RICO Law Blog : RICO Lawyer & Attorney : Thomas Walker : Cosho Humphrey Law Firm : RICO Act, Federal and State Racketeering Litigation, Boise Idaho

A federal district court has denied Countrywide Financial Corp.’s motion to dismiss a consolidated class action complaint against the lender. Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who is overseeing the multidistrict litigation against Countrywide entitled In Re Countrywide Financial Corp Mortgage Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, sustained all claims for the majority of plaintiffs. The plaintiffs in the consolidated actions Levas v. Bank of America Corp., Jackson v. Countrywide Financial Corp. and White v. Countrywide Financial Corp. accuse Countrywide of steering borrowers into risky and inappropriate subprime mortgages irrespective of their suitability to borrowers in order to maximize profits. Whatley Drake & Kallas, LLC is co-lead interim class counsel in the multidistrict litigation.

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ING Bank, the nation’s second-largest thrift, is seeking more than $6 million from a group it alleges engaged in a conspiracy to obtain fraudulent mortgage loans. This unusual racketeering lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle, alleging a criminal conspiracy by an escrow agent, a mortgage broker and 10 couples to defraud the bank of at least $6 million through falsified mortgages.
 

The bank, an arm of the Netherlands-based ING Group, is also seeking a court order to foreclose on eight properties in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Grant counties because the borrowers have failed to pay their interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgages on time and allegedly made false statements in their loan applications.
 

Some of the borrowers received between $1,500 and $12,500 in cash from the loan proceeds, court documents filed by the bank suggest.
 

And ING contends two of the borrowers never lived in the houses they bought with the loans.
For their part, the borrowers, all Eastern European immigrants, say they are victims of the alleged fraud as well.
 

Legal experts said the suit may be one of the first in the nation in which a bank — unable to recoup its losses by selling the loans or the collateral properties — uses the racketeering law to collect money from borrowers and the real-estate professionals who helped them buy a house.
 

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