In a reversal of the smidgen of accountability forced on Bank of America for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, a U.S. appeals court threw out a jury’s verdict — and with it, the $1.27 billion fine BoA would have paid for mortgage fraud.
Though the Department of Justice had alleged Countrywide Financial Corp., which was purchased by Bank of America in 2008, had sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thousands of bad loans through its “Hustle” mortgage program, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found insufficient evidence to back charges of fraud.
“The trial evidence fails to demonstrate the contemporaneous fraudulent intent necessary to prove a scheme to defraud through contractual promises,” wrote Circuit Judge Richard Wesley on the court’s unanimous decision, as Reuters reported.
Originally, the DOJ claimed Countrywide’s “High Speed Swim Lane” (HSSL, also called Hustle) program “rewarded staff for generating more mortgages and emphasizing speed over quality, and resulted in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being lied to about the quality of loans they bought,” Reuters explained.
Though the court confirmed the jury’s findings that the shoddy loans might represent an “intentional breach of contract,” it didn’t agree the breach could be considered actual fraud.
Wall Street cleared a major obstacle in the court’s reversal, as repercussions from the judgment will make proving fraud against corporations like the Big Banks far more strenuous for the DOJ — particularly since precious few cases surrounding the crisis have even made it to trial.
In using an old law, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) — enacted in the 1980s after the savings and loan crisis — the government attempted to “civilly prosecute fraud affecting federally insured financial institutions,” as Fannie and Freddie were, the Wall Street Journal explained.
It’s possible the ruling will trigger a domino effect as the Big Banks may now feel emboldened to fight charges rather than pay settlements.
Rebecca Mairone, a mid-level Countrywide executive, had been ordered to pay $1 million in civil penalties in the same original ruling from 2014 by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff — but that ruling was also tossed out on Monday. Mairone’s attorney, Joshua Rosenkranz, said the ruling shows “this case was a massive government overreach from inception,” and prosecutors “tried to take an allegation of garden variety breach of contract and turn it into a fraud [case] with crushing and career-ending penalties.”
Countrywide’s rather atrocious loan scheme allowed employees to tell superiors why mortgages rejected by corporate auditors would still be loan-worthy — without having to provide evidence of customers’ ability to repay.
Countrywide has served as a de facto poster child of the 2008 financial crisis because its Hustle program almost exclusively favored speed and profiteering over due diligence and caution.
Former Countrywide executive, Ed O’Connell, became a prime witness for the government for his testimony that he had been ignored by superiors after alerting them to the quantity of problematic loans being issued. As the Wall Street Journal reported, O’Connell did not receive money from this case since the time it was appealed, but previously received $58 million from Bank of America in the matter.
Both the Dept. of Justice and the U.S. attorney’s office reportedly declined to comment, though the option remains open for the government to pursue the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.
An unidentified Bank of America spokesman said the company was “pleased with the appellate court’s decision.”
Though the original $1.27 billion penalty could have been considered paltry compared to the estimated over $3 trillion lost to the financial meltdown, it had at least been symbolic. With this ruling, the Big Banks unsurprisingly receive yet another layer of defense against responsibility for wrecking the global economy.
This article (So, You Thought Bank of America Would be Punished for Role in 2008 Crisis? Think Again) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Mike Mozart. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
So.. what’s new? Even Judges are get rich for siding with the criminal banks!
When a judge throws a case so his son in law can get a job it’s “legal.”
B of A along with Citibank and JP Morgan Chase are facets of BIS behind which are the eight most powerful banking dynasties: the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.
Carroll Quigley confirmed “BIS was part of a plan to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements.”
globalresearch (dot) ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080
“The Extraordinary General Meeting of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) held on 8 January 2001 decided, in accordance with the recommendation of the Board of
Directors, to restrict, for the future, the right to hold shares in the BIS exclusively to central banks and accordingly approved the mandatory repurchase by the BIS of all BIS shares held by private shareholders, against payment of compensation of CHF 16,000 for each share (equivalent to some USD 9,950 at the USD/CHF exchange rate on 8 January 2001).”
If you want to can trace everything to the Vatican and the Black Pope.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), US Supreme Court Justice, (1939)
“So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. ”
– Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
(1804-1881)
“There is something behind the Throne greater than the King himself.”
Sir William Pitt (1708-78),
“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.” — British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876
Great classic quotes. Thanks!
You’re welcome.
The lesson; crime pays. Get into finance and steal as much as you can cause the law doesn’t apply.
Pay attention to point 7.
500 years b.C. the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu formulated the principle of subversion this way :
1. Cover with ridicule all of the valid traditions in your opponent’s country.
2. Implicate their leaders in criminal affairs and turn them over to the scorn of their populace at the right time.
3. Disrupt the work of their government by every means.
4. Do not shun the aid of the lowest and most despicable individuals of your enemy’s country.
5. Spread disunity and dispute among the citizens.
6. Turn the young against the old.
7. Be generous with promises and rewards to collaborators and accomplices.
first time you ever posted anything intelligent…
Only from a standpoint of a crazy person……. you ?
not yet
DeCeipt gave billions to the bankers to make sure they had a great vacation in Dubai.
Well, it was EITHER…
*Prosecute the bankers for the toxic mortgage/LIBOR scams that impoverished the world, making homeless, hungry, beggars out of all of us.
*Punish the banking cartel’s multi-billion dollar drug-money laundering operations.
*Investigate why jobs and manufacturing are being out-sourced to China. How China came to own the most of the US debt that financed the US war against…China. Why China (the oligarchy) is buying up US assets at fire sale prices, even as the US is threatening war against China (national security).
*Stop the Fed from fanning hyper-inflation (QE1, QE2, QE3, QE∞) that will result in food riots, mass starvation.
*Stop the looting, privatization of the world’s social safety net, public space, the commons, imposed “austerity” due to the unprosecuted toxic mortgage/LIBOR/Social Security rip-off scams.
*Investigate who was really behind 9/11, the false-flag terrorist attack that touched off the serial, never-ending wars of pillage against the nation-states of the world, initiating the massive expropriation of public wealth, while simultaneously creating the pretext for the massive police state edifice now threatening the freedoms of everyone.
*Investigate why the US government won’t move heaven and earth to stop the radiation spewing from Fukushima, poisoning the US, the northern hemisphere, and investigate the connections between the Fukushima, Stuxnet, HAARP and nuke created earthquakes.
OR…
The Satanic oligarchy…
*Makes being homeless, jobless, veteran, elderly and hungry a crime (useless eaters).
*Ends food stamps to the poor even though there are no jobs, no social safety net, which will result in the starvation of thousands of Americans; with one in five children now living in poverty, forcing the old back to work, while the young can find no jobs.
*Stands by while the unprosecuted banking and economic crisis destroys the ability of cities and towns to protect their own citizens, fund their police departments.
*enables the invasion of Mexican drug cartels, allowing the cartels to traffic drugs into the US, while supplying arms via “Fast & Furious” and allowing a massive influx of illegal aliens into the US.
*Confiscates the guns.
*DHS buys billions of anti-personnel bullets, while giving away “tanks” to US cities and towns.
*Flies soon to be weaponized drones over everywhere.
*Allows Israel, a foreign country to run US NSA spying out of Mormon (Freemason/occult) Utah.
*Pre-positions military hardware in preparation for the coming US melt-down and chaos (COG).
*Buys thousands of “FEMA coffins” in anticipation of US mass starvation, Fukushima FEMA camp relocations.
So, You Thought Bank of America Would be Punished for Role in 2008 Crisis? Think Again
lol…No, sorry. I’m not that stupid.
The banks own the courts in the state of New York. One of the main sticking points for Europe regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade agreement is the banks in the US are insisting that agreement prohibit any foreign country from suing New York banks anywhere outside of New York City.
Same sht. Different day.
The sooner all the zentral banks (zionists owned) fail, the sooner a thousand years of peace will commence.
ENDtheFED.
USURYisTHEFT.
TAXATIONisTHEFT.