Angelo Mozilo

Well, Duh: SEC To Sue Angelo Mozilo For Insider Trading

Moe Tkacik | May 13, 2009, 7:23PM

Huge surprise: the SEC is mobilizing to sue sue former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo for insider trading.

Perhaps no one made so much money so directly perpetrating the abuses responsible for the most painful consequences of the economic collapse as Mozilo, whose massive mortgage giant encouraged sales reps to sell homeowners on the biggest and most abusive loans possible, fueling a meteoric rise in housing prices that sustained Countrywide's profit margins for much of the last decade -- until 2007, when the market finally broke down and Countrywide tried to change tactics, raising its lending standards with an internal memo encouraging employees to "Do the right thing."

That memo was instantly parodied by Countrywide employees, who posted and circulated an alternate version that ended:

P.S. My naked orange body is rolling around in piles of hundreds of millions of dollars from the stock I've dumped.

The first of innumerable shareholder lawsuits alleging insider trading was filed shortly thereafter.

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Topics: Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide