Goldman Sachs Says Regulators Might Bring Fraud Charges

WASHINGTON -- Goldman Sachs & Co. says one of its units is being investigated by federal regulators over whether it improperly used investment accounts to make trades and could face civil fraud charges.

Goldman says the staff of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has told the firm it will recommend that the agency file charges.

The charges involve money belonging to customers of another financial firm that was a Goldman client. Goldman says in a filing with regulators that the charges would be based on allegations that it knew or should have known that the money belonged to customers of that firm rather than to the firm itself.

Goldman says it is cooperating with the investigation. It didn't name the client firm.

Comments

[SamSeven]

11:48 AM on 05/11/2011

Please someone arrest these guys please please please.

G&S has committed fraud, money launderning and conspiracy yet these crooks cant seem to go to jail. They fleeced America of it's riches and now are almost finished with Greece.

[paulbenjouse]

01:59 PM on 05/11/2011

Unfortunate that they will get away with it all ;(

[Tom Stimmel]

11:46 AM on 05/11/2011

Well that tears it then. Time for Goldman to re-write those laws.

[TOCB]

08:27 AM on 05/11/2011

"improperly used investment accounts to make trades..." What does that mean? Is Goldman the only ones doing this? What prevensts others from doing it? I have long suspected that big players in the financial markets manipulate the markets for their gain at the expense of average "investors". It has long troubled me that it is in someone's best interest that a stock price falls. Rapidly. The market rule should be if you don't like a company's performance you should be allowed to sell shares you own. However, to allow "sofisticated" investors the privilege of selling shares they don't own is giving them a tool to manipulate the market. I recall that during the financial meltdown the SEC banned shorting certain stocks. That brings to question, why is it bad for some stocks, some of the time and not for others.

[muck-raker]

10:29 AM on 05/11/2011

it is called naked shorting

[ken607]

08:10 AM on 05/11/2011

why do you think the GOP is working so hard to DERGULATE? DUH! so these CRIMINALS can LOOT all they can. i think the death penalty should be ON THE TABLE. after all these people ARE causeing deaths EVERYWHERE in the world! by stealing peoples retirements, pensions,401k and homes! we all know the gop stands for megarich but if they dont givein soon there will be bigger problems going on like a NEW revolution. and they will not be very liked!

[martman1]

07:54 AM on 05/11/2011

So the CFTC will bring charges when the hurt party is another financial firm but ignore the damage being done when it is the public that is hurt. No surprise here.

[big tom]

07:27 AM on 05/11/2011

every week the same crooks in the headlites..put them in prison .. they are a threat to society.

[muck-raker]

10:36 AM on 05/11/2011

so true F&F:By Matt Taibbi

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's pfucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's pfucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

[pep1]

07:12 AM on 05/11/2011

charges are one thing... let's see if they get convictions with serious jail time... then I'll be impressed

[G52]

06:43 AM on 05/11/2011

Before everyone gets too excited I would like to point out that the head of the CFTC is an Obama appointee who was a former employee of...............guess who? Goldman Sachs

His name is Gensler.

[G52]

06:48 AM on 05/11/2011

Goldman is being "investigated" by one of its former employees.............

Could anything be wrong with that? Here is a link on some of his plans.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/gensler-says-regulators-should-set-small-group-of-systemic-firms.html

[rst2536]

06:42 AM on 05/11/2011

A BID TO PURCHASE THE UNIVERSE

A meeting of financial services
Discussing God at Wall Street banks:
A banker said, “The saints preserve us, His
Hot ire will have us walking planks.
Before He does this, my proposal
Is that we place at His disposal
A buyout offer. Don’t applaud.
We have more money than the God.”
This motion raised their wild excitement
Because it was a stratagem
Insuring they’d remain the crème.
And, too, this was their real incitement,
How much they’d charge a business to
Escape their Hell when it came due.

See more at http://poemsonaffairsofstate.blogspot.com/

[Alphonso Whitfield]

06:07 AM on 05/11/2011

These should be criminal and not civil charges. If a citizen writes a bad check its criminal, why not a corproation, they want to be treated as a "person" when its convenient except when it has consequences affecting their ability to steal.

[muck-raker]

05:54 AM on 05/11/2011

Best article of its kind: excerpt:Millions have lost their jobs and their homes, and the meltdown in the U.S. housing market continues apace. Taxpayers will be picking up the bill for generations to come. Meanwhile, many of those who played key roles in inflating the U.S. housing bubble and lining their own pockets while leading the U.S. economy off a cliff enjoy lives of unfathomable wealth.

So while U.S. corporate profits continue to be stoked by the Federal Reserve's printing presses, rockbottom interest rates and a multiplicity of tax loopholes, the folks on Main Street face higher taxes, reduced services and the erosion of key entitlement programs.

"Inside Job is the definitive screen investigation of the global economic crisis, providing hard evidence of flagrant amorality," Variety, the U.S. entertainment-industry bible, gushed when the documentary was first released.

"Boasting more villains than a dozen blockbusters, it points an incriminating finger at not only financial-services execs who got filthy rich on working people's pain (and who remain in power) but also government officials and biz-school (academics) revealed to be in Wall Streeters' pockets."

Yes, bin Laden is dead, and that's a wonderful thing. But the financial terrorists are still running amok, with the U.S. government's acquiescence.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/public+enemy+dead+others+still+economy/4715736/story.html

[JacksonAndy78]

05:10 AM on 05/11/2011

WHEN?

He should have been in PR1S0N Years ago!

“I know one thing for sure: This is not G0D’s work — it has the unmistakable odor of MAM.M0M,” (the financial community - Banks and their C0-C0nspirators) has “failed miserably at our primary function, the efficient and productive allocation of capital... active money managers underperform the market 80% of the time.”

-- Pimco’s Bill Gross - a growing new breed who see the path America’s on is destroying us from within: our economy, democracy, our very soul.

[whitemale08]

03:10 AM on 05/11/2011

Civil fraud charges are not enough.

Justice demands criminal charges of fraud and an IMMEDIATE SHUT DOWN of all operations.

It's time transfer the MBS losses back onto Goldman Sach's balance sheets and place them into RECEIVERSHIP/BANKRUPTCY, revoking their 'bank charter' by restoring Glass-Steagall.

The global economy will never be safe until Goldman Sachs is SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!

[goodwill2]

02:29 AM on 05/11/2011

Civil charges duh.

[almost homeless]

02:09 AM on 05/11/2011

Regulators my arse! More like contract employees of Goldman Sachs.