Justice Department 'Hustle' Case Against Bank of America Dies
November 22 2016 - 11:24AM
Dow Jones News
By Christina Rexrode
The government's Hustle case against Bank of America Corp. is
finally dead.
The case, in which the government accused the bank's Countrywide
Financial Corp. unit of churning out shoddy mortgage securities in
the run-up to the financial crisis, already was thrown out by the
Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May. The U.S. attorney's
office in Manhattan, which had first brought the case in 2012, then
asked the appeals court to reconsider its decision, a request the
appeals court denied.
The U.S. attorney's office could have asked the Supreme Court to
take up the matter, but Monday was the government's deadline to do
so. The appellate court also threw out a fraud verdict against
former Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone, who now goes by
Rebecca Steele and was one of the few individuals prosecuted for
the financial crisis.
"We won. It's over. Justice is done," said Marc Mukasey, Ms.
Steele's lawyer.
A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment. A spokesman for
the U.S. attorney's office also declined to comment.
The Hustle case had been a landmark in the Obama
administration's efforts to hold banks accountable for the
financial crisis. The Second Circuit ruled the government hadn't
proven that the bank's actions amounted to fraud.
Write to Christina Rexrode at christina.rexrode@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 22, 2016 12:09 ET (17:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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