Steven Mnuchin had a highly unusual name-drop during his confirmation hearing Thursday: the Octomom.
Grilled about foreclosure practices while he headed OneWest Bank, the Treasury secretary nominee said he regretted some of the mistakes the bank made in kicking people out of their homes when they didn't deserve it.
While confidentiality laws prohibited him from discussing individual cases, he did say one of the "most troubling" of the situations "was actually to the Octomom."
The reference was to Nadya Suleman, who became a source of national controversy when she gave birth to octuplets in January 2009, thanks to the use of fertility drugs.
Mnuchin offered no details about what went wrong. Press reports indicate that IndyMac, the bank that OneWest bought up during the financial crisis, filed foreclosure documents in 2009 for a La Habra, California, home that Suleman paid $453,750 for in 2006. TMZ reported that she finally moved out in June 2012.
"That was a terrible situation. We worked very, very hard to move her to another home that they could afford," Mnuchin said.
"I can assure that as chairman of the bank, I took these issues very seriously," he added. "There were mistakes. We regret those mistakes. We had hundreds of thousands of delinquent loans."
Mnuchin said the bank made every effort to do modifications for delinquent borrowers. The Octomom, who briefly turned to exotic dancing and making pornography as her time in the spotlight faded, apparently was unsuccessful in getting her terms changed to ones she could handle.
"We believed in loan modifications, and we were financially incented to (provide) them when we could," he said.
Suleman could not be located for comment.