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[Music] aloha good afternoon everybody welcome to this news conference about a whistleblower complaint filed against the bank of america and possible other federal litigation to come the hawaii state teachers association is hosting this news conference because hsta's board of directors recently approved a policy saying that hsta believes our members and communities are better served when local families have stable housing and therefore hsta supports efforts to hold banks and mortgage lenders accountable to their promises of home loans to native hawaiians we're going to hear from a number of people today from maui and from across the country on this important issue and we're going to start off with some opening remarks from brandon maka ava ava who is the president of napo kokua brandon aloha hsta mahalo for having us hosting us on this platform um i'd like to start off by showing appreciation to maui county um to to mayor victorino to to everyone who has helped in this fight um this fight originally started on maui 27 years ago um this was holding bank of america accountable for 150 million dollar commitment that they haven't fulfilled yet um from 1994 to 1998 they were supposed to provide 150 million dollars in hawaiian homes beneficiary loans so that our people can have a more stable future housing uh building equity um in in in a struggling place for hawaiians and um bank of america has yet to fulfill that commitment um they were supposed to fulfill this commitment in order for them to take over liberty bank so they they committed this to the federal reserve not just our people but the federal reserve so this commitment is real um they were supposed to finish it in 1998 and they didn't in 1998 they wanted to merge one of the largest banks in america nation's bank and in order for them to merge with this bank we held them accountable our organization napoi kokua as well as as the hawaii fair lending coalition and so kathy bessant from bank of america flew down here to meet with our kupuna and hawaii fellaini coalition and they worked out an agreement to recommit to this commitment 150 million dollars okay because this commitment was late and wasn't done it was actually they actually only did three percent of this commitment in that four year span we actually made them um correlate a second commitment which was to help hawaiians create a hawaiian owned and controlled bank where hawaiians would all be shareholders in so that we can build an economic foundation for our future for our keiki and to develop new avenues for our people to help with our problems here um this commitment again has not been fulfilled in 2007 they were let out of this commitment prematurely but in 2012 dhhl's new director found out that they didn't fulfill the commitment and recommitted to this commitment 20 years after the 1998 ray commitment governor david ige sent a letter to kathy besson asking her to come to hawaii to settle this commitment with the hawaiian people with napoli kokua our organization she ignored it so we got the counties involved specifically maui county and so they took action on their own and we'll hear more about that from kyani rollins fernandez who is the maui county vice chair but i'd like to now acknowledge a strong supporter of ours for for a bunch of years even before he was mayor but maui mayor mike victor reno i'd like to acknowledge his presence in here and tell him mahalo for all your support mayor hello everyone and you know thank you and mahalo for what you are doing this is a real long drawn-out uh issue that needs to get resolved and we're here to support you in that respect and we have stood strong from the beginning and i think by standing strong we'll we'll be able to accomplish what we have set out to do so i wish you well i won't go into a lot of details because i think miss rollins has more details and i prefer having the time to listen to all of you instead of speaking to you so mahalo and god bless you all thank you so much mayor maui mayor michael victorino next we're going to hear from our attorney he is a former miami prosecutor who's been fighting banks over fraudulent and unfair foreclosures for for many years bruce jacobs all the way from miami florida bruce thank you thank you very much for having me um i really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this fight i've had my own fight with bank america in florida for 12 years i've been doing this and to me the issues that we keep seeing are these banks seem to have a business model which is that they're going to deprive people of their property without due process of law and and there's a pattern we see it over and over again these banks commit illegal acts they get caught they cut a deal nobody goes to jail they make some promises that they decide whether they're going to keep and usually they don't they go right back to whatever it is that they want to do because they're banks and if you when you when you fight them what they'll do is send an army of lawyers and lobbyists and those guys can lie and cheat as they need so i've been uh really honored to be asked by notwa kakua to join them in this fight and something i really feel strongly about is that nbk is asked nicely the governor of hawaii has to bank america nicely the hawaii state senate all the counties of hawaii have all said to bank america come come to why it's beautiful out here come and work this out and bank america ignored them so that's over today is the last chance to resolve this amicably because today on behalf of napolikura i filed a dodd-frank act complaint and what it says is that bank america should have disclosed to all of its investors long time ago that this was coming that there are substantial material risks that bank america faces because they're engaged in rico conduct now what is rico it's a federal statute you usually hear about it it involves the mobsters and the mafia but it's a law and it says that when a bank and their lawyers and lobbyists are engaged in systemic fraud that's rico that's not acceptable and that is something that we can use to fight back so if this doesn't bring back america to the table if we're not going to resolve with them i'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to following this rico lawsuit in federal court seeking class action certification for it and making sure that bank america is held accountable because if you have an army of lawyers and lobbyists and they lie they lie to the governor they lie to the tanapuaka they lie to the department of justice they lie to the federal regulators they lie to the courts that's a criminal enterprise and that's not acceptable and we should hold them accountable thank you thank you so much counselor next we go back to maui now and we're going to hear from the maui county council vice chair keaney rollins fernandez council member mahalo and mahalo to hsta for organizing this important news conference as brandon mentioned in his opening comment uh remarks uh this fight to hold bank of america accountable started on maui and uh we're proud to see this fight through this fight for justice all the way through in november 2018 uh the council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the governor's effort to intervene between napo kokua the hawaii fair lending coalition and bank of america to reach a settlement agreement relating to a 150 million dollar loan commitment for native hawaiians on hawaiian homelands after governors governor ige's efforts did not yield the desired results in october 2019 the council unanimously adopted a resolution to authorize the employment of special counsel to investigate actionable claims against bank of america and the banking and mortgage industry citing wrongful foreclosure and bad bad acts or failures to act committed by the banking and mortgage industry exacerbated maui county's affordable housing crisis it negatively impacted maui county's economy and have resulted in decreased real property tax revenue and increased the county's expenditures related to housing and social services throughout maui county and this includes bank of america's failure to fulfill loan commitments to native hawaiians filipinos and others as described in the federal reserve bulletin issued on july 1994. special counsel then presented to the council in july 2020 and upon determining our strong legal case the county had against bank of america the county council unanimously adopted a resolution to contract special counsel to file legal action uh legal claims against bank of america and other mortgage lenders for failure to fulfill loan commitments fraudulent foreclosures and similar unlawful conduct within three hours of voting to take legal action against bank of america its high pay high paid attorneys filed a meritless lawsuit against the county in december 2020 the u.s district court judge j michael seabright dismissed bank of america's lawsuit against kanye maui pointing to the fact that the county hasn't yet filed a lawsuit judge seabright called the bank's move a big pocketive preemptive strike against the county correctly stating that most parties don't have the resources to make this kind of pre-end preemptive strike that he didn't yet know what the county was going to claim and neither did they the lawsuit also denied this 150 million dollar commitment and and stated that if there was a commitment that they honored it and neither of that is true our county stands firm as mayor victorino said in seeing this through on behalf of all of our maui county residents mahalo and mahalo council member next we're going to go back to the continental united states this time to washington dc and we're going to hear from the co-director for the committee for better banks his name is nick weiner and the committee for better banks is a coalition of bank workers community and consumer advocacy groups and labor organizations joined together to improve conditions in the banking industry nick mahalo keoki and it's an honor to be here with everyone the committee for better banks calls on bank of america to live up to its commitments to the hawaiian people bank workers are committed to serving the best interest of their customers and expect the giant banks they work for to fulfill their obligations especially to disadvantaged and underserved communities in need of access to capital to build wealth through homeownership the communications workers of america helped form the committee for better banks to bring frontline bank workers together to improve their working conditions so workers have the job security to stand up against predatory sales goals and cross-selling so workers can speak out if they're being pressured to push products on customers that they may not need cannot afford or even know about it was the members of the committee for better banks at wells fargo who spoke out and helped expose the toxic culture that led to the fake account scandal and it was members of the committee for better banks who exposed that pay for bank tellers was so low that one third had to rely on public assistance to make ends meet the public outcry pressured all the major banks to increase their minimum minimum pay to 15 an hour including bank of america which went further announcing its minimum pay will be twenty dollars an hour but as you've heard bank of america still has a long way to go the bank with 2.8 trillion dollars in total assets and roughly 17 billion dollars in profits last year can afford to keep its promises to the hawaiian people unfortunately bank of america and other mega banks are so big they feel like they do not have to be accountable to anyone because they can afford to pay millions even billions of dollars in fines for violating consumer protection laws and it's just the cost of doing business that is why we need the systemic change being called for today to prevent this fraudulent behavior that's ripping off communities from happening in the first place empowered frontline bank workers who have a seat at the table with collective bargaining rights is a missing piece of the puzzle to a more just fair and equitable banking system for example regulators could create independent advisory councils consisting of frontline workers who could help examiners gain insight into what is really going on inside these megabanks we hope the new bind administration will look closely at meaningful ways to implement policies that empower bank workers doing so could help make sure that bank of america's promises to the wine people are finally kept because when bank workers are empowered to improve their jobs and customer service and the communities they live in we will all be better off mahalo and mahalo to you thank you so much nick weiner from the committee for better banks in washington dc finally uh and importantly we we end up uh where everything began back on maui and we're going to throw things over to ian chan hodges he's the coordinator for the hawaii fair lending coalition ian mahalo and again i want to thank hsta for hosting this really appreciate all your work on behalf of course teachers and our communities um i wanted to sort of go off of what nick was just saying and talk about the systemic problems we're facing because i think maui county uh with the strong support of the efforts in not waikiko and the hawaii ferelini coalition actually um are leading the way in not only addressing the issues we've been talking about uh with uh bank america's lack of fulfillment of its uh commitment to native hawaiians but also to the larger picture of how banks actually a big bank like make america can get away with this for so long and to put this in perspective when we first started this fight my two boys uh were just learning how to walk and my youngest son in may will graduate from college so this fight's been going on for a long time and one of the reasons is because as many people have actually already talked about uh during this conference there are systemic problems we have to deal with and some of those deal with the regulators and the factors revolving doors some of the regulators with lawyers who work for the regulars and go ahead and work for the banks um and so what uh what nick guido is talking about the committee for banks is important as far as having having frontline workers of the banks be able to when they see something going wrong protect their communities um and actually the shareholders as well and be able to have the opportunity to report that and i want to also thank again uh maui county because mountain county has actually led the way and very victorino i know before you were even left to mayor you wrote a very strong letter to the ceo of bank of america um talking about what it means to actually understand kuleana and responsibility and keeping your commitment so we really appreciate that and all the work you've done since then and we definitely appreciate the leadership that maori county council has shown not only in the resolution they've they've adopted that was followed by the other three counties in hawaii but also taking action they have with the retaining special counsel and i think the what we're actually looking for here as bruce mentioned earlier is bank america has been asked very nicely to show up show up back in hawaii by our governor by our state senate uh by our count by our counties um to resolve this issue and so we're asking for that again and we'd like to see happen is basically for a just resolution to this issue and for a settlement that actually uh deals with the fact that the there's been over two decades of unfulfilled commitment for 150 million dollars for the creation of a native foreign bank and also for the creation of a sovereign wealth fund that would actually fund housing and public education in hawaii and finally for the systemic changes that nick weiner referred to to be able to actually have frontline workers at bank of america have the opportunity without fear for their jobs to report any wrongdoing they see and again thank you very much over the last two decades and we look forward to a just resolution of making america mahalo and mahalo ian and all of you folks thank you so much for the great overview and now we're going to have some questions uh for our viewers who are watc ing on streaming we have a reporter in the zoom here with us who's going to be asking some questions and i might throw in one or two as well um so let's go to melissa tanji from maui news i believe she has a question first for the maui county officials for either mayor victorino or council vice chair rollins fernandez and melissa can you unmute and uh ask a question thank you sure mahalo everybody and um this is edith for mayor victorino or vice of council chair keaney rollins fernandez i wanted to check and see what is the county doing i know napole is going in with a suit but what's what's maui khan you're going to do legally mahalo mayor victorino and mahalo melissa for your question and quick correction uh it's a maui county council vice chair so um as i stated we've retained special counsel and we've contracted the legal firm of marjory bronster and they are getting their putting together their case and so that's in the works right now and the administration supports that and has been working very closely absolutely thank you and then melissa you said you had another question for for bruce jacobs our uh bank fraud and bank uh attorney from uh florida is that right melissa yes and i apologize kiana getting kind of nervous here so i know you're the maui county thompson place chair mr mr jacobs there can you explain to me what you filed today i just want to make sure i got that clear so there's a number of tools that you can use now to fight banks one of them is the dodd-frank act and this was um you know done during the obama administration right after the crash and what it allowed is that anyone can file a whistleblower complaint if they're the original source of the information to say that the company is not doing something they're supposed to do so every bank every corporation is supposed to make sure their investors understand when there's risks that they're facing uh if there's something significant that's going to happen like they're going to get sued to rico that they're going to you know have the people of napo saying that there's a bank that would be worth billions of dollars today but you defied your commitments and then lied about it and engaged in a criminal enterprise that is a risk that the investors should know happened and to have the ability to decide where they want to stay investors and the fact that bank america did not disclose these risks and took actions to stop us from even getting to the position that we're in today and you know actively went out to try to interfere with what we were doing and stop it from going forward was all designed to make it so they don't have that they're not going to just disclose this fraud that's going on to their investors so under the dodd-frank that we're able to file that whistleblower complaint now the sec which uh mr gensler is now the new chairman of the sec um you know he's someone who has made a name for himself as being you know a stern regulator someone's willing to take on these large banks by administration i mean all of these issues that we're dealing with they bank america is a part of the 25 billion national mortgage settlement and they are committing fraud on the court after they promised to stop doing it that's a a serious risk that the investors should know was going on and that's why we filed that dodd-frank act complaint today and this is the last step that we'll take before we go in and we just make this a federal recall case and we take it from there and melissa the um the complaint that mr jacobs refers to was filed this morning hawaii time by brandon who you know gave the the opening statement today he filed that federal whistleblower complaint with the u.s securities and exchange commission this morning and i put a link to it in the chat uh melissa so you can grab that google um google link and take a look at that um at your leisure and melissa do you have any other follow-up questions uh maybe one for for brandon there i mean how do you and your people feel i mean waiting you know for so long for this um we feel hurt melissa um i personally feel hurt for the kupuna that are no longer here that originally took on this fight i'm the next generation i'm the new president of napoli but this this organization was started by kupuna on maui their dream was to have affordable housing options for hawaiians and that dream got crushed by this commitment not being fulfilled so i you know i personally feel hurt but i think all of hawaii should feel hurt by bank of america not fulfilling this commitment because if if he solved the issues with hawaiians and you help hawaiians get into hawaiian homelands where they belong this could solve issues all over the state for for non-hawaiians for people that that that are renting right now that we're fighting each other for for houses you know we we have a housing program what they need is is banks to be allowed to fund this and and for banks to give beneficiaries the opportunities to to have loans but what is not happening right now is banks are still not loaning to beneficiaries here in hawaii and so bank of america had a commitment to start doing that and they failed that commitment so it has set back our people a long way and you're seeing it today now the hho is having to come up with an idea you know building a casino to to help with housing the issue is housing and bank of america had a direct um mandate and a direct commitment to fulfill this it's not like a charity they got something out of it they they got to merge with other banks they got to grow their wealth while we were stuck over here holding the bag so it's personal for us melissa but but you know we we are committed we we resolute to finish this fight for our kupuna that is still here today and the kupuna that is not here with us anymore thank you so much brandon and i if you don't mind i do have a question for bruce uh jacobs you you touched on this earlier in your opening remarks um and and so so to be clear right there's this federal sec complaint that brandon made this morning that's a whistleblower complaint but you're also talking about uh you know that bank of america is guilty of violating federal rico or racketeering statutes can you give us a little more specifics there of and and that's the the pending lawsuit there and specifically in this case in the case of you know maui and hawaii how is bank of america guilty of breaking those racketeering laws that as you said are often used against the you know mafia organized crime folks okay i mean that's a great question so we're following a case that was brought by farmers from hawaii against the dupont chemical company about 20 years ago and what they were doing was the dupont company had sold the product that they knew was going to destroy all the crops and they destroyed all the cops all over the country and when they got sued for destroying the crops the company said we didn't know was going to do that which was a total lie and over the course of years they won a lot of cases and did a lot of things that were helpful for dupont and bad for the farmers until someone finally proved that they knew all along and they were committing fraud on the courts and it was across the nation so these farmers in hawaii took it a step further and said we're going to sue you under the rico statute and what they said was because the dupont company and their lawyers were a criminal enterprise that means that when they're engaged in that systemic fraud that means they're engaged in mail fraud wire fraud and obstruction of justice which are felonies which are serious crimes and that's what rico is designed to to prevent and to punish so another thing is you know the fact that they have been lying to everyone who's asked the regulators the governor the counties that there's never been a commitment if there was one they honored it they just told that to a federal judge and that's not true there was a commitment and it wasn't honored you can tell by looking in the public records there's like 13 million dollars worth of fha 247 loans on record period so there was never a commitment that was fulfilled yet they have the lawyers and lobbyists are part of the criminal enterprise that are using this false statement this fraud this malford wire for an obstruction to deprive the napoacakua of their bank to deprive these native hawaiians of their of the money they need to to develop their homelands and just like for me in florida these the lawyers are committing fraud on the courts in foreclosures they're committing forgery perjury uh destroying evidence backdating records defying court orders you know this is something that is obstruction of justice it's fraud and that is the uh we both have the same problem here in florida and it's actually the foreclosure world is national so it's it's ohio it's florida it's hawaii it's new york it's it's all of these states where these banks are there acting as if it's okay because people didn't pay their mortgage which i i get but at the same time a lot of people would be willing to pay a mortgage if they would just work with them and if they're committing fraud they don't have to and that's been the problem that we've been seeing people shouldn't lose their homes fraudulent foreclosure is not due process so the ricoh statute was designed for all kinds of criminal activity including criminal activity made back by banks thank you so much and we thank you all for joining us today and for this news conference and we invite you to share the links to this live stream on both hsta's facebook page or our youtube channel with folks who you know will be interested in this topic please share it far and wide because this is a very important mission advocating for affordable housing for native hawaiians here in hawaii and we thank you for joining us today we thank our panel of folks from across the country and across the state uh for joining us on this important issue we hope you all have a good day aloha and a hui hello and hello all of you especially hst mahalo you