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Financial fraud prosecution dropped

Wed, 12/16/2009 - 22:10 by Inderjit Singh

Washington -- The U.S. Justice Department said prosecution of financial crimes dropped sharply in the past year, despite headlines centered on massive fraud cases.

While New York trader Bernard Madoff's multi-billion Ponzi scheme made headlines, federal prosecutors charged only 91 people with corporate fraud in the year ending Sept. 30, down from 313 in 2003, the year the department began keeping track, USA Today reported Wednesday.

With the Bush administration pushing the Justice Department to tackle terrorism cases, prosecutors let their guard down regarding financial crime, said Sen Ted Kaufman, D-Del.

Official: SEC should pay bounties

Thu, 07/02/2009 - 04:23 by Salinder Kumar

New York -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should reward those who provide information on financial fraud, an official said Wednesday.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz is investigating why the agency failed to catch on to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, which sucked up billions of dollars in investors' money for years. Several people warned the SEC that Madoff's returns were too good to be true.

Kotz said the SEC has procedures for paying bounties in place but only in insider-trading cases, Financial Times reported. In a letter to Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., head of a house panel working on financial regulation, Kotz also said the criteria for providing rewards are "vague."