Cheat Sheet: BofA Supplied Default Answers for ‘Independent' Foreclosure Claims Reviewers

``No evidence has emerged that Bank of America pressured reviewers to accept its answers, and the bank did not supply answers for the final questions: whether the bank should pay compensation and, if so, how much. But those ultimate determinations depended on responses to the preceding questions, and for reviewers the path of least effort was to accept the bank's answers. This practice only ended a month after ProPublica published a story showing that Bank of America was doing much of the work itself. When that story was published, ProPublica hadn't yet learned that the answers the bank supplied showed up on the reviewers' computer screens as defaults, and Bank of America strenuously denied that it had compromised the integrity of the review. Since November, the reviewers now begin their analysis without the bank's answers. ''