WP: Ameriquest Dispute (fraud charges) Holds Up Founder's Ambassadorship

Ameriquest Dispute Holds Up Founder's Ambassadorship
States Negotiating Settlement
By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; D01


Five months ago, Ameriquest Mortgage Co., the nation's largest lender to people with bad credit, announced in a securities filing that it had set aside $325 million to settle allegations that it had misled, overcharged and defrauded home-loan borrowers in more than 30 states.

The announcement came on the day the Bush administration announced that billionaire Roland E. Arnall, Ameriquest's founder and principal shareholder and the largest campaign contributor to Bush since 2002, would be nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

The settlement was never reached, and homeowners have not received compensation for their losses.

Arnall's nomination has been tied up in a dispute on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as state attorneys general negotiate with Ameriquest for more than just money. They demand that the company make significant changes in how it does business. They want the politically influential firm, which makes high-interest loans primarily to lower-income people, to agree to halt allegedly deceptive sales techniques that have resulted in some buyers losing their homes to foreclosure.

"The issues have been about full and fair disclosure, transparency, and basic fair dealing, which are all required by our laws," said Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general in Connecticut, where he said hundreds of people have said they were misled and financially injured by the company....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120502103_pf.html

characteristics. Republican, dishonest, untrustworthy, deceptive, greedy.

For heaven's sake, people. If you won't let the Bush administration hire the corrupt and the greedy, who will fill their positions?

:puke:

these guys would be out of work like the rest of Americans. Bush is doing a heck of a job on that unemployment problem.

until all consumers are aware of how these folks do business and work the political system to keep being able to be so predatory. There is currently a bill in the House (Ney - R (corrupt) Ohio) to void state laws and force a much lower bar federal standard on anti predatory lending laws.

Nominated.