Well look at this, According to published reports, Wells Fargo who happens to be the NAACP's favorite predatory lender, donor and “Lead Sponsor” of the NAACP’s 101st annual convention is the Target Of Justice Department Probe.
Get this, The NAACP which appeared to get "promotional kick back money" after mysteriously dropping it's lawsuit against Wells Fargo, the nation's largest home mortgage lender, for allegedly preying upon African American borrowers during the housing bubble and steering them into high-cost subprime loans.
This is not the first bad news for the NAACP's lead sponsor, Wells Fargo.
As reported by Faye Anderson over at Anderson at Large, On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Board ordered Wells Fargo to pay an $85 million fine for steering borrowers with good credit into subprime loans.
The order reads:
The $85 million civil money penalty is the largest the Board has assessed in a consumer-protection enforcement action and is the first formal enforcement action taken by a federal bank regulatory agency to address alleged steering of borrowers into high-cost, subprime loans. […]
The order addresses allegations that Wells Fargo Financial sales personnel steered borrowers who were potentially eligible for prime interest rate loans into loans at higher, subprime interest rates, resulting in greater costs to borrowers. The order also addresses separate allegations that Wells Fargo Financial sales personnel falsified information about borrowers’ incomes to make it appear that the borrowers qualified for loans when they would not have qualified based on their actual incomes.
There is more... In 2007, the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against 15 of the nation’s largest subprime lenders for “systematic, institutionalized racism in sub-prime home mortgage lending.”
One of the defendants included Wells Fargo Bank & Company.
As Faye Anderson reported in her blog post dated April 28, 2010, "The NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous was an outspoken critic of Wells Fargo. So you can imagine my surprise when earlier this month, I read the NAACP dropped its lawsuit against the predatory lender." So what did the NAACP get? As Citizen Journalist Faye Anderson ask in the same article.
Easy answer, that the Justice Department needs to probe. The NAACP in my humble observations accepted Wells Fargo’s tainted money as a "kick-back" for dropping the lawsuit.
AAP says: "Forget all the black celebrities that kiss the NAACP's ring in order to get an Image Award. Average black Americans who are hurting and facing depression-like unemployment levels have questioned for years the integrity and credibility of the National office of the NAACP.
Average black Americans have wondered for years if the NAACP represented them of the interest of big banks and corporate kickbacks. Well again, here is the smoking gun. Let's hope the Justice Department probe includes the "corporate kickbacks" from Wells Fargo to the national office of the NAACP."
