SEATTLE, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Bank regulators said that cash withdrawals snowballed at Washington Mutual before the savings and loan was seized by the U.S. government.
After a prolonged struggle to stay afloat, Washington Mutual's customers took $16.7 billion in cash from their accounts in the nine days prior to Thursday's takeover, MarketWatch reported Friday.
Many of the withdrawals involved retail accounts that were over the $100,000 federal insurance cap, said Tim Ward of the Office of Thrift Supervision.
At the time the association failed, Washington Mutual, in conjunction with its subsidiary in Utah, had assets of $307 billion and deposits totaling $188 billion. It is widely reported to be the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
The collapse included the sale of $1.9 billion worth of Washington Mutual deposits to JP Morgan Chase, The New York Times reported.
Included in the purchase were some of the savings and loan's West Coast branches, the Times said.
