Enforcement

The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday had his first taste of the withering congressional criticism endured by his predecessor on trips to Capitol Hill.

Continuing to pull back the reins on the aggressive approach taken under former Director Richard Cordray, the agency's new five-year plan values consumer choice over heavy-handed enforcement.

A Bridgeport, Conn., local debt collection lawyer, embroiled in a controversy over the city's foreclosure on homeowners owing back sewer bills, is being sued by a local homeowner who claims he was the victim of an illegal foreclosure.

It is unclear whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is abandoning its supervisory oversight of Equifax or just taking a back seat to the Federal Trade Commission as the latter investigates the credit bureau.

Consumer advocates see acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney's restructuring as an attempt to reduce oversight and penalties for firms that discriminate against borrowers.

Servicers that handle loans in the government's Making Home Affordable program could face more enforcement at the urging of the Special Investigator General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

A Bucks County, Pa., man is charged with lying to federal housing officials in a series of forged financial statements in order to serve as an approved mortgage lender for the Federal Housing Administration.

Mick Mulvaney’s unapologetic memo to staff about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mission headlined a spate of developments this past week as he continues to transform the agency. Here are the key developments.

A former associate of Cook County Judge Jessica Arong O'Brien pleaded guilty Friday to her role in a $1.4 million mortgage fraud scheme and is expected to testify at O'Brien's criminal trial next month.

Mick Mulvaney and Richard Cordray set themselves apart from the run-of-the-mill Beltway bashing of late when their war of words over the CFPB went positively bookish.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a request for information Wednesday seeking comment on the bureau's process for investigating companies that face possible enforcement actions.

Ocwen Financial is receiving a lump-sum payment of $280 million from New Residential under the latest restructuring of the mortgage servicing rights sale.

If anyone has doubted that acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney intends to overhaul the agency, the last three days alone have put those doubts to rest.

The CFPB's recent freeze on collecting any personally identifiable information from companies it supervises is slowing investigations and could ultimately cripple the agency's enforcement function — and that may be the point.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is asking acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney to account for recent directives limiting agency staff members’ ability to access or acquire electronic data, saying the moves hamper critical agency operations.

The Denver judge, who last spring ruled that former foreclosure king Larry Castle and his law firm did not violate state laws designed to protect consumers against fraudulent charges, was biased and made several missteps during the three-week bench trial leading up to his decision, the Colorado attorney general's office asserts in its appeal of the verdict.

PHH Corp. agreed to a $45 million settlement to resolve allegations from 49 states and the District of Columbia that it engaged in "foreclosure process abuses" involving "inconsistent signatures" in its servicing business from 2009 to 2012. The settlement comes as the nonbank mortgage company continues its legal challenge to a separate regulatory action by the CFPB.

A Stratford, Conn., man faces up to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud, according to the Department of Justice.

PHH Mortgage was the first mortgage servicer to be fined by the New York Department of Financial Services for failing to maintain a "zombie" property.

A Milwaukee landlord who continued to buy foreclosed properties at auction after being sanctioned, must pay $64,550 in municipal court fines that he has been effectively dodging as far back as 2009, a Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge ordered.