Towards the end, Angelo was cashing in $17,000,000 worth of stock options every five days, and he practically walks scot-free.
From the nytimes.com:
Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay $67.5 million on Friday to settle a civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. Countrywide itself is paying $20 million of Mr. Mozilo’s $67.5 million payment as part of an indemnification agreement he has with the company.
Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs paid a $550 million fine to settle securities fraud charges. Securities regulators are also investigating former senior executives at Merrill Lynch for possible securities fraud.
The deal came just four days before a jury trial was scheduled to begin in Los Angeles. David Sambol, the former president of Countrywide, and Eric Sieracki, the former chief financial officer, were also sued by the S.E.C. Both men settled their cases Friday as well; Mr. Sambol agreed to pay $5.52 million and Mr. Sieracki consented to $130,000. Mr. Sambol also is barred for three years from serving at a public company.
Mr. Mozilo’s agreement with the government is a humbling moment for one of the country’s most audacious and flamboyant financiers.
For years, Mr. Mozilo was among the highest-paid executives in America and his S.E.C. fine is a fraction of the vast wealth he amassed running Countrywide. In one eight-year period, from 2000 until he left the company in 2008, Mr. Mozilo received total compensation of $521.5 million, according to Equilar, a compensation research firm.
The SEC is spineless as well as incompetent. Mozilo should be behind bars for fraud, insider trading, etc. Joseph Kennedy, Sr., the first head of the SEC, must be rolling in his grave.
According to today’s Financial Times, and other publications, BofA pays Mozillo’s 45 million fine and the fines of the other two. They essentially get off free!! What a SEC scam.
Love the title you put on this post, JtR! Keep ’em coming…
The SEC is worthless. This along with TARP greenlights telling crooks if you’re big enough you can buy government.
Mexico here we come!
Hey, give`em a break. They really nailed Martha Stewart.
Gee, no wonder the rest of the world is willing
to get here by any means necessary.
Greed is Good and it lives in America.
Opportunity for all.
I’ll bet Anthony is picking out the next pool he will lie down by right about now.
Or will he have to go to one of those tanning beds?
The orange midget
We all think of
I hope he gets
Some prison love
Hopefully a populist administration will win in 2012 and prosecute him – if the statute of limitations hasn’t run out.
Obama is such a bankster tool.
But at least Angelo got a bit of a punishment, he is barred from being an officer or director of any publicly held corporation for life. Now if that were also done, to Ken Lewis, Price, Stan Oneil, Dick Fuld and their ilk, and also in those cases bar them from investment advice, it would be a start. Let them work at Wal-Mart as greeters.
Civil suits will dog him.
He has criminal charges pending. This guy needs to be placed next to the Enron slime in jail.
From the latimes.com tonight:
The sting of the penalty, however, was dramatically reduced because Bank of America and insurance will foot much of the bill, said John Coffee, a securities-law professor at Columbia University.
“Both sides are engaging in the usual game of making this settlement look better than it appears,” he said. “Both sides have an interest in putting the most positive spin on a settlement.”
Mozilo also was barred from ever serving as an officer or director of public companies. Sambol agreed to a three-year prohibition on holding such positions.
The defendants, who were not in court Friday, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter approved the settlement in Los Angeles federal court Friday, calling it “fair, adequate, reasonable and in the public interest.”
Mozilo is still the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, according to people with knowledge of the probe who are not authorized to speak publicly. The settlement of the SEC civil case, however, deprives federal prosecutors of the opportunity to see how the testimony and other evidence play out before a jury.
“The defendants, particularly Mozilo, get closure of the SEC case without there being any adverse findings against them,” said Jacob Frenkel, a partner at Shulman Rogers Gandal Pordy & Ecker in Rockville, Md.
Federal probation officials are recommending that former KB Home executive Bruce Karatz spend no time in prison for his conviction on felony fraud charges related to stock manipulation, according to court documents filed by prosecutors Friday.
The United States Probation Office suggested that Karatz, 64, receive a sentence of five years’ probation, including eight months of home confinement, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors filed an objection to the recommendation at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, noting that the home detention would be served “in defendant’s 24-room Bel-Air mansion situated on a one-acre estate.”
The recommendation “suggests that there is a two-tiered system of justice, one for well-connected CEOs who can break the rules, secretly inflate their compensation and lie about it with virtual impunity, while ordinary citizens … will face far more severe penal consequences,” federal prosecutors Paul Stern and Harvinder Anand said in their objection.
2005: Countrywide earns its largest profit to date, $2.5 billion. Mozilo takes home $160 million in pay and stock-option profit.
September 2007: Amid a crash in the subprime market, Countrywide says it will cut nearly 20% of its workforce.
October 2007: Securities and Exchange Commission regulators begin looking into $145 million in stock sales by Mozilo in the months before the company’s shares plunged.
Jan. 11, 2008: Bank of America Corp. announces it will buy Countrywide. The transaction is completed six months later.
June 4, 2009: The SEC files suit against Mozilo, accusing him of fraud and insider trading.
Oct. 15, 2010: Mozilo agrees to pay $22.5 million in fines and turn over $45 million in allegedly ill-gotten gains. The latter payment is to be covered by Bank of America.
$521 Million in 9 years salary translates to $158,000/day everyday. that is sick.
“fair, adequate, reasonable and in the public interest.”
Then he added:
“Thank you, I”m being here all week.”