Queens has been harder hit by foreclosures than any other New York borough, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes it has found a culprit. Last July, the F.B.I. accused Edul Ahmad, a local broker, of a $50 million mortgage fraud, saying he lured fellow immigrants into subprime mortgages, inflated the values of their properties and concealed his involvement in deals that were ruinous for scores, if not hundreds, of borrowers. Mr. Ahmad pleaded not guilty, and posted $2.5 million bail. Now, according to court papers, as reported in The Times, he is plea-bargaining with federal prosecutors.
Whatever Mr. Ahmad did or did not do, one thing is sure: he did not act alone. The attention Mr. Ahmad has drawn highlights the relative lack of scrutiny of the big banks and their senior executives. Big banks created demand and provided credit for dubious mortgage loans, which they bundled into securities and sold to investors. If not for reckless lending and heedless securitizing, there would have been no mortgage bubble and no mortgage bust — and, in all probability, no Edul Ahmad.
There have been some prominent civil suits with settlements and fines, including the $550 million deal between Goldman Sachs and the Securities and Exchange Commission over the misleading of investors in a mortgage-backed investment. Bank of America, which bought Countrywide Financial in 2008, recently agreed to pay $335 million to settle a lawsuit by the Justice Department over Countrywide’s practice of steering black and Hispanic borrowers to subprime loans while similarly qualified white borrowers got better terms. But such cases have been narrowly focused and rarely name top executives.
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