Obnoxious bank: Capital One called a man’s cell phone 221 times trying to collect an alleged debt
OAKLAND, Calif. – Capital One Bank called a man’s cell phone 221 times trying to collect an alleged debt, in violation of federal law, the unhappy customer claims in Federal Court.
Why thousands of homeowners are getting money for mortgage abuses they never suffered
Thousands of homeowners will get a pleasant surprise in the mail this summer: checks to (wait for it) compensate them for foreclosure problems they never suffered.
EverBank Financial is prepared to write $1,050 checks to 25,389 of its customers, even though no errors were found in reviews of their foreclosure files, according to a reportissued Wednesday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The mind-boggling situation is an outgrowth of the foreclosure settlement that the Jacksonville, Fla.-based bank inked with the OCC and the Federal Reserve in August. And the payments tell us a lot about the byzantine nature of the mortgage settlement world.
EverBank’s deal was part of a $10 billion agreement that regulators struck last year with some of the nation’s biggest banks because they made it harder for millions of struggling Americans to hang on to their homes.
Citigroup : Says Prosecutors Probing Its Mexico Unit — Update
Citigroup Inc. on Friday said U.S. federal prosecutors, Mexico’s banking regulator and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into its Mexico subsidiary, Banamex.
Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission has started an “extraordinary review” into the matter, the bank said in a regulatory filing, and the SEC has started a formal investigation. The bank also said the Justice Department has requested information, a development The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
An SEC spokesman declined to comment.
The investigation stems from Citigroup’s announcement in February that it had lost as much as $400 million due to a possible fraud involving Banamex and a Mexican oil-services company, Oceanografia, which is a supplier to the Mexican state-owned oil company, Pemex.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is expected to send subpoenas within days to exchanges, one of the sources said on Thursday. Another source said major banks that operate dark pools, or platforms where trades take place out of sight of the rest of the market, have been sent letters asking for information.
The sources spoke this week on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
U.S. anti-money laundering authority faces hiring probe – sources
The Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that governs labour practices in the government, determined that the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, illegally screened candidates in a quest to hire only lawyers for certain jobs, the officials said. It has recommended further investigations by two other federal agencies into FinCEN’s practices, they added.
Rules for hiring at government agencies make it illegal to screen candidates for qualifications that aren’t stipulated in the job description, and the jobs FinCEN had posted weren’t designated as being only for lawyers, the officials said.
Some senior Treasury officials knew about FinCEN’s practice but it was not halted until OPM identified the problem, two of the sources said.
A Treasury spokeswoman said that FinCEN is “committed to complying with all relevant federal rules and regulations regarding federal hiring.”
OPM did not return calls and emails seeking comment.
Libor-Tied Investor Suit Against Barclays Revived
MANHATTAN (CN) – After understating borrowing costs in connection with the Libor scandal, Barclays Bank may be liable to shareholders, the 2nd Circuit ruled.
Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond apologized in announcing two years ago a $452 million settlement to resolve his bank’s attempted manipulation amid the ongoing financial crisis.
The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the European Interbank Offered (Euribor) are based on the interest rates leading banks charge when loaning money to other banks overnight.
Although the rates should represent the cost of a bank’s lending activities, Barclays admitted that it submitted artificially low rates to the British Banker’s Association, which publishes Libor, to hide rising loan costs and to benefit derivatives positions its traders took based on the benchmark rates.
The bank’s American depository shares dropped 12 percent the next day.
Pensions and retirement funds claimed in ensuing class actions that Diamond lied to them in 2008 conference call with market analysts by promising that Barclays was “categorically not paying higher rates in any currency.”
Roughly a year ago, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said that the plaintiffs failed to plead loss causation and dismissed all of the claims.
A three-judge panel found Friday that she reached that conclusion too soon.
Credit Suisse Can’t Dodge German Bank’s $138M RMBS Suit
Law360, New York (May 01, 2014, 7:28 PM ET) — A German lender’s lawsuit accusing Credit Suisse Group AG units of lying to it about the quality of $138 million in residential mortgage-backed securities was pared down on Thursday, but a New York judge let the central fraud allegations stand.
Following oral arguments on Credit Suisse’s motion to dismiss the case, New York Supreme Court Justice Marcy S. Friedman said the allegations in the complaint by Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank AG of material misrepresentation of the quality of the securities are adequately pled to support a cause of…
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