Bank of America Employee Accepted Bribes on Short Sales

A bank that has earned a terrible reputation in recent years amongst whistleblower claims that employees received bonuses for reaching foreclosure quotas, Bank of America seems to be constantly under fire for its conduct during the financial crisis. Recent news regarding a short sale fraud scheme perpetuated by a B of A employee comes as no surprise.

Since 2008, we’ve heard countless nightmare stories about working with Bank of America on short sale purchases. A widespread investigation regarding fraudulent short sales at Bank of America implies that many real estate investors were given an unfair advantage over others who were actively purchasing short sales from the bank.

A former Bank of America employee, Kevin Lauricella, was in charge of negotiating short sales at the bank and was recently sentenced to 30 months in prison for accepting bribes from real estate investors seeking to purchase short sales. According to authorities, Lauricella signed off on short sales at extremely low prices in exchange for bribe money paid by real estate “flippers” looking for extremely good deals. Several other defendants in the case claimed that this fraudulent short sale negotiation was fairly wide spread. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ranee Katzenstein said, “There are a large number of related cases.”

Posted by Corey Curwick Dutton