In the last week Big Four auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been sued over its performance of audits of companies with massive frauds. First, PwC was named as a defendant in a suit filed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as the receiver for Colonial Bank.

Colonial Bank went under thanks to a fraud by Taylor Bean & Whittaker Mortgage Corp., its largest mortgage banking customer. Executives at Taylor Bean & Whitaker cooked up a scheme whereby they sold $400 million in worthless mortgages to Colonial Bank. The mortgages were worthless because they either did not exist, or had already been sold to other investors. Continue reading