Over two-thirds of the $3.4 billion in checks issued to borrowers who were aggrieved by various foreclosure mistakes or inequities had been cashed as of July 11. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said Friday that nearly 2.9 million checks totaling over $2.5 billion had cleared the account used for the settlement payments.

This is news primarily because of the history of the settlement and the payment checks. The settlement occasioning the payout was reached by OCC and the Federal Reserve with 13 of the largest servicers late last year. In return for an agreed upon $3.6 million in cash and other compensation the regulators agreed to halt the Independent Foreclosure Review they had ordered to identify borrowers harmed by foreclosure related problems. All homeowners who were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010 and whose loans were serviced by one of the 13 are eligible for compensation under the agreement.

First there was much criticism of the settlement amounts which ranged from $300 to $125,000 depending on the degree of abuse suffered by borrowers and/or their financial losses. Many of the borrowers had lost their homes, some in error, and others had suffered financial loss fighting the foreclosure been misled or otherwise harmed by the process.

Then Rust Consulting was hired as the banks' settlement agent. First the firm was slow to alert borrowers to expect payments then they delayed the payout for weeks. Borrowers complained of checks sent to the wrong address or to deceased borrowers. One glitch led to most of the customers of two banks getting checks for the wrong amounts.

Immediately after the first checks were mailed in April borrowers started reporting that their checks were returned for insufficient funds. Rust downplayed the incident saying it only affected a handful of customers and happened because Rust had forgotten to move funds into the account to cover the checks.

In May The New York Times reported that a fresh round of nearly 100,000 checks that had gone out from Rust were written for the wrong amounts. Rust corrected that error and mailed out checks for the difference in amounts by late May. That month Representative Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD) called the payout the "worst settlement I have seen in my life" and opened an investigation into the problems and the hiring of Rust.

With the settlement payout apparently back on track, OCC said that checks to the remaining borrowers will issued later this summer.