Issue Position: Consumer Protection

Issue Position

Maura led the Attorney General's Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau, which is charged with protecting Massachusetts consumers. Under her leadership, the office has taken on abusive mortgage lenders, for-profit colleges, payday lenders and companies that target the elderly with scams. Maura has worked on nation-leading regulations to stop abusive lending to home-buyers and students. Her aggressive plan to stop abusive lending by for-profit colleges calls for new enforcement actions, adoption of regulations, changes in legislation and increased public awareness efforts in partnership with communities.

Because of lawsuits that the Attorney General's Office brought against big banks, mortgage brokers and servicers, Massachusetts is the first state where it is illegal to sell someone a mortgage that you know they cannot afford. We need to continue to push forward and stop abuses at for-profit schools and online payday lenders.

Maura oversaw the landmark HomeCorps program that has worked directly on behalf of distressed homeowners to get banks to modify thousands of mortgages to affordable levels and to stop nearly 1,000 unnecessary foreclosures, and she chaired the state's foreclosure impacts task force. Maura also oversaw teams that brought cases for predatory lending, unfair debt collection practices, non-payment of wages, unlawful evictions, and unfair insurance practices, and against for-profit colleges that deceptively marketed to students (many of them low-income women and veterans) all looking to climb up the ladder. Maura also studied the impact of CORI and credit scores on the ability of people to gain meaningful employment.

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