Bank of America is in hot water with the U.S. Justice Department.

According to CNN, the U.S. Justice Department is demanding BOA cough up $1 billion, accusing the banking giant of selling defective mortgages in what it calls "the Hustle."

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the lawsuit, saying the fraudulent mortgages purchased by firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shorted taxpayers roughly $1 billion and resulted in "countless foreclosures."

In its suit, the Justice Department said "the Hustle" is short for "High-Speed Swim Lane," or HSSL — get it? — which was started by mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and continued after BOA purchased it in 2008. 

The program was supposed to streamline the origination process, but Justice Department officials said it was "intentionally designed to process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints, and which generated thousands of fraudulent and otherwise defective residential mortgage loans."

Read the full story here, and more of Neon Tommy's BOA coverage here.

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