Bank of America’s Countrywide to Pay $17.3M RMBS Settlement to Massachusetts

According to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, Countrywide Securities Corp. (CFC) will pay $17 million to settle residential mortgage backed securities claims. The settlement includes $6 million to be paid to the Commonwealth and $11.3 million to investors with the Pension Reserves Investment Management Board. Countrywide is a Bank of America (BAC) unit.

Coakley’s office was the first in the US to start probing and pursuing Wall Street securitization firms for their involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis. Other RMBS settlements Massachusetts has reached include: $34M from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), $36M from Barclays Bank (ADR), $52 million from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), $102 million from Morgan Stanley (MS), and $60 million from Goldman Sachs. (GS).

Meantime, a federal judge is expected to rule soon on how much Bank of America will pay in a securities fraud verdict related to the faulty mortgages that Countrywide sold investors. A jury had found the bank and ex-Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone liable for defrauding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae via the sale of loans through that banking unit. The US government wants Bank of America to pay $863.6 million in damages. Mairone denies any wrongdoing.

The case focused on “High Speed Swim Lane,” a mortgage lending process that rewarded employees for the volume of loans produced rather than the quality. Checkpoints that should have made sure the loans were solid were eliminated.

In other recent Countrywide news, a federal judge has given final approval to Bank of America’s $500 million settlement with investors who say the unit misled them, which is why they even invested in high-risk mortgage debt. A number of investors, including union and public pension funds, said they were given offering documents about home loans backing the securities that they purchased and that the content of this paperwork was misleading. They contend that a lot of securities came with high credit ratings that ended up falling to “junk status” as conditions in the market deteriorated.

This payout is the biggest thus far to resolve federal class action securities litigation involving mortgage-backed securities. The second largest was the $315 million reached with Merrill Lynch (MER), which is also a Bank of America unit. That agreement was approved in 2012.

Also, Bank of America was recently named the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the California city of Los Angeles over allegedly discriminatory lending practices that the plaintiff says played a part in causing foreclosures. LA is also suing Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC).

The city says that Bank of America offered “predatory” loan terms that led to discrimination against minority borrowers. This resulted in foreclosures that caused the City’s property-tax revenues to decline. BofA, Wells Fargo, and Citibank have said that the claims are baseless.

U.S. seeks $864 million from Bank of America after fraud verdict, Reuters, November 9, 2013

Bank of America Added to Los Angeles’s Lawsuit, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2013

More Blog Posts:
$500M MBS Settlement Reached Between Countrywide and Investors, Stockbroker Fraud Blog, May 10, 2013

New Jersey Files Securities Lawsuit Against Credit Suisse Over $10B in MBS Sales, Stockbroker Fraud Blog, December 20, 2013