The hacktivist movement known as Anonymous on Monday began releasing internal documents purporting to show malfeasance at Bank of America, jumping the gun on its ally WikiLeaks.
Conspiracy theorists looking for revelations that would shake up the world of corporate finance may be disappointed, however.
The documents are a pretty tepid exchange of e-mails among employees of Balboa Insurance, a loan underwriter acquired by Bank of America in 2008 when it took over the collapsing mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.
The e-mails seem to show a cover-up in the fall of 2010 to conceal bad loans from auditors by changing loan numbers, though it would take more than a casual knowledge of banking or finance to make much sense of them.
Readers well versed in such matters can click here for bankofamericasuck.com (not the better-known bankofamericasucks.com), which masks out the name of the leaker, or here, the presumed leaker’s own blog, where he makes no effort to conceal his name and also details the circumstances that got him fired from Balboa. (He also appears to be an aspiring rapper.)
For months, WikiLeaks has been thought to have a trove of material incriminating Bank of America in shady dealings that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. The rumor that took on such force that Bank of America stock briefly plunged on Dec. 1, 2010, when a release seemed imminent.
WikiLeaks and its legally beleaguered leader Julian Assange have done nothing to dispel the rumor, but they haven’t exactly coughed up the goods, either.
Anonymous, however, is all about “put up or shut up,” and after some of its members were contacted last week by someone offering dirt on Bank of America, they seemed to have jumped at the chance.
It’s not clear whether this small-potatoes stuff is part of WikiLeaks’ unseen cache of material on Bank of America, or if it’s just something a disgruntled former employee is using to get back at the company.
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