Mortgage Relief: Now With Less Actual Relief

Last week, I mentioned Goldman Sachs’ creative way of satisfying its mortgage relief settlement. At the time, I assumed it would be the quirkiest method I’d come across. I was wrong—Deutsche Bank takes the crown.

According to reports, “Deutsche Bank AG has been offering attractive financing terms to help investors and other banks buy soured mortgages…” This is part of their $7.2 billion mortgage settlement with the U.S. government. In plain terms: Deutsche gets credit toward its penalty by lending money to other companies—like Goldman Sachs—so those companies can buy bad mortgages and restructure them.

Yes, they’re getting credit for being adjacent to the actual mortgage relief. There’s only one catch—only one institution gets credit per mortgage. So if Goldman modifies a mortgage using Deutsche’s financing, only one of them can put that win on the board.

Goldman’s challenge is in picking which mortgages to modify while staying profitable. Deutsche’s challenge? Finding partners who haven’t already been fined for doing the exact same thing.

Fraud: Phishing, but Make It $100 Million

Insider trading often makes for entertaining stories—briefcases of cash, coded language, poor judgment. But the more common fraud today isn’t that cinematic. It’s phishing—fake emails, pretending to be someone you’re not, tricking people out of money. Most of the time, the scams are small. This one was not.

Evaldas Rimasauskas, a 48-year-old from Lithuania, tricked two major U.S. tech companies into wiring him a combined $100 million. The indictment doesn’t name names, but one is described as a “multinational technology company specializing in internet-related services,” and the other as a “multinational corporation providing online social media and networking services.”

Sounds a lot like Google and Facebook, but that’s speculative.

What isn’t speculation is the scale. Rimasauskas forged contracts, invoices, and other corporate documents—enough to convince two of the most powerful companies on Earth to pay him for services he never rendered.

The Art of the Scam

This case stands out not just for the amount stolen, but for what it implies. Rimasauskas didn’t develop a product. He didn’t innovate. He likely just impersonated a company already working with the targets. And that worked—well enough to move $100 million.

It’s a reminder that the weakest point in any system isn’t the technology—it’s the people. Somewhere along the chain, someone believed a lie, approved a wire, and no one stopped it. The story is almost more impressive when you imagine he didn’t even need to try that hard—he just built believable paperwork and knew where to send it.

Still, there’s a small part of me that wishes he had developed something so convincing it accidentally passed for legitimate. Imagine conning your way into an accidental startup pitch meeting with a fake product—and winning. If only all fraudsters were that ambitious.

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