Bank Of America

A U.S. District Court jury in Los Angeles convicted a Palos Verdes Estates businessman of mail fraud Friday for masterminding an elaborate mortgage securities scheme that cost Bank of America up to $95 million. It was apparently the largest swindle ever perpetrated against the bank, but a spokesman said Bank of America has already recovered some of its money and anticipates recovering the rest. Prosecutors said David A.

Three masked men dressed in black held up a Bank of America branch in Thousand Oaks on Thursday, and authorities said it was possibly the work of a Los Angeles street gang that has now allegedly robbed the Hillcrest Drive bank three times in the past 22 months. In each of the takeover robberies, witnesses told investigators that three males in dark clothing and ski masks barged into the bank, while yelling at tellers and customers to get down on the floor.

The employees began arriving for work as usual at the Bank of America branch here, but this was no normal day. Instead of reporting to their teller windows or desks, many of the 20 employees trapped for six hours New Year's Eve in the bank filed into sessions with trauma counselors. "We needed it," said one employee. "In some ways, it's painful because you're kind of reliving it all over again . . . but I think it helps."

New York's attorney general issued subpoenas Tuesday to former Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain and Bank of America Corp.'s chief administrative officer, J. Steele Alphin, amid an investigation into bonuses that Merrill paid executives just before it was sold to Bank of America. Thain, 53, was serving as head of the newly combined company's wealth management division before he resigned last week.

Still refusing to disclose what happened to the loot, a former Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to 14 years and three months in federal prison Monday for robbing $722,000 from a Bank of America branch. David A. Mack, a national collegiate track star and decorated LAPD veteran, was convicted of staging the armed robbery in 1997 with the help of his paramour, an assistant manager at the bank branch near USC.

It couldn't have been more than a couple of months after I signed up with Bank of America's online bill-paying service that they made their first mistake. A monthly payment to Honda Motors had arrived late by a day, despite my having ordered it up well within BofA's required lead time. That meant about $25 in late fees and all the joy that comes from having a late payment on the few dozen secret databases that credit companies keep. That's the bad news. Here's the good news.

A decade ago, big banks and thrifts began closing branches in the belief that clicks would replace bricks as customers moved their business online. But consumers weren't ready, and the experiment was soon abandoned. Now the old model may finally be changing. Bank of America Corp.

In a rare move, a federal judge threw out a deal in which Bank of America Corp. would have paid $33 million to settle charges that it misled shareholders about $3.6 billion in bonuses being paid to Merrill Lynch & Co. executives, contending that the punishment was too light. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York also lashed out at federal regulators, saying they didn't dig deeply enough to determine whether Bank of America executives intentionally set out to deceive shareholders about plans to pay bonuses to employees of Merrill Lynch last year, when the bank was acquiring the Wall Street firm.

Gabby Ornelas, a former teller at the giant Bank of America Corp., remembers the training sessions. And she remembers her marching orders: "Sell, sell, sell." Ornelas was instructed to use her Spanish-language skills and Latino heritage to sign up customers for as many kinds of banking services as possible, she said -- services that led to lucrative fees for the bank and financial entanglement for many customers.