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In a letter to two trade groups, Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery pledged to work to minimize collateral damage from the investigation.
January 23 -
The investigation's nickname is "Operation Choke Point," and that seems appropriate, because a noose appears to be tightening around the necks of banks that have ties to online payday lenders.
January 22 -
Monitoring fraud and deception is an immense undertaking for third-party payment processors and banks. Trying to make them into first responders to various social pathologies is a step too far.
October 15 -
The payments associations proposal comes amid regulatory scrutiny of bank relationships with online lenders, and could affect financial institutions' dealings with a range of other industries.
November 12
PNC Financial Services received a subpoena regarding the return rate for its payment-processor clients from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The department's consumer protection bureau is "seeking information concerning the return rate for certain merchant and payment processor customers with whom PNC has a depository relationship," the Pittsburgh-based bank said today in a regulatory filing. "We believe that the subpoena is intended to determine whether, and to what extent, PNC may have facilitated fraud committed by third-parties against consumers."
PNC, the second-biggest U.S. regional bank, said in the filing that it's cooperating with the investigation.
The lender agreed to pay $35 million in December to settle claims it charged minorities more for home loans than similarly qualified white borrowers. The case was the first fair-lending action to be brought jointly by the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It concerned violations of fair-lending laws on loans to about 76,000 black and Hispanic borrowers from 2002 to 2008 by National City Bank, according to a complaint. PNC purchased Cleveland-based National City at the end of 2008.