Joe Nocera’s last column in today’s NYT (he moves to the OpEd pages) tells a simply ghastly tale of misplaced governmental priorities: In Prison for Taking a Liar Loan.

It tells the horror show story of how the IRS came across one of the 15 million liar loans written during the credit bubble.

An excerpt simply will not do it any justice — go read it in its entirety.

Basically, they decided this dude was living beyond his means, so they investigated him. He is now in jail. Key points:

NYT says evidence against him is very thin.
NYT suggests that both the guy who sold the loan and the corp he worked for knew about these fraudulent loans and encouraged them.
The guy who sold him the loan went to prison for selling other fraudulent loans and got less time than he did.
He had to pay restitution - to the corporation that sold him the liar loan.
None of the corporate management has been prosecuted even though they have admitted that they knew some of these loans were cooked.

Its not clear why this guy became a priority for prosecutors. It may be the case that the small fish are slower and easier to catch.