The latest chapter in Bank of America’s legal woes began Tuesday with the filing of parallel suits by the SEC and DOJ charging the bank with fraudulently misleading investors as to the risks associated with some $850 million worth of mortgage-backed securities. Those securities, not surprisingly, did not fare well when the housing market collapsed, and their purchasers suffered losses estimated at more than $100 million as a result.

Bank of America is no stranger to fraud allegations. In October 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York intervened in a False Claims Act case seeking over $1 billion in damages for the bank’s alleged failure to vet properly mortgages issued by its subsidiary Countrywide Financial—a failure that left taxpayers holding the bill when those government-backed loans failed. Those allegations were brought to the government’s attention when Edward J. O’Donnell, an executive vice president for Countrywide, blew the whistle by filing a qui tam action against Bank of America. O’Donnell’s suit soon earned the support of the U.S. government, with multiple agencies signing on to the suit and Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, calling the alleged conduct “spectacularly brazen in scope.”

Read the entire articles, “U.S. sues Bank of America over sale of $850 million in mortgage-backed securities”; “U.S. Accuses Bank of America of a ‘Brazen’ Mortgage Fraud”