For all of you folks out there wondering what went wrong in this mortgage meltdown, for the ones looking to put a human face with this horrible event. Let me introduce to you the king of the greedy, corrupt mortgage heathens.
Mr. Roland Arnall, owner and operator of Ameriquest Mortgage and ACC Holdings.
Ameriquest Mortgage was responsible for so much mortgage fraud and sub prime exploitation that the very name sends shivers up the spines of anyone who has ever worked for, dealt with or been victimized by Arnall and his gang of deceivers.
At one point during 2004-2005 Ameriquest Mortgage had over 500 individual class action lawsuits pending against it in over 49 US states. The charges range anywhere and everywhere from document forging to appraisal manipulation to strong arm tactics used against borrowers. The Ameriquest AE's (loan officers) and upper management were by and large untrained, uneducated car salesmen and thugs who were placed under extreme pressure to perform and to sell bad high interest mortgage loans to anyone who would take them.
Minorities and elderly were pinpointed because they were easy marks. Mortgage lates on your credit? Excellent, they knew you couldn't back out or go anywhere else. Unable to verify income? That's OK.
Ameriquest fleeced more hard working loan applicants out of their hard earned money than I would wager ANY other mortgage company to ever exist. I have provided many examples of what consumers were put through by this evil corporation below.
Ameriquest was a privately owned company, meaning that Arnall was the sole owner and beneficiary. This is how he could afford to pay 25 year old's $50-80K per month to manage branches and book dirty loans. The entire company structure from top to bottom was based on manipulation and fraud. The training video shown to new employees who were loan officers was the movie "Boiler Room". Ameriquest would not hire LO's with experience because they wanted new to the industry types who would do what they were told and didn't know how bad they were screwing people. If anyone ever asked questions they would be shown the door.
The pressure to perform and meet ridiculous sales goals was put on loan officers who would do anything to keep their high paying job or advance in the company. Arnall created an entire culture of greedy and unethical young men who spent nights and weekend and 14 hour days slamming and hard selling poor people and poorly informed borrowers. Exploitation was not only encouraged but expected.
The real meat of what I am sharing here is not just the horror stories from victimized borrowers, but what and more importantly who Mr. Roland Arnall was. Here are some interesting facts:
1.) Arnall was the single largest contributor to the Bush campaign in 2004, giving millions of dollars to the Republican party in order to fund George W's campaign.
2.) Arnall was a co-founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
3.) Arnall was appointed by George W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador the the Netherlands....right after Ameriquest had settled a $325 Million mortgage fraud lawsuit with over 40 states combined!!!
4.) This past year when the mortgage meltdown got into full swing and other mortgage company execs were facing investigation and imprisonment by the FBI for their involvement, Roland Arnall suddenly and suprising passes away.
Here are a few details about his departure. Supposedly Arnall developed, was diagnosed and subsequently died from an onset of cancer - all with a less than a two week period of time. His funeral was held within two days of his passing, the ceremony was closed casket and hidden from any and all public or media coverage.
Many believe that Arnall has managed to fake his own death and being that he is a naturalized Israeli citizen, is likely living in Israel right now away from any possibility of prosecution. He paid a $325 Million lawsuit but was estimated to have raked in billions of dollars from dirty mortgage loans.
Here is the link to Ripoff Report showing the 528 some odd complains against Ameriquest dating back to 2005. If you read through these stories they are heart breaking, and if you go back and read the ones from 2004 forward you can see a virtual time line of the mortgage meltdown beginning to take it's course.
ripoffreport.com