Fed Fining Eight More Home Mortgage Lenders In Robo-Signing Scandal

The Federal Reserve plans to fine eight more bank holding companies for improper home mortgage foreclosures, the latest fallout from the so-called robo-signing scandal in which banks filed foreclosure documents without verifying their accuracy.

The latest fines, announced Monday, follow the U.S. central bank's decision last month to fine the nation's five largest mortgage servicing firms -- Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and Ally Financial Inc. -- a combined $766.5 million in the robo-signing scandal.

That settlement also included the five banks agreeing to cut mortgages for about one million homeowners and paying into a fund that will give $2,000 to about 750,000 homeowners who suffered improper foreclosures.

Neither the size nor the timing of the fines being levied against the eight bank holding companies was disclosed by a Fed official who announced the penalties before a Congressional committee meeting in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The eight banks are EverBank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), HSBC Holdings PLC (NYSE: HBC), PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE: PNC), MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET), OneWest Bank, SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI) and U.S. Bancorp. (NYSE: USB).

"Although the Federal Reserve has not issued monetary sanctions at this time against the other eight institutions that it supervises and that are also subject to enforcement actions for unsafe and unsound practices in their loan servicing and foreclosure processing, the Federal Reserve believes that monetary sanctions in those cases are appropriate and plans to announce monetary penalties against them," Suzanne G. Killian of the Fed said in a statement.