On its face, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2011 fraud suit against three top executives of failed California thrift IndyMac Bancorp Inc. seemed like just the kind of tough action that Congress and the public craved in the wake of the financial crisis.
The executives allegedly misled investors and issued false statements about the health of the mortgage lender. “The federal securities laws do not become optional when the news is negative,” Lorin Reisner, deputy director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said in a February 11, 2011, news release announcing the suit.
