Two years after Lynn Szymoniak helped the U.S. recover $95 million from Bank of America Corp. and other lenders for mortgage-fraud tied to the housing bubble, the whistle-blower said the government is ignoring a chance to collect more money for identical claims against other banks, Bloomberg News reported today. Szymoniak got $18 million when the U.S. Justice Department intervened in her foreclosure-fraud lawsuit. The government negotiated a settlement with five lenders including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The other banks accused of the same behavior, including Deutsche Bank AG and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), are still fighting Szymoniak’s suit, saying that she isn’t a true whistle-blower. And the U.S., while continuing its crackdown on banks that packaged risky loans for sale as securities, hasn’t joined with her this time, leaving her to fight the banks alone. U.S. District Judge Joseph Anderson in Columbia, S.C., today is set to consider their bid to throw the case out.
