CRC Senior Vice President Mike Russell said the firm took on the IndyMac case because it believed Schumer had acted irresponsibly and because Seely "wasn't trying to gouge anybody in court."
Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon questioned CRC's involvement, saying, "It certainly raises eyebrows."
The letter, signed mostly by former staffers at IndyMac's now-shuttered mortgage operation, asks Brown to investigate Schumer and to prosecute him under a state law making it a misdemeanor to spread false and damaging statements or rumors about a bank.
Through a spokesman, Schumer denied that any of his statements were false and said IndyMac's downfall was inevitable after years of high-risk lending. The spokesman added that the information Schumer cited about the savings bank's financial troubles was taken from regulatory filings that are publicly available on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. website.
Brown, a Democrat and former California governor, is a candidate to become governor again in 2010. His spokesman, Gareth Lacy, said, "We'll review the letter," and declined to comment further.
Seely said that she had never worked with the media and that she used Google to find a public relations firm that could handle an issue with political overtones. She said she approached several firms, and CRC was the only one that volunteered.
A former IndyMac project manager who helped the thrift start a direct-to-consumer lending division, Seely lives in the Northern California city of Dublin in Alameda County, where her voter registration shows no party affiliation.
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scott.reckard@latimes.com
