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37 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM CFPB AWARDED $59M IN MORTGAGE RELIEF FRAUD CASE A federal judge in Wisconsin awarded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) a $59 million judgment from two defunct mortgage-relief law firms and their attorney principals as restitution and civil penalties for misrepresenting their services to consumers. is is the final judgment in the CFPB's 2014 case, which accused e Mortgage Law Group LLP, Consumer First Legal Group LLC, and their founding partners of scamming struggling homeowners into paying illegal upfront fees for mortgage assistance legal help that wasn't delivered as promised. Law360 reported that U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered the payments on November 4, putting the former firms and their principals on the hook for paying various pieces of a combined $21.7 million in restitution to consumers, most of which TMLG was already ordered to pay in 2017 as part of a stipulated agreement resolving its part of the case. e judgment also orders civil penalties totaling nearly $37.3 million for CFLG and the individual defendants, omas Macey, Jeffrey Aleman, Jason Searns, and Harold Stafford, the bulk of which will fall on Macey, Aleman, and Searns. e civil penalty amount is roughly $9 million less than what the CFPB proposed earlier this year, and Judge Conley disagreed with the date calculated used by the CFPB in working up its penalty recommendations as well as its tally of violations by each defendant. While the agency argued that each discrete regulatory violation found by the court should count toward that number, Judge Conley said such an approach "would result in excessive and duplicative penalties in this case." "erefore, exercising the discretion granted by the civil penalty statute and relevant case law, this court will calculate the number of violations based on the general category of each defendants' misconduct—such as making misrepresentations or failing to make certain disclosures—rather than on subcategories for each specific type of misconduct," the judge wrote. THE IMPACT OF DEBT ON BLACK HOMEOWNERSHIP Younger generations are hampered in the homebuying market by debt, but according to e Washington Post, this may be especially true for black millennials. Laurane Simon, member of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), notes that the danger of the slipping black homeownership segment. "is is exactly the kind of first-time homebuyer the industry needs," Simon says. "We need younger buyers of color to be able to embrace real estate." e homeownership gap between black and white homeowners has widened to its largest level in over 50 years, according to the Urban Institute. In a new research report from Urban's Housing Finance Policy Center, Researchers Jung Hyun Choi, Alanna McCargo, Michael Neal, Laurie Goodman, and Caitlin Young analyze what has caused these disparities. "African Americans are already being left out of the housing market, and that's exacerbating levels of inequality in this country," says Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist and SVP of research at the National Association of Realtors (NAR). "ere's a kind of urgency now within the housing community to bring younger African American buyers into real estate." Rising student debt is increasingly the biggest hurdle for many black millennials, even compared to their white counterparts. Around 85% of blacks who graduated with bachelor's degrees in 2016 carry student debt, compared with 69% of whites with bachelor's degrees, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. Additionally, 38% of all black students who entered college in 2004 had defaulted on their student loans within 12 years, according to the Brookings Institution. Alanna McCargo, VP, housing finance policy at the Urban Institute, notes that intergenerational wealth is a significant reason for this change as minorities are less likely to be homeowners and have less wealth. "is explains part of the reason for the persistent gap in homeownership across racial and ethnic groups," McCargo says. "And it's another reason to sound the alarm for boosting the minority homeownership rate as the best way to build long-term wealth for black households."

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