Dozens of workers who were accused of fraud and fired by Fannie Mae in April have filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against the mortgage giant —and are also seeking $82 million in separate defamation suits against company chair Bill Pulte and CEO Priscilla Almodovar.
The 66 employees suing Fannie Mae for unlawful termination — all U.S. citizens of Indian nationality — say they were fired on an April 3 Microsoft Teams call during which they were accused of violating the company’s charitable giving program.
According to the workers’ complaint against Fannie Mae, almost everyone on the call — more than 140 people — spoke the Telugu language, and all but a handful were over the age of 40.
“All of the charities involved advocated for programs supporting Indian national, ethnic and cultural programs, and only charities advocating for supporting Indian national, ethnic and cultural programs were identified,” the complaint alleged. “To this day, Fannie Mae has still provided no evidence to support their claims of fraud against any of the plaintiffs.”
The July 21 civil rights suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks punitive damages “for these reckless and malicious acts of discrimination,” compensation for emotional suffering and humiliation, and lost wages and reinstatement of employment.
The workers were all long-standing employees — most had been with the company for more than a decade — and are entitled to two weeks of severance pay for each year of service, the lawsuit claims.
Fannie Mae and its federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment.
The allegations made by Fannie Mae echo a case brought in California by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office in December, charging six former employees of Apple Inc. for allegedly defrauding Apple’s matching gifts program.
Executives at two charities — American Chinese International Cultural Exchange (ACICE) and Hop4Kids — were accused of returning donations to employees but keeping Apple’s matching funds for themselves, prosecutors alleged. Apple fired around 50 employees from its Cupertino headquarters in the wake of the charges, the International Business Times (IBT) reported in January.
“Reports suggest that many of the fired employees are of Indian origin, with some allegedly connected to Telugu community organizations in the U.S., although this detail has not been confirmed by authorities,” IBT reported.
No charges have been brought against the Fannie Mae employees who were dismissed in April, and they deny wrongdoing.
Pulte, Almodovar face defamation suits
Almodovar and Pulte — who, as director of the FHFA, appointed himself as chair of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in March — are named in two separate defamation suits filed by 41 fired Fannie Mae employees on Aug. 12 in Fairfax County, Virginia Circuit Court.
The defamation lawsuit against Pulte and Fannie Mae seeks $41 million ($1 million for each of the 41 plaintiffs), citing an April 8 press release posted by Pulte to the social media platform X and published on Fannie Mae’s website.
Fannie Mae Fires Over 100 Employees for Unethical Conduct, Including the Facilitation of Fraud pic.twitter.com/NynWXUnr5t
— Pulte (@pulte) April 8, 2025
“Since my swearing-in, we fired over 100 employees from Fannie Mae who we caught engaging in unethical conduct, including facilitating fraud, against our great company,” Pulte is quoted as saying in the press release.
The next day, Pulte appeared on the Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle,” alleging that fired workers “were making donations to the charity and then getting kickbacks — the internal company charity.”
Pulte also claimed that the FHFA had discovered “multiple people were working two jobs,” including some who were located in China.
The defamation lawsuit against Almodovar and Fannie Mae also seeks $41 million, citing a quote by the Fannie Mae CEO in the April press release.
“I would like to thank Director Pulte for his empowering of Fannie Mae to root out unethical conduct, including anyone facilitating fraud,” Almodovar was quoted as saying. “We hold our employees to the highest standards, and we will continue to do so.”
The defamation lawsuits against Pulte and Almodovar maintain that the fired employees never engaged in unethical conduct or facilitated fraud.
They “were all employees in good standing with Fannie Mae and had never received any form of disciplinary action during their tenure with the company,” the defamation lawsuits allege.
“Accusing someone of fraud of that magnitude is an act which could be prosecuted as a felony and would both render them unfit for any employment for profit for want of integrity and would prejudice them in their profession or trade,” attorneys for the fired employees maintain. “Therefore, defendants knew that their public statements about Plaintiffs were false or made them so recklessly as to amount to a willful disregard for the truth.”
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