Back in 2013, an internal memo, recently published by The Intercept, urged top officials in then-Attorney General Kamala Harris’s office to sue OneWest Bank over allegations of foreclosure violations in the state of California, which included backdating mortgage documents to speed up foreclosures and manipulating the results of home auctions, according to coverage in Bloomberg.
Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, ran OneWest Bank from 2009 to 2015. And now, a spokesman for him on behalf of the Presidential Transition is calling that leaked memo "meritless."
"OneWest was the only bank in the country to complete the grueling independent foreclosure review by the OCC and received the top rating from government regulators for compliance,” Mnuchin Spokesman Barney Keller said in an email to HousingWire.
To be sure, back in 2015, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency did determine that OneWest satisfied the terms of the 2011 foreclosure-related consent order and the OCC terminated that order.
Furthermore, OneWest completed the independent foreclosure review in accordance with the requirements included in the original 2011 order and did not enter into a payment agreement with the OCC.
Keller also said OneWest's exemplary mortgage serving practices didn't end there.
“Steven Mnuchin and OneWest managed to issue over 100,000 loan modifications including thousands that reduced borrower principal, on loans that he did not even originate,” he said.
“Memos like this belong in the garbage, not the news," he added.
