Ya know, the real culprits of trouble rarely commit suicide, they are usually too full of themselves, but regardless, this is yet another casualty of the ongoing economic mailaise:

David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of money-losing mortgage giant Freddie Mac was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide.

It appears the SEC was investigating the accounting practices of Freddie.

Freddie disclosed in the recent SEC filing that in September it received a federal grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York seeking documents related to accounting, disclosure and corporate-governance matters. That subpoena was later withdrawn, Freddie has disclosed, and the investigation was taken over by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Several colleagues described Mr. Kellermann as jovial, upbeat and very popular at the government-backed mortgage company but one said he had recently appeared stressed at work. "He worked himself into a frazzle," a former colleague said.

Mr. Kellermann was at the center of Freddie's struggles to cope with huge losses from home-mortgage defaults and investigations of its accounting policies. Investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department have been questioning officials of Freddie about possible accounting violations and other matters in recent months, the company disclosed in March.

While colleagues said they believed Mr. Kellermann probably would have been involved in answering those questions, there was no indication that he personally was a target of any investigation. "We know of no connection between this terrible personal tragedy and the ongoing regulatory inquiries discussed in our recent SEC filing," said David Palombi, Freddie's chief spokesman.