Miguel Gonzalez, left, waits for his appointment at an IndyMac Federal Bank in Monterey Park. IndyMac Chief Executive Michael W. Perry rarely met a nontraditional loan he didn’t like, and the Pasadena savings and loan was sucked under by stated-income mortgages that required no documentation of ability to pay. As regulators seized IndyMac in July 2008, its branches resembled scenes from the Great Depression, with panicked depositors lining up in the heat to withdraw funds. Perry staunchly denied wrongdoing, portraying himself as the victim of the housing crash and overaggressive regulators. But he agreed in December 2012 to pay $1 million to settle government claims that he overloaded IndyMac with risky loans. He was also barred from the banking industry for life. Cost: $13 billion. (Nick Ut / Associated Press)
American Savings & Loan Assn. of Stockton was the nation’s largest thrift when regulators granted it a chance to work its way out of trouble during the savings and loan crisis. But enormous losses on mortgage-backed securities and commercial mortgages in California and Texas proved impossible to overcome, and American failed in September 1988. The flamboyant L.A. financier Charles Knapp, pictured, had been ousted in 1984 as chief executive of American’s parent company, Financial Corp. of America. But Knapp was later sentenced to 61/2 years in prison for defrauding another savings and loan in Phoenix. Cost: $5.4 billion. (Los Angeles Times)
BankUnited Financial Corp. of Coral Gables, the largest Florida-based savings institution, was seized in May 2009 by regulators who said it had run out of capital. A specialist in loans to foreigners buying Sunshine State homes, BankUnited was a top originator of pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which permitted payments so low that loan balances rose instead of fell. Often made without documenting borrowers’ incomes, pay-option ARMs played a role in the downfall of Washington Mutual Bank in Seattle along with Countrywide Financial Corp., IndyMac Bank and Downey Savings in California. Cost: $4.9 billion. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
First RepublicBank Corp. of Dallas -- Texas’ largest bank holding company and the 14th largest in the United States, was seized in July 1988 by regulators who had judged that the bank was hopelessly insolvent just four months after a $1 billion government bailout. It was the largest bank failure in U.S. history at the time. Despite the $1 billion emergency loan from Uncle Sam, the bank couldn’t weather huge loan losses on commercial real estate, which had been grossly overvalued during appraisal, as the Texas property markets crashed. Cost: $4 billion. (Dallas Morning News)
Edwin T. McBirney III , right, leaves the U.S. court building in Dallas with defense attorney Paul Coggins and Pamela Stewart. Sunbelt Savings Assn. of Dallas was known as “Gunbelt” under the ownership of McBirney, one of a wave of aggressive S&L operators who surfaced after the industry’s Reagan-era deregulation. “Fast Eddie” McBirney loved big things: land development deals, cigars, a penthouse suite at the Las Vegas Dunes. Sunbelt owned seven airplanes between 1982 and 1987, court records showed, and paid nearly $70,000 in McBirney’s limousine bills. By August 1988, two years after regulators forced McBirney to step down as chief executive, Sunbelt’s debts exceeded assets by $1.9 billion. McBirney blamed his successors at the S&L’s helm for the losses but later pleaded guilty to four fraud and tax counts and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Cost: $3.8 billion. (Dallas Morning News)
Lincoln Savings was a conventional S&L when Charles H. Keating Jr. -- a Phoenix developer with a passion for private jets and high-rolling investments -- bought it in 1984. When Lincoln failed in 1989, thousands of depositors, including many elderly Southern Californians, lost $285 million. Keating had sunk the Irvine thrift’s federally insured deposits into junk bonds, land developments and the $300 million Phoenician Hotel, while Keating paid himself and family members $34 million. Using lawsuits and political connections to battle regulators, Keating tarred the reputations of five senators who intervened on his behalf. Keating proclaimed his innocence, saying vindictive regulators had hounded him to ruin, but was convicted in the early 1990s on dozens of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering counts. He spent less than five years in prison before his convictions were overturned and he pleaded guilty to lesser fraud charges. Cost: $3.1 billion. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
