Commercial Banking

NYAG Eric Schneiderman Plans To Sue BOA & Wells Fargo For Mortgage Fraud

In January of 2011, President Obama selected New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in his State of the Union address to lead a banking crime busters force. The creation of the team came on behalf of the Democrat's disenfranchised liberal base, a sect frustrated with the lack of criminal conseq ... More >>

The (Very) Earthly Pursuits of Rev. Calvin O. Butts III

Meet the reverend of real estate

Does TD Bank Owe a Debt to Midtown Lunch?

One of a series of subway teaser ads by TD Bank I was hurrying toward the R train at Elmhurst Avenue with a group of friends - having just eaten a belt-busting Sichuan meal - when I spotted an ad on the mezzanine level. It was a subway billboard for TD Bank ("TD" stands for "Toronto-Dominion"), an ... More >>

Country Club Sopranos

American banks are on a massive crime spree. Obama and Romney hope you won't notice.

Bank of America Slammed With Federal Lawsuit For "Doing the [Mortgage Fraud] Hustle"

In more long-awaited fallout from the mortgage crisis, Federal prosecutors today sued the Bank of America and Countrywide Financial for a scheme to defraud the government via a program called "The Hustle." Yes, they called it "The Hustle." Its purpose: allegedly to process home loans at high speed ... More >>

NY GOP Wants Investigation Into Rep. Steve Israel's Sketchy Mortgage "Bailout"

The New York Post ran an "exclusive" story yesterday suggesting that Long Island Congressman Steve Israel's 2008 support of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) for financially strapped banks is the reason he was granted a "bailout" on the mortgage for his Dix Hills home. The bank that holds Isr ... More >>

Matt Taibbi Joins Occupy Wall Street for Anti-Corporate Protest

Occupy Wall Street protesters held their biggest march so far this year today as part of a nationwide "Shut Down the Corporations" day of action. Several hundred occupiers gathered in Bryant Park this morning before marching east on 42nd Street to the global headquarters of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, ... More >>

ACES WILD

Tennis stars go head to head

Bank of America Prepared For OWS Anti-Foreclosure Actions, According to Memo

This internal memo from Bank of America to third-party contractors has been circulating around the Internet: ​ It's regarding yesterday's Occupy Our Homes action, in which protesters reclaimed foreclosed properties. The memo, which actually does appear to be real, includes tips like "Your s ... More >>

Malcolm Gladwell Shilling For Bank of America

​Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point among other books, has a new gig: doing speaking engagements for Bank of America. Somehow nobody seems to have known about this, and Bank of America only released the press release today. Gladwell likes money almost as much as he likes p ... More >>

Ireland's Richest Man Declares Bankruptcy

via RTE​Sean Quinn, once rated Ireland's richest man with a fortune estimated around €4 billion (about $6 billion), declared bankruptcy yesterday. The Irish Independent reports Quinn told a Belfast court he acquired untenable debts after investing in the failing Anglo Irish Bank. In technica ... More >>

Bank of America Retracts $5 Monthly Debit Card Fee

​Bank of America has changed its mind about charging customers a $5 monthly fee for using their debit cards, a move that angered many a banking customer, not to mention lawmakers, and in part was a catalyst for Bank Transfer Day, a move initiated by Kristen Christian, an L.A. woman, to get peo ... More >>

New York Commercial Bank, Go Screw Yourself!

​Last year, when I took out a CD at Atlantic Bank (part of New York Commercial Bank), they told me I had to also start a checking account there to get the CD rate. They said, "It can just be one dollar in there" while assuring me repeatedly that there would be no transactions required and no ... More >>

Thomas Wu, Bent Banker Indicted For Taking Bailout After Defrauding Investors

​In a case that should resonate with the protesters down in Zuccotti Park, three San Francisco bank officials have been charged with fraud after receiving nearly $300 million in federal bail out money during the Bush era financial crisis. United Commercial Bank CEO Thomas Wu, along with vice ... More >>

Florida Couple Almost Repossesses Bank of America's Furniture

​Last year, Warren and Maureen Nyerges, a retired couple in Naples, Florida, were hit with a mistaken foreclosure lawsuit by the Bank of America (remember, it's the Bank of Satan). They had paid cash for their house in 2009, no mortgage, and thus no grounds for a foreclosure suit. The bank dropped ... More >>

Huge Email Hack Reveals Customer Info From Target, JP Morgan and 50 More Big Brands

​The digital marketing firm Epsilon told its clients on Friday of "an unauthorized entry into Epsilon's email system," insisting it "was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only" and that no other information was at risk, but it's only now becoming clear just how widespread the ha ... More >>

Anonymous Hackers Release Bank of America Emails in "Black Monday" Leak

​Anonymous, the loosely organized hacktivist collective operating lately in support of WikiLeaks, dropped extensive correspondence at 12:00 a.m. on Monday between employees they claim were working for a previously Bank of America-owned insurance company, Balboa Insurance. According to Anonymou ... More >>

Aaron Barr of HBGary Steps Down After Battle With Hacker Group Anonymous

​When Aaron Barr, a computer security expert for the firm HBGary, announced his plans in a Financial Times article to talk to the FBI about Anonymous, the worldwide collective of hacker activists, the group quickly lashed out, publishing personal information (like his social security number) a ... More >>

POWER PLAY

Tennis legends battle again

Anonymous Hackers Reveal HBGary and Aaron Barr's Plan to Target WikiLeaks Donors

​Aaron Barr, a computer security expert for HBGary, spoke last week to the Financial Times, telling the paper that he had gathered incriminating information about the shadowy hacker group known as Anonymous, a general source of online chaos and most recently, diligent supporters of WikiLeaks. ... More >>

Alleged Drug Money Smelled Like Drugs

​An assistant bank manager in East Hills, Long Island has been charged with laundering money that reeked of weed. The Daily News reports that Natanzia St. Rose is accused of exchanging $50,000 in illicit funds through the JP Morgan Chase branch where she worked. The large amounts of cash were ... More >>

WikiLeaks Will Target Bank of America Next

​As long speculated, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks will release classified documents from Bank of America, in a break from harassing international governments. The confirmation of the target comes via John Carney's NetNet blog at CNBC.com, where he sources an anonymous "person who has close conta ... More >>

Bank of America Drops WikiLeaks Payments

via​Bank of America has announced it will no longer process transactions for the website WikiLeaks, which trades in the release of secret government documents. WikiLeaks has teased coming after a financial institution next and in a 2009 interview founder Julian Assange mentioned "sitting on fi ... More >>

Banks Say Bye-Bye to Holiday Parties Again

​Some Wall Street bankers might need to forsake the glitzy office party for take-out and a movie this year -- TheStreet.com says many of the city's finance firms -- including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and UBS -- are either canceling or keeping "mum" about their par ... More >>

Rich People Finally Feeling Good About Being Rich, Again!

​Sucks having fallen on these "tough economic times," for everyone! Even those who went from having, say, $20M in personal wealth to $5M in personal wealth. Those people feel shitty, too. Well, times have changed, and as the Wall Street Journal uncharacteristically (and somewhat "snark-ily") n ... More >>

THE BARD GOES SHOPPING

A Hamlet for our consumer culture

Cuomo Throws Haymaker at Bankers, Ducks Paterson Jab

State attorney general Andrew Cuomo this morning reached to take the first post-TARP scalp, accusing former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis of pulling a massive fraud on both taxpayers and shareholders. "Egregious and reprehensible" were two of the kinder words Cuomo used in unveiling a civil lawsuit ... More >>

Obama's New Bank Laws Would Re-Criminalize Wall Street Shenanigans; Panicky Dems Finally Listen to Paul Volcker

Volcker: He told Obama so.Finally, Barack Obama today unveiled a proposed major curb on Wall Street that would revive the "spirit of Glass-Steagall" — the Depression-era law that would have prevented last year's Wall Street meltdown if it hadn't been abolished during the Clinton administration ... More >>

Have You Seen... Bank of America ATM Skimmers

These two fellows worked up a nice scam at the Bank of America ATM at 315 Lafayette Street. They altered the machine to obtain customers' personal information, and then transferred that information to "cloned" debit/credit cards, which they used to drain their victims'' bank accounts via Bank of ... More >>

We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?

Have You Seen... Uptown Bank Robber

​We're told that the number of local bank robberies is down this year -- 159 versus 244 this time last year. Nonetheless they're still happening and one went down Thursday morning at the Bank of America at Broadway near 107th Street. The suspect, pictured, is believed to be in his 30s, and 5' ... More >>

Have You Seen... University Place Bank Robber

​Someone robbed the Capital One Bank at University Place and East 8th Street on Saturday around 10 a.m. Here's a surveillance photo of the schnook, with his cell out, like he has to tell his mom why he's not home for breakfast. He's thought to be between 25 and 35 years old, 5'6", and between ... More >>

Counterfeit Check Ring Busted; Defrauded "Hundreds," Paid Off Bank Tellers

Eighteen men were busted for running a sweeping identity theft ring out of a Bronx apartment, the Manhattan District Attorney's office announced yesterday. Over the course of two years, the men stole millions of dollars from just about every bank in the city, but focused most of their efforts on JP ... More >>

Cuomo May Seek Giveback of $4B Merrill Lynch Bonuses

The saga of the $4 billion in bonuses paid to collapsed Merrill Lynch just got funnier for everyone except the people who received the money. Having subpoenaed ousted Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain (and the head of Bank of America, which took the firm over) about the bonuses, AG Andrew Cuomo is said t ... More >>

Circuit City Dies, 30,000 to be Laid Off

You may remember that in the early days of the TARP, people would ask why we were bailing out banks but not Circuit City, the troubled electronics chain that went bankrupt in November. They were told then that private sector capitalism would sort it out, and in late December Circuit City got a $1.1 ... More >>

Krugman called it: 'Heads they win, tails we lose'

Nothing Says "Brooklyn Basketball" Like... A British Banking Conglomerate

'Real-life Mexicans not only don't care about those stereotypes, they embrace them'

Staring Debt in the Face

Hapless Military Personnel Are Ordered to Use Plastic, Get Dunned by the Pentagon

Let's Get This Party Started Right