“Many sophisticated parties have been duped,” said NAR.

This advisor noted that WJB was looking to raise debt, but was also open to a sale.

The Fair Labor Standards Act spells out the basis for an administrative exemption from overtime pay.

One commenter said the GSEs should be required to purchase chattel loans that are “prudently underwritten with appropriate consumer protections.”

CFPB Now Accepting Complaints About Online ‘Marketplace’ Lenders. The bureau is now taking complaints from the public about online marketplace lenders, including companies that play in the mortgage space. “When consumers shop for a loan online we want them to be informed and to understand what they are signing up for,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “All lenders, from online startups to large banks, must follow consumer financial protection laws. By accepting these consumer complaints, we are giving people a greater voice in these markets and a place to turn to when they encounter problems.” The bureau also released a consumer bulletin that outlines tips for consumers who are considering taking [with exclusive data chart] ...

Last week, the CFPB asked the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Southern Division to enter a final judgment and order that would shut down Student Loan Processing.US, and crack down on its sole owner, James Krause, for allegedly charging borrowers millions of dollars in illegal upfront fees for federal student loan services. The order would also require the company to pay refunds to thousands of consumers the bureau says were harmed, as well as a civil money penalty. In December 2014, the CFPB sued the company and Krause, alleging they illegally marketed and sold services promising to advise and assist borrowers applying for Department of Education student loan repayment programs. According to the bureau’s complaint, the ...

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last week granted the CFPB’s request for a final judgement against debt relief company Morgan Drexen, Inc., bringing to an end a lawsuit filed by the bureau back in August 2013. The agency alleged that the company and its leadership charged illegal upfront fees for debt relief services and misrepresented their services to consumers. According to the CFPB, when consumers signed up for Morgan Drexen’s services, the company presented them with two contracts, one for debt settlement services and one for bankruptcy-related services. Based on its investigation, the bureau brought suit alleging that consumers who signed up sought services for debt relief and not bankruptcy, that little to no bankruptcy ...

CFPB Director Richard Cordray last week defended the approach his agency has taken in its public enforcement actions, which many in the industry have criticized as “regulation by enforcement.” “I think that criticism is badly misplaced,” Cordray said Wednesday in a speech at a meeting of the Consumer Bankers Association in Phoenix. Certainly, he said, any responsible official charged with enforcing the law has to recognize that he should be thoughtful in how he deploys his agency’s limited resources most efficiently to protect the public. “That means working toward a pattern of actions that conveys an intelligible direction to the marketplace, so as to create deterrence that can be readily understood and implemented,” said the CFPB chief. The alternative, as ...

Industry groups representing mostly smaller mortgage lending institutions had some suggested revisions for the CFPB to take into account as it considers updating its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act resubmission guidelines. “The current resubmission standards are simply impractical and will become even more unattainable when the revised HMDA rule goes into effect,” said the American Bankers Association and the Consumer Bankers Association in a joint comment letter to the bureau. Equally as important, the current standards demand a level of accuracy that far exceeds what is necessary to achieve HMDA’s purpose. “More reasonable data integrity standards will underline our members’ focus on responsibly providing credit to consumers who meet prudent underwriting standards; they will not detract from these vital purposes,” they ...

The Consumer Mortgage Coalition and the Mortgage Servicers Working Group wrote the CFPB recently to express their concerns with the bureau’s proposal on successors in interest and urged a more simplified approach instead. “While the CFPB stated that the successors in interest proposal was designed to make account information available to confirmed successors in interest, and to make loss mitigation procedures available to them, the proposal would not make these available,” the groups said. To begin with, privacy protections that the CFPB has not proposed to amend would continue to prohibit servicers from providing information absent borrower consent. “When the borrower does consent to disclosures, the disclosures are permitted under current law,” the CMC and the MSWG note. Also under ...