Lawsuit Against Countrywide Financial Corporation Expanded
January 27, 2008
It was announced on Friday that the consolidated class action lawsuit filed against Countrywide Financial Corporation and other defendants is to be expanded to include 26 different financial services companies that underwrote Countrywide stock and bond offerings, two global accounting firms, and additional Countrywide officers and directors who signed SEC filings that contained false and misleading information about Countrywide’s business and finances.
“The actions of Countrywide and its underwriters created a situation in which, when the company’s stock and bond prices fell, it was investors, and not the company’s executives, that sustained heavy losses,” Thompson said. “As borrowers lost their homes and investors held onto artificially inflated securities, Countrywide executives cashed out to the tune of almost $700 million. We will pursue every avenue to ensure that those who defrauded investors are held accountable for their actions.”
“Countrywide’s underwriters had a duty to investigate whether Countrywide was acting honestly,” DiNapoli said. “Instead, the underwriters and accountants enabled Countrywide to release false statements. Investors lost millions, and New Yorkers lost their homes. We can’t sit idly by; we need to recover the pension fund’s losses and find a way to help all those families. This class action suit is the first step.”
Countrywide Financial Corp., based in Calabasas, California, is one of the nation’s largest home mortgage lenders. The class action alleges that Countrywide’s material misstatements and omissions regarding its lending practices, and other aspects of its business and finances, artificially inflated the price of the company’s securities. When the truth was revealed, stock and bond prices plummeted and investors lost money. The class action also alleges that Countrywide issued stock and bonds based on SEC filings that contained false information.
By expanding the suit, the plaintiffs seek to ensure that the underwriters and accounting firms who participated in marketing of Countrywide securities to the public are held accountable for their actions. The suit also seeks to hold Countrywide officers and directors who signed false and misleading SEC filings accountable.
Thompson and DiNapoli believe that the New York City Pension Funds and the New York State Common Retirement Fund lost millions of dollars as a result of misleading statements and factual misrepresentations by Countrywide. On November 28, 2007, Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer, of the United States District Court, Central District of California, named DiNapoli and the New York City Pension Funds as co-lead plaintiffs in the class action suit.
The five New York City Pension Funds - which collectively hold more than $110 billion in assets - are the: New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System for the City of New York, New York Fire Pension Fund, New York City Police Pension Fund and the Board of Education Retirement System. Thompson serves as investment advisor to the funds.
Labaton Sucharow LLP, a firm with extensive experience in large securities fraud cases, is lead counsel.
The expanded suit includes the following companies:
ABN AMRO Inc.
A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
Banc of America Securities LLC
Barclays Capital Inc.
BNP Paribas Securities Corporation
BNY Capital Markets, Inc.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Countrywide Securities Corporation
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities Inc.
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Greenwich Capital Markets, Inc.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Lehman Brothers Inc.
Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc.
Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.
RBC Capital Markets Corporation
RBC Dominion Securities Inc.
RBC Dain Rauscher Inc.
Scotia Capital Inc.
SG Americas Securities
TD Securities Inc.
UBS Securities LLC
Wachovia Capital Markets LLC
Wachovia Securities, Inc.
Grant Thornton LLP
KPMG LLP
| 2.5 |
Written by 
admin · Filed Under Business News
I have just made the effort to refinance through xxxx and almost made the mistake of signing for payments that would have been higher then quoted to me. The payments that were quoted did not include the escrow that xxxx had all of the information for to be able to quote a correct monthly payment yet when quoted the extra expense of the escrow was left out. Besides this the original financing was done through xxxx and through the refinance they were trying to charge me for escrow payments I had already made through my mortgage I’ve never missed a payment on. I am still trying to go through the refinance crap with xxxx at this time and they seemed to have dropped the ball on me after I told them charging me for the escrow twice is a common mistake that costs homeowners often. Also the closing expense for a total loan of $79,100.00 came to $5,666.07 if I would have signed. This is way out of hand considering a family member has just refinanced over $112,000.00 for less then half of the amount of my closing GFE and this family member has a credit rating number below mine. Through all of this I stand to loose $350.00 that was charged to my credit card to start the refinance. Originally I was told this money would be refunded through the closing yet it was not included in the GFE that was sent to me.
Be careful people, I almost fell for this and I hope you don’t let them take you to the cleaners as they have tried with me.
I was a Colorado xxxx Home Loans Employee and part of the workforce reduction layoff. xxx ruined me financialy and I’m still lookinfg for permanent employment, after 6 months!!!
I have a lot to say. I was the only employee out of 23 employees, that did not receive any bonus payouts.
I had more tenure than anyone in my office and I trained my upper management. I was promoted twice and never received anything close to what the management was making, as new employees.
They received bonuses of $114,00.00+ for end of year bonus and 40,000 to 50,000 qrtly bonuses. I was laid off Oct 11th and they hired someone else in my place. They said they couldn’t keep me unless they had 1000 loans.
They hired someone with 400+ loans in the pipe. They did fraudulent loans and made everyone pull the numbers, in order to receive their upper management bonuses. I was promoted twice and yet only receive 1 merit increase in 3.5 years.
I was given letters of reference from upper management and promised the highest of references to any potential employers and I learned 3 1/2 months after looking for work, that the mgrs. were instructed to give no references for any employee.
Needless to say, I stopped using that reference letter. It isn’t worth the paper it was written on!
I witnessed 95% of all loans to be unworthy borrowers and the loans still had to be done, no matter what incentives had to be given, to acheive those high dollar goals. Call me xxxxx
we are with xxxxxxxx and we had to file for bankrupcy,in 2003 we paid everything to date and was discharged ,but xxxxxx said we were 4 month behind yet ,we send every payment cerifed mail ,they have to sign everytime,then they took our escoll money to pay to date ,they were going to send the money back and forclose on us they told us they were doing us a favor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and of course they have bad credit rating for us ,making it harder for us to get away from them
I would like to know how and who to contact to participate in the class action lawsuit against Countrywide Home Loans. My husband and I have suffered and nearly lost our home due to them adding fees and not giving us any reasonable options while our mortgage continued to go up every 6 months and at some points it even increased before we could catch it up / before 6 months. For over 2 years we have been miserable and stressed to the point of nearly giving up everything to try to keep our home. I live in MS and I don’t know who to talk to here about this. Thank You.
The following link is to a site containing details of many of the lawsuits against Countrywide:
http://www.responsiblelending.org/issues/mortgage/countrywide-watch/litigation/
You could also try the Mississippi Attorney General’s office for information.
I am currently with countrywide and they have screwed with me BIG TIME. I fell behind by 2 months and they put me into foreclosure. I did there so called workout program and they got me further behind on my payments. Every time I talked to them they always said my case has been given to a different nagotiator. They drug it out another 5 months which put me 6000 further behind that what I was orinally. Now my payments are more than I can handle and I now have 8 months worth of late or no payment on my credit. I can’t get any kind of loan thanks to them dragging there feet and making my situation going from fixable to total devistation. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m a single mom raising 2 boys and am scared I might loose my house. I am having to borrow money from family and friends just to keep the payments current. I can’t keep aking them for help. So what does everyone do? Throw in the towel and say fine have the house? It’s a total mess and I’m stressed to the max. Any advise would be greatly appriciated.
Kathy
I had to get refinanced in order to buy out my former husband during our stressful divorce and to prevent him from going after my retirement in the divorce settlement. In a hurry, I ended up getting an ARMS loan, not fully understanding the fianancial reprecussions. I kept paying the lowest end payment which kept allowing xxxx to tag on the same or more money to the end of the loan. The loan kept getting bigger and the market value of the house kept going down. There was no hope for me to sell the house and pay off the growing loan!
I got a financial advisor who approached xxxx with a financial plan that was a win/win situation for both of us. All they had to do was take $35 K off the end of my loan and I would Self Raise my own house payment to $2K a month from $1411.00. (This would be a struggle on one salary, but I didn’t want to loose my home.) Then in a few years, when the market improved and finally turned around, I would live in the house, take care of it for them, then sell the house and xxxx would get all of their money and I would retain my good credit rating. Sounded pretty cool to me!
I had received a letter from xxxx stating that my loan was set to recast and my payment would have been $3K…which I could not afford. The plan my consultant came up with was flawless and xxxx would have nothing to do with it.
It is such bad business! Go Figure. They would rather pay out $75K in forclosure fees and be stuck with a house that has lost it’s value, one that it is 18 years old, then to forgive $35K off my loan.
Oh, and the other thing, I have never missed my payment…even the low end payment of $1411.00 and so xxxx wouldn’t even talk to my financial advisor at first because my loan WASN’T DILIQUENT. They had so many houses in foreclosure where people just walked away. He had to go over several people’s heads to talk to someone in the “HOPE DEPARTMENT” aka the “WORKOUT DEPARTMENT”
They told him to submit the plan in writing and every time we called about it, we talked to someone different. People that had been helping us, no longer worked there when we’d call back! It has been a NIGHTMARE and going on TWO YEARS since I got the letter saying the loan was going to recast.
So, xxxx would not help me, even tho I came to them to get help BEFORE disaster struck! xxxx would not help someone who had a flawless plan. I have a good job. I have an excellent credit rating. I even paid a financial consultant to help me approach xxxx. They blew us off at every opportunity and said that xxxx would NEVER consider such a plan, although when you read the paper or watch tv xxxx was spending a fortune advertising that they would consider all offers and plans and they would help any borrower who needed help! Yeah, right. As long as you qualified and did it THEIR way.
I come to them, lay a plan out for them and they say NO! Yet they are helping give “deals” to friends of employees and State Senators and Hollywood Stars….what a bunch of jerks!
So, here I sit, waiting for the loan to recast and then being forced into letting my precious house just go into foreclosure! I still have not stopped paying the low end payment.
PLUS I dont’ think people know that when you let your house go into foreclosure or even do a deed in lieu….the IRS hammers you. You are liable for paying taxes on the difference between the FMV of your home and the Loan Balance. Mine is right around $126K….so at approx. 30% for taxes, I will be stuck paying a tax bill of about $29K. I don’t have that kind of money and I am about
(or was) 3 years away from retiring. I have done everything right.
We remorgaged our home with Countrywide in May of 2008. We were told that our payments would not go up nor would the intrest, but that is not so ! We have gotten 2 different amounts that we have to pay in August one is for the Escrow for 949.00 and the other is for our house payment of 596.00. It is only supposed to be 429.00 a month. We still had money in escrow so where did it all go and why are we having to pay this other amount ? I do not understand all this at all. When we remorgaged our home, they sent someone here for us to sign the papers, we did not get to read any of them all he done was tell us about them and said sign here. So I do beleive we got jerked around.
Billy
I want to join any lawsuit against Countrywide. They forced me into forclosure twice by changing agreements made, not accepting payments, hounding me daily by different callers. Each time I paid legal fees and caught up and when I made payments within 30days they would report me as 30 days, within 60 days , and within 90 days they would always exxagerate the late payment to ruin my credit. If i ever made a agreement for payment, the next day someone else would call and not have a clue about the agreement. It was a true nightmare. Thank God I refinanced with another company and said goodbye to Countrywide. I had never missed a payment on my mortgage until Countrywide bought my loan. The first thing is I did not know where to pay, so I called in and they never answered the phone. I actually had the speaker phone on over 2 hours and they never picked up. But they have thousands of people to call and harass you to no end. I hate Countrywide and they did everything they could to ruin my credit so that I could not get rid of them. But I Did.
I left Countrywide by refinancing in January 2006 and I have never been late since. I have tried to fit my credit report with Countrywide but they refuse to fix it. Hopefully once BOA takes over this can be solved.
I will do anything to join a lawsuit against Countrywide because they did everything they could to ruin my life and credit.
Sincerely, Robert Milton
Cincinnati, Ohio