accusing it of gouging and predatory lending practices against older, female, and minority borrowers. Prosecutors accused it of allowing mortgage brokers and its own employees to charge these customers an additional fee of as much as 12 percent of the loan amount. As part of the settlement, Ameriquest (then still known as Long Beach Mortgage) agreed to use the educational fund to train its employees in proper mortgage techniques and to refrain from utilizing predatory lending techniques, but only within the State of California. Shortly after entering into this settlement agreement, the company "switched" names with its subsidiary and began aggressively seeking refinance-mortgage business throughout the United States.“Ameriquest was very, very engaged,” recalls Georgia state Sen. Vincent Fort, who authored the law. Mr. Fort says that Adam Bass Adam J. Bass a lawyer for Ameriquest, lobbied him directly. The state senator says he accused Mr. Bass of victimizing poor minorities, which angered Mr. Bass. In 2001, after being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, the company settled a dispute with ACORN, a national organization of community groups, promising to offer $360 million in low-cost loans. In February 2005, reporters Michael Hudson and E. Scott Reckard broke a story in the Los Angeles Times about "boiler room" sales tactics at Ameriquest. Their investigation found evidence that the company had undertaken various questionable practices, including "deceiving borrowers about the terms of their loans, forging documents, falsifying appraisals and fabricating borrowers' income to qualify them for loans they couldn't afford." On August 1, 2005, Ameriquest announced that it would set aside $325 million to settle investigations by 30 state attorneys general into allegations that it had preyed on borrowers by offering loans with hidden fees and balloon payments. In at least five of those states—California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Florida—Ameriquest had already settled multimillion-dollar suits. Federal Housing Administration commissioner Brian Montgomery stated that the settlement reinforced his concern that the industry was exploiting borrowers and that he was "shocked to find those customers had been lured away by the 'fool's gold' of subprime loans". In May 2006, Ameriquest Mortgage announced it was closing all of its retail offices and in the future would make its loans through mortgage brokers, a channel not covered by the predatory-lending settlement. On June 13, 2007, lawyers for borrowers seeking class status asserted in a filing with the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that "assets