have apparently done nothing about it. According to Dillon, HUD-OIG, the FTC and who knows who else knew about this as part of a USA/Curry v. Fairbanks criminal investigation that was killed per the civil settlement.

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