Bank of America Corp on Thursday fended off demands from a group of big investors, including the New York Federal Reserve Bank, to buy back troubled mortgages because they were made improperly, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper cited a letter from the bank's lawyers saying such a move would only speed up the foreclosure process and force it to evict more homeowners.

In October, a group of eight investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and bond fund Pimco, accused the bank of inappropriately bundling some mortgages into more than $47 billion in bonds.

The investors said that some mortgages should never have been included in the bonds in the first place and are pressing Bank of America to buy back a portion of those mortgages, citing lax underwriting standards.

In a letter from its lawyers on Thursday, Bank of America said the mortgage problems came about because of the economic downturn. It also argued that there were no underlying problems with how the mortgages were sold to investors, the Times said.

Bank of America termed the investor claims to buy back a portion of the mortgages as "utterly baseless," the paper said.

Bank of America could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.