The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought unspecified damages and civil penalties and named as defendants Houston-based Allied Home Mortgage Corp., founder Jim Hodge and Jeanne Stell, the company’s executive vice president and director of compliance.
The prosecutor said the investigation continues and “if and when we have sufficient evidence for a criminal case, we’ll bring it.”
Helen Kanovsky, HUD’s general counsel, said the agency had stopped insuring loans for Allied and was seeking to prevent Hodge from participating in any government programs again after seeing the destruction that the fraud had caused in communities across the country.
“Mortgage fraud has very real human victims,” she said.
According to the lawsuit, nearly 32 percent of the 112,324 home loans originated by Allied between Jan. 1, 2001, and the end of 2010 have defaulted, resulting in more than $834 million in insurance claims paid by HUD.
The lawsuit said the default rate climbed to “a staggering 55 percent” in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the housing boom, when the government paid $170 million to settle Allied’s failed loans. It said an additional 2,509 loans are now in default and HUD could face $363 million more in claims.
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