At times, Secured Funding salesmen broke the rules, according to at least three lawsuits filed last year in federal courts in St. Louis and Milwaukee. The plaintiffs accuse Secured Funding of accessing their credit reports without permission for the purpose of sending them unsolicited loan offers.
In one case, Secured Funding sent the plaintiff a “personalized Platinum Equity Card” offering “$50,000 or more in cash” just for calling Secured’s toll-free telephone number. In the other two lawsuits, Secured sent bogus $75,000 checks that reassured the recipients their “Less Than Perfect Credit Is OK!” Afghani says the firm was blasting consumers with as many as 4 million pieces of mail a month.
In answers to the complaints, Secured Funding denied wrongdoing. The company said it followed federal regulations when accessing “consumer reports” to pitch customers.
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Secured Funding’s attorney in the lawsuits, Richard Gottlieb of the Chicago office of Dykema Gossett PLLC, resigned in April, citing “irreconcilable professional differences” with Secured Funding. Gottlieb declined to comment.
This is a fascinating overview of the combination of greed, regulatory laxness, and financial insanity that made the real estate bubble possible.
I saw this happen under Reagan in the S&L deregulation nonsense/fiasco. The less we regulate financial institutions, the more likely they are to screw up.
a plan to skin marks. Remember the Enron collusion in the so-called energy shortage in California? All greed, all lies but it started with deregulation of a commodity that NEEDED regulation. FERC (Federal Energy something Commission) didn’t work because – Bush did not let it work. He wanted CA who had a dem gov to suffer so that they would turn to repubs. Sound familiar? NOLA anyone?
Or it was planned from the start as a fund raiser, like the S&L crisis. When and how will they manage a bailout? Or will it just be a bunch of bankruptcies?
BCCCI anyone? Why are those guys running our country again? Where is the Christic Institute when you need them? Where is our collective memory gone? The memory hole I am afraid..