Anonymous hacktivists reveal alleged fraud at Bank of America

Hacker group Anonymous has released emails claiming to reveal fraud at Bank of America.

A handful of emails purportedly from a former employee at Balboa Insurance, a mortgage unit of the Bank of America, have been posted online at bankofamericasucks.com

Anonymous has also posted a conversation thread with its source, in an attempt to confirm the authenticity of the documents released so far.

The former employee accuses Balboa Insurance of knowingly charging customers overinflated insurance premiums in the documents released.

He also claims the firm has been falsifying loan documentation to proceed with foreclosures and that incorrect volumes have been reported to all lenders and federal auditors to avoid fines for falling behind on loan modifications.

More information has been gathered, but the whistle-blower noted he needed to "keep a few aces up my sleeve for my inevitable years of litigation for what I'm doing".

"I'm well known throughout Bank of America. They saw to that when they showed everyone my picture and labelled me as a terrorist," he noted in one email.

"There are a lot of honest and good people working for that company, and their concerns are constantly silenced, because it is cheaper and easier to fire people and sweep their issues under the table than it is to fix the problems."

A Bank of America spokesman confirmed to Reuters that the information related to clerical and administrative documents, and was stolen by a former Balboa Insurance employee. The firm denied that the documents related to foreclosures.

"We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue," the spokesman said.

V3.co.uk contacted Bank of America for additional information, but the firm had yet to respond at the time of publication.

Anonymous has been linked to WikiLeaks and the hackers previously launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against firms including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal after they severed ties with the whistle-blowing web site.

The Metropolitan Police force arrested five people suspected of involvement in these DDoS attacks at the end of January.