(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase Co made mistakes while suing thousands of its credit card customers over non-payments, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the bank’s internal review of its debt-collection process.
JPMorgan examined about 1,000 lawsuits and found mistakes in 9 percent of the cases, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the review.
“Any rate above zero is high,” one person familiar with the bank’s conversations with regulators told the newspaper. (http://link.reuters.com/mak59t)
The errors ranged from inaccurate interest and fees applied by outside law firms to a “small number of instances” in which lawsuits listed higher balances than the amounts owed by borrowers.
In certain cases sworn documents were signed without knowledge of their accuracy, according to an internal document reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
JPMorgan, however, concluded the mistakes it found were “mostly small” and “had a minimal” impact on customers. “We have no reason to doubt” that the principal amounts the bank sought to collect were accurate, the document said.
California’s attorney general sued JPMorgan in May, accusing the bank of falsely signing documents to unlawfully collect credit card debt from thousands of customers.
The lawsuit accuses JPMorgan of engaging in widespread, illegal “robo-signing” of legal documents to commit debt-collection abuses against about 100,000 California credit card borrowers.
JPMorgan stopped filing credit card-related lawsuits in 2011 after allegations emerged that employees in its mortgage unit had signed off on large numbers of foreclosures without reviewing the underlying documents.
The bank decided to review its collections-litigation practices following the foreclosure fiasco to determine if it had similar problems elsewhere in its consumer unit, according to the paper.
JPMorgan could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular U.S. business hours.
(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by David Cowell)
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London Whale
The bank’s chief investment office gambled on credit derivatives, a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/jpmorgan-chase-q02-earnings-2012_n_1670629.html” target=”_hplink”losing $5.8 billion/a (so far), and its trading desk may have tried to hide the losses from the home office. The bank says it is being sued by shareholders over the losses and has gotten subpoenas and requests for information from “Congress, the OCC, Federal Reserve, DOJ, SEC, CFTC, UK Financial Services Authority, the State of Massachusetts and other government agencies, including in Japan, Singapore and Germany.”
Milan Swap Deal
The bank has faced a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-18/milan-swaps-prosecutor-seeks-ban-on-4-banks-from-government-work.html” target=”_hplink”lawsuits and criminal investigations/a over an interest-rate swap deal it made with the city of Milan, Italy, back in 2005. The bank settled a civil suit, but criminal charges are still pending against the bank and several employees, with hearings in the trial “occurring on a weekly basis since May 2010.”
Enron
The bank and some of its executives are still being sued over the bank’s relationship with the failed, fraud-ridden energy giant, more than a decade after its failure.
Energy Manipulation
Speaking of Enron, the a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/jpmorgan-chase-power-market_b_1647131.html” target=”_hplink”Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is investigating/a charges that JPMorgan manipulated power markets in California and the Midwest.
Credit Card Swipe Fees
The bank said in the filing that a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-09/jpmorgan-says-credit-card-swipe-case-cost-1-2-billion.html” target=”_hplink”it will pay about $1.2 billion/a to settle charges that it conspired with MasterCard and Visa to rig credit-card swipe fees.
Libor
The bank is being investigated by regulators all over the world for its a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/jpmorgan-chase-libor-subpoenas_n_1760015.html” target=”_hplink”alleged involvement in manipulating Libor/a, a short-term interest rate that affects borrowing costs for people, businesses and governments all over the world.
Madoff Ponzi Scheme
Several lawsuits have accused the bank of aiding and abetting Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the biggest in history. The Madoff bankruptcy trustee and others have also sued the bank to get back some Madoff clients’ money.
MF Global
The bank is under investigation by regulators for its a href=”http://www.google.com/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=1ved=0CFEQFjAAurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fhalahtouryalai%2F2012%2F06%2F04%2Fjpmorgans-other-messy-problem-mf-globals-missing-money%2Fei=Ui0lUNP7Eqe96QHP94CABAusg=AFQjCNEJVDksnFTh3KP1uS3u73bLgoSfZQ” target=”_hplink”relationship with the failed brokerage firm MF Global/a. It is also being sued for allegedly aiding and abetting MF Global misuse of customer money.
Mortgage Backed Securities
The bank is being sued by hordes of investors for its bundling and selling of mortgage-backed securities packed with bad mortgage debt before the financial crisis. “There are currently pending and tolled investor claims involving approximately $130 billion of such securities,” the bank says.
Mortgage Foreclosures
The bank was part of the big a href=”http://nationalmortgagesettlement.com/” target=”_hplink”$25 billion settlement/a with the government over mortgage-foreclosure abuses. But there are still several lawsuits and regulatory actions pending against the bank over its foreclosure practices.
Peregrine Financial
The bank didn’t mention this in its regulatory filing, but it is also involved in the failure of the Iowa brokerage firm Peregrine Financial. JPMorgan a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/pfg-customer-account-jpmorgan-chase_n_1668386.html” target=”_hplink”holds some customer money for the firm/a, and recently a href=”http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/08/06/jp-morgan-objects-to-terms-proposed-by-peregrine-trustee/” target=”_hplink”tussled in court/a with the PFG bankruptcy trustee.
JPMorgan Review Finds Mistakes In Debt-Collection Lawsuits: WSJ
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