The CFPB now has the lion’s share of the oversight of the consumer debt collection market. Under the “larger participant” rule recently adopted by the CFPB, any firm with more than $10 million in annual receipts from consumer debt collection activities is now subject to the bureau’s supervisory authority. “This authority extends to about 175 debt collectors, which accounts for over 60 percent of the industry’s annual receipts in the consumer debt collection market,” the bureau said in its annual report to Congress on the Fair...

A federal judge in Los Angeles last week denied a motion by Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit to dismiss securities fraud claims by the Federal Housing Finance Agency on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for toxic MBS purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises.The FHFA’s complaint alleges that Fannie and Freddie purchased approximately $26.6 billion in residential MBS that Countrywide sold from Aug. 30, 2005, to Jan. 23, 2008. The agency alleges negligent misrepresentations and fraud related to the offerings of Countrywide MBS.

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to launch an industry-wide review of housing counseling agencies, including those approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as other tax-exempt entities that provide mortgage foreclosure assistance, compliance experts warned. In fact, the IRS has started looking at providers that have applied for tax-exempt status in recent months and has denied three organizations in February 2013 alone, according to attorneys with the Washington, DC, law firm Venable. Housing counseling agencies can use the issues raised in the “private letter” rulings as a ...

A federal employee union and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have agreed to implement a seven-day employee furlough because of a severe mandatory reduction in HUD’s budget in FY 2013. The seven furlough days, which also will affect FHA operations, will apply to HUD’s entire 9,100-person work force and will be spread out to one for each pay period beginning May 24. HUD initially proposed a 13-day furlough plan, which was to start May 10, but agreed to reduce it to seven days and to move the start date to May 24. Under an agreement between HUD and the American Federation of Government Employees Council 222, furlough days will occur on ...

A U.S. Senator’s call for a Department of Justice investigation into whether Lender Processing Services used an improper fee structure to double-bill underwater homeowners for servicing fees related to processing foreclosures and bankruptcies is off the mark and old business, say industry observers. In a letter sent last week to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, cited concerns brought to his attention by an industry professional that Jacksonville, FL-based LPS engineered a scheme to charge homeowners or mortgage investors for foreclosure-related legal services provided by the company’s preferred network of law firms. Banks using LPS network law firms would receive free access to the firm’s mortgage-processing software, according to the letter. “The ramifications of this case, however, seem...

The CFPB and other federal defendants have filed to dismiss a legal challenge to the bureau’s authority to identify “unfair, deceptive, or abusive” acts or practices, and the related assertion that President Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the bureau was invalid because the Senate allegedly was not in recess at the time of the appointment. The case is State National Bank of Big Spring, et al., v. Neal S. Wolin, in his official capacity as Acting United States Secretary of the Treasury and ex officio Chairperson...

The Department of Justice has filed a 20-page brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in an attempt to dissuade the court from embracing the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board, in which the court declared unconstitutional President Obama’s recess appointments of three members of the NLRB. “The Noel Canning decision conflicts with nearly two centuries of executive branch practice and the decisions of three other courts of appeals, two of them sitting en banc,” Beth...

A legal argument by the CFPB in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, Marx v. General Revenue Corp., was recently rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States. The SCOTUS ruled that a prevailing defendant can recoup costs even if there is not a court finding that the plaintiff filed suit in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment. In this case, petitioner Marx filed suit, alleging that General Revenue Corp. (GRC) violated the FDCPA by harassing and falsely threatening her in order to collect on...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it will share information soon on the estimated impact of mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts on HUD/FHA programs and their recipients. A HUD spokesman declined to put a sequestration tag on all affected programs, including FHA, saying details would be available as soon as the department notifies all HUD funding recipients of automatic spending cuts that went into effect last week. The mandatory cuts to defense and discretionary spending kicked in after Congress failed to enact a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, as required by ...