Sure companies will and can do that, there has been pretty good history of really large companies committing financial fraud. However, I don't think there ever has been systematic fraud in the US, unlike with subprime mortgages
Also, it was not really single family home owners that defaulted in mass. Investors, even those with prime credit ratings, were much more likely to default than non-investors when prices fell.[8][9][10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
People talk about subrime morgages as if they meant poor people. However, largely it was people buying up large numbers of homes and then strategically defaulting that caused the real damage.
The subprime mortgage crisis is in fact an excellent example of systemic fraud which happened in the US, fraud committed by ratings agencies (AAA CDOs) and banks (autosign). The system was corrupt, and probably still is - the incentives are all wrong.