Michael Douglas Stars In FBI's Anti-Financial Fraud PSA [VIDEO]

Michael Douglas has a new starring role.

The FBI has enlisted Douglas, an actor famous for his roles in Basic Instinct and Traffic, to encourage Wall Streeters and ordinary Americans to report any suspicious financial activity they may come across. Referencing perhaps his most famous starring role as Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street, Douglas gets serious fast.

"The movie was fiction, but the problem is real."

Even though Douglas delivers the line with cheesy after-school special flair, he may be right. Federal prosecution of financial crimes fell to a 20-year low in 2011, according to a November report from a watchdog group.

"Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets," Douglas says in the PSA. "If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is."

Comments

[one1byke]

01:18 PM on 03/10/2012

Zombie.

[Damn Strange]

09:58 PM on 02/29/2012

Hi, I'm Mitt Gekko, doing this community service message as part of my sentence.
Do you know any white collar criminals? Have you seen anything suspicious? Contact us through this website right away, so my handlers can decide if you should just be fired, or if more drastic measures are required to shut you up.
Thank you.

[mtm4882]

02:47 PM on 02/29/2012

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is bad."

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

02:16 PM on 02/29/2012

Let's hope it's not another how-to movie, like "Wall Street" turned out to be.

[clearasmud]

12:59 PM on 02/29/2012

We have apparently gotten to the point that the FBI is not allowed to bust the Banksters, so they are issuing Warnings that the Banksters are Criminals?

[linbianism]

10:28 AM on 02/29/2012

does anyone seriously think michael douglas knows anyting about wall street?

[sammi 56]

10:58 AM on 02/29/2012

Probably more than you do....

[Operafaust]

02:05 PM on 02/29/2012

No one is saying that he does. He was chosen because his iconic, Oscar-winning portrayal of fictional hedge fund/private equity titan Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's classic movie "Wall Street" back in '87 inspired generations of men to seek fame and fortune in finance. He was supposed to be the villain, but almost every broker, banker and trader on the Street knows his famous 'greed is good' speech by heart, word for word. Gordon Gekko isn't real, but he might as well be. That's why they picked him - because after 25 years, bank CEOs still tell him privately that seeing his performance inspired them to go into finance.

And on a personal level, I'm not proud of this, but it inspired me, too. I remember watching it on VHS back in the day and feeling goosebumps when the movie was over. I was only 21 at the time, studying corporate finance. I memorized that speech. I gave it at parties. I recited it at job interviews. When I became a broker I could practically hear Sinatra's 'Fly Me to the Moon' every time I walked unto the trading floor.

[Captain Leafheart]

10:09 AM on 02/29/2012

Some deals are too good to be true... ethical,etc. Any attempt to monitor/condemn/punish will be countered by a dizzying barrage of lawyerspeak, algorithmic rationalization, and of course the big players invoking "Hear No, Speak No, and See No."

[phill273]

09:28 AM on 02/29/2012

All I have to say is that individual policing within a company is better than the government will ever be. The SEC couldn't catch Enron, GM using a discount rate on its pension liabilities that was too high, and don't forget the Repo 105s by Lehman Brothers.

[Damn Strange]

12:44 AM on 03/01/2012

If you think these criminals don't kill snitches you haven't been following the news.

[phill273]

12:55 AM on 03/01/2012

All I'm saying is that the SEC is incompetent.

[jessjesskk]

03:07 AM on 02/29/2012

"If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is."

...or it is a deal arbitraging the hoard mentality with the economic reality, while being able to stand the test of timing.

[marinatha]

09:13 PM on 02/28/2012

Lets start with off shore accounts.Insider trading.Not enough watchdogs to even begin looking for the real crime in plain site.This psa did dance across my mind with michael douglas years ago.It has come to fruitation, but too little too late I am afraid.We are corrupt to the core of this country.

[PROGRESSISGOOD]

07:08 PM on 02/28/2012

Identifying the criminals is the easy part. We know who they are, we just need the FBI to arrest them.

[FOXYROSE]

05:06 PM on 02/28/2012

That brings to mind MF Global and former Gov Corzine who doesn't know what happened to billions of dollars! You don't hear a thing about him anymore and he is walking free along with Blaggo who never seems to get a jail date. If it was you or I we would have been behind bars post haste.

[1BadBob]

05:57 PM on 02/28/2012

Excuse me, Blago has a big date really soon middle of March for fourteen years and he has no more filth then every lawmaker it is a corrupt government

[jimme]

06:12 PM on 02/28/2012

Did you ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe, Corzine doesn't know ?
There are enough underlings that could've done things without his knowing. It happens all the time.
As far as Blaggo, he's going to club fed coloradr come March, I think it's March, maybe June, either way it's easy to look it up.

Edit: he was supposed to go in Feb. but was granted an extra month, so March it is.

[ThePeacemakers]

03:43 PM on 02/28/2012

If this works, they should have Al Pacino (as Tony Montana) talk to the drug dealers...

[mrJJ]

03:18 PM on 02/28/2012

‘Unprecedented’ insider trading probe involves 120 people: report

NEW YORK — US authorities are actively building cases against 120 people accused of insider trading in an expanding and possibly unprecedented criminal probe, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The Journal said the investigation comes after a series of successful prosecutions of insider trading, with 66 people charged since late 2009 and 57 of them convicted or pleading guilty.

“We’ve identified them, and now of course we have to build a case around that,” the Journal quoted David Chaves, a senior Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, as saying on the sidelines of a Monday press conference.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/28/unprecidented-insider-trading-probe-involves-120-people-report/

[laura r]

02:29 PM on 02/28/2012

While George W. Bush was looking for WMD in Iraq, Wall Street was creating the biggest global WMD in history. Let's all hope that Europe can pull together on their debt crises. If they go down, it will pull our over leveraged banks down again; they have trillions in Derivatives (destruction) connected to the European banks.

”Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back.”
Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England

[Damn Strange]

12:46 AM on 03/01/2012

You mean, While George W. Bush was looking for WMD in Iraq, he was busy helping Wall Street create...