By Mary Ellen Podmolik
At least 531 Illinois homeowners will be offered mortgage loan modifications by Wells Fargo Bank after an investigation into allegedly deceptive marketing of payment option adjustable rate mortgages.
Illinois and seven other states investigated Wachovia and Golden West’s marketing of pay-option ARMs, potentially risky loan products because they allow borrowers to pay only a minimum payment, with the rest of the funds due added to the balance of the loan, which eventually resets at much higher required payments. Wells Fargo owns Wachovia and Golden West. Get the full story »
By Reuters
Facebook and Twitter social networking sites were used to tout stocks in a classic “pump and dump” fraud of about $7 million that was uncovered during a cocaine-trafficking probe, U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday. Get the full story »
By Reuters
The Justice Department sued American Express on Monday for allegedly violating antitrust law over credit card acceptance rules, and settled with Visa and MasterCard on the same issue.
The Justice Department, in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, said the case was focused on credit card companies’ efforts to stop merchants from steering customers to credit cards with lower fees imposed on the merchant.
In a proposed final judgment, Visa and MasterCard must allow merchants to offer discounts to customers who use cards that charge the stores less. Get the full story »
Oct. 1, 2010 at 11:50 a.m.
Filed under:
Exchanges,
Investigations,
Investing
Bloomberg News | A mutual fund’s routine effort to hedge against losses helped set off a chain of events that turned an orderly selloff on May 6 into a crash that erased $862 billion in U.S. equity value in less than 20 minutes, according to two people with direct knowledge of regulators’ findings. Get the full story »
Sep. 30, 2010 at 9:52 a.m.
Filed under:
Banking,
Investigations,
Investing
By Reuters
Fabrice Tourre, a central figure in a controversial Goldman Sachs transaction, asked a judge to throw out a U.S. regulator’s fraud lawsuit against him, 2-1/2 months after the bank settled its part of the case for $550 million. Get the full story »
Sep. 29, 2010 at 4:28 p.m.
Filed under:
Investigations,
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has asked Ally Financial to freeze all foreclosures and not initiate any new ones against Illinois homeowners until an investigation of its foreclosure practices is complete.
According to the state, more than 100,000 Illinois homeowners have mortgages that are serviced by the company, including 78,500 first mortgages.
An Ally employee testified in a Florida court case that he signed at least 10,000 affidavits a month to process foreclosures without reviewing the underlying paperwork and that those documents were then filed with the court as evidence of Ally’s rights to foreclose on the homes. Get the full story »
By Bruce Japsen
The Illinois Department of Insurance said it has taken steps to prohibit several companies from “marketing and selling non-comprehensive health insurance” in the state without a license. Get the full story »
Sep. 27, 2010 at 3:08 p.m.
Filed under:
Investigations,
Stock activity
By Reuters
A surge in quote traffic immediately followed by heavy sales of key securities may have sparked the “flash crash” on U.S. stock markets on May 6, a firm that has provided key insights into that day’s events said on Monday.
The sale of $125 million worth of Chicago Mercantile Exchange S&P500 stock index e-mini futures contracts at 2:42 p.m. on May 6, followed 25 microseconds later by the sale of more than $100 million worth of popular exchange-traded funds (ETFs) appears to have triggered the sell-off, datafeed vendor Nanex LLC said. Get the full story »
Sep. 24, 2010 at 12:19 p.m.
Filed under:
Investigations
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
The Illinois Attorney General’s office said Friday that it was “demanding” a meeting with Ally Financial, commonly known as GMAC Mortgage, to determine how many Illinois homeowners may be involved in an investigation of the company’s foreclosure procedures and whether the state’s Consumer Fraud Act had been violated. Get the full story »
By Reuters
Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein at the Senate hearing on the role of investment banks during the financial crisis, Apr. 27, 2010. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT)
The timing of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was “suspicious,” the federal regulator’s watchdog said Wednesday.
The SEC filed civil fraud charges against Goldman in mid-April, the same day the watchdog group released a damning report that accused the SEC of mishandling its probe of Allen Stanford’s alleged Ponzi scheme.
The report, authored by SEC Inspector General David Kotz, said the SEC had suspected as early as 1997 that Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme, but did nothing to stop it until late 2005. Get the full story »
Sep. 21, 2010 at 11:49 a.m.
Filed under:
Food,
Government,
Investigations
By Associated Press
A company that has engineered salmon to grow twice as fast as the conventional variety says its food should not be labeled any differently in the grocery store if it is approved by the U.S. government.
The chief executive of the company, Ron Stotish, argued at a Food and Drug Administration hearing Tuesday that genetically modified salmon have the same flavor, texture, color and odor as the conventional fish. Get the full story »
Sep. 21, 2010 at 9:40 a.m.
Filed under:
Investigations,
Manufacturing
By Bruce Japsen
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied $54,500 in fines against an Evanston-based plastic maker, saying it violated 16 “serious safety violations” by exposing employees to unguarded machinery and “electric shock hazards.” Get the full story »
Sep. 21, 2010 at 8:02 a.m.
Filed under:
Banking,
Investigations
By Associated Press
The Vatican said Tuesday that it is “perplexed and surprised” by a money laundering probe after police seize euro23 million.
The ANSA news agency says Italian financial police seized the $30 million from an account in the Vatican bank in the money laundering investigation. Get the full story »
Sep. 17, 2010 at 9:01 a.m.
Filed under:
Banking,
Investigations
By Gail MarksJarvis
Banks are getting wise to people who bank hop to get the highest interest rates on checking accounts and some are cutting off customers who they think have become too big for their britches. Depositaccounts.com writes that banks can tell when you have been trotting from bank to bank opening accounts. And they don’t like it because they want you to be loyal only to them. My advice: Shop anyway. The more the merrier if you can pull it off.
By Julie Johnsson
Boeing Co. received billions of dollars in illegal government subsidies, including $25 million in incentives that Illinois provided the plane maker to relocate its world headquarters to Chicago in 2001, a panel of the World Trade Organization determined.
The WTO report is confidential and was released to U.S. and European trade officials Wednesday. It is the first ruling in the second of dueling trade cases filed by the U.S. and European Union against each other last decade alleging that aircraft manufacturers had received unfair government support. Get the full story »
