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POWERED BY: LENDERS COMPLIANCE GROUP

Friday, September 9, 2016

Flipping the Bird at the CFPB!

Jonathan Foxx
Managing Director
Lenders Compliance Group

Do you really want to tell the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that it doesn’t regulate you?

Before flipping the bird at the CFPB, a company had better do some deep and serious deliberations!

Take the case of Intercept Corp., a company that the CFPB asserted allegedly took money from consumers’ bank accounts without authorization to do so. It was claimed that the company willfully ignored red flags and thereby allowed its client companies to take consumers’ funds.

Here’s what happened, as described in the complaint,[i] and argued in federal court a few days ago.

Intercept does business as InterceptEFT. The CFPB claimed that InterceptEFT, and its President, Bryan Smith, and also its CEO, Craig Dresser, knew about the alleged illegal withdrawals but they did nothing to protect consumers.

Intercept tried a gambit that, in this instance, seems to have been destined to failure: when in doubt, remove the opposing litigant for lack of standing. So, let’s do it, let’s try to remove the CFPB! Let’s contend - or maybe “pretend” should be the best word here - that we’re not governed by the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA). Sure, that will work!

The CFPB, it seems, successfully argued otherwise.

What does InterceptEFT do? The CFPB describes this company as a financial service that is mainly used for consumer purposes – meaning personal, family, or household needs. It is a third party vendor. The CFPB took the position that although consumers don’t directly work with this third party vendor doesn’t alter the service, and the company's classification doesn't change just because the complaint doesn’t explicitly state that its products are offered for those consumer purposes.

Specifically, the CFPB alleges that Intercept and its executives processed transactions for clients they knew, or should have known, were making fraudulent or other illegal transactions, even after being warned several times of the wrongdoing. The injury to consumers reached into the many millions lifted from consumers’ bank accounts.

Now the gambit: Intercept claimed that it met exceptions for the law, including one that would allow it to escape the suit because not all of its clients are covered by the CFPA.

The CFPB descanted critically:

“That reading would produce the absurd result that an entity could not be a service provider if it provided support services to even a single non-covered-person client - regardless of the entity’s conduct with respect to covered persons.” … “Intercept provides no justification for such an arbitrary result, and indeed there is none.”

As to attempts to remove the President and the CEO from the litigation, the CFPB said that they should be held accountable as individuals because they’re involved in the company’s day-to-day operations and not just “uninvolved company figureheads or passive shareholders.” These company officers had said that they worked with the banks on due diligence checks, so their work was not recklessness.

But, that position came under this withering fire from the CFPB:

“[That argument] contradicts the factual allegations in the complaint, which describe how numerous banks warned Smith and Dresser about apparent fraud and illegality and how the two men responded, not by acting on those concerns, but by seeking to minimize and work around them.” ... “Smith and Dresser cannot now hope to hide behind the very warnings they previously chose to ignore.”

The injury was substantive, claimed the CFPB. The Bureau said that it had proved substantial injury was caused as direct monetary losses, as described by category in the suit. Indeed, consumers couldn’t have avoided the harm because they didn’t even know about the unauthorized withdrawals in the first place.

So, first gambit: fail.

Second gambit: obfuscate, complicate, baffle and befuddle.

InterceptEFT launched a second line of counter-attack. As the CFPB stated in its suit, “…rather than confronting these allegations head-on, defendants claim not to understand them, asserting that the complaint is too vague or ambiguous for defendants even to present a defense on this element of unfairness.”

If adumbration is the tactic, better be prepared with a phalanx of facts! Unfortunately, Intercept had few facts to support their endeavor to becloud the issues. Although the Bureau did not name the clients, the complaint points to specific communications that Intercept had concerning access as well as its more common practices – such as allegedly ignoring specific warnings.

Second gambit: arrested development.

Third gambit: invoke statute of limitations.

Worth mentioning is that the motion to dismiss had also claimed the suit was barred under the statute of limitations. This really could not go anywhere, since the CFPB said the dates Intercept proffered regarding the government's discovery of the alleged violations were irrelevant because they were determined by when the Federal Trade Commission did a separate investigation, not the one conducted by the Bureau itself.

Third gambit: boomerang.

Now comes the last and fourth gambit, one that is like a last gasp of air in a hot air tunnel: challenge the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Intercept raised a motion challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB as an agency. The Bureau squelched that line of reasoning by stating every court that has considered the Bureau’s constitutionality has ruled in the government’s favor and that Intercept didn’t provide any new, substantial arguments that would justify a ruling otherwise.

Fourth gambit: crash and burn.

In sum, the Bureau pled that Intercept and its officers failed to meet the standard of proof needed to dismiss a case at this stage. The court will determine if the foregoing gambits will put this case down or keep it going forward on some subtle and abstruse vapors. 

But why prolong the agony?



[i] Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Intercept Corp. et al., case number 3:16-cv-00144, in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. 

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Going after the Big Cheese (PHH takes on CFPB’s Director)

As many of you know, I have been following the PHH dispute with the CFPB virtually from its inception. Although PHH is a large organization, let’s face it, this is still like a mouse (PHH) squeaking at an elephant (CFPB)! The bite, in this instance, happens to be a $109 million penalty that the CFPB is assessing against PHH.

Reduced to the least common denominator, this is a fight against the authority vested in the Director of the CFPB, or, better said, the authority that the Director presumes to have vested in himself versus a play at arrogating to himself certain authority that he simply does not have.

Going after the Big Cheese himself is no mean feat!

But PHH has assembled a highly skilled and prominent legal team.

And there are amici curiae on both sides.

Let me back up a few steps and give a wider angle. PHH appealed to the DC Circuit Court because the Bureau’s Director Richard Cordray raised a $6 million penalty for mortgage insurance kickbacks - such penalty issued by an administrative law judge - to a whopping $109 million.

To ensure that the information presented at bar was applicable to Dodd-Frank, the hearing judges required the Bureau to provide answers in oral arguments regarding substantive provisions as to the president’s authority to remove the CFPB director only for cause, and, importantly, about how the Court should view an administrative agency led by a single director rather than the more typical commission structure.

Today is the day for those oral arguments!

Here’s one bottom line that may come from the foregoing aspects of the dispute: if the Bureau loses, the Director may find that his authority, presumed or otherwise, will be vitiated.

An access point to the litigation is to challenge the constitutionality of the Bureau itself! Areas of contention, right from the inception, have been the supposed, czarist-like construct of having a single director in charge of the Bureau, plus the view that the CFPB’s funding should come from congressional appropriations rather than from the Federal Reserve’s own budget.

Is it surprising that the DC Circuit recently required the Bureau to be prepared to face questions about whether Dodd-Frank’s provision - stating that the president can remove the CFPB director only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” - passed constitutional muster? Actually, I don’t think so. After all, the Bureau has been challenged on these issues all along and there is clearly an interest in determining the scope of authorities vested in the Director. If adjudication seems to reach to an unassailable decision, the viability of claims involving the CFPB’s constitutionality may be finally resolved. Or maybe not! The Supreme Court would be the next step along this circuitous path to a decision.

Should we be surprised that the Court is looking for answers about potential remedies for any problems that the applicable provision brings, including potentially removing it from the statute and allowing the president to remove the CFPB director without any specific cause?

Again, I am not surprised. If it turns out that the cures (remedies) are worse than the infection (overreaching authority) and the treatment needs to be changed, the Court will need to determine the extent to which such changes could affect the Director’s authority.


So, even though PHH is challenging Director Cordray’s interpretation of violations under RESPA that allowed him to distend a $6 million penalty handed down by an administrative law judge into an engorged, ballooned penalty of $109 million that the CFPB director handed down when PHH appealed, the fact is the instant arguments are really going quite far beyond that issue.

Here’s a pivot point: whether the Constitution allows Congress to put in restrictions on when the president can fire officials at an administrative agency. Short answer: Yes, it is constitutional if you go by the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which affirmed the DC Court’s ruling that such protections were constitutional.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Recess Appointment Gambit

Some people just won’t take No for an answer!

The most recent fool’s errand is offered thanks to the irrepressible, litigious efforts of the State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas, and two advocacy groups, conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute and the 60 Plus Association.

In State National Bank of Big Spring et al. v. Geithner et al. (U.S. District Court, DC, Case 1:12-cv-01032), the plaintiff seeks to disabuse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“Bureau”) of its constitutionality.

Here is one of the lawsuits that started droning high and mighty soon after the Bureau received its enumerated authorities in the summer of 2011.

The bank sued in June 2012, arguing that the Bureau has an inordinate amount of power because (1) the Bureau’s director can't be removed at will, and (2) the agency's funding is routed around the congressional appropriations process.

A little over a year later, in August 2013, the case was booted, only to be resuscitated in July 2015 by the D.C. Circuit, since the appeals court found the bank has standing to challenge the Bureau’s constitutionality – based on the fact that the Bureau regulated the remittance market, which is the bank’s business. That said, there had been no enforcement action.

Lacking an enforcement action to protest, maybe the bank just wanted to get out in front of the problem before it started!

The bank went forward with a summary judgment challenge in November 2015.

In any event, about the 2012 suit’s allegation: the claim is that the law creating the Bureau, Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is unconstitutional. The bank claimed the president's inability to remove the Bureau’s director without good cause violates the separation of powers doctrine, a claim, the Bureau argues, that ignores Supreme Court precedent.

This gambit has been pushed hither and yon for some time. For instance, right from the start there has been a challenge to the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be the Bureau's first director. President Barack Obama used a recess appointment to put Mr. Cordray in charge of the Bureau, albeit only after mostly Republican senators refused to vote on his nomination. Their opposition was based on the structure and congressional oversight of the Bureau, not really at all based on Mr. Cordray’s credentials.

But Conservatives have long held that the recess appointment violated the Constitution, engendering the recess appointment itself by keeping the Congress technically open by holding a series of pro forma sessions, gaveling in sessions for minutes or seconds, in order to meet the lowest bar for being open for business.

So, we’re back in court!

Now, the Bureau has asked a Washington, D.C., federal court for summary judgment. Filing last Friday, the Bureau asserts that the bank’s challenge to the Bureau's constitutionality can't get around long-standing precedent supporting legislators' authority to create independent agencies.

Here’s two of the pivotal quotes:

“SNB’s arguments that Title X violates constitutional separation-of-powers principles rest on policy arguments with no support in the constitutional text or judicial precedent.” 
“The challenged provisions of Title X – considered either individually or collectively – are consistent with Articles I and II of the Constitution, as they have been interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court.”

The Bureau argues that the Supreme Court had ruled in 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that Congress has the authority to create independent agencies with overseers appointed by the president who can only be removed for good cause.

Thus, asserts the Bureau, the authority is grounded in the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission, which was at issue in that case, or any of several other federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, that are considered to have been created under the same authority.

Given precedent, the Bureau’s view is that, whether or not the Bureau is headed by a single, appointed director or several commissioners (or multiple directors or a phalanx of overseers), is entirely irrelevant and nugatory. In defending the single appointee, the Bureau’s brief states: “If anything, it should be easier for the president to hold accountable a single officer than several.” 

Furthermore, the Bureau stated that the foregoing argument didn't appear in the bank's complaint and that it can't raise the claim now in its own motion for summary judgment filed in early November. Indeed, it is argued that the bank was not harmed by the rules approved by Director Cordray, and, in cases where the bank claims it was harmed, invalidating them would not serve to correct the injuries alleged by the bank.

From a regulatory perspective, the Bureau is correct with respect to the validity of rules approved by the Bureau’s director. Even if the court were to consider the validity of rules approved by Director Cordray during his recess appointment, the D.C. Circuit has upheld such rules when later ratified by an agency.

I think you can see how this Hatfields and McCoys battle can get very complicated.

I expect this species of litigation to find its way into the dustbin of history.

Still, as Alexander Pope said, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."


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President & Managing Director
Lenders Compliance Group