The Complaint alleged that Mozilo, Sambol, and Sieracki knew that Countrywide was writing increasingly risky loans and that defaults and delinquencies would inevitably rise among loans that Countrywide serviced or had packaged and sold as mortgage-backed securities.

FORBES: Countrywide Financial Victims Lining Up To Get Paid

The SEC says Mozilo, former chief operating officer David Sambol and ex-chief financial officer Eric Sieracki deliberately misled investors about the nature of Countrywide's business, including the degree to which it had deviated from underwriting mostly prime loans toward riskier subprime and option adjustable-rate mortgages, both of which began to crumble when the housing bubble burst in 2007.

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