Our readers are still commenting on our original post about www.Tagged.com, even though the story was written some five months ago. The email phishing scam involving Tagged.com quickly caught the attention of N.Y. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who claimed that the website was responsible for “deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy.”

While Cuomo announced his intentions to sue the third-ranked social networking site, no lawsuits were ever filed, according to the New York Times. Despite no official lawsuits being filed, Tagged.com did in fact end up settling disputes with both New York and Texas: Read the rest of this entry »

Concerns are mounting by the day that the industry woes caused by the recently-enacted Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) are beginning to really financially impact borrowers. The HVCC, which was constructed in the first place to “improve” the appraisal process, has long been criticized by many to be hurting it.

HVCC has accumulated a host of skeptics in nearly every sector of the real estate industry. Mortgage lenders and brokers, realtors, and independent appraisers have all complained for months now that HVCC was delaying closings, costing them money, and hurting their businesses. We’ve read reports before that the HVCC was negatively impacting consumers, but we’re now hearing it first hand.

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Last Tuesday we wrote that Federal Investigators announced that 20 criminal probes have been launched to investigate possible securities fraud, tax issues, public corruption, insider trading, mortgage-mod fraud, and other crimes associated with the TARP. By the weeks end, accusations into TARP’s “criminal” element grew even stronger — possibly even encompassing those pointing the finger.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo informed Congress last week that Bank of America’s (BofA) coerced acquisition of Merrill Lynch on the part of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke amounts to securities fraud. Cuomo suggests that the Federal officials mandated that BofA’s top executive Ken Lewis not disclose Merrill’s massive fourth quarter losses to investors prior to the merger which proved to be a financial disaster.

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President Obama announced today that he will attempt to block the millions in bonuses that AIG plans on doling out to certain employees. The president had harsh words for the insurer who has received $173 billion in bailouts from the U.S. Treasury in the past six months:

“This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed,” Obama told politicians and reporters…

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