Interesting tidbits keep turning up in the Thornburg Mortgage bankruptcy case, one of the largest in US history.

Court documents show that in October, the company, now known as TMST, had $24 million in the bank (or rather, banks—foremost among them being New Mexico Bank & Trust). That month alone, TMST made a gross profit of $2.2 million from servicing mortgages—and has made $19.9 million since filing for bankruptcy in May. After legal fees and “general and administrative” costs, TMST has netted $816,773 since the bankruptcy. Of course, all that belongs to its creditors.

The case is also shedding light on what kind of tax burden one of Santa Fe’s largest private employers faces, or rather, doesn’t.

Since filing for bankruptcy, the company has paid a $107,850 in combined state and federal taxes—or 13 percent of its net profit in that time. For comparison’s sake, check out the federal income tax brackets. A married couple making the median income in Santa Fe is going to pay 15 percent. Such a couple is likely to pay property taxes, as well—unlike TMST, which pays no property taxes on its corporate HQ, thanks to a clever deal with the city of Santa Fe.

Click on the image below for a breakdown of TMST’s tax payments.

Note that TMST, which laid off 130 workers in April and more since, has paid all of $973 in unemployment taxes in the months since its bankruptcy. Two years ago, Gov. Bill Richardson—who has received many thousands in campaign contributions from company founder Garrett Thornburg over the years—signed into law a bill that cut employer unemployment tax payments to the lowest rate allowed by federal law, saving corporations an estimated $26 million in 2008.

More on Thornburg after the cut.

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On a Friday-going-on-Saturday when the Carlos Fierro trial dominated local headlines, the company that was Thornburg Mortgage announced that its founder, H Garrett Thornburg, Jr, was stepping down as board chairman. Journal North editor Mark Oswald had the story, which you can’t read unless you subscribe to that paper.

As Oswald noted rather slyly, the news came in a “release issued by a New York public relations firm.”

Why resign now? Thornburg cited “shocking allegations” against former executives he’d worked with closely for years. It’s unclear how significant this move is, because Thornburg remains in charge of Thornburg Mortgage Advisory Corporation, a legal entity that technically employs the other company’s executives.

In the late Thornburg Mortgage’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported yesterday the company opposes its creditors’ motion to have an independent manager take over while the company is dismantled. Thornburg says it’s “superfluous, not to mention an unnecessary and unwarranted expenditure of time and resources,” according to Reuters. A representative creditor, however, is “been particularly concerned that its cash collateral might be used to finance the unnecessarily high operating costs of this estate.”

Pretend you’re a newspaper. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

Now say one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in US history occurs on your turf. Then imagine that, in the course of the bankruptcy case, federal investigators determine the company’s management—which includes some of your city’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens—has “improperly divert[ed]” company resources and “cannot now be entrusted” to act transparently and honestly.

Unfortunately, your business reporter has been cut to part-time. But you still think this might be story worth mentioning, right? Right?

Not if you’re the Santa Fe New Mexican. Or the Albuquerque Journal.

This morning a US Justice Department official asked federal bankruptcy judge to take action against Thornburg Mortgage over claims of misappropriated funds discussed in today’s SFR. The filing, by Assistant US Trustee Mark A Neal, basically says Thornburg management should be removed by the court because they used creditors’ money to fund startup costs for an entirely new company. (Some management has already departed, as we reported yesterday.)

A story last week by Reuters—the international news wire service, which the dailies presumably keep tabs on—hinted something like this might be coming. And the story of the new company won’t be news to SFR readers. But shouldn’t the dailies be on this? A federal official is basically saying the CEO of what was one of Santa Fe’s largest private employers—a company local politicians both praised and rewarded—is untrustworthy and may have spent money that wasn’t his.

“Not only is candor to the Court and [creditors] lacking in this case, but [Thornburg Mortgage] violated chapter 11’s basic prohibition on the use of estate assets,” Neal writes in his filing. “Furthermore, the use of [Thornburg Mortgage]’s employees by its most senior officers to staff start-up aspects of a new and undisclosed company is, at its very best, strong evidence of incompetence and/or gross mismanagement.”

Thornburg employees paid to work for the new company, SAF Financial, “are likely to instead prioritize their work in favor of an emerging entity, owned by insider management, that may offer them future employment. The creation of this…conflict-of-interest is the doing of current management, which cannot now be entrusted to perform their fiduciary obligations,” Neal writes.

Click here to download the 14-page filing.

SFR has tried to get a message to company founder Garrett Thornburg, who—unlike Thornburg Mortgage CEO Larry Goldstone and CFO Clarence Simmons—is not named in Neal’s filing. (That’s Thornburg, pictured.) It’s probably past time for him to address these issues.

We’ll let you know if and when we get a response. Neal did not immediately return a request for comment.

Thornburg Mortgage is not commenting on anything at all.

I ran across this blog a week or so ago, after SFR’s cover on Thornburg Mortgage. It’s written by a woman in Chicago who bought a house with a Thornburg loan. Now that the company’s in bankruptcy, she wants Thornburg borrowers to “unite” to persuade the company to offer them the right to buy back their mortgages. “Banks buy back their debt,” she writes. “Why can’t we?”

Good question.

Reuters business blogger Felix Salmon endorsed her idea, with a caveat:

The borrowers are saying that if Thornburg is willing to sell their loan to an outside investor for 69 cents, it should be even more willing to sell that loan back to the homeowner for 70 cents. But in fact it’s more complicated than that. The homeowners who are willing and able to buy back their own loans for 70 cents on the dollar are generally the most valuable of Thornburg’s borrowers — they’re overwhelmingly likely to be the ones whose loans are worth par, or more. So if Thornburg allows them to buy their own loans back, the value of the remaining mortgages goes down, and the investors aren’t going to be willing to pay 69 cents on the dollar any more.

Also, Kelli K, the author of the Thornburg Borrowers Unite blog, broke a little news the other day, after calling the firm that’s handling Thornburg’s bankruptcy, Houlihan Lokey. Here’s what they told her:

First of all, despite what many of us believed, Thornburg did NOT keep many of our loans on their books. I was told there were “maybe a dozen” mortgages that had not been securitized. In other words, there are a few crumbs at the bottom of the cookie jar.

For everyone else, the only question that remains is who will take over the servicing rights that Thornburg used to enjoy. I was told that the company’s creditors are trying to figure out who walks off with that prize right now. If you received the same email I got yesterday from Thornburg, you already know that it may take up to 90 days for us to learn who the new servicer is.

What’s the upshot for those who live in Thornburg’s backyard? Not much. Not many New Mexicans were Thornburg customers. This is just a little glimpse into the isues that come up in a bankruptcy.