Paul Kiel covers business and consumer finance for ProPublica.
In recent years, he’s focused on the U.S. tax system. The Secret IRS Files, which involved a team of ProPublica reporters, revealed key ways the ultrawealthy avoid taxes. Before that, he worked on The TurboTax Trap and Gutting the IRS investigations.
He has won numerous awards, including the Selden Ring Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, a Barlett & Steele Award, a Scripps Howard Award twice, a Hillman Prize, and a Philip Meyer Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors.
His work has appeared in several newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. He has also produced stories for National Public Radio and American Public Media’s Marketplace, as well as appeared on This American Life.
A study by government and academic researchers finds that approximately 800,000 homeowners missed out on mortgage modifications because of big banks' poor performance.
While Democrats paint a glowing picture of the bailout, our Bailout Tracker database tells the whole story. A look at the biggest losses and gains stemming from the TARP and Fannie, Freddie bailout.
Last month, the government released information on the compensation victims of the banks’ foreclosure practices might receive. For homeowners, it turns out that it’s crucially important just how the bank messed up.
Under the foreclosure settlement with big banks, states got $2.5 billion to help homeowners. But a comprehensive, state-by-state breakdown shows that almost a billion is going to general use.
We contacted every state to see how they are spending the money they received from the foreclosure settlement. Here’s the most comprehensive breakdown available anywhere.
An employee at a mortgage servicer that was owned by Goldman describes the internal chaos that harmed thousands of homeowners and undermined the government's flagship foreclosure prevention program.
The story of how one woman went from a three-bedroom home to a tent is the story of how America ended up in a foreclosure crisis that still drags down the economy.
Yesterday's mortgage settlement aims to avoid the pitfalls of the administration's floundering foreclosure program, but enforcement is again a question.
The Independent Foreclosure Review seeks to compensate homeowners victimized by big banks, but key elements remain undecided, unclear or secret, while lawmakers and homeowner advocates have criticized some of the known features.
Regulators have provided a bare-bones website and frequently asked questions about the foreclosure reviews. But we thought things could be even clearer for readers, so we are providing this FAQ.
Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Edward DeMarco had blocked earlier efforts to help struggling homeowners, but now he’s signed onto a major change to encourage banks to refinance underwater mortgages.
Anonymous tip warned Treasury that United Commercial Bank was troubled, but the bank still got almost $300 million. Now the bank has failed and two executives are facing criminal charges.
Documents obtained by ProPublica suggest the government coddled mortgage servicers in its flagship foreclosure prevention program despite frequent and serious errors.
By vastly expanding its suit against Bank of America to include all major stages of the bank's mortgage practices, Nevada signals that the banks' mortgage troubles will likely continue to dog them.
An internal document obtained by ProPublica shows that when one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers sought to foreclose on a homeowner last year and lacked a crucial document, they just made one up. The case appears to be part of a larger pattern of deceptive filings to foreclose on homeowners.
After two years of arguing that it had little power to punish banks for breaking the rules of its mortgage modification program, the administration has decided it’s finally time to crack down. But the punishment won’t do much damage to banks that count their profits in the billions.
Many homeowners have received a mortgage modification only to find themselves once again at risk of foreclosure because of errors by their mortgage company. ProPublica investigated six of these cases.
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