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| Subject: Manipulative Government Regulators Aided IndyMac Cover-Up, Maybe Others Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:10 pm | |
| Darrel Dochow May Not Be the Only Official Who Helped Banks Hide Financial Problems
A brewing fraud scandal at the Treasury Department may be worse than officials originally thought.
Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News.
In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules -- even if it disguised the bank's health to the public.
Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson announced in November his office would probe how a Savings and Loan overseer allowed the IndyMac bank to essentially cook its books, making it appear in government filings that the bank had more deposits than it really did. But Thorson's aides now say IndyMac wasn't the only institution to get such cozy assistance from the official who should have been the cop on the beat.
The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.
Darrel Dochow, the West Coast regional director at the Office of Thrift Supervision who allowed IndyMac to backdate its deposits, has been removed from his position but he remains on the government payroll while the Inspector General's Office investigates the allegations against him. Investigators say Dochow, who reportedly earns $230,000 a year, allowed IndyMac to register an $18 million capital injection it received in May in a report describing the bank's financial condition in the end of March.
"They [IndyMac] were able to maintain their well-capitalized threshold and continue to use broker deposits to make loans," said Marla Freedman, an assistant Inspector General at Treasury. "Basically, while the institution was having financial difficulty, it kept the public from knowing earlier than it otherwise should have or would have."
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Economy/story?id=6658365&page=1 _________________ Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner "Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann |
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