Coleen Colombo joined the Concord (California) branch of BNC in 2003. The small office, next to a Mercedes-Benz
dealership and a run-down Kmart, was part of a regional group that funded some $1.2 billion worth of loans each
month. Colombo initially thrived in her job as a senior underwriter.
In a performance review, she received a top rating of
"exceeds expectations," according to a wrongful termination and harassment suit filed in California Superior Court on
behalf of Colombo and five other female employees. The environment turned hostile in 2005 and thereafter,
the suit says. At that time, one fellow employee, a male wholesaler, began bringing Colombo questionable loans with
incorrect salaries, occupations, and home values, she says. In one instance, she claims in the suit, the wholesaler "tried to
bribe (Colombo) to allow a loan with fraudulent information to go through."
The bribes, known as spiffs, were common at the BNC branch, says Sylvia Vega-Sutfin, a former wholesaler who
left the firm in 2005. The mother of four, who says she made $16,000 a month during the boom, says that some underwriters
demanded spiffs of $1,000 for the first 10 loans and $2,500 for the next 20 loans, whether they approved the mortgages
or not. When she refused to pay them, Vega-Sutfin says, her loan files started to go missing and the size of her commission
checks plummeted. Her bosses "said they would make an example of me to others: ‘If you complain, this is what will
happen,'" she says.
Colombo says in her lawsuit that she e-mailed the regional vice president for operations to report the wholesaler who tried to bribe her. She claims the vice president brushed off her complaints in a meeting. Colombo "left the office in tears," the suit says. After she returned from a short leave of absence, the branch manager told her a coworker "wanted her terminated for making the complaints," Colombo claims. Meanwhile, the wholesaler who tried to bribe Colombo
started sexually harassing her, according to the suit. The male colleague made her feel "uncomfortable and fearful"
by "intentionally rubbing his body against hers." Colombo resigned from BNC in 2005. "You would have thought he was
the pimp and we were his prostitutes," says Linda Weekes, another underwriter who is part of the suit. "It felt like a
dirty place to work." The case has been on hold since BNC's owner, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy on September
15, 2008. "We dispute the allegations made by these former employees and will be contesting them on the merits in the
pending litigation," says a Lehman spokesman. The world came crashing down for wholesalers when
subprime loans started going bad. Wall Street quickly reined in its mortgage factories, tightening lending standards, pulling
credit lines, and forcing lenders to buy back the same risky loans it once consumed. For the thousands of wholesalers
swept up in the excitement and excess of a manic market, it was time to find a new job.