ACORN got names of at-risk home owners from banks, signed them up as dues-paying members

From the executive summary of Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee's investigation of ACORN and the SEIU:

ACORN, as a corporation, is responsible for thousands of fraudulent voter registrations throughout the United States.

Responses from various state election offices show that ACORN’s late filings of voter registration cards and the sheer amount of fraudulent cards obstructed election administration efforts in many states. Fraudulent voter registrations are not isolated incidents; they reflect ACORN’s criminal motive to compromise the system of free and fair elections promised in the Constitution of the United States.

ACORN used provisions in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that allowed community groups to challenge bank mergers and acquisitions if a bank did not adequately invest in its own community. These challenges, which featured ACORN’s standard intimidation tactics, successfully forced banks to make lending agreements with ACORN Housing. If banks refused ACORN’s demands, they jeopardized approval of mergers in a timely manner. ACORN Housing moved to become a conventional service provider for the loans. ACORN reaped profits from over a billion dollars in loans to low- income neighborhoods. Because of the policies and financial instruments developed, in part through ACORN’s lobbying activities, borrowers eventually defaulted on the loans. The end result was the bursting of the housing bubble.
 
ACORN Housing received a total of $39,925,620.13 from Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., CitiBank, HSBC, CapitalOne, and SunTrust. These lenders and banks also provided ACORN with grants, address and bank account information of at-risk homeowners so ACORN could provide free counseling services. Instead, ACORN used the address and bank account information to target struggling Americans who would be signed up as dues-paying members of ACORN. ACORN’s membership recruiting brought in $48 million a year for ACORN—a boon for their Muscle for Money program.