To hear Eric Holder Jr. tell it, the Justice Department is aggressively cracking down on financial fraud. On Monday in Washington, Mr. Holder, the United States attorney general, announced with much fanfare the results of a new enforcement program: Operation Broken Trust. “With this operation, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is sending a strong message,” Mr. Holder declared, highlighting the Ponzi schemes, affinity frauds and investment scams his department had prosecuted. In all, Mr. Holder said his new task force had brought cases against 343 criminal defendants and 189 civil defendants for fraud schemes that harmed more than 120,000 victims throughout the country, involving more than $8 billion in estimated losses. It all sounded quite important, and the program’s slogan is pretty catchy. But after you get past the pandering sound bites, a question comes to mind: is anyone in the corner offices of Wall Street’s biggest firms or corporate America’s biggest companies paying any attention to Mr. Holder’s “strong message?”
Pulling back the curtain on fraud inquiries
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