Coleen Colombo and Colleagues Resist Mortgage Fraud
Synopsis
In 2003, Coleen Colombo joined the California branch of BNC, where she worked as a senior underwriter. The BNC office in which Colombo worked was part of the regional group that offered a considerable amount of loan to its customers. The performance of Colombo in her work was outstanding. This is according to a wrongful termination and harassment suit filed in California Superior Court on her behalf and on behalf of five other BNC employees. The suit states that the work environment began to become hostile for Colombo in 2005 after one of her fellow employees, a male wholesaler, began bringing her loans with questionable attributes such as incorrect salaries and home values. The male wholesaler even tried to bribe her to allow a loan with incorrect information to be approved.
According to Sylvia Vega-Sutfin, a former employee of BNC, the bribes were common in the company. Vega-Sutfin stated that most of the underwriters in the company demanded bribes so that they can approve the loans. When she refused to pay them, her life in the company began to become unbearable to her; sometimes her loan files could disappear mysteriously and the size of her commission checks dropped significantly. She claimed in the filed suit that her bosses said would make her an example to others who might want to complain regarding the issue of bribery. The same thing happened to Colombo; in her suit, she states that she informed the regional vice president of BNC about the wholesale who wanted to bribe her, but the president downplayed her complaints in a meeting, and she was later threatened that she would be dismissed from the company if she continued complaining. The lawsuit also claimed that the same wholesaler who tried to bribe Colombo began to harass her sexually, making her fearful and uncomfortable in the