BofA settles for $108M in Countrywide suit

Bank of America will pony up $108 million to settle charges that Countywide Financial, which it acquired in July 2008, collected excessive mortgage-servicing fees from financially struggling homeowners, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. In some cases, said FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz, Countrywide charged fees to customers it wrongly said were in default and imposed new rounds of fees on homeowners who had recently emerged from bankruptcy protection. The payment, one of the largest in the commission’s history, will go to more than 200,000 homeowners whose loans were serviced by Countrywide before the Bank of America merger. [NYT]