OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says in a lawsuit that a unit of by Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway “ignored clear and obvious red flags” that borrowers were unable to pay the mortgages they were given to buy manufactured homes from another Berkshire company.

The CFPB he said Monday that Vanderbilt Mortgage & Finance’s decisions put many families in a position where they struggled to pay their bills and buy basic necessities. In one example, Vanderbilt approved a loan for a family that already had 33 bad debts, and as a result, the family began falling behind just eight months after the loan was approved.

“Vanderbilt knowingly traps people with risky loans to close the deal on the sale of a manufactured home,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement.

Vanderbilt is a unit of Berkshire’s Clayton Homes, which is the nation’s largest builder of manufactured homes. A Vanderbilt spokesman said the company was reviewing the CFPB’s lawsuit Monday, but had no immediate comment. Clayton also did not immediately respond. Both Vanderbilt and Clayton are based in Tennessee.

A decade ago, Clayton was accused of predatory lending in a series of news, however Buffett defended Clayton’s lending practices and said the company followed all state and federal laws.

After the 2008 financial crisis that was triggered by systemic failures in the mortgage market, all lenders were required to verify borrowers’ incomes and make a good-faith decision about whether they could re-play a loan.

The CFPB said in the lawsuit that Vanderbilt failed to do that and sometimes manipulated its lending standards when borrowers had insufficient income or relied on unrealistic estimates of living expenses.

In addition to prefabricated housing companies BerkshireHeadquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, it owns a wide assortment of companies, including other manufacturers, several major utilities, major insurers such as Geico, the BNSF railroad, and some of the best-known retail brands, including Dairy Queen and Helzberg Diamonds.