Consumers who were victims of mortgage discrimination could get anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars each as a result of a settlement announced Wednesday by the Justice Department.

Under the deal, Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit is paying a record $335 million to settle civil charges that it discriminated against minority home buyers.

More than 200,000 individuals were affected and could be eligible for payments from the fund.

Affected consumers include two different groups of victims who will be eleligible for two different types of damages, said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, who spoke with Justice Department officials abou the settlement.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused the operators of the online site Full Tilt Poker of operating like a Ponzi scheme, siphoning more than $440 million in gambler winnings to board members and owners.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York also charged PokerStars and Absolute Poker, as well as poker celebrities Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson, of taking part in and profiting from the scams, according to an amended version of a forfeiture and civil money laundering complaint that was originally filed in April.

According to the complaint from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Full Tilt Poker and its board, including Lederer and Ferguson, “defrauded players by misrepresenting that their funds on deposit in online gambling accounts were safe, secure, and available for withdrawal at any time.”

Seven states have joined a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit seeking to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of rival T-Mobile USA, officials said Friday.

The move strengthens the federal case against the proposed merger, setting up another hurdle to completion of the deal.

“We are pleased that these states have joined the department in its lawsuit,” the department said in a statement. “Together, we will seek to protect consumers from the anti-competitive harm that would result from this proposed transaction.”

The states involved are New York, Washington, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp on Monday won dismissal of a lawsuit by former assistant store managers in New York who accused the world’s largest coffee chain of cheating them out of customer tips.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan said the plaintiffs failed to show that they had a right to share in money left in the plexiglass cube containers, known as tip boxes, that Starbucks places beside cash registers.

Full Story at Starbucks wins dismissal of worker tips lawsuit – Yahoo! News

Starbucks wins dismissal of worker tips lawsuit

WASHINGTON — The government’s labor dispute with Boeing Co. is turning into a political headache for President Barack Obama, giving his Republican rivals a fresh opening to bash the administration’s economic policies.

From congressional hearings to presidential debates, outraged Republicans are keeping up a steady drumbeat of criticism over the National Labor Relations Board’s lawsuit against the aerospace giant.

SAN FRANCISCO — Feeling the weight of mortgages on two properties and several thousand dollars of credit card debt, Jason and Kristin Koontz filed for bankruptcy last year.

The couple surrendered one property to foreclosure but say they were still making payments for their house in Mishawaka, Ind. EverHome Mortgage Co. filed a claim on the three-bedroom ranch to ensure its rights in the bankruptcy proceedings.

NEW ORLEANS – Victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill should start getting bigger payments faster, the administrator of the fund set up to help them said Saturday.

Kenneth Feinberg said he was responding to criticism from residents and businesses.

“Over the past few weeks, I have heard from the people of the Gulf, elected officials, and others that payments remain too slow and not generous enough,” Feinberg said in a statement. “I am implementing new procedures that will make this program more efficient, more accelerated and more generous.”

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Total claims against BP could end up being less than the $20 billion the company pledged to set aside, according to incoming Chief Executive Robert Dudley.

A Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) report said that analysts met with Dudley, who told them “that given current estimates of claims the $20 billion Independent Claim Fund that BP established probably exceeds calls.” BP confirmed the comments.

FORTUNE — It was a humiliating moment. Congressman Edolphus Towns was upbraiding a top Johnson & Johnson executive. Certainly Towns (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has browbeaten his share of CEOs and Wall Street titans. But it’s not the sort of thing that usually happens to J&J. At this hearing in May, though, Towns laid into the health care giant. “The information I’ve seen during the course of our investigation raises questions about the integrity of the company,” he boomed. “It paints a picture of a company that is deceptive, dishonest, and has risked the health of many of our children.”

WASHINGTON — General Electric Co. will pay $23.4 million to settle federal charges that some of its subsidiaries paid illegal kickbacks to the Iraqi government in order to win contracts under a U.N. program.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said in a civil complaint filed Tuesday in federal court that GE subsidiaries gave cash, computers, medical supplies and other goods worth $3.6 million to the Iraqi health and oil ministries from 2000 to 2003

The SEC alleged the kickbacks were in return for contracts to supply medical and water purification equipment under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program, which provided humanitarian aid to prewar Iraq.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Thursday’s $100 million settlement between Dell and the Securities and Exchange Commission was a reminder that the government is going after tech’s bad boys — and Intel is likely next on the feds’ list.

According to the SEC’s complaint against Dell, Intel paid the computer maker rebates as part of a deal in which Dell agreed not use microchips manufactured by Intel’s rival AMD. We’re not talking small change: The payments totaled $4.3 billion between 2003 and 2006.

WASHINGTON — A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.

In the survey, commissioned by the rig’s owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they “often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig.”