White House Creates Task Force to Target Financial Fraud

President Obama is forming a multiagency task force to go after criminals who defrauded investors and consumers during the financial crisis.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force will work with state and local authorities to pursue fraud cases in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown and the housing market crash, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Mortgages, securities, and corporate fraud schemes have eroded the public's confidence in the nation's financial markets and have led to a growing sentiment that Wall Street does not play by the same rules as Main Street," Holder said.

The task force is similar to one created in 2002 by George W. Bush that went after corporate malfeasance stemming from the accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom. Holder said President Obama's task force will take a page from his predecessor's and track down "unscrupulous executives, Ponzi scheme operators and common criminals," the Times reported.

The new task force comes six months after Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, which authorized $245 million annually in 2010 and 2011 to hire hundreds of prosecutors, agents and other federal officials to pursue financial fraud. The measure also strengthened and expanded money laundering laws and other statutes to apply to fraud committed by private mortgage lenders.