When federal regulators recently concluded that home mortgage giant Fannie Mae had executed a $10.6 billion accounting fraud, regulators at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight vowed to seek forfeiture of any fraudulent gains from the Fannie Mae executives who concocted the scheme.
Don’t count on them wresting money away from Fannie executives using Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, however. So far, that seemingly significant provision of SOX has proven to be a dud when regulators and aggrieved investors try to retrieve prior bonuses and compensation earned thanks to fraud.
