Mortage Company in the News

When you spent a lot of time working with Deed Indexing Standards, certain names become quite familiar to you. One is E*Trade which is noteworthy because of the presence of an asterisk in the middle of the name. The general rule of the indexing standards is no punctuation, so we’ll probably be jettisoning the * but that’s still a matter of debate. Another familiar name is 1-800-East-West-Mortgage, one of the most active lenders in this area. That name is indexing standards-worthy because of all the hyphens but the standards make an exception for that particular punctuation mark so they will probably stay. This all came to mind early this morning when I stumbled upon an article in the Boston Globe business section describing how “East-West settlement ends kickback investigation.” According to the Globe, East-West has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle an investigation by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the FDIC into the alleged practice of East-West of funneling mortgages to closing attorneys, home appraisers and title companies who provided East-West with Red Sox and Patriots tickets as well as other costly perks. East-West denies any wrongdoing and says it settled the claim just to avoid the costs of litigation. Government sources say that East-West is cooperating in the further investigation of those who provided the tickets and other gratuities.