With big credit lines and an investment from Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, the largest mortgage lender in the nation, may believe that it has weathered the subprime storm.

But it may yet still get buffeted. Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reports that the state treasurer of North Carolina has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate stock sales made by Countrywide's chief executive Angelo Mozilo in the months before the mortgage market imploded—and before Countrywide's stock price tumbled.

Mozilo has had gains of $132 million since starting a stock-sale plan in October 2006, the Times says.

The state treasurer of North Carolina, Richard H. Moore, has questioned changes to the stock program that allowed Mozilo to increase significantly his sales of Countrywide shares.

"As an investor and a Countrywide shareholder, I was shocked to learn that C.E.O. Angelo Mozilo apparently manipulated his trading plans to cash in, just as the subprime crisis was heating up and Countrywide's fortunes were cooling off," Moore wrote in an October 8 letter to Christopher Cox, the S.E.C. chairman, according to the Times.

Countrywide has declined to comment on the letter. The company also said today that it financed 44.3 percent fewer mortgages in September.

The company's chief operating officer, David Sambol, said the volume reflected "current market conditions and more restrictive underwriting."