SunTrust sales representatives entered fabricated income and asset figures into the bank’s exclusive version of Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriting system, the complaint says. Fake numbers, it says, would generate automatic approvals for unqualified borrowers, “at the same time preventing underwriters from exercising proper oversight.”

That oversight was thwarted because once the system’s approvals kicked in, the complaint contends, underwriters in SunTrust’s due diligence department could not stop the loans from being sold to Fannie or Freddie. There was no turning off the assembly line.

The complaint contains several internal SunTrust documents to support its allegations. One is a promotional piece for sales reps that explains the Agency Shortcut mortgage. “It’s a SISA (Stated Income/Stated Asset) at full doc pricing,” it says. Translation: undocumented loans carried the same interest rate as a fully documented version.

Because of fabrications, the complaint says, Fannie Mae’s system recognized these loans as fully documented. But according to the complaint, the Agency Shortcut mortgage waived property inspections and did not require the borrower to sign the document that allows the Internal Revenue Service to provide a prospective lender with a borrower’s income. In addition, borrowers of these loans could have a debt-to-income ratio of up to 64.99 percent, an onerous level.

SunTrust terminated the Agency Shortcut program in April 2008, the complaint says. Two months before, Fannie Mae limited the number of times a sales rep could enter information on a single borrower, according to the complaint. This might have been in recognition that its underwriting system was being gamed by repeated efforts to gain a loan approval.

The complaint contends that SunTrust originated “tens of billions of dollars” in Agency Shortcut mortgages. It is unclear how many of these loans landed at Fannie or Freddie; Suntrust’s financial filings say the bank sold $98.6 billion in total loans to Fannie and Freddie during the three years ended 2008.

Support for the whistle-blower’s descriptions of lax lending at SunTrust seems apparent from the boatload of loans sold to Fannie and Freddie during the mortgage mania that the bank has had to buy back. Such repurchases are typically done with loans that failed to meet standards — like borrower quality — or other characteristics promised to the purchasers at the time of the sale.