WaMu pressed sales agents to pump out loans while disregarding borrowers' incomes and assets, according to former employees.

The bank set up what insiders described as a system of dubious legality that enabled real estate agents to collect fees of more than $10,000 for bringing in borrowers, sometimes making the agents more beholden to WaMu than they were to their clients.

WaMu gave mortgage brokers handsome commissions for selling the riskiest loans, which carried higher fees, bolstering profits and ultimately the compensation of the bank's executives. WaMu pressured appraisers to provide inflated property values that made loans appear less risky, enabling Wall Street to bundle them more easily for sale to investors.

"It was the Wild West," said Steven M. Knobel, a founder of an appraisal company, Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson, that did business with WaMu until 2007. "If you were alive, they would give you a loan. Actually, I think if you were dead, they would still give you a loan."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28wamu.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1230441239-8VhVlubh5FC6AJpG2xX86w&pagewanted=all