If you had a Mortgage with CountryWide you may get a Refund

(CNNMoney) — Borrowers who were overcharged by Countrywide Financial over three years ago are finally going to get reimbursed.

The F TC said Wednesday that, as a result of a settlement reached with the mortgage lender over a year ago, it is sending out checks totaling nearly $108 million to more than 450,000 former Countrywide borrowers. This was for overcharges the company made before it was bought by Bank of America.

There were two types of overcharges, according to Frank Dorman, an FTC spokesman. The first were tied to inspections, home maintenance, lawn mowing and other services that Countrywide provided to homes of borrowers in default.

Instead of directly hiring local vendors for those tasks, the company used their own subsidiary companies to hire the vendors — and then had the subsidiaries mark up the fees, sometimes doubling them or more. They passed along the overcharges to the homeowners. Affected consumers will receive all those overcharges back.

The second set of overcharges came in the form of false claims and fees to escrow accounts of borrowers who entered into Chapter 13 bankruptcies (this type of bankruptcy protection provides debtors with time to pay off what they owe). The borrowers weren’t notified about the fees or charges at the time they were incurred. The FTC says they will get back the entire amount of those undisclosed fees or charges.

The action covered borrowers who were in default betweenJanuary 1, 2005andJuly 1, 2008. Many of the amounts are quite small; the average is about $240, but some borrowers will receive checks of several thousand dollars, the FTC said.