Bankster Turns To Title Insurer For $24M 'Cough-Up' For Losses Over Soured HELOCs

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Courthouse News Service reports:

• The foreclosure meltdown has led the U.S. Bank National Association to demand $24 million from First American Title Insurance Co., claiming the title company charged more than $20 million for a new product supposed to protect the bank from defaults on home loans, then walked away when the disaster came.



• U.S. Bank claims the title company charged it more than $20 million in premiums and fees for its "FACT product," and new "service" that First American introduced in 2001.



• First American claimed its product would "benefit institutions such as U.S. Bank when making home equity loans to consumers, by simultaneously allowing the lender to make faster lending decisions and insuring the lender against the risk that such faster decisions might fail to uncover, among other things, undisclosed intervening liens, title defects, errors in legal description, or vesting problems that would impair the lender's collateral in the even the customer later defaults on the loan," according to the federal complaint.

For more, see Bank Claims Title Company Scammed It.