NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Angelo Mozilo, the former co-founder of Countrywide Financial, agreed Friday to pay $67.5 million to the SEC to settle fraud charges. Mozilo will pay $22.5 million in the largest penalty ever on a senior executive of a public company, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He will also give up $45 million in "ill-gotten gains," the SEC said. The whopping fine was announced at a court hearing before U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles.
"Mozilo's record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. What Mozilo kept to himself, said Khuzami, was "a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model."
Mozilo, who has long been the poster boy of the subprime mortgage meltdown, was slated to appear in the federal courthouse on Tuesday. By settling the SEC charges, Mozilo will avoid a trial that could have provided fodder for future criminal charges.
Read More: Source CNN Money
"Mozilo's record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. What Mozilo kept to himself, said Khuzami, was "a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model."
Mozilo, who has long been the poster boy of the subprime mortgage meltdown, was slated to appear in the federal courthouse on Tuesday. By settling the SEC charges, Mozilo will avoid a trial that could have provided fodder for future criminal charges.
Read More: Source CNN Money
