Consumers have reported receiving fictitious email messages, allegedly initiated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), regarding funds purportedly under the control of the OCC. Any communication claiming that the OCC is involved in holding any funds for the benefit of any individual or entity is fraudulent. The OCC does not participate … Read more
One of the options you can use to get out of debt is a Debt Management Plan (DMP) from a non-profit credit counseling agency. These groups can organize many of your unsecured debts into one monthly payment that consumers make to the agency. It is then divided up and sent along it’s merry way to … Read more
The Office of the Comptroller of Currency has issued guidance to banks it supervises that will be used to supervise the bad debt and debt collection practices of banks. The new guidance is not a rule yet but it is the OCC document on what is “best practices.” The focus of the rule is bad … Read more
The government agency, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is warning consumers to be on the lookout for fraudulent messages that are intended to scam money out of consumers. The OCC says fictitious correspondence, allegedly issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) regarding funds purportedly under the control of … Read more
by Paul Kiel ProPublica The idea behind the Independent Foreclosure Review seems simple. During the peak of the foreclosure crisis, the banks broke laws and made errors that hurt homeowners. In response, the government mandated they compensate the victims. But there is growing evidence some banks are playing a major role in identifying the victims … Read more
by Paul Kiel ProPublica Can you put a price on the damage caused by a wrongful foreclosure? Banking regulators have. And it’s $125,000. Or $60,000. Or $15,000. Or2026 it’s unclear. Last November, banking regulators launched a process to force the big banks to compensate homeowners victimized by their foreclosure abuses. Many crucial details remained unclear, … Read more
The OCC announced it has sent a cease and desist letter to Citibank regarding “identified deficiencies in the Bank’s overall program for Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (“BSA/AML”) compliance” As we all know, banks make mistakes. It just seems that typically it is the consumers that wind up paying for them. The OCC found that the … Read more
Rudy, a reader of the site forwarded me this information to share with you regarding their recent attempts to get their mortgage modified through HAMP. Rudy Says Dear Steve: Who will bail us out while our government can bail out hundreds of billion dollars to big banks and other financial institutions because they are just … Read more
National Consumer Law Center has uncovered a spreading Main Street bank trend in the payday lending world. Back in 2008 I had written an article about Kinceta Federal Credit Union in California that felt being in the payday loan business was good for their customers. At the time, the thought that a bank or credit … Read more
by Paul Kiel, ProPublica Four years into the foreclosure crisis, banks say they’ve made major improvements in how they handle struggling homeowners. They’ve promised, for example, not to foreclose on homeowners who are being considered for mortgage modifications. But that’s still happening. Consider the cases of Laurie Pinkerton and Lisa Peterson. The two women, both … Read more
by Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, ProPublica Early last year, as they weighed whether to bar banks from speculative trading with their own money, congressional staffers turned to a key regulator for advice. The response from Julie Williams, the chief counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was startling, according to people … Read more
by Paul Kiel ProPublica Chanel Rosario was supposed to be one of the lucky ones. After years of sending and re-sending documents, waiting on hold and attending court hearings to avoid foreclosure on her Staten Island home, she’d finally received a much-needed reduction on her mortgage. Eagerly, she and her husband signed it and mailed … Read more
Marian Wang, ProPublica In our primer on the players in the foreclosure scandal, we noted that the biggest foreclosure contractor to which banks outsourced servicing tasks, Lender Processing Services (LPS), has been accused of flaws in the processing of key mortgage documents. The company has said that it is “not aware of any defects in … Read more
Marian Wang, ProPublica While they may be conducting their own investigations, federal prosecutors and national bank regulators for the most part aren’t the ones leading the investigation into the foreclosure mess. At least that’s the perception–one that’s reinforced when Elizabeth Warren, Obama’s head of consumer financial protection, says her money is on a 50-state investigation … Read more
“Dear Steve, Currently paying off about $75,000 in credit card debt taken on during the economic slowdown last year when my consulting business tanked; current income of about $150,000. Not sure that debt relief is a viable option for me without severe negative credit rating consequences, so I’m paying down debt on most cards with … Read more