Marginal Revolutions

Ameriquest Mortgage Company is one of the known leading wholesale lenders of the United States. It as founded in the year 1979 in Orange County, California. It was first founded as a bank called Long Beach Savings & Loan. In 1994 the bank converted to a mortgage lender. Citigroup bought out leading lending unit Argent Mortgage and AMC Mortgage Services which shutdown lending unit Ameriquest Mortgage. This happened in the year 2007.

Ameriquest was one of the first mortgage companies to use computers and the internet to search for borrowers and to speed up the whole loan process. Ameriquest was also widely advertised on television and at many different football and baseball games. It also sponsored the Rolling Stones and NASCAR. Ameriquest was also affiliated with several charities. One of these included the Soaring Dreams Fund which gave money to children in need. This fund was promoted on race cars in the NASCAR Bush Series.

Ameriquest was at the center of several lawsuits. In 1996 they paid out $3 million dollars to a educational fund. This was because of a Justice Department lawsuit that stated Ameriquest was gouging and had predatory lending practices against minorities, female and older borrowers. There was also accusations of allowing additional fees up to 12 percent of the loan itself. In 2001 Ameriquest was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. In the same year Ameriquest settled a dispute with ACORN. They settled this by offering $360 million in low cost loans. There were several other lawsuits against Ameriquest as well. Former employees from this company said that they were forced to falsify documents on different bad mortgages and then sell them to the banks of Wall Street that were hungry to make a fast profit. This type of mortgage fraud was thought to be the heart of the financial crisis of 2007-2010.