Legal Commentary

FBI Conducting Criminal Investigations of Mortgage, Banking Firms

By Jeralyn

42 FBI task forces around the country are investigating some of the top mortgage firms, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for fraud. AIG and Lehman Bros. are also subjects of the investigation.

The FBI says it has opened 36 investigations so far. As to what's under investigation:

Sources tell ABC News the investigations are looking into whether company officials systematically misled investors about the financial strength of their institutions.

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified about the investigations on Sept. 16 at a House Judiciary Committee meeting. One of the areas under investigation: whether the companies misstated their assets. From the transcript (available at Lexis.com)

On the one hand -- as I indicated before, we're looking brokers and appraisers, buyers and lenders at the local level, but we also have 24 investigations that are looking at corporations -- large corporations, where the allegations would be that there were misstatement of assets. So, we're looking at it from the large corporation perspective as well as various schemes that were undertaken at the local level.

...As I've said, we've had in the last two years, I think, more than 500 indictments. I'm not certain of the actual number of convictions, but -- and we currently have 1,400 cases of the state, the local variety, and 24 cases of the corporate variety.

...we've had a number of prosecutions over the last two years, in excess of 500, of a variety of mortgage fraud schemes that preyed on unwitting consumers and others. So, yes, around the country, particularly in those pockets where the sub prime mortgage crisis is most affecting the community is where may of these investigations reside. We also, as I indicated earlier have a number of investigations going against financial institutions who may well have misrepresented their assets in the course of filings and otherwise. So we're looking at it from both the top as well as those schemes at what would be the bottom of the pyramid and we're doing it in 42 task forces around the country and on those 42 task forces will be agents and specialist and experts from a variety of federal agencies as well as from state local law enforcement and then we will choose the particular jurisdiction in which to file the case depending on the circumstances of the case.

Since last week, the number of investigations has changed from 24 to 26. ABC News reports:

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko added to Mueller's figure, saying in a statement to ABC News that "the FBI currently has 26 pending corporate fraud investigations involving subprime lenders. As we have seen, this number can fluctuate over time; however, we do not discuss which companies may or may not be the subject of an investigation."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 24, 2008 (boomark / email).