In 2003, Vijay Soni was convicted of forgery, falsifying real estate documents, identity theft and grand theft by a jury in Orange County, California.

Vijay was a real estate agent who was caught using the personal information of his prospective clients to make large purchases which Vijay and his wife Supriti kept, saddling the poor clients with huge quantities of debt they were forced to clean up on their own.

For this, Vijay spent a year in prison and was forced to give up his real estate license, and his wife Supriti received three years.

Despite this sordid past, Washington Mutual gave the Sonis over $24.5 million dollars in loans, which they used to purchase properties for family members and friends.

The properties were soon in default, leaving Washington Mutual in ownership of houses worth much less than the loans that had been used to buy them, while the Sonis pocketed the difference. How could a major corporation be so foolish?

Washington Mutual had no one to blame for themselves for getting suckered into the Sonis's real estate fraud.

When the Sonis went to Washington Mutual for their loans, Washington Mutual neglected to even run a simple criminal background check, which would have proven that the Sonis could not be trusted.

With such blatant negligence when it came to checking the backgrounds of the people they were lending to, it's no wonder Washington Mutual found itself holding the bag when the Sonis scheme came crashing down.