BofA gets sued for the "Hustle"

     Bank of America has been hit with a $1 billion lawsuit from federal prosecutors in regards to their "Hustle" scheme. The "Hustle" refers to a period from 2007 to 2009 in which the bank allegedly had a program in place to push along the process of mortgage applications quicker than usual. This program allegedly disregarded checking for certain aspects in mortgage applications such as mortgage fraud, misstatements, and wrongdoings in the applications. The loan origination program was started under Countrywide Financial and Countrywide Home Loans which were acquired by BofA in 2008. According to the lawsuit many of the loans that originated in this program were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and later defaulted upon which caused many foreclosures and a billion dollars in losses (Hence the billion dollar lawsuit.) One of the spokesman for BofA reported to USA Today that the bank has already repurchased some of these loans that have gone wrong, attempting to resolve this matter responsibly. The spokesman continued to say that the bank cannot “compensate every entity that claims losses that actually were caused by the economic downturn."

"Countrywide and Bank of America made disastrously bad loans and stuck taxpayers with the bill," said Preet Bharara, Manhattan U.S. attorney.

"Countrywide and Bank of America systematically removed every check in favor of its own balance — they cast aside underwriters, eliminated quality controls, incentivized unqualified personnel to cut corners and concealed the resulting defects. These toxic products were then sold to the government sponsored enterprises as good loans."

source: USAToday