(a large Republican donor...I think the largest to Arnold)
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ameriquest4feb04,0,7844867.story?coll=la-home-headlinesWorkers Say Lender Ran 'Boiler Rooms'
Critics say Ameriquest, touted as an industry model, fabricated data, forged documents and hid fees. The company denies wrongdoing.
By Mike Hudson and E. Scott Reckard
Special to The Times
February 4, 2005
Mark Bomchill says he'd like to forget the year he spent hustling mortgages for Ameriquest Capital Corp. in suburban Minneapolis.
Slugging down Red Bull caffeine drinks, sales agents would work the phones hour after hour, he said, trying to turn cold calls into lucrative "sub-prime" mortgages — high-cost loans made to people with spotty credit.
The demands were relentless: One manager prowled the aisles between desks like "a little Hitler," Bomchill said, hounding agents to make more calls and push more loans, bragging that he hired and fired people so fast that one worker would be cleaning out his desk as his replacement came through the door.
"It was like a boiler room," said Bomchill, 37. "You produce, you make a lot of money. Or you move on. There's no real compassion or understanding of the position they're putting their customers in."
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Recent lawsuits filed by consumers in California and at least 20 other states allege a pattern of fraud, falsification of documents, bait-and-switch sales tactics and other violations. Six of these suits seek class-action status to represent large groups of borrowers; such status has been granted for a 2001 suit filed in Redwood City, Calif. In a sworn declaration in that case, a former loan officer named Kenneth Kendall said Ameriquest managers encouraged employees to "promise certain interest rates and fees, only to change those rates at the time of the closing."
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