A Cayman Islands firm with ties to an Atlanta mortgage company agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine after federal investigators accused the company of misleading investors.
The settlement is the latest in a string of legal troubles that have afflicted various parts of the empire of former Ocwen Financial Corp. Chairman Bill Erbey.
Ocwen, which specialized in collecting payments and handling foreclosures on homeowners with subprime loans, grew spectacularly after the Great Recession, landing Erbey on Forbes’ billionaire list. But he fell off the list last year as hot water rose around his companies.
In the latest dispute, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said poor accounting methods and Erbey’s past role as chairman of both Ocwen and Cayman Islands-based Home Loan Servicing Solutions led to conflicts of interest and misstated profits. Erbey launched HLSS in 2012 to buy mortgage servicing rights from Ocwen, although Ocwen still handled the actual payment collections.
The SEC said HLSS misstated its profits from 2012 to the first quarter of 2014 by improperly accounting for its transactions with Ocwen - including many transactions approved by Erbey.
In a settlement late last year with the New York Department of Financial Services, Erbey was forced to resign as Ocwen’s chairman, and the firm agreed to pay a $150 million cash settlement and to get the agency’s approval before taking on new mortgage servicing business.
Ocwen paid a $2 billion settlement in 2013 to settle federal and state regulators’ allegations that it mishandled many homeowners’ troubled loans.
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