Chris Cox was head of the SEC when the economy came crashing down. And, he's little more than a Wall Street shill:

THE lawyer solemnly told regulators it would be far too costly for a mutual fund to seek appraisals of its assets, and no appraisals were made. When employees of the investment firm suspected something was amiss, they were reassured when a government auditor pored over the books and concluded that all was well.

And so the fraud continued for more than a decade. It later turned out that the assets sold to investors were largely fictitious, and that the supposed auditor, who presented credentials showing she worked for the California Department of Corporations, was in reality an actress hired by the man running the fraud.

The lawyer who argued that it would be a waste of money to require appraisals is about to be inundated with appeals to reduce the cost of regulation. That lawyer was Christopher Cox, who is likely to be confirmed today as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Cox did not know he was representing a crook at the time he wrote the letter. It was years later that William Edward Cooper, whose investment firm Mr. Cox was representing, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Then, there was a 1985 letter on behalf of the fraudsters. This letter speaks to Mr. Cox's disdain for rules to rules and regulations to keep mortgage brokers honest:

It was on Feb. 22, 1985, that Mr. Cox sent his letter to regulators at the California Department of Corporations arguing that any appraisal of the value of mortgages in the proposed fund would be subjective and worthless, and that the expenditure of fund assets for an appraisal ''would unfairly and unreasonably harm the investors' rate of return.''

INSTEAD, Mr. Cox said, regulators and investors should assume that the mortgages were worth their face amount.

Had appraisals been required for the mortgage pools Mr. Cooper had already sold, a fraud that began in 1982 might have ended. Instead it continued until 1994. More than $100 million was stolen from people who had sought safe investments for their individual retirement accounts.

''There were always red flags, but Cooper was a master at deflecting questions,'' said Roger Rauch, who worked for Mr. Cooper for six years, including a stretch as president of the company's brokerage subsidiary. ''The audit,'' Mr. Rauch said in a telephone interview this week, ''was done to alleviate suspicions, not just mine but those of the salespeople.''

The 1990 report by the fake auditor, in reality an actress who spent three weeks apparently reviewing the books, was a masterpiece. It found a few problems but concluded nothing was really wrong. The employees were reassured.

The 1985 letter Mr. Cox sent on behalf of his client also insisted that regulatory standards for the suitability of investments should not apply because the fund was so safe: ''Because all of the trust fund loans are secured and over-collateralized, there is relatively low risk,'' Mr. Cox wrote. It turned out that no investment sold by Mr. Cooper was safe.

As chairman of the S.E.C., Mr. Cox will have to decide whether to seek a weakening of rules stemming from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that have forced companies to assure their internal controls are adequate. He will hear that the rules are too expensive and are therefore hurting the investors they are supposed to protect.

This is the real Christopher Cox. This story gives an insight into the character of the man who was at the helm of the SEC during the crash. Tomorrow, Chris Cox testifies before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). He needs to be asked the tough questions.