From the Real Estalker.com:
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while mindin’ the necessary ps and qs for our discussion about the Thousand Oaks, CA mansion recently leased by phoenix-like pop phenom Britney Spears, we rather randomly ran across another, smaller mansion located behind the guarded gates of the well-heeled Sherwood County Club owned as per property records–and much to our pearl clutching flabbergast–by the vastly-loathed and utterly disgraced former Countrywide Financial CEO and COB Angelo Mozilo who has the architecturally conventional (mc)mansion listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,400,000.
Mister Mozilo, a mortgage industry maverick who co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and nearly 30 years later co-founded the dramatically collapsed IndyMac Bank (now OneWest Bank), is widely regarded as one of the more Machiavellian sub-mortgage-men who helped march the U.S. (and global) economy straight off the cliff in the mid-Noughts.
While Mister Mozilo and his mortgage-making army pushed and pedaled sub-prime home loans he talked up the then-flourishing company’s stock price, earned hundreds of millions in compensation, and cashed out more than $400,000,000 worth of Countrywide stock, a large portion of it during the last couple of years of his tattered tenure as the king of Countrywide.
Alas, the sub-primed fueled real estate bubble burst sometime around 2007 and Mister Mozilo left Countrywide in 2008 after the crippled company was sold for $4.1 billion to Bank of America. In June 2009 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Mister Mozilo with insider trading and securities fraud.
In September 2010 Mister Mozilo settled with the SEC and agreed to pay $67,500,000 in fines, $45,000,000 of which was paid by Bank of America. Despite the sizable payout, settlement terms allow Mister Mozilo to circumvent acknowledgement of any misconduct. We can’t vouch for or confirm it but online idle chatter says he has a net worth well in excess of half a billion dollars.
To be honest, puppies, Your Mama isn’t sure where exactly Mister Mozilo and his wife Phyllis currently (or previously) consider(ed) their primary residence. After all, In addition to the house in Thousand Oaks they now have on the market, they own a variety of luxury residences in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, and the affluent Coachella Valley desert community of La Quinta (CA).
Listing information shows the stately two-story house was built in 1999 and sits on a half acre lot that backs up to the 2nd fairway of the Jack Nicklaus-designed par-72 championship course at the Sherwood Country Club, The meticulously maintained mansion measures 6,238 square feet with a total of 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a finished 4 car garage.
As it turns out, listing their Thousand Oaks mansion isn’t the only recent adjustment Mister and Missus Mozilo have made to their rather extensive portfolio of residential real estate. Property records reveal in March 2011 Mister and Missus Mozilo splashed out $1,800,000 on a .78 acre vacant parcel of land at The Madison Club, an upscale, guard-gated golf community in La Quinta (CA) that weaves and winds its way through and around an undeniably scenic Tom Fazio-designed course.
The Mozilos have owned desert digs since at least August 2005 when records show they procured a 4,161 square foot Mediterranean mini-mansion with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms that backs up to the golf course in the guard-gated The Quarry at La Quinta, another golf-centric community in La Quinta designed and developed around a Tom Fazio-designed course. Since buying the the house at The Quarry at La Quinta property records suggest (but don’t make entire clear) Mister and Missus Mozilo own or owned one and possibly two 3,000-plus square foot condominiums same development.
Mister and Missus Mozilo have also maintained a residence in the upscale coastal community of Santa Barbara, CA since at least 1994 when they coughed up an unknown amount of money to acquire a house located a short and flat walk to both the beach and the casually elegant ocean front Four Seasons Resort, The Biltmore. Almost 10 years later in September 2003 they dropped and undisclosed amount for a house almost directly across the street, which they subsequently sold in February 2008 for $9,000,000.
In July 2004 Mister and Missus Mozilo, who clearly have a real estate thing for country clubby cribs that booty-up to hyper-manicured golf courses, dropped another unknown but no-doubt considerable amount of sub-prime mortgage moolah to buy a 12,692 square foot mansion with 9.5 bathrooms that borders and overlooks the Montecito Country Club.
In addition to their residential holdings in Thousand Oaks, La Quinta and Santa Barbara, property records also provide evidence that Mister and Missus Mozilo own additional residential property in or around Hilo, HI–it appears to be a condo–and in December 2010 they took in $2,500,000 when they successfully unloaded a large house in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb of La Cañada Flintridge that they purchased way back in September 1993 for $875,000.
Certainly Mister Mozilo’s career in the mortgage industry is over. In fact he’s disbarred from accepting an officer or director level position of a publicly traded corporate entity for the rest of his life. Even still and even though he’s a become a bit of a social and professional pariah, he can take whatever comfort there may be in his clearly sizable retained wealth that will likely allow he and his to live in guard-gated golf community luxury the rest of their lives.
Angelo Mozilo is the poster child for “Crime DOES pay”. I can only hope that the Mozilos move permanently to that condo in Hilo, HI.
Hilo is located on eastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii and is designated as the 3rd wettest city in the US. May the “Tan Man” lose his perpetual tan as he won’t be going to jail anytime soon…
Mozilo did get one punishment a lifetime ban on being a director or officer of any public company, thus no gravy train rides on a board of directors by his cronies. I think he was primarily in a state of delusion in the last few years, perhaps even schizophrenic. In books about the mortgage mess he is seen issuing memos that contradict each other, mortgage quality versus market share.
Absurd and infuriating. This scumbag should be in 10’x5′ jail cell. Same goes for Paulson, Dimon, Gensler, Corzine and every other criminal bankster I can think of.
If you or I stole $5 bucks from a 7-Eleven we would get a at least 1 year in jail. Think about it.