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Prosecution of Subprime-Mortgage Fraud

BY Laurence A. Urgenson
August 27, 2008

With the meltdown of the U.S. housing market, many players in mortgage lending now face the triple threat of criminal, civil, and administrative legal action. Potential targets include financial institutions, borrowers, mortgage brokers, lenders, securities dealers, and auditors. Popular pressure to hold someone accountable will increase now that taxpayers have been asked to pay for various bailouts. But the scope of federal action against questionable lending practices will depend on the answer to a key question: What funding will be made available to law enforcement agencies?

Current Investigations

Countrywide Financial Corp.'s recent woes may foreshadow what awaits other players in the subprime-mortgage industry. Countrywide faces concurrent criminal, civil, and administrative investigations or lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California reportedly is investigating alleged fraud in Countrywide's origination of loans, including what prosecutors assert was willful blindness by company executives to many borrowers' inflated income figures. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York is investigating whether Countrywide's executives committed securities fraud by understating the risks of buying securities backed by mortgage loans to subprime borrowers. Countrywide and its executives also face SEC and FTC investigations, shareholder lawsuits, consumer-protection lawsuits brought by the Attorneys General of Illinois and California, and claims by the U.S. Trustee that Countrywide's loan servicing practices represent an abuse of the bankruptcy system.

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