Mortgage servicer to return $50K to Maine homeowners
Ocwen Financial Corp. (NYSE: OCN), a Florida-based mortgage servicing company, will return $50,000 in wrongly charged attorney’s fees to 24 Maine residents, according to a news release Tuesday. The company will also pay the state $24,000 in civil penalties and $10,000 in investigative costs.
In a consent agreement signed last week, Ocwen admitted that for over four years it had pursued foreclosures against Maine homeowners based on illegal filings. Specifically, Ocwen submitted paperwork claiming it had powers of attorney granted by mortgage lenders that had previously been dissolved.
The state said the powers of attorney terminated when the corporations granting them no longer existed.
Under the consent agreement, the state’s attorney general and Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection found that Ocwen’s use of the powers violated a statute prohibiting “false, deceptive or misleading representation or means in the collection of any debt.”
Ocwen’s illegal filings began after July 2014 and continued into January this year, even after Ocwen’s lawyers assured regulators last November that the practice would stop. The company termed the additional filings “inadvertent.”
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