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US To Sue Angelo Mozilo, Again
Nearly a decade after Countrywide was sold to Bank of America in what has become the worst M&A deal of all time, bar none, having resulted in tens of billions of legal charges for Bank of America shareholders, the most recent of which was revealed also minutes ago when Bank of America was said to reach a record $17 billion settlement with the government over the sale of mortgage-backed securities, moments ago Bloomberg announced that none other than Agent Orange himself, Angelo Mozilo, is about to be sued. Again, only this time the lawsuit may actually not be tossed or result in yet another DOJ trademark wristslap.
- U.S. SAID READYING LAWSUIT AGAINST MOZILO IN COMING MONTHS
- U.S. SAID PREPARING TO FILE MOZILO LAWSUIT IN LOS ANGELES
More from Bloomberg:
Government attorneys plan to sue Mozilo, Countrywide’s former chairman and chief executive officer, and other individuals using the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, said one person with knowledge of probe. The law, approved by Congress in 1989 in response to savings- and-loan scandals, gives prosecutors 10 years to bring cases and has less stringent liability requirements than criminal charges.
While U.S. prosecutors have notified lawyers that their clients are targets of civil cases, any suit against Mozilo and other individuals may be more than a month away, one of the people said.
The Justice Department has been focused on wrapping up a FIRREA settlement with Bank of America Corp. for about $17 billion over mortgage bonds inherited from its 2008 acquisition of Countrywide and 2009 purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. The accord, which may be announced as soon as tomorrow, will penalize the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank for how securities were marketed to investors, people familiar with the matter have said.
Mozilo said he has “no regrets” about how he ran Countrywide, according to a June 2011 deposition he gave in a lawsuit between the mortgage lender and bond insurer MBIA Inc.
But why wait so long? Well, before you go high-fiving Eric Holder who is about to arrive in Ferguson, it turns out that the government seemingly waited so long just so it would avoid filing a criminal case against the Moz. As it stands he will merely be slapped with a few civil charges, and promptly settle for a few basis points of what BofA paid him for Countrywide. Bloomberg explains:
More than 12 months after a deadline passed to file criminal charges, U.S. attorneys in Los Angeles are preparing a civil lawsuit against Mozilo and as many as 10 other former Countrywide employees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The government is making a last ditch-effort to hold him accountable for the excesses of the past decade’s subprime-mortgage boom, using a 25-year-old law that has helped the Justice Department win billions of dollars from Wall Street banks, said the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the case publicly.
...
U.S. prosecutors dropped a criminal probe of Mozilo in early 2011, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time. Since then, President Barack Obama’s administration has faced a wave of criticism from public-interest groups, the media and lawmakers who say the government hasn’t held enough individuals accountable for causing the financial crisis.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, sued the Justice Department in June to try to obtain its records detailing investigations of Mozilo and Countrywide. The group faulted the government for failing to prosecute either Mozilo or the company “despite substantial evidence of wrongdoing.”
The SEC’s lawsuit, filed 16 months earlier, accused Mozilo of reassuring Countrywide investors about the quality of the company’s loans, while knowing that its underwriting standards had deteriorated.
Until now, the harshest penalty imposed on Mozilo, 75, has been a $67.5 million accord with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2010 to resolve allegations that he misled Countrywide investors. Mozilo agreed to settle the SEC case in October 2010 by paying a $22.5 million fine and disgorging $45 million of gains from stock sales at what the regulator said were inflated prices. Bank of America covered a portion of his penalties.
He earned $535 million from 1999 to 2008, according to compensation-research firm Equilar Inc. The size of the sanction in the SEC case, in which Mozilo didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, compared with his pay has fueled public anger that financial executives walked away from the housing bust enriched and mostly unscathed.
Surely the best justice M&A proceeds can buy...
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No more sun lamps for you!
He's competing with Boehner to see who can look most like a Cheeto.
Hands up! Don't sue!
huh... if he didnt spend it all by now, he is really fucking dumb..
I'd be more impressed if they sued John the slime Corzine of MF Global. But this less like to happen than Obama to abandon playing with Reggies balls on the golf course.
Mozillo, Boenher and Legarde are from the same litter.
The DNC must need some money
The elite does not go to jail.
"Only the little people pay taxes"- Leona Hemsley and Hillary Clinton
The dude looks like he's perpetually just pulled his head out of the devil's arse
Lost it all at the Casino, here's my players card, and oh, I forgot to use it a lot.
Usually I'm against suing unless it's a last resort but this guy has earned it.
Filing civil suit against a crook like Mozillo is better than nothing.
I would like to believe that criminal prosecution never took place because the evidence wasn't strong enough to get a slam-dunk conviction.
Hope that this is not really a whitewash to protect any political "Friends of Angelo" such as Democrat Chris Dodd.
"I'm no crook!"
... or is it ...
"I am not a crook."
The solution to criminals getting away with crimes after the statute of limitations has expired is to hang them with ten year old rope.
This guy helped put us into a countrywide (hehe) recession that we're not even close to recovering from. Children born during the time of his crimes are in early grade school now, and the statute of limitations has already run out? WTF?
"It's not easy being orange, either."
Lesser Known Muppet Quotes, p.27
Fucking comedy. God, that guy is a fucking cheese-dick!
+ 1 for Coffee spit on my computer screen ( at work no less)
Thank you for that. Nothing is funny, but this is.
You sir, win the internets today!
He could just have Addison's like Boehner too.
Brings me to tears
I'm lookin' at a dead man.
Think this guy is partnered up with Choate men and Elis?
And what happens when he offers to spill the beans on Dodd if things go forward?
Sometimes the penalties should be well beyond payment of some criminally acquired monies.
Punitive damages to boot are justified in this asshole's case.
Thieves suing thieves in the courts of thieves.
An American, not US subject.
Eric Holder is on it? I'm sure Mozzy is shaking in his tanning booth.
This guy is probably more responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis than anyone.
I'm all for reducing frivolous litigation in this country but frankly this guy couldn't get sued ENOUGH. I hope he's still getting served on his death bed.
“Mozillo could not be reached at his $38,000,000 house in Bermuda.”
In his defense, it's hard to hear the phone ringing in such a cavernous mansion.
Especially with those ring-tones these days. In my office, when a phone rings, every one away from their desk has to do the "dog head-turning" thing (or move a couple of steps) in order to get a fix on where the sound is actually coming from.
I've actually stood in front of my desk and claimed, nope it's not my phone ringing.
Damn, did I just iron-clad his alibi?
It's just a glitch in his phone, Hodler's Phone # got blacklisted by accident.
The fraud committed at the Countrywide storefronts was exposed by a whistleblower and well documented. Pushing prime borrowers into subprime by de-activating cetain data feilds in the application software that would improve the credit profile is just one of the many infractions.
Of course many of the loans came in through "brokers"
When they hired my unqualified Uncle to work their phone banks I new it had to be a scam. He said that they constantly went on about "helping the less fortunate buy a home" as an excuse.
Except: Franklin Raines who made the rules at Fannie Mae: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines
FTA: The Investor's Business Daily editorial staff has noted that the expansion of easy credit to home buyers with a lesser ability to pay them back was one of the major contributing factors to the subprime mortgage crisis.[17] Raines himself stated before Congress,“In 1994, we launched our trillion-dollar commitment, a pledge to provide $1 trillion in financing for 10 million underserved families before the decade was over… In 2000… we launched a redoubled new pledge… to provide $2 trillion for 18 million underserved families before this decade is over. …we are one of the best capitalized financial institutions in the world, when compared to the risk of our business… …these assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2 percent.” Note: He admits that he initiated $3T in subprime housing loans while collecting $90M in compensation.
Raines and two other executives were sued and settled for $3M, the fines paid for by Fannie Mae's Insurance Agency, leaving his $90M of salary and bonuses untouched.
And: Jamie Gorelick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Gorelick
She also collected multi-multi-multi millions while "working" at Fannie Mae, AND she "served" on the 911 "Fact Finding" commission!
These are the people who
im not a fan of that fuckbag, but wasnt he simply doing what the Fed wanted? how about we have a trial for greeny, the bernanke and the fat cow and hang them all?
And the suit against Corzine?
Likely Caraceni.
Don't hang Angelo. Hang the friends of Angelo !
well, ok. Angelo, too
Sue Angelo Mozilo? What the fuck good would that do? Its not like any of the affected parties would ever see a nickle of that money...leave him alone! He might be the buyer of that pontoon boat I have up for sale on Craigslist! That is, if he wants to go slummin...a guy can hope right?.
If this fucker has 'no regrets' about how he ran Cuntrywide and is so damn proud of the job he did, why won't he come out and face the public that he helped so much?
Allergic to guillotines?
Orangelo Mozilo? I thought we'd seen the last of him.
If he was hiding in a Cheetoh factory you'd be correct.
I wonder if he's still orange? He should be on the Kardashian show.
Of course there are no criminal charges. Wouldn't want to frighten Wall Street into thinking they might be held ACCOUNTABLE for their crimes or anything.
Welcome to Merika! Land of Liberty and JustUs for the 1%.
free corzine, free mozilo
You go back, Jack, do it again...
the teflon mozzarella
You know things are getting bad when they sue each other.
Completely cynical.
Angelo was only doing exactly what the Fed Treas OCC wanted -- shovel money out the door to anyone with a pulse. When his parent got over extended, he even went on CNBC to say, in so many words, hey, I need more deals in the bank, meaning I need more deals ultimately underwritten by Uncle Sam (FDIC). When things REALLY started to go sideways in Aug. 2007, the Fed cut the discount rate, threw open the window, push terms from overnight to 30 days, and gave BAC and other money centers a waiver from using bank funds to backstop non-back activity. Within days BAC bought 16 percent of Countrywide -- and THAT was supposed to fix what everyone knew was a problem. Except it didn't.
If Angelo has liability, so do dozens of federal officials who thought they were smarter than everyone else and the rules did not apply to their plans.
Shhhh. They might hear you.
Cannot believe that anyone could downvote this. Is there a sock-puppet in the house?
Of course there are a lot of actors, private and public, who are complicit in the subprime mortgage debacle, but Mozilo knew what he was doing and exploited it to such an extent that it pales in comparison even to most other subprime lenders around that time. This guy deserves to have his name dragged through the mud for the rest of all history and THEN some.
... and why not Corzine?
zerohedge @zerohedge 2m
BOFA FINE MAY INCLUDE $9B-$10B IN CRIMINAL PENALTIES, And 0 days in prison time.
Oh so if I commit any sort of criminal offence all I have to do is pay a penalty? No?
Ah, the Just US system for the rich and powerful.
Did'nt Fed cocksuckers force BOA to take on Countrywide Mortgage practically at the point of a gun during the "crisis". And now they sue them for Countrywides bad loans, before they bought them.
BofA bought Countrywide voluntarily and for a song, though there might already have been some Treasury/Fed informal guarantees. BofA had their tail twisted to buy Merrill Lynch after they would probably have backed out, and there were DEFINITE though still secret Treasury/Fed guarantees as to losses.
But strictly speaking, even all of that does not preclude regulators from going after Mozilo, though they may have trouble finding just what he did wrong. Misrepresented the quality of loans? Ha. Everybody knew.
Nope. NOT EVEN CLOSE. Ken Lewis did it all on his own. He waived any due diligence because he wanted to be the "biggest". Read Professor Bill Black's article on the acquisition.
http://dailybail.com/home/william-black-not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper-bank-of-americas.html
$535m won't pay for lunch at Goldman.
Tyler:
A link would have been nice.
CFTC Confirms Its Reported Gold And Silver Market Data Is Erroneous - CoinWeek | CoinWeek
CHOMP CHOMP
<= This is my shocked face.
"No just God would stand for what he did."
- Obama
Speaking of Orange, I guess a good prosecutor could get him on the electronic resistance scale...
'Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls Behind Victory Garden Walls"...
See? That fucking WOP raped our daughters! Impersonated a traffic cone, Or at the very least grew a garden without a permit!
Never trust an orange...Irishmen excepted of course...
The bronze god of subprime...something wrong with the harness of his golden parachute???
I hope the golden parachute goes down like a lead balloon. He got the golden parachute and the taxpayers got the golden shower.
He should be sued for that cheesy tan if nothing else.
So I am guessing that in 20 years MF Global may be held accountable?
Maybe banish that tangerine Fucker to Wisconsin and see how long he lasts? Gobbled up and crapped out to the hogs by a big hungry Finn at the State Fair through mistaken identity as a slick talking deep fried curd..?
Thanks for the offer, but I can assure you, the Sconnie's don't want your orange porcine food item. I think Illinois may find him to be a suitable candidate for Governor.
Nah. It would be cruel and unusual punishment if you didn't allow Tangelo to maintain his orange glow. He can work on his tan with Sheriff Joe, on the chain-gang, out in the Arizona sunshine.
The government is using Tanzillo as a extra source of revenue.
The government did spare Tanzillo jail time for his fradulent activities in favor of being hit for more money.
Time to hit Tanzillo up for a few hundred million.
Hundred million? Pffftt...just a cost of doing business.
Yet another collosal waste of your money on the eternaly bronze, suave suited fucker, but no criminal case to answer and no jail time eh?
Save the humungous cost to the tax payer and just hang this cunt.
This is nearly as funny as Bernie Ecclestone who was up on a bribery charge, paying the German court who was after him a bribe of 100 million Euros, to get off on said bribery charge??
Theatre, Of, The, Absurd.
No justice for you little man, now eat your fucking peas.
;-)
Ponzi and Mozilo ... got a nice kind of Italian restaurant sound to it. Dudes were both good cooks.
Last time Mozilo was sued, Bank of America paid all of his legal bills.
Shop lifting: death penalty without verdict
Billion dollar fraud: pay a small fraction of profits as fine
That hope got pretty much fucked in this country.
Correction: the worst m&a deal ever forced on a public company by the us government.
Long tanning beds for big hitters.
Want to bet that if a serious investigation were done that MSNBC's pimp Cramer's financial records would show huge payments from Mozillo to Cramer?
This guy is an idiot if he is still in this country and still a US citizen. Because he should thank his lucky stars he's not in jail.
Sucking moar blood from a dead turnip.
I would hate that guy even if he was a shoe salesman.
Might as well go after Corzine for MF Global. What? No! Can't do it?
/ hahahahahaaa
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/07/embattled-jon-corzine-to...
And just in case you weren't paying attention. The first go-round he got a pass and BofA picked up the tab for most of the fine.
Well, maybe I should rephrase that. The customers of Bank of America picked up the tab in the form of higher fees, and lower interest payments.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1015/Countrywid...
or here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39688498/ns/business-us_business/
But $25 million of Mozilo's restitution will come from an escrow fund the company set up to cover shareholder litigation and Mozilo has no obligation to pay the remaining amount, according to the settlement agreement.
.
the thing that get me is CA AZ FL real-estate and Countrywide caused it. Calipers and bankers should have taken there hits.. So the CA DOJ , justice Dept, Holder, White, SEC, FED going to stop drinking from the Jim Jones Kool Aid tub. Can tell more people smoking hopium on a public relations stunt.
Ask him where the flippings deeds went in court under oath. Bring the document control records or face contempt time.
My guess is this is one of the cats that knows the real deal and can document it. We should all show up at the court house for the tan man.
Yall wana fix this? This is a very good place to start!
About that oath thingy.
If we got our shit together?
Justice delayed is justice denied. The Dept of Injustice ran out the filing time purposely.
Mozilo is the fall goy for the Wall Street investment banks that *demanded* more subprime loans from Countrywide in order to feed their CDO chop shops.