Tag Archives: DOJ

Is B of A the Most Embarrassing Department of Justice Suit Ever?

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Devin Smith | 8 comments

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) latest civil suit against Bank of America (B of A) is an embarrassment of tragic proportions on multiple dimensions. In this version I explore “only” seven of its epic fails.

The two most obvious fails (except to the most of the media, which failed to mention either) are that the DOJ has once again refused to prosecute either the elite bankers or bank that committed what the DOJ describes as massive frauds and that the DOJ has refused to bring even a civil suit against the senior officers of the banks despite filing a complaint that alleges facts showing that those officers committed multiple felonies that made them wealthy by causing massive harm to others. Those two fails should have been the lead in every article about the civil suit.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, bank of america, bankster, BofA, DOJ, too big to prosecute

How Dare DOJ Insult HSBC’s Crooks as Less “Professional” than Liberty Reserve’s Crooks?

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Devin Smith | 3 comments

By William K. Black

Standard Chartered and HSBC’s leaders must be doubly humiliated by the description by Mythili Raman, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Criminal Division, of Liberty Reserve’s money laundering operation. UK laws are, of course, very congenial to those suing for libel and I am sure that these banking titans are meeting with their solicitors to demand a retraction and apology from Raman. In the very first clause of her May 28, 2013 statement to the media on the actions against Liberty Reserve’s controlling officers, Raman emphasized how “professional” they were as money launderers: “Today, we strike a severe blow against a professional money laundering enterprise charged with laundering over $6 billion in criminal proceeds.” In four paragraphs, she used the word “professional” three times and “sophisticated” once to describe Liberty Reserve’s money laundering. Continue reading →

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, Control Fraud, DOJ, HSBC, Liberty Reserve, Standard Chartered

By their responses ye shall know them

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Devin Smith | 1 comment

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

A preliminary note:

Greetings from Davos! I’m actually writing this over the mid-Atlantic as I return from being a keynote speaker at the annual “Public Eye” “shame prize” awarded to Goldman Sachs for its abuses. The shame prize award was made in Davos during the World Economic Forum as a counter-WEF event. Shell also “won” a shame prize, but I spoke on Goldman Sachs, the role of epidemics of accounting control fraud, and the WEF’s anti-regulatory and pro-executive compensation policies. I explained that the anti-regulatory policies were intended to fuel the destructive regulatory “race to the bottom” and why the executive and professional compensation policies maximized the incentives to defraud. I also explained that WEF was a fraud denier. Collectively, these three WEF policies contributed to creating the intensely criminogenic environments that produce the epidemics of accounting control fraud driving our worst financial crises. Detailed written developments of these arguments can be found here on our UMKC economics blog: New Economic Perspectives. Continue reading →

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged department of justice, DOJ, frontline, truth to power

The Second Great Betrayal: Obama and Cameron Decide that Banks are above the Law

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Devin Smith | 23 comments

By William K. Black

One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement. The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud.

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23 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged banksters, Breuer, DOJ, HSBC, SDI, to big to prosecute, Treasury

The WSJ Conflates Lending to Blacks with Imprudent Lending

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Devin Smith | 4 comments

By William K. Black

The Wall Street Journal has written a revealing editorial entitled: A Fine for Doing Good: The Justice Department sues a bank for prudent lending.

The WSJ appears to have forgotten the concept of a poll tax as a means to exclude most blacks from voting. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged DOJ, poll tax, WSJ

Two Billion Dollars Lost because the FDIC Ignored United Commercial Bank’s Frauds

Posted on October 17, 2011 by William Black | Comments Off

By William K. Black

The good news is that we finally have the second group ofindictments of senior bank officers. The prosecution involves officers of United Commercial Bank (UCB), a roughly $10 billion San Francisco bank that originally specialized in lending to Chinese-Americans and became primarily a commercial real estate (CRE) lender. The indictment deals only withthe cover up phase of UCB’s senior officers’ frauds. I will show in future posts that the reportedfacts on UCB’s loans were consistent with accounting control fraud. The UCB case is so rich in lessons that itwill take a series of articles to capture what the case reveals about thedegradation of regulation and prosecution of elite accounting controlfrauds.

Here are the most essential facts. In 2002,a court found that UCB’s senior managers had engaged in fraud to hide losses ona large loan for the purpose of fraudulently inducing another bank to bear thelosses. It found the senior officers’conduct so outrageous that it awarded substantial punitive damages. The FDIC, the SEC, and the Department ofJustice did nothing in response to the fraud.

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