Montecito resident Angelo Mozilo, whose company, Countrywide Financial, was a centerpiece of the mortgage meltdown that led to the 2008 recession, died Sunday. He was 84.

“It is with great sadness that the family of Angelo Robert Mozilo announces his passing from natural causes,” according to a statement from the Mozilo Family Foundation. “The family requests privacy at this time.”

Countrywide attracted national attention over its practices of loaning money to individuals with poor credit to help purchase homes.

According to the Washington Post, Mozilo was charged with securities fraud and insider trading after the government accused him of misleading investors about the dangers of the subprime mortgages, while gaining stock value and then selling it before the meltdown.

A trial was set in 2010, but shortly before it started, Mozilo agreed to pay a $22.5 million penalty to settle SEC charges that he and two other Countrywide executives misled investors, according to an SEC press release.

Mozilo also agreed to $45 million in “disgorgement of ill-gotten gains” to settle the SEC’s disclosure violation and insider trading charges against him, for a total financial settlement of $67.5 million that will be returned to harmed investors.

“Mozilo’s record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite — a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model,” Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC Enforcement Division, said in a press release at the time.

Bank of America eventually purchased what was left of Countrywide.

In 2021, Mozilo successfully sought a restraining order against the Montecito Country Club, after the club built two pickleball hard courts, a sand volleyball court, a turf soccer field and other sports complex activities, and then sought “as-built” approvals.

According to the Mozilo Family Foundation website, Mozilo was a “champion for the underserved.”

The family cites his awards and recognition, where he was named to the National Housing Hall of Fame, received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, National Housing Person of the Year, the Horatio Alger Award and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and was recognized by the National Italian American Foundation for humanitarian service. 

He and his late wife, Phyllis, “provided scholarships for countless youth, at all levels of education, have built buildings and programs in service to their community, and have been a port in the storm for friends and strangers alike.  They mentor, coach, instruct and guide as second nature,” according to the foundation website.

Attorney Barry Cappello, who represented Mozilo on the pickleball lawsuit, has fond memories.

Cappello said the man who asked to represent him was elderly, kind, and clearly overcome with the prospect of living without his beloved wife, who predeceased him a few years prior.

” He just wanted peace and quiet, but the monstrous noise from pickleball courts built across from him without a permit was more than he could take,” Cappello said. “He asked us to help. We did. The result turned into a friendship in the last year of his life with the man responsible for the noise and who graciously removed the courts, Ty Warner.”

Cappello said he knew he would be representing a man whose reputation from over a decade before, was that of the head of Countrywide Mortgage the supposed scourge of the 2008 banking crisis, that brought companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers to their end.

“I never met that Angelo in those days, but I did know the truth about the crisis and the ‘jacket’ the media created for him was so exaggerated,” Cappello said. “He was neither the center nor was he properly blamed for the banking crisis. It is sad his obituary can never really tell the whole story.”

Cappello said Mozilo nor Countrywide was charged with a crime, nor were they charged with fraud by the Justice Department.

“Like many public companies their regulator, the SEC, did assess a civil penalty under a standard consent decree where the party does not admit wrongdoing but agrees to certain terms and payment of money for finality,” Cappello said. “Good lawyers recommend this to their clients to save them grief, time, and more money for lawyers.”

Cappello said the culprits in that crisis were the Wall Street Banks that created fictitious instruments and sold them all over the world, and the government financial regulators like Treasury, the FED (Federal Reserve) and Comptroller of Currency.

“These agencies allowed almost no controls over lenders at the time. Loans were booked by mortgage lenders that never should have been allowed,” Cappello said. “Countrywide was just one of these participants,”

Mozilo saw the crisis coming, Cappello said, and actually saved his stockholders from bankruptcy by selling his company to Bank of America just before the floor collapsed.

“In those days I smiled at how savvy he was to get out of any charges and sell his company and save his stockholders and employees,” Cappello said. “When I represented him as an older man, now living in Santa Barbara in retirement, I was happy to help him find solace and peace and a new friend.”

Mozilo had five children and 11 grandchildren.