Federal and state officials announced Thursday morning a $25 billion settlement of a long-running probe into allegedly shoddy foreclosure practices at the nation's five largest banks, a deal that will include more than $1 billion in assistance to former and current Illinois homeowners.
Read MoreThe attorney general in Illinois on Thursday sued a mortgage document firm and said it filed "faulty" documents with local governments in a rush to process mortgages and foreclosures.
Nationwide Title Clearing Inc was a "key contributor" to the mortgage crisis by "undermining the integrity and accuracy of the mortgage servicing and foreclosure process," Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement.
“Illinoisans are vulnerable to identity theft and fraud when security breaches occur,” Madigan said. That’s why businesses that collect personal information have an obligation to comply with Illinois law to avoid breaches and take action to inform consumers when breaches occur. Today, I’m providing guidance to Illinois businesses and government agencies on how to prevent, prepare for and respond to security breaches appropriately.”
Prolonged outages that at one point left more than 800,000 people in Northern Illinois without power during last summer's storms were not unpreventable acts of God, but were caused by years of neglect of equipment and lack of tree-trimming by ComEd, according to a report from the Illinois Attorney General's office.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s claiming the credit ratings agency fraudulently gave high ratings to risky mortgage-backed investments in the years prior to the 2008 housing market crash.
Read MoreMadigan says Westwood College degrees have failed to qualify graduates for careers in the field of criminal justice. She claims Westwood graduates are also left with thousands of dollars in debt from classes that fail to prepare them for careers.
Read MoreThe Illinois attorney general's office is lashing out at Westwood College, which has four Chicago-area campuses, claiming the institution misleads students enrolled in its criminal justice program, putting them deep in debt and saddling them with a nearly worthless degree for pursuing careers in Illinois law enforcement.
Read MoreAttorney General Lisa Madigan's office on Friday detailed the undercover operations, dubbed "Operation Smoke Out," with law enforcement officials and prosecutors at a series of presentations on the state's work to address the rising number of young people using synthetic drugs.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan today released her list of the top 10 consumer complaints for 2011, revealing that consumer debt was the upmost concern among Illinoisans.
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“These allegations show that the defendant devised and executed a scheme to deceive her employer and steal over $1 million,” Madigan said. “This prosecution will ensure she will be held accountable for these illegal acts.”
Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the U.S. Department of Justice today announced a $335 million joint settlement with Countrywide, a subsidiary of Bank of America, over allegations that the former mortgage giant steered African-American and Latino borrowers into risky subprime loans more often than similarly situated white borrowers and charged them more for their loans during the height of the nation’s housing boom.
Read MoreThe state attorney general's office filed suit Monday against three Chicago-area firms and their principals who allegedly operated mortgage rescue schemes that conned homeowners out of more than $44,000 in upfront fees and provided them with little or no help.
Madigan applauded the move, saying H.R. 3035, or the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011,” amounted to nothing more than a bad deal for consumers. The bill would have required consumers to pay for the cost of unwanted solicitation calls without their explicit consent.
Although debtors' prisons are illegal across the country, it's becoming increasingly common for people to serve jail time as a result of their debt.
Collection agencies are resorting to some unusually harsh tactics to force people to pay their unpaid debt, some of whom aren't aware that lawsuits have been filed against them by creditors.
“Blagojevich’s criminal misconduct not only related directly to his official duties as governor but, in fact, involved the exercise of those very duties,” Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote. “He repeatedly traded on his position as a public servant for his own, unlawful ending, violating the public’s trust.”
Read MoreIllinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced Dec. 8 a $58.75 million multistate settlement with Wells Fargo Bank N.A. for the activities of the former Wachovia Bank N.A. over a scheme to rig bids and engage in other anticompetitive practices that defrauded government entities, schools and nonprofits that purchased municipal bond derivatives from the bank.
The Illinois Attorney General says a new state initiative to crack down on serial child pornographers is working.
Read MoreIllinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, in an interview, vowed to push state-court judges to quash arrest-warrant requests by lawyers representing the fast-growing debt-collection industry. Madigan also said she will file enforcement actions against companies that "abuse" their power to seek arrest warrants under Illinois law.
Read MoreAttorney General Lisa Madigan highlighted a darker side of the holiday season today at a news conference announcing the release of the state's Safe Shopping Guide, which lists all consumer items recalled in 2011, including dozens of children’s products.