Bank of America is putting up a strong defense and plans on whittling down the settlement price in a Federal Housing Finance Agency non-agency MBS fraud case against the company, sources close to the matter told Inside MBS & ABS. One official close to the due-diligence team working for BofA said the regulator seeks a $13 billion payment to settle charges that the bank and two companies it bought during the housing meltdown – Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch – sold faulty nonprime MBS to the government-sponsored enterprises. This source, who spoke under the condition his name not be published, said...[Includes one data chart]