H R Block Inc

H&R Block Inc. says it is looking to sell its Irvine-based wholesale mortgage unit, Option One, in an effort to focus on its retail businesses. Founded in 1992, Option One specializes in mortgages to customers with bad credit, originating about $3.6 billion in loans over the last year. That makes the company--which employs 1,500 people nationwide, including 600 in Orange County--slightly larger than Orange-based rival Long Beach Financial Corp.

H&R Block Inc. said Tuesday that it would give 700,000 customers rebate coupons for tax preparation services to settle a class-action lawsuit in Texas over loans given in advance of tax refunds. The settlement, which also covers the plaintiffs' legal fees, removed uncertainty about the company's potential legal liabilities. Its ailing shares jumped as much as 12%. The Kansas City, Mo.

H&R Block Inc. has agreed to settle a long-standing class-action lawsuit over its refund anticipation loans for $39 million. The Kansas City, Mo.-based tax preparer said Thursday that the settlement, subject to court approval, would cover 1.7 million class members who bought 2 million loans from April 8, 1994, to Dec. 31, 1996. Beneficial National Bank, which provided the loans through H&R Block, would pay half the settlement, H&R Block said.

An office manager at tax-help firm H&R Block Inc. used customers' names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth to steal their refund checks, withdraw cash from their bank accounts and spend thousands of dollars with fake credit cards, according to a federal complaint disclosed Thursday.

H&R Block Inc. said Monday that it had signed an agreement to sell its troubled mortgage servicing business for $1.1 billion to billionaire investor Wilbur Ross. Option One Mortgage Corp., which has been rocked by the nationwide mortgage crisis, services about $53 billion of sub-prime mortgages, ranking it the fourth-largest in the nation.

H&R Block Inc. on Wednesday postponed the spinoff of its remaining stake in CompuServe Corp., hoping to raise the stock price before giving the money-losing unit to shareholders. To separate CompuServe from its tax-preparation business, H&R Block intends to improve CompuServe's performance by cutting costs and stemming customer defections to cheaper Internet services.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer sued H&R Block Inc. on Wednesday, seeking to stop a widely used loan program that entitles the nation's largest tax preparer to a chunk of its customers' tax refunds. The San Francisco Superior Court complaint joins a long list of lawsuits that have targeted H&R Block's refund anticipation loans -- cash advances the company arranges for customers so they won't have to wait for a check from the government.

New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer on Monday said he had evidence that H&R Block Inc. executives not only knew they were pushing customers to buy money-losing retirement account plans, but penalized employees who refused to recommend them. Spitzer amended his March suit against the giant tax-preparation company with copies of e-mails that he said showed managers disregarded complaints from tax preparers about misleading marketing of the retirement product called Express IRA.

H&R Block Inc. on Wednesday said it lost a bid for dismissal of a lawsuit on behalf of millions of customers who claim the world's largest tax preparer plotted with bankers to gouge them on tax-refund loans. U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo in Chicago found that a nationwide class of consumers can press claims that H&R Block and its banking-services partner, Household International Inc.