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SEC Distributes $356 Million to Defrauded Fannie Mae Investors
Investor Protection Agency's "Fair Funds" Distributions to Fraud Victims Top $3 Billion Mark
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2007-219
Washington, D.C., Oct. 19, 2007 - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that checks totaling more than $356 million are going in today's mail to investors harmed by the financial fraud at Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) between 1998 and 2004. With today's payments, the SEC has distributed more than $3 billion overall since the agency was given authority to send financial penalties from SEC enforcement actions to the victims of financial fraud.

Today's $356,128,500 going to individual investors, pension plans and other victims represents the entirety of the money Fannie Mae paid to settle the SEC's fraud charges last year, plus interest. Prior to the enactment of the Fair Funds provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the SEC was required to send financial penalties from its enforcement actions to the U.S. Treasury instead of to harmed investors.

"The SEC is continuing to make highly effective use of the authority provided by Congress in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to return more money to injured investors as quickly as possible," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. "The $350 million penalty paid by Fannie Mae was one of the largest in Commission history, and now all of it is going to its rightful owners - the victims of this fraud."

Linda Chatman Thomsen, Director of the Division of Enforcement, added, "I am very pleased that we were able to swiftly recompense shareholders after creation of the Fair Fund."

The Fair Fund for Fannie Mae victims resulted from an enforcement action in May 2006 in which Fannie Mae paid $350 million to settle SEC charges that it issued materially false and misleading financial statements in SEC filings and in various reports disseminated to investors. Final judgment was entered in August 2006, and the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia approved the establishment of the Fair Fund in April 2007.

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-219.htm