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Anonymous Leaks Internal Bank of America Emails

euphemistic writes "Reportedly the information Wikileaks was set to disclose about a particular bank back from December, 'a massive batch of internal Bank of America emails' has been leaked. While the site hosting it seems to currently be down due to the obviously gigantic amount of traffic interested in this leak, the leak is said to pertain to the Bank of America's improper foreclosure on homes. 'The report came from a former employee with Balboa Insurance — a risk management and insurance firm. The employee reportedly corresponded with Bank of America employees and was told to falsify loan numbers on documents to force Bank of America to foreclose on homeowners.'"

19 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. Well, now we know why by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess this explains why Bank of America's law firm was so willing to buy into HBgary and other's bullshit about being able to take down Anoynymous and Wikileaks.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  2. And... by MikeDirnt69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .. nothing will happen.

    --
    Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
    1. Re:And... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Amen. The two words that will characterise this period of history will be "corruption" and "unaccountability". Western management has turned impunity--legal, financial, and personal--into a science.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    2. Re:And... by heptapod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Of course nothing will happen. These leaked Bank of America emails were released during the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis. GREAT FUCKING JOB THERE, CHIEF!!! It shows they're a bunch of amateurs who know nothing about timing so this reaches the broadest audience. Slashdot, reddit, and the rest will get up in arms but the people who need to know, i.e. mom & pop and that mythical linux using grandma, won't have it show up as a blip on their radar because of their reliance upon mainstream media to feed them.

    3. Re:And... by Joreallean · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Although the money helps this isn't about money... It's about the fact that these "people" are doing actions of an individual under the name of a corporation. The difference in your example between your corporation vs commoner is that one is an individual. The government can certainly throw the book at a corporation, but what happens? It either gets a bad reputation and loses the market for a while or they just dissolve it and start something new under a new name. There is no personal responsibility for any of the actions of a corporation and therefore there is absolutely no accountability for their actions. As long as we continue to treat a corporation as the "person" responsible for its actions and not the actual people in charge will they be able to do whatever they want with little to no consequences. These people have just learn to shield their own malfeasance under the guise of a legal corporation. I'm by no means saying that all corporations are like this, but at some point it seems they stop caring about the work they are doing and start caring about the state of the company.

    4. Re:And... by DrStrange66 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bank of America is too big to fail and is therefore too big to go after.

    5. Re:And... by s4m7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like." - Edward Thurlow, often attributed to Andrew Jackson

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      This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
    6. Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or it shows that Bank of America PR staffers know exactly how to contain a potential disaster. By releasing their own information as Anonymous during a time where it is guaranteed to be buried under far more pressing news stories.

    7. Re:And... by mhelander · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've heard it claimed it is because just like we all think we are better than average drivers, everyone in the US think they're one day going to become rich.

  3. I will be closing my BOA account.... by Mazzie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and switching to a more reputable corporate behemoth like... hrmm... like... uhhh... doh!

    --
    Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
    1. Re:I will be closing my BOA account.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Switch to a local credit union. That is, by far, your best alternative.

    2. Re:I will be closing my BOA account.... by countertrolling · · Score: 5, Funny

      I deposit my money into Sealy Posturepedic...

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    3. Re:I will be closing my BOA account.... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Interesting

      At business school I learned something within the first 20 minutes of finance 101. The most important lesson in the class which was repeated on the final was what is a company's goal?

      If you said to make money you are wrong. The goal of a corporation is to raise its stock price, not make money. A third of the course dealt with how to trick investors by creating magical ratios of liquidity (assets that can turn to cash very fast) to make wall street happy and raise the share price. To top it off we studied how going into debt was a great thing as it gave you profit leverage. Holding off paying your suppliers was good too as you can invest the money while you drag your feet.

      The rest of the course dealt with a privately held and small companies. Now their goals was to make money as well as have an excellent credit rating and low debt to make sure adequate lines of credit were available in case of an emergency and to plan ahead conservatively without going bankrupt. 2 different worlds.

      Private companies are the way to go. They simply make rational decisions and play by the rules. The big boys don't and love risk. If the average CEO job is short you can guarantee yourself you wont be held accountable either for short term gains that cost the company later. WOW

  4. leaked? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reportedly the information Wikileaks was set to disclose about a particular bank back from December, "a massive batch of internal Bank of America emails" has been leaked.

    Is this saying that Wikileaks' information was leaked by a third party?

    As for bank foreclosure fraud, we've known for a year or more that banks have been doing that. A common case is that all the shady asset-juggling left things in a state that no one knows who actually has the rights to it, so the evictions are rushed through without proper legal scrutiny, or even on the basis of forged documents.

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    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  5. No one investigating, no one going to jail by RichMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The governement administration was pretty quick to hand them money to keep going and the oversight seems to be uninterested in putting people in jail.
    If you pickpocket a $100 store item expect to go to jail. If you force thousands into bankruptcy and put several nations into financial stress you will have no problem collecting your yearly bonus pay.

    It seems to me we need a crack down on white collar crime.

    Stop jailing people for grams of pot and start jailing people for ((( some smart saying I can't think of that means investment people who steal money))).

  6. Incompetence Conspiracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As someone who has worked for a big bank, I can assure you that while there are pockets of AMAZINGLY retarded people that commit blatant fraud, it is mostly just a large group of MOSTLY retarded people committing fraud and not really recognizing that's what they're doing.

    I worked hand in hand with the foreclosure group and I think I can summarize what's really been happening:

    1) Overwhelming Workload + Incompetent Staff = Mistakes
    a) Leads to massive spike in hiring through temporary agencies and the introduction of a much larger group of incompetent people into the process.
    2) Convoluted, counterproductive processes + people who can't use excel spreadsheets = Mistakes
    a) See 1a
    3) Incentive Structure - This one's a bit harder but most banks use production based incentive structures to pay employees beyond their base pay. The more work you do, the more money you make. If it's easier to get rid of a "file" (troubled loan) by tossing it to the foreclosure group and having it roll through that process than it is to help someone save their house, guess what happens. If it takes you an hour to successfully help someone (which it doesn't, it takes days or weeks) or 10 minutes to move their file to foreclosure and therefore out of your stack, and you get paid based on how many files you move out of your stack, guess where all your files go.
    4) Banks DONT LIKE TO RESCIND SALES. It costs them money.

    To me, this is all SUPER old news. I watched this happen in real time for years and the news was always WAY behind on what was happening and WHY. It's not as simple as "banks are greedy and committing fraud/crime." That's certainly a part of it, but not nearly half of it. Realistically it's "There's too much work to do and the people doing it truly don't understand what they're doing"

    It's way easier to recognize what's really happening when you look at how things are done at the bottom. Listening to CEOs and PR reps is a waste of time, they have no idea what's really going on underneath them.

    The problems we have always faced are the result of incompetence, period. More to the point the problem is people.

  7. Tinfoil hat time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can't help but wonder who's really behind this leak. It smells a LOT like a false flag operation.

    Bank of America has known for months that they're the next major Wikileaks target. Now all of a sudden the material pops up "from Anonymous", in the middle of the Japan earthquake, a HUGE news story - and over the weekend. I tried viewing the site all morning and have been getting 503 errors. If you wanted to bury an inevitable major embarrassment to your company, I think this is how you do it. Wikileaks, for all their faults, would never release this while there were so many other major developing stories.

  8. The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Your comment about "this period of history" draws attention away from the fact that the U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. Few in government are on the side of the people. Most of the really powerful in the U.S. government are helping the corrupters.

    For example, see the Rolling Stone article about Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine

    The documentary movie Inside Job was nominated for an Oscar. It's an excellent movie about the extreme corruption. NOTHING has been done.

  9. Who wants torrents? Come and get 'em! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry to reply off-topic, but I want to post this as high up as possible:

    http://www.mediafire.com/?9gig97gio0g3b7b

    Here is the torrent file. BoA seems to be sockpuppet-rushing TPB to mark the torrents as fake.