Whistleblower lawsuits made public in recent weeks shed new light on abuses in the mortgage industry that led to — and continued well after — the housing crash in 2007.

The cases suggest that fraud inside the banking industry continued years after the meltdown, some as late as 2011. They have been made public as federal officials put the finishing touches on the $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement with five major lenders.  

A suit unsealed March 7 alleges that Bank of America fraudulently misled borrowers and regulators in order to keep customers out of mortgage modifications that would have cost the bank money but potentially prevented foreclosures — making “a mockery of a program designed by Congress and the Treasury Department to help millions of struggling American homeowners,” the complaint stated.

As a condition of accepting $45 billion from the federal bank bailout, Bank of America promised to help move troubled borrowers into the taxpayer subsidized Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

But that’s not what happened, according to the whistleblower suit filed by Gregory Mackler, formerly an employee of Urban Lending Solutions, the company Bank of America contracted to manage HAMP complaints.

Mackler claims the company developed a host of strategies to evade required HAMP modifications, using stalling tactics designed to run down the clock on the window of time borrowers were eligible for federally subsidized loan modifications.

The suit claims Bank of America:

A crowd of Northern Virginia residents and clergy members marched to General Electric's offices in Washington, D.C., today, demanding that the company's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, take responsibility for helping homeowners who received subprime loans from the company's now-closed mortgage arm, WMC Mortgage Corp.

WMC, was the subject of a Center for Public Integrity investigation, which found that after GE bought WMC in 2004 it continued to ignore complaints from compliance officers about suspicious loans supported by inflated incomes and falsified documents. After having pumped out roughly $110 billion in high-cost loans, the company’s finances began faltering and GE shuttered the unit in 2007

The FBI is now investigating WMC.

At today’s protest, Rev. Clyde Ellis, pastor at Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Woodbridge, VA, led off a series of speakers with a call-and-response litany of Immelt and WMC’s ills. “They made loans that were structured to fail!” he said.

“Shame!” the knot of roughly 75 protesters shouted back into the building’s otherwise empty lobby and 10-story high atrium.

The protestors were led by a coalition of religious groups, Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE), which targeted GE because they say the company has refused to consider investing money in nearby Prince William County to help struggling homeowners make up for the equity and losses they incurred from the subprime loans. VOICE has successfully begun negotiations for reinvestments with other major lenders, including Bank of America.