Deloitte & Touche LLP settled lawsuits by Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.’s bankruptcy trustee and Deutsche Bank AG over $7.6 billion in losses associated with the collapse of the mortgage lender, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy trustee Neil Luria and Taylor Bean’s Ocala Funding unit sued Deloitte in September 2011 over claims the accounting firm failed to detect a fraud that led to losses at the defunct lender. Deutsche Bank, which filed its complaint in December 2011, invested in asset-backed notes issued by Ocala based on Deloitte’s audits of Taylor Bean’s financial statements from 2005 through July 2009. The settlement comes ahead of an Oct. 21 trial in the case. Taylor Bean, once the 12th-largest U.S. mortgage lender, collapsed in 2009 after federal regulators began probing a fraud that involved fake mortgage assets, targeted the federal bank bailout program and contributed to the failure of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial Bank.
