“It was from start to finish the vehicle for a brazen fraud by the defendants,” Judge Rakoff wrote in a 19-page opinion, “driven by a hunger for profits and oblivious to the harms thereby visited, not just on the immediate victims but also on the financial system as a whole.”
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Bank of America Raises Its Mortgage Settlement Offer
Bank of America and federal prosecutors have accelerated their negotiations to resolve an investigation into the bank’s sale of troubled mortgage securities before the financial crisis. The two sides, however, remain far apart on crucial issues and a settlement remained elusive late Wednesday, even after the bank significantly raised its offer.
The bank’s lawyers and Justice Department prosecutors met in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the size of a potential cash penalty, a major sticking point in the settlement talks, according to people briefed on the meeting. Heading into the meeting, the Justice Department was demanding roughly $17 billion to settle the case, more than $10 billion in the form of a cash penalty and the rest in so-called soft dollar payments to help struggling homeowners.
The bank was offering a total of $13 billion, the people said, including $4 billion in cash. The bank narrowed the gap on Wednesday, the people said, raising its cash offer to about $7 billion and its total proposal to roughly $14 billion.
But the Justice Department, which has measured the success of its mortgage cases largely on the size of cash penalties, has balked at the offer. If a deal is not reached in the coming days, the Justice Department might announce a lawsuit against the bank.
Rest here…
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Can anyone tell me if i have recourse in BofA loaning me money and refinancing my mortgage ? I am on a fixed income, and they knew I cannot possibly pay this back. I have had a room mate to help but they are leaving soon.
It will be nothing, as usual, compared to all the stress each individual experienced throughout the whole fraudulent experience and behavior of this, and other immoral and unethical corporations, which they will carry with them throughout the remainder of their life, of course, and never will they be compensated for the lost years of their lives taken during, and as a result, of the stress.
As we have learned individually and learned without the assistance of the mass media, some ‘People’ are ‘more equal’ than “others”. The crumbs thrown to those who experience these frauds and financial ruin obtain a financial pittance in the mail without any true action of justice, nor will they ever.
Most importantly, the three arms of the U.S.A. government (the House, the Administration and the Judicial system) will never regain the trust nor allegiance of each individual touched by these fraudulent and criminal entities of foreclosure which was backed, financially supported and defended by the likewise fraudulent and criminal government.
Just another farce: a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
So I can understand, if the US Corp. is making BofA pay out $17billion for all them bad loans, what happens to the liar loans that got securitized but the notes never made it into the trust, wouldn’t BofA have to buy back all those COuntrywide unsecured debts? Wouldn’t this mean they have assets on the books they don’t own?
SHHH , you must never speak of falsified collateral … of course it’s true ,, that was EXACTLY how the Savings & Loans “fixed” their books ,, trading junk between illiquid banks but booking it at full face value to show they had a solid asset base … someone might have gone to jail if all the SEC enforcers weren’t jerking off to porn in their private cubicles.