Enforcement

The templates are meant to make it easier to obtain agency approval for small-dollar loan products and to accommodate mortgage servicers that want to provide online loss mitigation options.

The agency has freed companies from reporting requirements and provided flexibility on exams to help them deal with COVID-19 fallout. It has also finished other regulatory relief efforts that were in the pipeline before the pandemic hit.

A Rapid City, S.D., real estate agent must serve more than a year in prison and pay $124,645 in restitution after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

Five Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter to Director Kathy Kraninger calling the agency's response to COVID-19 “tepid and ineffectual at best.”

Finance of America Reverse agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that a company it acquired violated the False Claims Act for loans submitted for Federal Housing Administration insurance in 2010.

The agency said lenders should avoid reporting delinquent payments to credit bureaus for consumers who have sought payment relief due to the pandemic.

The reprieve from mortgage data collection was among several changes to the agency’s supervisory and enforcement procedures to help firms responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With increased economic distress because of the coronavirus, lenders are likely to see an increase of borrowers looking for a mortgage rescission, arguing they are eligible for an extended filing time frame.

The Trump administration proposes cutting personnel and other budgetary items at the bureau, while the agency’s director — who controls the purse strings and was hand-picked by the administration — aims to boost spending and hire more employees.

The pursuit of a dream home became a nightmare for apartment hunters who were scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars by an agent pushing a phony affordable housing scheme in Brooklyn, N.Y., authorities said.

Members of the House Financial Services Committee chastised Kathy Kraninger for not supervising student loan servicers and failing to examine firms for compliance with the Military Lending Act.

Mary Doenlen couldn't tell a judge why she stole over $130,000 from her employer. She wasn't in financial straits. She has a daughter, a husband and a sickly father to tend to.

The agency has named Thomas G. Ward as the bureau's assistant director for enforcement. House Democrats have questioned Ward's role as a political appointee in the Trump administration.

Rooted in increased regulations and general customer backlash, there is a growing emphasis on collecting consent and ensuring privacy of customer data, especially following enactment of the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Mortgage foreclosure rescue schemes resulted in the second highest median individual loss to consumers among all types of fraud reported to the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.

A Virginia Beach, Va., real estate broker was sentenced to 13 months in prison for secretly purchasing foreclosed properties the Department of Housing and Urban Development hired him to sell.

A former Fannie Mae employee is facing more than six years in federal prison for participating in a scam involving discount sales of properties owned by the government-sponsored enterprise.

The Federal Housing Administration has implemented defect taxonomy revisions for 2020 that it considers one of several milestone achievements in its efforts to "provide greater clarity and consistency for lenders.”

The Department of Banking and Insurance in New Jersey is warning that enforcement of a 2019 residential mortgage servicer licensing law will begin in 2020.

Consumer attorneys are filing more Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits than ever and if a piece of follow-up legislation becomes law, the peril to mortgage lenders will grow.