Based in Orange, Ameriquest Mortgage is a unit of privately held Ameriquest Capital Corp. Its founder and majority owner is Los Angeles billionaire Roland Arnall, a major contributor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other politicians.In 1996, the company, then known as Long Beach Mortgage Co., paid $4 million to settle U.S. Justice Department charges that its lending practices cheated minorities, women and elderly people.
The Federal Trade Commission suspended an investigation into Ameriquest's lending in 2001, after the company promised to adopt "best practices" that would set a standard for subprime lenders and pledged to make $360 million in low-cost loans to borrowers identified by ACORN, a national grass-roots group.
The San Mateo County class-action suit, filed by Burlingame, Calif., law firm Cotchett, Pitre, Simon & McCarthy, accused Ameriquest employees of surprising borrowers at loan closings with high fees and interest rates that often were markedly higher than had been promised in good-faith estimates of the loan costs.
Employees used ruses such as telling the borrowers their old loans had already been paid off to pressure them into accepting new loans, the lawsuit says.
Unless Ameriquest "changed" the appraisals, I can't see an independant appraiser risking their license and going to jail for $400 bucks. Appraising is by no means an exact science, but since the savings and loan fiasco, since 1989 they have to follow very strict USPAP guidelines.