Bank of America defensively buys critical domain names Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/23/bank-of-america-defensively-buys-critical-domain-

Talk about keeping your enemies closer. In a preemptive move against a potential Wikileaks attack, Bank of America has gone on a shopping spree, registering domain names of sites that insult their top executives.

Domain Name Wire reported on Monday that the bank has bought “hundreds of domain name registrations,” with names such BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianMoynihanSucks.com, in reference to Bank of America’s chief executive. The bank also purchased .net and .org versions of the sites, plus some that take aim at chief financial officer Charles Noski, Chairman of the Board Charles Holliday and board member Charles Rossotti.

Full story: Bank of America buys up anti-BoA domain names

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/23/bank-of-america-defensively-buys-critical-domain-names/#ixzz1926GuPzS

Bank of America Vainly Tries To Head Off WikiLeaks at the URL Pass

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Here's The URL That Bank Of America Really Wants To Buy But Can't: BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.COM

Bank of America now has another PR disaster on its hands, one that was completely self-imposed.

By buying up hundreds of domain names like

brianmoynihansucks.com

and

salliekrawchecksucks.com

and

annemfinucanesucks.com

Bank of America has generated way more bad publicity for itself and its executives than sites built on these domains ever would have.

Anne Finucane

(Who on earth would want to go to annemfinucanesucks.com? No normal people even know who Anne M Finucane is. In case you're curious, she's Bank of America's chief marketing officer. That's her in the middle of the picture to the right, with Sandy Weill and some other fellow.)

But now at least we know the reason Bank of America ordered some minion to think of and buy these hundreds of domain names--and probably paid him or her hundreds of dollars an hour to do it.

The reason?

A site called BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com.

Bank of America doesn't own that URL, although it presumably wishes it did.

BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com is "the official Bank of America consumer opinion site." It's a forum you can go to to read and rant about how horrible Bank of America is. Unlike annemfinucanesucks.com, it's a site you might actually think of searching for if you were feeling like reading or ranting about how much Bank of America sucks.

BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com is, helpfully, organized into topics, so you can go rant and read about whatever Bank of America product you're particularly pissed off about. It's also home for a big, energetic community of similarly enraged Bank of America customers, so you can always find someone else to co-miserate with.

(When we visited this morning, there were 24 angry people there.)

Anyway, now that Bank of America has revealed its intention to try to corner the market on URLs that could be used to host sites that are critical of Bank of America and its executives, the value of BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com just went way up.

So if we were the lucky owner of BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com, we might think about cashing in on that.

We'd guess that, between the cost of domain name registration and minion-time, Bank of America has probably invested $10,000 or more in its URL-acquisition campaign. We'd further guess that Bank of America would be willing to pay all that and more for the granddaddy of Bank-of-America-sucks domain names: BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com

So if we owned BANKOFAMERICASUCKS.com, we'd probably probably ask for at least $100,000...

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bankofamericasucks-2010-12#ixzz1925rtm9J

Bank of America Buying Naughty Domain Names

It's a common practice among the disgruntled, Internet-savvy customers to create websites with embarrassing domain names to sharpen any axes they have to grind with Corporate America and its executives.

When confronted with these guerilla attacks against their prestige, most companies grin and bear it. That's not the case with Bank of America, which has taken the offensive against offending domain names by buying them up.

The bank has been feverishly registering domains that include the names of its directors and executives combined with "sucks" or "blows," according to Domain Name Wire. Hundreds of domain names were registered by the bank on December 17 alone, Domain Name Wire said.

Among the names registered by the bank to protect its CEO Brian Moynihan, for example, were BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com. In addition to the .com domains for those names, .net and .org versions were also registered (though .info seems to have escaped the bank's notice). Other officials receiving domain protection include CFO Charles Noski, Chairman Charles Holliday, and board member Charles Rossotti.

Apparently the bank's campaign to avert naughty domain names being created with their executive's monikers isn't very systematic. For example, the names of all board members are protected from .com abuse except for Monica C. Lozano and Thomas May, according to Chris Nemey at IT World.

Despite its domain buying spree, there is one domain that it can't buy, and it's probably the most important naughty domain of all: bankofamericasucks.com.

MBIA wins key ruling in Bank of America case

(Reuters) - MBIA Inc won a key ruling that will sharply reduce the time and cost of gathering evidence to prove that Bank of America fraudulently induced it to insure billions of dollars of mortgage bonds.

A New York state judge ruled that MBIA can use statistical sampling to try to prove that underwriting standards on pools of about $20 billion in loans were fraudulently represented.

MBIA is seeking to recover more than $1.4 billion that it has paid out in insurance claims stemming from the bonds that pooled loans from Countrywide, a mortgage company that was bought by Bank of America.

The bond insurer had argued inspecting each of 368,000 loan files that were packaged into 15 mortgage bonds would have been extremely costly and time-consuming.

Bank of America said in a statement that the "ruling is limited and procedural in nature. Nothing has been decided on the merits. As the Court notes, MBIA must prove each element of its claims -- this we believe it cannot do. We intend to continue to aggressively defend."

The ruling could give momentum to other insurers and investors who have been pressing mortgage companies to repurchase soured loans underlying mortgage bonds but have struggled with the expense of fighting on a loan-by-loan basis.

MBIA proposed using 400 loans from each of the 15 mortgage bonds as a sample that would be tested.

"The use of sampling is widespread as a valid method to prove cases with large amounts of underlying data," Judge Ellen Bransten wrote in her Wednesday opinion. She added that "sampling is not proof, but merely a vehicle to present evidence."

MBIA has alleged that Countrywide falsely represented that its loans strictly complied with long-standing guidelines, when in reality the loans were often made with little regard to the ability of the borrower to repay.

MBIA did not have an immediate comment.

Shares of MBIA ended down 0.4 percent at $9.86 while shares of Bank of America fell 2.4 percent to $13.06 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Bank of America WikiLeaks' next target?

CHARLOTTE: WikiLeaks' next data release, early next year, is widely expected to centre on Bank of America Corp (BofA).

WikiLeaks Editor In Chief Julian Assange - currently under house arrest in England - touched off a fevered wave of speculation last month, when he disclosed the group would follow up its release of 250,000 diplomatic cables from the US government in November with a look at the financial sector.

Assange has not named BofA as the target of the next release, but he said in a 2009 interview the group has five gigabytes of documents and data from the hard drive of one of the bank's executives.

On Dec. 1, Bank of America marketing chief Anne Finucane said the company has had no evidence it is the target of WikiLeaks' next release.

Some scenarios for the next WikiLeaks data release include:

Customers and overseers

Bank of America is one of the most heavily scrutinized banks in the world. Since the financial crisis, the bank has been the subject of wide-ranging congressional and regulatory probes, and a barrage of lawsuits.

Analysts said such scrutiny makes it unlikely WikiLeaks would release information that is not already generally known.

Instead, some said WikiLeaks could release sensitive data about customers, namely what the bank thinks of some borrowers.

"Banks talk about their customers all the time, especially in credit committee, but it's the kind of private, candid conversation never meant for public consumption," said Tony Plath, banking professor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte.

Alternatively, records of conversations with regulators may also embarrass the bank, analysts said.

Bad mortgages, foreclosures

Analysts said the WikiLeaks trove could also include internal correspondence that show the bank knew it was creating shoddy mortgage-backed securities during the height of the crisis. Documents could also show that it cut corners when foreclosing on thousands of US homes.

The two issues have put the largest US banks at the centre of a public firestorm in recent months over whether they are legally entitled to repossess homes.

"That might be the most damaging thing," said Richard Bove, bank analyst with Rochdale Securities.

Many also say that banks will have to buy back billions of dollars of bad mortgages from investors and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because the mortgages were never eligible to be packaged into bonds in the first place.

Chief Executive Brian Moynihan has said the bank will engage in "hand to hand combat" over the loans with investors, but last week the bank started talking with a group of investors that is trying to get the bank to buy back bad loans.

Deals, deals, deals

Bank of America, under former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, bought troubled rivals during the height of the financial crisis, which could be the focus of the next WikiLeaks release, analysts said.

The bank announced plans to buy Calabasas, California-based Countrywide Home Loans in January 2008 for $4.1 billion in stock, followed by a buyout of Merrill Lynch & Co, announced as Lehman filed for bankruptcy in mid-September 2008.

The deals, which thrust BofA into the top ranks of US mortgage lenders and global investment banking, were widely criticized by investors.

The Merrill Lynch deal, in particular, attracted congressional and public scrutiny. The bank disclosed billions in Merrill Lynch losses in fourth quarter 2008, along with billions of accelerated bonus payouts to Merrill employees, as the deal was being approved by shareholders.

BofA received an additional $20 billion in US government bailout aid to complete the deal in January 2009, on fears Merrill's balance sheet was worse than the bank anticipated.

Another target?

Another possibility, analysts say, is that the WikiLeaks dump will cover another bank entirely.

Bank of America may not be the subject of WikiLeaks next data dump at all.

Speculation has centred on Bank of America because Assange mentioned the bank in a 2009 interview with technology newswire IDG News Services but has not mentioned them since.

Analysts said another major US bank - like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, or Citigroup Inc - could instead be at the centre of the next release.

Read more: Bank of America WikiLeaks' next target? - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/-Bank-of-America-WikiLeaks-next-target/articleshow/7151865.cms#ixzz191kFGT28

State suing Bank of America

In a complaint filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, the state charges the bank, the largest servicer of home loans in Arizona, with engaging in practices which led to hundreds of people being ousted from their homes even as they were being told their mortgages were being modified.

"The complaints that have come into the Attorney General's Office, the evidence we have amassed in a year‑long investigation shows a systematic disregard for their borrowers,'' said Attorney General Terry Goddard.

What makes the situation even worse, Goddard said, is that Bank of America signed a consent decree two years ago promising to improve how it treats its mortgage customers, most of whom at that time had been inherited after the bank acquired Countrywide Financial Corp.

"What they have done in these cases is not done what they said they would do,'' he said. Sometimes homeowners would not get a timely response; other times, Goddard said, the bank would not respond at all "and the proceeding with foreclosure actions.''

Goddard said he has worked to negotiate a deal with the bank for several months. But he said that the bank has been unwilling to provide the kind of relief he believes is necessary, especially considering the violations of the earlier consent decree.

In a prepared statement, B of A Vice President Dan Frahm chided Goddard, whose term is up in two weeks, for filing his "expensive, go‑it‑alone litigation'' rather than working with counterparts from other states for a nationwide settlement of foreclosure issues. Frahm said those national talks are designed to result in "fair and equitable foreclosure practices.''

Goddard said he and the Nevada attorney general, who also filed suit Friday, went to Iowa this week in a last‑ditch effort to work out something to provide immediate consumer relief.

"They didn't want to make it enforceable,'' he said.

"At that point, we had nothing to lose,'' Goddard said. "We got a consent judgment against them two years ago and they haven't lived up to that.''

Allegations in the lawsuit include:

‑ inconsistent statements given by bank personnel to homeowners about the status of their loan or refinancing;

‑ shuffling homeowners among many different people rather than a single point of contact;

‑ failing to provide reasons why a loan modification request was rejected.

Goddard's biggest complaint is the use of a "dual track'' process, getting homeowners to keep making mortgage payments with assurances their loans were being modified while starting foreclosure proceedings.

"That's highly deceptive and highly destructive of the financial integrity of the borrower who, if they know as a certainty they're going to be foreclosed, is not going to continue to make mortgage payments,'' Goddard said.

"They're going to save that for something else, so they can find somewhere else to live,'' he continued. "But deceptively, Bank of America, on many, many occasions, continued to accept mortgage payments while they continued to process individuals for foreclosure and, in fact, were ready to sell the house.''

Goddard said his investigators even found situations where the bank continued to demand and accept mortgage payments even after the home had been sold but before the original owner was evicted.

Faye Weber, one of the people identified by Goddard as a victim of the bank, told how she sought modification of her loan from Countrywide in April 2008 to lower her monthly payment. Weber said she complied with each request for documents.

Weber said she was told in October by Bank of America she had been pre‑approved for the modification, and made her mortgage payments for October through January only to get a letter in January to be in court.

"It was an eviction,'' she said, with the judge giving her until Feb. 22 to get out of her Mesa home.

"They're still hounding me,'' Weber said.

"They're saying that according to their records, I am the owner of that house,'' she said. "But it's been empty since February (2009).''

Goddard also said that while the bank's own web site promises a response on home loan modifications within 90 days, "we've had people in the process for over a year.''

He said some of the practices by the bank appear to be a deliberate maneuver to avoid working with homeowners. For example, he said some of the people who were in charge of answering calls from borrowers had "little or no training.

"Our investigation has shown that was not uncommon and, in fact, people that had no financial background whatsoever were put on the phones to answer questions,'' Goddard said.

"The main statement they were given, the main objective was to terminate the calls within six or seven minutes,'' he continued. "I would submit that's not a helpful guideline.''

Goddard said even if he wins the lawsuit, that won't help those already evicted: Once a home has been sold to a third party in foreclosure, there is no way to reverse that deal.

The sole exception, he said, is if the property was purchased by the mortgage holder in a credit bid and retains title.

What Goddard said he can get is $25,000 for each violation of the earlier consent decree and $10,000 per violation of Arizona's Consumer Fraud Act.

How many violations there are, he said, is unclear.

Goddard said his office has received between 300 and 400 specific complaints. But he said there likely are many other former homeowners who, having lost the fight with the bank, simply walked away.