Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Ex-CEO Sentenced To Prison

Raymond Bowman, who headed mortgage giant Taylor, Bean & Whitaker during the housing melt-down, has been sentenced to more than two years in prison on charges of mortgage fraud.

Bowman, and the firm's former treasurer, Desiree Brown, received their sentences Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. They were convicted of duping some of the U.S.' largest financial institutions and contributing the the failure of two banks, Colonial Bank and Colonial BancGroup.

Both defendants will be required to pay restitution to victims, and both received reduced sentences after prosecutors told the court that both had helped the government in its case against Taylor, Bean & Whitaker's chairman, Lee Farkas.

Farkas was charged a year ago with attempting to defraud investors and the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP), created by Congress during the banking crisis to buy toxic assets from troubled financial institutions.

Federal prosecutors charged tha Farkas engineered a multibillion-dollar fraud and also attempted to obtain more than $550 million from the TARP program. At the time, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breur called the alleged fraud "truly stunning in its scale and complexity."

Farkas was convicted in April on multiple counts of fraud and is scheduled for sentencing next month.

Taylor, Bean & Whitaker filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2009 and shortly afterward, closed it's doors. The Ocala, Florida-based company had been the nation's 12th largest mortgage lender, specializing in government-backed FHA loans.

But in July 2009, FHA suspended the lender from its program and opened a fraud investigation. Things quickly spiraled down after that not just for the company, but for thousands of homeowners too.