Bear Stearns criminal activity investigated.

There is no telling how much criminal activity is going on these days.
And I'm talking about all over Wall Street as well as big sovereign wealth funds based in Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
All your BS insider "swells" made out real well.
Insiders sold Millions in stock earlier in the year and "somebody" went crazy with puts and rumors last week.
Nothing unusual.



LINK
Reuters
SEC probing options activity in Bear Stearns
Thursday March 20, 8:16 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the events leading up to the collapse of Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC - News), specifically a surge in options contracts betting that the investment bank's share price would fall sharply, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the paper reported the SEC probe focuses on a surge last week in "put" options that came days before the firm's proposed sale to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM - News) for stock now valued at about $278.5 million, or $2.32 a share.


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US, Abu Dhabi, Singapore agree sovereign wealth fund principles
Mar 20
The US Treasury said Thursday it had struck a series of agreements with big sovereign wealth funds based in Abu Dhabi and Singapore on investments in US markets.

The agreements covering investment principles were hammered out following a meeting here between US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Abu Dhabi and Singapore government officials.

"We had a good discussion today on the issues surrounding sovereign wealth funds. Singapore and UAE have long-established, well-respected funds and are showing real leadership by joining with us today," Paulson said.

The agreements encourage sovereign wealth funds to be more transparent and to base their investment decisions on commercial grounds among other measures.

"The US welcomes sovereign wealth fund investment and looks forward to continuing to work with these two countries and others to support the initiatives underway at the IMF and OECD to develop best practices for sovereign wealth funds and recipient countries," the US Treasury chief said.

The agreements governing sovereign wealth funds were released by the Treasury after Paulson met Singapore's finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, government of Abu Dhabi executive council member Hamad Al Hurr Al Suwaidi and other officials at the Treasury.

The International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were seeking standards for sovereign wealth funds, whose value is expected to swell to 10 trillion dollars in five years.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 20 March 2008 - 10:48 PM.

LINK
SEC probes rumours over Lehman and Bear Stearns
Suzy Jagger, New York
March 19, 2008

Wall Street's regulator has launched a formal inquiry into whether hedge funds and other market participants sought to deliberately circulate false rumours about Lehman Brothers over the last few days in order to profit from short-selling shares in the investment bank, The Times has learnt.

On Monday, shares in Lehman Brothers fell by as much as 40 per cent amid panic that another Wall Street bank was experiencing severe funding problems. While all investment banking stocks tumbled on Monday, Lehman's rivals were broadly down around just 10 per cent.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now investigating whether hedge funds and other dealers in the equity market had sought to drive down Lehman's stock price by disseminating unfounded rumours about the bank's liquidity position.

As the rumours gained pace, and Lehman's stock declined, Richard Fuld, the bank's chairman and chief executive, sought to quash the speculation on Monday by issuing a statement insisting the group had $35 billion (£17.5 billion) of cash and liquid assets and a further $160 billion of unencumbered assets that could be sold to generate cash.

LINK
13 Charged In Big Insider Trading Scam
Plots Touch 4 Elite Wall Street Firms

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 2, 2007; Page A01

Federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges against more than a dozen people, including former executives at four of Wall Street's elite institutions, accused of engaging in thousands of improper trades in two schemes that netted more than $15 million in profit.

A grand jury in Manhattan indicted nine people on conspiracy, fraud and bribery charges. Among them were lawyers and officials responsible for protecting the integrity of the firms and the market, who instead became perpetrators, prosecutors said. They worked for such top-tier firms as UBS, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Securities and Bear Stearns.

Four others, who agreed to plea bargains, helped investigators crack open the massive, six-year insider-trading plot and will provide testimony against their onetime associates, government officials said.

Together, the charges and guilty pleas mark one of the biggest and most prominent insider-trading busts since the era of Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine, when handcuffed executives were marched out of investment firms two decades ago.

"It is particularly pernicious when Wall Street insiders . . . shamelessly compromise the markets' integrity and investors' trust for a quick buck," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, the enforcement chief at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The six-month probe unearthed furtive meetings among the alleged conspirators, who used disposable cellphones and coded text messages to evade detection and paid kickbacks in the form of cash-filled envelopes. Investigators said they shook their heads at times as the case increasingly resembled the greed on display in the 1987 film "Wall Street."

The charges come as federal authorities are accelerating their efforts to stanch the improper flow of information among a select group of insiders on Wall Street -- a tactic that allows insiders to reap handsome profits at the expense of average investors.

Among those charged is Mitchel S. Guttenberg, a manager in UBS's equity research department, who prosecutors say tipped off traders to forthcoming upgrades and downgrades in specific stocks in exchange for a share of the profit. Guttenberg was arrested at home yesterday morning, said FBI official Teresa L. Carlson.

In 2001, as part of his job, Guttenberg gained access to a daily list of UBS analyst recommendations before it was distributed to the public, government officials said. He first exploited the information to repay a $25,000 personal loan owed to Erik R. Franklin, a former employee of Bear Stearns who has worked at three hedge funds in recent years, according to court papers.

The pair initially met at New York's fabled Oyster Bar, in the bowels of Grand Central Terminal. But finding that arrangement nettlesome, they bought disposable cellphones and sent each other coded text messages before UBS analysts downgraded their ratings on such stocks as Allstate and CVS.

The scheme involved thousands of trades, according to SEC officials. Guttenberg and Franklin invited others to join them, including relatives and executives who had worked at Bear Stearns, regulators said. The men traded in their personal accounts as well as in Franklin's hedge fund accounts.

Brokers at the New York firm Assent discovered the scheme by monitoring an account that some of the participants used. Instead of reporting the problem to law enforcement officials, however, the Assent brokers "blackmailed" the traders for more than $180,000 in cash to keep quiet, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said at a news conference in New York.

LINK
Probe of Insider Trading at Bear Stearns
December 17, 2007

Federal investigators are examining whether some insiders pulled money out of Bear's troubled hedge funds, while others were blocked from doing so.
The investigation by securities regulators and federal prosecutors into this summer's collapse of two Bear Stearns (BSC) hedge funds that invested in risky securities backed by subprime mortgages is heating up. BusinessWeek has learned the Securities & Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn are looking into an allegation that at least one Bear Stearns insider associated with the funds may have been pulling his personal money out of the investment vehicles this spring when the market was in turmoil. The alleged redemptions occurred, sources say, during a time the funds' managers were urging other investors to stay put.

The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that Ralph Cioffi is the manager drawing scrutiny, after moving $2 million of his $6 million investment in the funds into another Bear-managed hedge fund. BusinessWeek has learned the other Bear fund in question is the $228 million Bear Stearns Structured Risk Partners fund. People familiar with the probe say investigators have been reaching out to investors in the highly leveraged funds, seeking information about the comments the funds' managers made during the spring with regard to the issue of redemptions, as well as the funds' exposure to the subprime mortgage market. The funds once controlled nearly $35 billion in collateralized debt obligations and other mortgage-backed securities, and investors lost a combined $1.6 billion when the funds filed for bankruptcy in July.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 20 March 2008 - 10:11 PM.

True insider trading:

Pssst....Guard! Come here. I've got a hot stock tip...

Good stuff Roger.

They'll also have to investigate the SEC.

Cramer had a good rant on the elimination of the uptick rule:

http://www.cnbc.com/...video=690802125