Why Did WaMu Fail?
No wonder WaMu went under so quickly at the start of the financial meltdown: it was busy giving O.J. Simpson a second mortgage right after he was acquited of the murder of his wife. Drew DeSilver of the Seattle Times has written up a lengthy piece on the collapse of Washington Mutual, which includes the blurb about Simpson: Seattle Times (via NPR): “Someone in Florida had made a second-mortgage loan to O.J. Simpson, and I just about blew my top, because there was this huge judgment against him from his wife’s parents,” she recalled. Simpson had been acquitted of killing his wife Nicole and her friend but was later found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit; that judgment took precedence over other debts, such as if Simpson defaulted on his WaMu loan. “When I asked how we could possibly foreclose on it, they said there was a letter in the file from O.J. Simpson saying ‘the judgment is no good, because I didn’t do it.
