DOJ moving slowly on finding Countrywide victims

The U.S. Department of Justice is moving slower than it had hoped on finding minority borrowers who were discriminated against by Countrywide, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning.

The department settled with Bank of America, which bought the subprime lender in 2008, for $335 million in December 2011, resolving claims that Countrywide steered black and Hispanic borrowers into loans with higher interest rates and fees. It was the largest fair-lending settlement in history.

Bank of America said at the time that it had discontinued Countrywide's improper practices, and said Bank of America policies were not at issue.

The $335 million was set aside to compensate the more than 200,000 victims of the alleged discrimination. The department hired Rust Consulting to track them down and ultimately administer the payments. It was hoped the first letters would go out in the summer of 2012.

But it took until just last month for those to be sent, the Department of Justice reported. And the Wall Street Journals says about 10 percent of those have already been sent back undelivered.

The department said at the time that it could take two years for payments to be issued. The Wall Street Journal says officials hoped it could be done sooner, but now aren't hopeful that will happen. A Department of Justice spokesman told the Journal that it still expects to meet the two-year goal.