SACRAMENTO – A California attorney will have to cough up millions of dollars he collected in a mortgage relief scheme despite his argument that the federal agency that fined him had no authority to do so, a federal appellate panel said Thursday.
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in July 2012 filed a civil enforcement action against Chance Gordon, seeking to disgorge $11.4 million he received between January 2010 and July 2012 from underwater homeowners seeking help saving their homes from foreclosure. The CFPB found that Gordon had engaged in a misleading ad campaign that, among other things, erroneously suggested he could help his clients and that he had a government affiliation.
