Blog Archive: January 2013

Recently leaked information indicating that a replacement to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) “Independent Foreclosure Review” has now been confirmed by the OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). As the Huffington Post noted, there is clearly no longer a need for concern over the independence of the review, because it is now being managed by the very same entities who were supposed to be punished by the settlement. Lenders and servicers will now...

As the December 31, 2012 deadline for submission of foreclosure review claims under the OCC program has passed, more and more people are seeing the consultant-driven audit as “a ruse and a waste of time and money,” just as described by the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Sheila Bair. According to sources at the NY Times, the OCC review has already cost banks $1.5 billion, and yet aggrieved homeowners have yet to see any meaningful recovery under thi...

  The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a grassroots, workers’ rights organization that has been nationally recognized for its campaigns to combat exploitation and modern-day slavery of migrant farmworkers. Migrant farmworkers never received the basic rights secured by the long struggle of the labor movement, such as the right to a reasonable minimum wage or the right to organize and to bargain collectively. With limited legal recourse, the CIW resorted to direct action, including ...

The federal government recovered nearly $5 billion from False Claims Act cases in 2012 according to a recent press release by the Department of Justice. “The False Claims Act is the government’s primary civil remedy to redress false claims for federal money or property, such as Medicare benefits, federal subsidies and loans and payments under contracts for goods and services, including military contracts.” The Act also encourages whistleblowers to speak out by promising them up to 30 pe...