Petition Launched Urging DOJ To Bring Charges Against Wall Street Before Statute Of Limitations Is Up

Time is running out to criminally charge the Wall Street firms who caused the 2008 financial crisis. 2015 is the last bite at the apple due to the statute of limitations on criminal fraud being up. In February of this year Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a final review of the evidence the DOJ has collected in the previous years before closing the cases for good.

In response Change.org has launched a petition to demand the Department of Justice file criminal charges before the statute of limitations expires in 2015. The petition heavily focuses on the evidence provided by JPMorgan whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann. Fleischmann gave what can fairly be described as smoking gun evidence to the Department of Justice in 2012 on JPMorgan's practices in the mortgage-backed securities market and was the subject of a popular piece by Matt Taibbi published by Rolling Stone.

The Rolling Stone article - subtitled "Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking" - details how Fleischmann, a former compliance officer at JPMorgan, told DOJ that she witnessed JPMorgan knowingly packaging and selling fraudulent financial securities. Fleischmann's evidence was reportedly used as leverage by the DOJ to get JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to agree to pay civil penalties in the billions.

But no one at JPMorgan or any of the other Wall Street firms has faced criminal charges related to their crimes. The firms all have just paid record breaking civil fines and gone back to business as usual. In truth, shareholders are the ones who have really paid the fines and Wall Street bonuses are back to pre-crisis levels.

If the point of criminal prosecution is to both punish and deter then there is every reason to push for the Department of Justice to fulfill its legal obligation and criminally charge those they know (thanks to Fleischmann) are guilty of crimes. Both to punish those who broke the law and deter others from breaking it again and causing another financial crisis.